Information society Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Information society - Essay Example The greatest forces behind the creation of an information society are the western civilised nations and various organisations like the UN, EC, IBRD and the OECD. The lessons learnt from the process of industrialisation have shown these groups that the development of information infrastructures and development frameworks is important for the Information Society (Audenhove et. al., 1999). The policies suggested by these groups broadly recommend the creation of opportunities where competition is encouraged, investments from the private and public sectors are to be supported and the free flow of every kind of information is strongly urged (Europa. 2006). While these policies have been lauded for their foresight, they have also been objected upon due to problems with their application especially in the third world and the developing regions. The development of an information society is supposed to include the entire world but the policies are often seen as weak when it comes to their usefulness in places where the basic necessities of life can not be found. Areas like sub-Saharan Africa and some regions of Asia lack basic facilities like water and electricity and there are some analysts who believe that without these basics no information society can ever be created (Audenhove et. al., 1999). It is therefore important to study the strengths and weaknesses of the policies for information society development in the third world since these could very well point to our collective future as a humane society. Since the last decade or so, the creation of an Information Society and the creation of a common Global Information Infrastructure have been on the ‘to do’ list of the G7 nations and their allied organizations. Sociologists and thinkers have been hard at work trying to create the policies which would encourage the development of both the above mentioned systems. As a foundation for this society, the creation and interconnection of high speed data