Information age

This item has been on the quality assurance side of the portal sociology entered. This is done in order to bring the quality of the articles on the subject of sociology to an acceptable level. Help eliminate the shortcomings in this article and participate in the discussion . ( Enter article )

In the narrower sense of the word, the information age , also known as the computer age or digital age , represents the third epoch of (economic and) social forms after the agricultural society and the industrial age . The transition from the industrial to the digital age is known as the digital revolution . However, depending on the underlying parameters, there are also extended word meanings.

Information age in the narrower sense of the word

→ Main article : Digital revolution

The most essential feature of the information age is that information is mainly stored and transmitted in digital form in the digital world . This phase is also characterized by the central importance of information as a raw material and commodity. This central position could only be achieved through electronic data processing and the globalization of information flows at the speed of light.

The sociologist Manuel Castells explains the term as follows:

“Information age [...] describes a historical epoch of human societies. The technological paradigm based on microelectronic based information and communication technologies as well as genetic engineering, which characterizes this epoch, replaces or superimposes the technological paradigm of the industrial age , which is primarily based on the production and distribution of energy. "

Information age in broader word meanings

For Neil Postman , the information age is associated with an exponential growth in the amount of information available to human beings at any given time. According to him, the steady growth in the amount of information available began with the invention of printing by Johannes Gutenberg . Postman expressly rejects the narrowing of the standard definition of the information age : “Nothing would be more misleading than to claim that computer technology produced the information age. The printing press started and we haven't been able to get away from it since. "

Robert Darnton claims that every age was an information age. He justifies this with the fact that information in communication between people has always taken the form of a message and that this form is an " artifact ".

Gert Scobel asks himself “whether the introduction of writing does not mark the beginning of the information age”, but points out that since the international networking of digital data, completely new structures have emerged that made it necessary, from an information society in the narrower sense To speak literal sense.

See also

• Information society , knowledge society
• Information economy
• Information economy

literature

• Manuel Castells : The network company. Volume I The Information Age . Leske & Budrich, Opladen 2001. (Original title: The Information Age. 3 Bde. 1996–1998)

Web links

• Friedrich Ebert Foundation : The Information Age
• Hannes Michalek: The information age cannot agree on the term “information” . University of Leipzig. Summer semester 2006

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Eckehard Steinbach: Digitization as the basis of the information age . Technical University of Munich. 2004
2. ↑ Manuel Castells: Building blocks of a theory of the network society , Berliner Journal für Soziologie , 11 (4), 2001, pp. 423–439.
3. ↑ Neil Postman: We inform ourselves to death . The time . Issue 41/1992. 2nd October 1992
4. ^ Robert Darnton: The library in the information age. 6000 years of writing . Federal Agency for Political Education . April 8, 2011
5. ↑ Gert Scobel: Scobel's column: We live in an information age. With all the associated advantages and disadvantages . 3 sat . July 2012