Theories of the Information and Post-industrial Society
David M. Berry The concept of what might broadly be termed the informational society has a number of fascinating theoretical elaborations, each emerging from distinct intellectual and disciplinary tradition. In this post (adapted from a table I created for my undergraduate students), I've attempted to provide is a map of this complex terrain, showing the various conceptual frameworks that have sought to capture the socio-technical transformations of the late 20th Century and into the 21st. I reproduce these tables which are meant to give a sense of alternative ways in which digital changes have been theorised – however they are not intended to be comprehensive, and indeed there are many others who have used similar historical eras to provide a sense of the changes. It is useful to conceptualise these tables as overlapping waves with different intensities across regions. For example, while "information society" discourse could be said to have peaked academically in the 1...
