The idea of an information society

Three days ago, the veteran journalist Edwin Ariyadasa turned eighty seven years. Today's 'Montage' is devoted a celebration of his life and work. I first got to know Edwin in the 1950s without getting to know him. What does this cryptic remark mean? As a schoolboy, I used to be an avid reader of the series of essays by Janaka that appeared in the `Silumina' supplement on arts and letters. This series dealt with art, literature as well as scientific topics such as the theory of evolution in accessible Sinhala prose. At a time when there was very little material in Sinhala on contemporary topics and scientific concepts, the essays by Janaka opened a very important window for us onto modern ideas and concepts.

Later, after graduating from Peradeniya, I spent some time on the editorial staff of `Dinamina'; I was a member of the features desk. Around the table sat, Sisil Illangakoon, the features editor, who was also my cousin, and B.A. Siriwardena, Jayavilal Wilegoda, G.S. Perera and Hema Gunawardena. Edwin was at a different desk; but I got the opportunity to discuss matters, both profound and trivial, with him at length. Being new to Colombo, his advice proved to be extremely useful.

A decade or so later, when I became the Head of the newly inaugurated Department of Mass Communication at the Kelaniya University, I invited Edwin Ariyadasa to serve as a Visiting Lecturer knowing full well his deep interest in, and intimate knowledge of, the field of communication. As a journalist he used to write on a broad gamut of topics ranging from literature and cinema to international relations. Through his copious writings, he was able to create a landscape of authority around him. He was also an accomplished broadcaster, and one of his memorable programs was the live broadcast in Sinhala on the moon landing. He explained in simple Sinhala the intricate science and the complex logistics that went into this historic event. That program, organized by H.M. Gunasekera, succeeded in a way few others did, in broadening the intellectual horizons of the Sinhala listeners.

Over the past six decades, Edwin Ariyadasa has introduced very many important concepts to the Sinhala reader. One such is the idea of the information society which today has assumed the status of a privileged concept in communication studies. Fritz Machlup had been working since the 1930s on the idea of knowledge industries and his book on the production and distribution of knowledge in the United States was one seminal treatise that served to focus on the information society. The writings of Daniel Bell on the post-industrial society, which he later termed the information society, are another.

What is meant by the information society? It refers to a society in which the generation, dissemination, reception and integration of information has become the centre of social living. In more advanced societies, the members of the information society are referred to as digital citizens. There are a number of scholars and thinkers who have written insightfully on this concept. Daniel Bell, Herbert Schiller, Jurgen Habermas, Anthony Giddens, Alvin Toffler, Theodore Roszak, are a few of them. Some, mostly in the domains of futuristic studies and communication, are highly enthusiastic about this concept, while others are less enthusiastic and harbour certain reservations. I belong to the second category. The stupendous developments in information technologies and the concomitant growths in the quantum of information have made an undeniable difference to modern life. However, there are certain negatives that we in our over-enthusiasm should not ignore downplay.

One of the most persuasive scholars of the information society that I have encountered is Manuel Castells, an empirical sociologist. I once listened to an hour-long interview he gave over the radio, which remains in my memory as one of the most lucid on the subject.

He is a Spanish-born scholar who now works in the United States. His trilogy of books, `The Rise of Network Society', `The Power of Identity' and `End of Millennium', are to my mind, the most significant interpretive works in this field of inquiry. Like many other teachers of communication, I use them frequently in class.

His central argument is that the information age marks the commencement of a new society which has spawned new networks that facilitate information flows in ways that have not been encountered before. He focuses on the idea of informational capitalism, and he prefers the term `network society' to information society, claiming that the latter is short of analytical rigor.

The information society is indeed an interesting concept; there is no doubt the quantity and velocity of the travel of information has increased dramatically in recent times, inflecting our lives in complex ways.

However, in my judgment, there are a number of problems associated with this concept. First the concept of information as used by these writers, Castells included, is inexact and somewhat fuzzy; it functions as a variable concept in which precision is silent. Second, the quantification of the amount of information in circulation does not tell us very much about its quality.

The more important question is what kind of information is being put into circulation and what meanings do items of information carry. As Baudrillard said, `there is more and more information, less and less meaning.'

Third, the much touted notion that the information society signifies a complete break with the past is misleading; there are obvious continuities with the past.

The fact that it represents the latest phase of capitalism provides us with one such historical linkage. Fourth, we live in a society in which information is commodified and hence the manipulation of information, its vendibility, becomes important; the mis-information that is circulated by mass media, Internet and so on is glaringly and disconcertingly obvious. It is as if we are living in a mis-information society.

As teachers of communication, we find this concept challenging and productively ambivalent. There is no doubt that it has emerged as a dominant concept in communication studies.

The fact that Edwin Ariyadasa talked about it in Sinhala in the 1970s, when the concept was barely emerging from the shadows, is indeed a testament to his prescience.