Specialists who introduced this term explain that an information society becomes, if abundant circulation of high quality information is observed in it, there are means necessary for its storage, use, distribution. Information in such a society is quickly and easily disseminated according to the requirements of people or organizations interested in it and is presented in the form familiar to all. Information and services related to its delivery should be as cheap as possible, because society becomes informational only if information is available to everyone. The pros and cons of the information society will be examined here.
Driving force
How to save people from routine in the production process, how to ensure the proper level of automation in the processing of information in the social and industrial spheres? Here the panacea is computerization. The Japanese, for example, consider the driving force of progress production not to be a material, but just an information product. Innovation, design and marketing will make the product more informative. The pros and cons of the information society with this formulation of the question are visible to the naked eye.
A plus will be a change not only in production, but also in the whole structure with a system of values in terms of increasing the importance of cultural leisure. Unlike an industrial society, where the goals are consumption and production, the information society offers intelligence, that is, knowledge, and the majority of workers are involved in collecting, storing and distributing them. These are the pluses. And the minuses of the information society follow from here - the minority of workers engaged in the creation of material, rather than intellectual values, simply cannot feed, dress, put on shoes and equip all “thinkers” with a residence permit.
Material base
Naturally, using intelligence, material values are easier to create. And that is a plus. But life shows that modern material values are becoming closer to disposable ones, polluting the environment and forcing people to spend much more time on replacing worn ones. And this is a huge minus. The technological and material base are various computer network systems and equipment, information technology, telecommunications .
The information society, its pros and cons in real practice - is a matter of several years. Already in the twentieth century, created by theorists became a visible picture of the near future. The forecasts are as follows: the world space is turning into a computerized single information community, people live in houses with electronic filling: all kinds of devices and devices.
Approaching the future
An example is Smart Home, and this is not fiction. Already in Moscow, a comprehensive management system for all the engineering of a modern building is used, automation of all operations. The solutions are not only high-tech, but also with a fairly high aesthetic level.
Here, setting, monitoring and remote control of lighting fixtures, as well as climate and ventilation, audio-video-television-video surveillance are controlled by voice or gesture, security and fire alarms determine the possibility of an emergency and control the entire system independently, all electrical drives are automated by a system of sensors and sensor panels.
The pros and cons of the information society and here are calculated easily. Plus - life becomes more convenient, minus - the consequences of the failure of at least one computer can be irreversible, which we occasionally observe with the airlines of any, even the most technologically highly equipped countries. Hacking, hacking of banking and even defense data of entire countries is also flourishing, which contributes to the growth of terrorism in the world. Against this background, hacking sites with personal data of citizens in order to blackmail or harm the reputation can not be remembered. These are the characteristic features of the information society.
Pros and cons
We are closely approaching the construction of a new type of society, therefore, it is necessary to accurately calculate how this path will make mankind happy and what it threatens. The pros and cons of the information society table will show clearly:
| Pros of building an information society | Cons of building an information society |
| 1. Overcoming the information crisis, smoothing out the contradictions between the information sea and the information deficiency. | 1. The increasing impact on society of any media - even poor ones. |
| 2. Ensuring the priority of information in comparison with other resources. | 2. Information technology interferes in people's private lives, often producing destructive actions, and the activities of organizations are disrupted. |
| 3. The dominant form of development is the information economy. | 3. The existing problem of selecting information of high quality and reliable is not resolved. |
4. The basis of society should be automated generation, processing, storage and use of all kinds of knowledge through the latest information technology and technology. | 4. Most people find it difficult to adapt in the information society. |
| 5. Information technology of a global nature, covering all spheres of human activity. | 5. Difficulties in neutralizing the danger of the gap between consumers and the "information elite" (people involved in the development and distribution of information technologies). |
| 6. The formation of the information unity of human civilization. | 6. There are not enough relevant developments of information law and information protection. |
| 7. By means of informatics, the realization of the free access of each person to the information resources of the entire civilization. | 7. The threat of violation of confidentiality of information data. |
| 8. Implementation of the humanistic principles of company management and environmental control. | 8. The security of personal information space is not properly ensured. |
The activities of people are mainly aimed at processing information, all material production, as well as energy production should be assigned to machines. This process is in full swing: already in 1980 the share of people’s employment changed dramatically in the USA: only 3% of all workers were engaged in agriculture, 20% in industrial production, about 30% of working people were engaged in the service sector, and 48% were in the process of creating information tools and worked directly with them. So the pros and cons of an open information society is a reality that requires systematic study.
Competitive tool
Information as an industrial product began to be considered back in the sixties of the last century, first in America, then in the USSR, with proposals for the concept of a paperless organization of management spheres. But more actively than others , the Japanese managed the information field . They correctly used the pros and cons of the information society. The table proposed above does not quite correspond to the Japanese level of technology twenty years ago: security in Japan was not bad, and the adaptation of people in a computerized space went quickly and fairly smoothly.
They became the most zealous propagandists of the ideas of industrial use of information. Subsequently, they brilliantly managed in the world market, winning the competition over and over again with Japanese devices, computers and other systems that create the technosphere. Therefore, they held leadership in this area for a very long time. The pros and cons of the formation of the information society, the Japanese managed to take into account and circumvent almost all the pitfalls of this voyage in the man-made information sea.
What are the realities of the information society
There is no reason to wait for any cardinal changes in social structures after the transition to the information society. The pros and cons balance this structure. The stratification of people into wealthy and poor will remain in almost the same proportions, since the measure of using the fruits of labor will remain different. Despite the differentiation of the sphere of virtual services, the services will be more important (expensive) and less - according to the capabilities of each member of the new society. This, of course, will not go to the pluses. And the minuses of the modern information society do not end here.
Problems will arise in access to the information that belongs not to one particular country, but to several or to all of humanity, for example, relating to space. Databanks on various branches of agriculture and industry, on purchasing power and potential sellers are secrets behind seven seals owned and constituting the wealth of individual exchanges and other brokerage houses that are involved in the redistribution of goods. But most of all it is the individual who suffers in the information society. The pros and cons are not balanced here. But this is the topic of a separate article, because the avalanche of virtual data has already blown away many.
Work at home - lack of communication
The proportion of home-based labor is one of the important features of the information society. In industrial, individual labor was on the verge of extinction. Automated workplaces allow many professionals to work without leaving home. This is the inevitable reality of the near future. There are already 27 million home workers in the United States, one third of all modern firms make extensive use of remote employment.
Huge progress is being made in the field of education and scientific activity. The exchange of results in networks occurs instantly, there is no dependence on printing - all this accelerates the pace of scientific research. Computer science plays a huge role in the organization of production, technology, now it has become no less important than all engineering, chemistry, physics and others in an industrial society.
Closest to the construction of such a society are information-industrial countries: England, Japan, the USA, Germany and others. They invest a lot in the information industry, computer systems and telecommunications. What are the pros and cons of the information society to its members, these countries know firsthand.
Positive and negative
Free access to any information other than personal and corporate is good. But the bad thing is that, together with the necessary and useful information, we are literally swept away by a stream of unnecessary, often immoral, imposed on a person right from childhood. The pros and cons of the information society are briefly formulated as excessive freedom of access with a side effect in the form of damage to spirituality.
A magnificent industry of entertainment, leisure, sports, tourism has been created, a person can relax, escape from work, relax, replenish spiritual strength, and this can also be attributed to the pluses. The minus is the lack of demand for spiritual potential due to the simplification of human needs through communications, therefore, most often from the rich arsenal of services, TV shows or games are selected on a computer. However, just as often this choice is due to financial insolvency. In any case, this is reality.
Television and personal computers
What are the pros and cons of the information society is best shown by television. With its help, monuments, masterpieces of culture are created. But also - advertising and spam. The number of pop and rock concerts, soap shows where profits are guaranteed is also great, and again, the human person is greatly simplified, society is becoming less moral and cultural.
The system of secondary and higher education has become more widely used databases, dictionaries, reference books, as the process of working with them has been greatly simplified. There was an opportunity to receive distance education. Many films and programs that are educational in nature. This is a plus. And the disadvantages of the information society are also considerable: pupils and students are spoiled by the availability of information, they are used to relying on other people's ideas, write off the Internet and often do not create their own. Such a plan of mental laziness can lead to the fact that science will not find its researchers and inventors.
Spirituality and creativity
The characteristic features of the information society, their pros and cons are clearly visible on the influence of the media in the environment of the younger generation. Aesthetic tastes must be (and are trying) to be formed, stereotypes of behavior, fashion for music, clothes are being popularized. Examples are given of patriotism, spirituality, the advantages of a family lifestyle. And next, if not together, is the unwinding of "stars", antiheroes with advertising of opposing standards of existence, often not traditional for our country and the rest of the Christian world.
The characteristic features of the information society are its pros and cons. This is an opportunity for creativity and laziness, when it is more pleasant to watch than to live, brought up by the media in people, and compensation for an unfinished act of creativity in the form of cruel spectacles. Instead of creativity, sex and drugs are often chosen - which is more affordable. Possibilities for communicating without boundaries are very good: in addition to dating at work or study, friends appear on blogs from all over the world. Minus - frequent cases of fraud, immoral communication, all this hardens and corrupts young people.
So, the main thing: the ability to develop freedoms that the information society gives is against the appearance of humanity, the gray mass. The choice is humanity.