What is Information society?
Information society is the post-industrial era. Its main idea was emerged from Japan. As information society deals with knowledge and knowledge is something that we know is present from the beginning of the universe. All the pre-Socratic philosophers and philosophers after Socrates have a great research on knowledge. Philosophy goes hand in hand with knowledge because philosophy means to love knowledge. Plato, Aristotle, Rene Descartes, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and other philosophers spend all their life to understand knowledge and to find different ways to find and gain that knowledge.
One of the famous quotes of Rene Descartes is “Cogito Ergo Sum” that means “I think, therefore I am” is the most famous way to apply skepticism in order to obtain knowledge. Many philosophers also have a keen debate on topics like either we gain knowledge through empiricism or through rationalism. Knowledge is some thing with out which no one could survive. Information is not always knowledge but knowledge is always an information. In the post-industrial era we see that the industry is making ways for the service sector to come and flourish.
Services are the intangible good and are most important part of the post-industrial era. Products manufacturers are making ways for service industries to be successful. In economics, service sector is basically the sector that provides you information and earn money. For example, journalism is the service industry that provides you the information and is earning a handsome amount of money.
Different Types of Models
There are many models like dept model that says information is not knowledge. It means that when someone gives you information, he is not increasing your knowledge always but we can say that information always increases the knowledge but its amount of increase is so low some time that we consider it as no knowledge. Some models tell that less information is of no use that is correct. It has also been said that less knowledge is dangerous and can lead you to the wrong path.
Information is power and anyone with the information is more superior than others. As in Republic of Plato, he explain the depth of knowledge in an example known as the cave, in this example he tell about a group of people who do not know about the external world were tie in a cave facing the wall and have no information of the external world all they know was the shadow they see of themselves cast on the wall by the fire. For them that was all the information they got.
Some how one of them succeeded to free him and manage to escape the cave. Once the person goes outside, he saw the real world, Sun, the sky, the trees, etc. and came to know that the knowledge they had before was wrong and this is the real knowledge. He went back to the cave and tried to explain his friends about the external real world by giving them information but his fellows consider him insane. Though the person with the superior knowledge was some how more powerful as information is power. Information is not absolute and is always changing.
Information society what’s on your mind
Information can be regarded as the transfer of knowledge from one self to another. There are different models through which information can be transferred like the elocution model in which the information is transferred in the form of a lecture. Further is the conversation model in which the information is exchanged from both ends in the form of a debate or arguments.
Another model is the registration model in which the information is transferred via registration and you are provided with the information that you want to know. Information society explains about the importance of information but we see that information is not absolute and is always changing. Information is always conveyed by someone who is superior and the person with power can alter the information according to his own benefit, so the information reached to us that travels from person to person and vary from place to place will not be considered as absolute knowledge.