Information Society

Today, more people are exposed and have access to more information than anytime in the past. This situation results from the information economy. Easy access and ample exposure to information has reshaped modern societies, permeated everyday life, and now influences the decisions people make and the opportunities they seek. There are even world summits that solely address the issues of an information society. Yet not everyone has equal access to information, and geographic patterns of information access have emerged. In effect, areas of higher economic development typically have greater exposure and access to information than lagging areas. This trend is true at the global, national, or regional scale. Some regions and urban places are tied to the information network to a greater extent than others, and such places tend to be sources for information.

The growth of an information society is tied heavily to information and communication technologies. The introduction of the telegraph helped collapse space in the 19th century. Ensuing developments in radio and phone technology furthered the collapse. Television has profoundly affected our ability to access information even to the point of it influencing how we might vote. Today, the Internet is one of the more viable avenues for accessing information. As information technology escalates in ingenuity and capacity, so does the ability of societies to effectively handle information and information flows. The Internet has become a popular way for businesses and institutions to interact with one another, for people to find information pertinent to their needs, or for converting information in hardcopy to a digital format. As such, modern societies have entered the digital age of information.

Not all societies have equal access to digital information. Those that are not fully enveloped within the information network typically have smaller national outputs, or fewer computers, televisions, and phones per person. Still, the ability to access information on the Internet and television or by phone has never been easier anywhere. The economic benefits that can accrue from information flows have for the most part reinforced existing spatial economic patterns. The Internet has not significantly reshaped spatial economies; if anything it has reinforced their structure. Those regions that are notably tied to a nodal center for economic leadership will continue to be so in the information age. As such, one might view information societies as hierarchically organized, with some people and regions having greater access to tacit information and being further up the hierarchy. Because of this hierarchical structure, it is not practical to view global information patterns as wholly ubiquitous.

Information patterns can be broken into different layers: that which is explicit (or easy to understand and open to public use); that which is tacit (or strategic and difficult to attain); and those layers in between, of which each will produce different geographic patterns. Explicit information patterns or flows will be much more ubiquitous over space than tacit information patterns. It is the concentration of strategic information that has led to truncation in spatial economies. Within information societies, selected cities have subsequently emerged as growth nodes.

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