information society  information society  technological trends  internet  theories of information society  habermas on public sphere  baudrillard on hypherreality  schiller on information inequality  digital divide  surveillance society    information society  
the canadian media critic, marshal mcluhan famously pointed out that electronic media, notably tv, are creating what he called a “global village”-people throughout the world see major news items unfold and hence participate in the same events as one another.(mcluhan, understanding media, 1964)
  the post-industrial society  

the american sociologist daniel bell argued that “a post-industrial society is based on services. … what counts is not raw muscle power, or energy, but information

… a post-industrial society is one in which the majority of those employed are not involved in the production of tangible goods”. (bell, the coming of post-industrial society, 1976)  alvin toffler  
alvin toffler argues that “in a third wave economy, the central resource-a single word broadly encompassing data, information, images, symbols, culture, ideology, and values-is actionable knowledge” (toffler, the third wave, 1980)
  technological trends of information society  
four technological trends have contributed to these developments:
the constant improvement in the capabilities of computers, together with declining costs
digitization of data, making possible the integration of computer and telecommunications technologies
satellite communication development  
fiber optics, which allows many different messages to travel down a single small cable.
eniac (electronic numerical integrator and computer, 1946), a four-megabyte ram (random access memory) card, milstar: a communication satellite and optical fibers.
  information superhighway  
in the mid-1990s the information superhighway was invoked by the us government.

it refers to a situation in which most or all households will be connected via fiber optic cable. the superhighway is more a vision of the future than a description of the present

the electronic gateway of which negroponte speaks will open into every home.
at the moment four separate technologies have separate electronic paths into the home: telephone, terrestrial broadcast, cable and have as their outlet a single computer/television.
the digital revolution led by new information technologies abolish distance and make it irrelevant.
  internet  
the future information technology lies not with the individual computer but with a global system of interconnected computers-internet.
the net has its beginnings in the pentagon, the headquarters of the american military.it was established in 1969 and was first of all named the arpa net, after the pentagon’s advanced research projects agency.
the arpa sought to allow scientists working on military contracts in different parts of america to pool their resources and to share the expensive equipment they were using.
  the development of internet  
its originators though up a way of sending messages too, thus electronic mail, email, were born.
   (이하 생략)