When Daniel Bell wrote, in 1973, his book "Towards a Post Industrial Society", he maintained that the signs of the future are always in the present. Bell qualified the society of the future (ours in 1994?) as post industrial for lack of a better definition that the remarkable Harvard University Sociologist could not yet find, due to the absence of those specific signs which are already surrounding us at the end of the XXth Century and the beginning of a new Millenium.
Sorbonne Professor François Bourricaud maintained, shortly after, that Daniel Bell had launched the concept out of context, since the only apparently true definition of the post industrial society referred only to the already existing changes in the job structure.
The priority of technological knowledge was ascertaining itself in those years which favoured a future development of society, in support of basic science and applied research. This is exactly what happened, following the excellent perspective study by Daniel Bell. I believe that some practical examples could provide us with some essential elements of the new information society of cyberspace in which we have already been immersed in the course of the past few years, namely since the beginning of the 80's.
1. In the job market, the concept of capital has switched from merely economic and monetary elements to others in the rapid, easy and free access to information. Nowadays, only he who possesses information truly has a capital.
2. An accessible, rapid, automatic, free, reasonable, global and, above all, up-to-date information is the key to the progress of industries in the years 2000.
3. At the same time, technological applications to obtain the said information, which electronic revolution projections centered around the mid-80's, have experienced an overflow in quantity, quality and speed.
The advent of the P.C. and its use at popular level are almost comparablke to the discovery and use of the wheel at the dawn of our civilization. The current electronic networks of information create new types of communities, add value, establish equal dialogues, promote intercultural behaviour and favour an authentic democracy of participation.
The combination of this new capital -information- with electronic technologies for its use, the electronic super highway, have already produced a revolution even in the job market.
a) On one hand, there is a significant job increase in the field of automatic management of information (in Canada only, 90% of new jobs have been generated in the past seven years in the area of information).
b) On the other hand, other jobs have a psychological element which brings about new and, until now, unknown work- related satisfactions, to the extent that 28% of the Canadian labour force is also concentrated on information.
c) the desire to learn, volunteerism and permanent research create new work markets with an autogenerating force practically unknown until now.
However, not all the data are positive at the moment. There is a lack of definition in important areas such as the right to privaqcy, intellectual ownership, respect of some established social values which today are totally uncontrollable in the new electronic highways of information.
But one must not forget that the mechanisms for obtaining the information we have today have reached a large sector of the public only in the past 5 or 6 years, through local networks or the international network (FreeNet or InterNet), according to the following evolution:
1. In 1969, the first defence computer systems were born and they were aimed exclusively at conducting information so that the Armed Forces could counter nuclear threat.
2. The advent, in 1989, of Science with the National Science Foundation Network (NFSNet) added to defence the academic and university world, libraries, specialized seminars, etc.
Finally, at the end of the cold war, in the early 90's, the free consolidation of InterNet and a few hundred FreeNets which interlink locally all over the world, provide access to any individual to an immense data world, and almost infinite facts and sources of information.
Today there is a practically free and uncontrolled access to both information channels, Internet and Freenet and through both systems, one may obtain, send and exchange hundreds of thousands of data on as many subjects which are equally and democratically diffused through an efficient, rapid and free electronic mail system. One only needs a computer, a modem and a telephone number to be logged to.
Naturally, the magnitude of the development of these informative networks, which already have over 20 million users and grow at a monthly rate of 10%, implies a certain degree of desorganization and the lack of mechanisms which would improve, facilitate and rationalize this new capital, which is a factor in creating new jobs and the basis for a new economic, political and social philosophy of co-existence.
Lastly, this great electronic highway of information is producing a true democratization and universalization of cultures at the end of the XXth century, which could be the key for the renaissance of the XXIst century which we are too anxiously awaiting.