Information revolution

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The term information revolution (sometimes called also the "informational revolution") describes current economic, social and technological trends.

Many competing terms have been proposed that focus on different aspects of this societal trend.

The British polymath crystallographer J. D. Bernal, writing in the late 1930s, introduced the term "scientific and technical revolution" in his book The Social Function of Science in order to describe the new role that science and technology are coming to play within society. He asserted that science is becoming a "productive force", using the Marxist Theory of Productive Forces. After some controversy, the term was taken up by authors and institutions of the then-Soviet Bloc. Their aim was to show that socialism was a safe home for the scientific and technical ("technological" for some authors) revolution, referred to by the acronym STR. The book Civilization at the Crossroads, edited by the Czech philosopher Radovan Richta, became a standard reference for this topic.

Daniel Bell soon challenged this approach with his Post Industrial Society, which took the view that the current trend is towards a service economy rather than socialism. Many other authors presented their views, including Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski with his "Technetronic Society".

The main feature of the information revolution is information. Information is the central theme of several new sciences, which emerged in the 1940s, including Shannon's (1949) Information Theory and Wiener's (1948) Cybernetics. Wiener (1948, p. 155) stated also "information is information not matter or energy". This aphorism suggests that information should be considered along with matter and energy as the third constituent part of the Universe; information is carried by matter or energy.

Information is then further considered as an economic activity, since firms and institutions are involved in its production, collection, exchange, distribution, circulation, processing, transmission, and control. Labor is also divided into physical labour(use of muscle power) and informational labour (use of intellectual power). A new economic sector is thereby identified, the Information Sector, which amalgamates information-related labour activities. Porat (1976) measured the Information Sector in the US using the input-output analysis; OECD has included statistics on the Information Sector in the economic reports of its member countries. Veneris (1984, 1990) explored the theoretical, economic and regional aspects of the Informational Revolution and developed a systems dynamics simulation computer model. The term Information Revolution may be preferred to terms such as "Information economy/society", in order to relate to the widely used terms Agricultural Revolution and Industrial Revolution.

The following fundamental aspects of the theory of the informational revolution can be given (Veneris 1984, 1990):
1. The object of economic activities can be conceptualised according to the fundamental distinction between matter, energy, and information.
2. Information is a "production factor" (along with capital, labour, etc), as well as a product sold in the markets, that is, a commodity. As such, it acquires use and exchange values, and therefore a price.
3. All products have use, exchange, and informational values.
4. Industries develop information-generating activities, the so-called R&D functions.
5. Enterprises, and society at large, develop the information control and processing functions, in the form of management structures.
6. Labour can be classified according to the object of labour, that is, information labour and non-information labour.
7. Information activities constitute a large, new economic sector, along with the traditional primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors. These, as well as the so called 'quaternary sector', should be restated because they are based on the ambiguous definitions made by Colin Clark in the 1940s.
8. From a strategic point of view, sectors can be defined as information, means of production, means of consumption, thus extending the classical Ricardo-Marx model.
9. Innovations are the result of the production of new information. Their diffusion manifests saturation effects, following certain cyclical patterns and creating 'economic waves'. There are four types of waves, distinguished by their nature, duration, and, thus, economic impact.
10. Innovations cause structural-sectoral shifts in the economy and society. Sectoral shifts can be smooth or can create crisis and renewal.

The information revolution is not a stage of capitalist development per se, since it can occur under non-capitalist conditions. In a similar manner, the industrial revolution took place in countries with various social and political systems.

References

Bell, D. (1980) Sociological Journeys: Essays 1960-1980, Heinmann, London.
Bernal, J. D. (1939), The Social Function of Science, George Routledge & Sons Ltd., London.
Brzezinksi, Z (1976), Between the Two Ages: America in the Technetronic Era, Penguin
Clark, C (1940), Conditions of Economic Progress, McMillan and Co, London.
Grinin, L. (2007), Periodization of History: A theoretic-mathematical analysis. In: History & Mathematics. Moscow: KomKniga/URSS. P.10-38. ISBN 9785484010011.
Marx, K, (1977), Capital, Progress Publishers, Moscow.
Porat, M-U (1976) The Information Economy, PhD Diss., Univ. of Stanford. This thesis measured the role of the Information Sector in the US Economy.
Ricardo, D (1978) The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, Dent, London. (first published in 1817).
Richta, R, Ed., (1969) Civilization at the Crossroads, ME Sharp, NY
Shannon, C. E. and W. Weaver, (1949), The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Urbana, Ill., University of Illinois Press.
Veneris, Y (1984) The Informational Revolution, Cybernetics and Urban Modelling, PhD Thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. This thesis explored trends and theories (general economic and regional), and developed a large scale dynamic simulation model of the transition from an industrial to an informational economy.
Veneris, Y (1990) Modeling the transition from the Industrial to the Informational Revolution, Environment and Planning A 22(3):399-416. [1]
Wiener, N, (1948) Cybernetics, MIT Press, CA, Mass.