The concept of the information society. main features and development trends

The experts who coined this term explain that an information society becomes if there is an abundant circulation of high-quality information and there are the means necessary for its storage, use, and 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 a form familiar to everyone. Information and the services associated with its delivery should be as cheap as possible, because a society becomes information society only if information is available to everyone. Here the pros and cons of the information society will be considered.

Driving force

How to free people from routine in the production process, how to ensure the proper level of automation in information processing in the social and industrial spheres? The panacea here is computerization. The Japanese, for example, consider the production of progress not at all to be a material product, but rather an information product. Innovation, design and marketing will make the product more information-rich. The pros and cons of the information society in this formulation of the question are visible to the naked eye.

A change in not only production, but also the entire structure and value system in terms of increasing the importance of cultural leisure will be a plus. Unlike an industrial society, where the goals are consumption and production, the information society offers intelligence, that is, knowledge, for use, and the majority of workers are busy collecting, storing and distributing it. These are the advantages. And the disadvantages of the information society follow from here - the minority of workers engaged in the creation of material, rather than intellectual values, simply cannot feed, clothe, put on shoes and provide accommodation for all those who “think.”

Material base

Naturally, using intelligence, it is easier to create material values. And that's a plus. But life shows that modern material assets are becoming ever closer to disposable, polluting the environment and forcing people to spend much more time replacing worn-out items. And this is a huge minus. Various computer network systems and equipment, information communications become the technological and material base.

The information society, its pros and cons in real practice, is a matter of several years. Already in the twentieth century, what theorists created became a visible picture of the near future. The forecasts are as follows: the world space is turning into a computerized unified information community, people live in houses with electronic filling: all kinds of instruments and devices.

Getting closer to the future

An example is “Smart Home”, and this is not science fiction. Already in Moscow, a comprehensive management system for all engineering of a modern building is used, and all operations are automated. The solutions are not only high-tech, but also with a fairly high aesthetic level.

Here, setting, monitoring and remote control of lighting devices, 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 electric drives are automated by a system of sensors and sensors panels.

The pros and cons of the information society are easy to calculate here too. Plus - life becomes more convenient, minus - the consequences of failure of at least one computer can be irreversible, which we already see from time to time with airlines of any, even the most technologically highly equipped countries. Hacking is also flourishing, hacking of banking and even defense data of entire countries, which contributes to the growth of terrorism in the world. Against this background, one can forget about the hacking of websites with personal data of citizens for the purpose of blackmail or damage to reputation. These are the characteristic features of the information society.

Advantages and disadvantages

We are close to building a new type of society, so it is necessary to accurately calculate what this path will bring to humanity and what it will threaten. The table will clearly show the pros and cons of the information society:

Human activity is aimed mainly at processing information; all material production, as well as energy production, should be entrusted to machines. This process is in full swing: already in 1980, the share of people’s employment in the United States radically changed: agriculture accounted for only 3% of all workers, in industrial production - 20%, about 30% of working people were engaged in the service sector, and 48% were engaged in creation information media and worked directly with them. So the pros and cons of an open information society are a reality that requires systematic study.

A means of competition

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 the Japanese were more active than others. They wisely used the pros and cons of the information society. The table proposed above does not fully correspond to the Japanese level of technology twenty years ago: security in Japan was well ensured, and people’s adaptation to the computerized space went quickly and quite smoothly.

It was they who became the most zealous propagandists of the ideas of industrial use of information. Subsequently, they managed brilliantly in the world market, time after time winning the competition due to Japanese instruments, computers and other systems that create the technosphere. Therefore, they maintained leadership in this area for a very long time. The Japanese managed to take into account the pros and cons of the formation of the information society and avoid almost all the pitfalls of this voyage in a man-made information sea.

What are the realities of the information society

There is no reason to expect any fundamental changes in social structures after the transition to the information society. The pros and cons balance this structure. The stratification of people into the wealthy and the poor will remain in almost the same proportions, since the measure of enjoyment of the fruits of labor will remain different. Despite the differentiation of the sphere of virtual services, there will be services that are more important (expensive) and less - according to the capabilities of each member of the new society. This, of course, will not be a positive thing. And the disadvantages of the modern information society do not end here.

Problems will also arise in access to information that belongs not to one country, but to several or all of humanity, for example, concerning space. Banks of data on various branches of agriculture and industry, on purchasing power and potential sellers are sealed secrets that belong to and constitute the wealth of individual exchanges and other brokerage houses that are engaged in the redistribution of goods. But it is the individual person who suffers most of all in the information society. The pros and cons are not balanced here. But this is a topic for a separate article, because the avalanche of virtual data has already destroyed many.

Working from home - lack of communication

The share of home work is one of the important features of the information society. In industrialization, individual labor was on the verge of extinction. allow many specialists to work without leaving home. This is an inevitable reality of the near future. There are already 27 million people working from home in the United States, and a third of all modern companies widely use remote work.

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 and technology; now it has become no less important than all engineering sciences, chemistry, physics and others in an industrial society.

The information-industrial countries that are closest to building such a society are England, Japan, the USA, Germany and others. They invest a lot in the information industry, computer systems and telecommunications. These countries know firsthand what the pros and cons of the information society bring to its members.

Positive and negative

Free access to any information, except personal and corporate, is good. But the bad thing is that, along with 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 the side effect of damage to spirituality.

A magnificent industry of entertainment, leisure, sports, tourism has been created; a person can relax, take a break from work, relax, replenish spiritual strength, and this can also be considered a plus. The downside 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, one chooses to watch TV shows or play games on the 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 demonstrated by television. With its help, monuments and cultural masterpieces are created. But also advertising and spam. There is also a large number of pop and rock concerts, “soap” series, where profits are guaranteed, again the human personality is simplified to a large extent, society becomes less and less moral and cultural.

The system of secondary and higher education has begun to make wider use of databases, dictionaries, and reference books, since the process of working with them has become significantly simplified. There is an opportunity to receive distance education. There are many films and programs of an educational nature. This is a plus. And the disadvantages of the information society here are also considerable: students are spoiled by the availability of information, they are accustomed to relying on other people’s ideas, they copy from the Internet and often do not create anything of their own. This kind 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 in the influence of the media among the younger generation. Aesthetic tastes should (and are trying to) be formed, stereotypes of behavior, fashion in music and clothing are being popularized. Spirituality and the benefits of a family lifestyle are served. And next to, if not together, is the promotion of “stars”, anti-heroes with advertising of opposing standards of existence, often not traditional for our country and the rest of the Christian world.

Characteristic features of the information society - its pros and cons. This is an opportunity for creativity and laziness, when you prefer to watch than to live, brought up by the media in people, and compensation for an unaccomplished act of creativity in the form of cruel spectacles. Instead of creativity, sex and drugs are often chosen - what is more accessible. The possibilities of communication without borders are very good: in addition to meeting people at work or study, “friends” appear on blogs from all over the world. The downside is frequent cases of fraud, communication on immoral grounds, all this embitters and corrupts young people.

So, the main thing: the ability to develop freedoms, which the information society gives, against the emergence of humanity as a gray mass. The choice is up to humanity.

Concept and features of the modern information society. Information and its types. Information resource. The main tasks of informatization.

Information society- a society in which the majority of workers are engaged in the production, storage, processing and sale of information, especially its highest form - knowledge.

Scientists believe that in the information society the process of computerization will give people access to reliable sources of information, relieve them of routine work, and ensure a high level of automation of information processing in the industrial and social spheres. The driving force behind the development of society should be the production of informational, rather than material, products. The material product will become more information-intensive, which means an increase in the share of innovation, design and marketing in its value.

In the information society not only production will change, but also the entire way of life, the value system, and the importance of cultural leisure in relation to material values ​​will increase. Compared to an industrial society, where everything is aimed at the production and consumption of goods, in the information society intelligence and knowledge are produced and consumed, which leads to an increase in the share of mental labor. A person will need the ability to be creative, and the demand for knowledge will increase.

Material and technological base of the information society There will be various kinds of systems based on computer technology and computer networks, information technology, and telecommunications.

Signs of the information society

1. Society's awareness of the priority of information over other products of human activity.

2. The fundamental basis of all areas of human activity (economic, industrial, political, educational, scientific, creative, cultural, etc.) is information.

3. Information is a product of the activity of modern man.

4. Information in its pure form (in itself) is the subject of purchase and sale.

5. Equal opportunities in access to information for all segments of the population.

6. Security of the information society, information.

7. Protection of intellectual property.

8. Interaction of all state structures and states among themselves on the basis of ICT.

9. Management of the information society by the state and public organizations.

In addition to the positive aspects, dangerous trends are also predicted:

· the increasing influence of the media on society;

· information technologies can destroy the privacy of people and organizations;

· there is a problem of selecting high-quality and reliable information;

· Many people will find it difficult to adapt to the information society environment.

· there is a danger of a gap between the “information elite” (people involved in the development of information technologies) and consumers.

The term “information” comes from the Latin “informatio”, which means clarification, awareness, presentation. From a rationalist position, information is a reflection of the real world through messages. A message is a form of presenting any information in the form of speech, text, image, digital data, graphs, tables, etc.

Information(Latin: Informatio - clarification, awareness, presentation) is information about the world around us that increases the level of human awareness.

If we consider information as a resource(material, labor, monetary), then this is new information that allows you to improve the processes associated with the transformation of information.

Information for consumers– this is new information accepted, understood and assessed as useful.

Highlight three phases of information existence:

I. Assimilated information– representation of information in the human mind, superimposed on the system of his concepts and assessments.

II. Documented information– information recorded in symbolic form on any medium.

A sign system is a set of signs for which there is a specified agreement.

A sign is a signal that can transmit information if there is an agreement on their semantic content between sources and receivers of information.

III. Transmitted information– information considered at the time of transmission of information from the source to the receiver.

Currently, economic information is in greatest demand. It provides knowledge about all areas of human activity in various forms (text, tabular, digital, etc.)

The Federal Law “On Information, Informatization and Protection of Information” provides the following definition of information and information resources:

Information- information about persons, objects, facts, events, phenomena and processes, regardless of the form of their presentation

Informational resources- individual documents and individual arrays of documents, documents and arrays of documents in information systems (libraries, archives, funds, data banks, other information systems).

Information resources are objects of relations between individuals, legal entities, and the state; they constitute the information resources of Russia and are protected by law along with other resources.

Documenting information is a prerequisite for including information in information resources. Documentation of information is carried out in the manner established by government authorities responsible for organizing office work, standardizing documents and their arrays, and security of the Russian Federation.

Information resources can be state and non-state and, as an element of property, are owned by citizens, government bodies, local governments, organizations and public associations. Relations regarding the ownership of information resources are regulated by the civil legislation of the Russian Federation.

The development of global information resources has made it possible:

1. create information services;

2. provide information services;

3. create all kinds of databases of resources, regions and states, to which relatively inexpensive access is possible;

4.increase the validity and efficiency of decisions made in companies, banks, exchanges, etc. through the timely use of the necessary information.

Informatization– a process in which conditions are created that satisfy the needs of any person in obtaining the necessary information.

Informatization of society is a global social process, the peculiarity of which is that the dominant type of activity in the sphere of social production is the collection, accumulation, production, processing, storage, transmission and use of information, carried out on the basis of modern microprocessor and computer technology, as well as based on various means of information exchange.

Goals of informatization:

1. ensuring sustainable economic growth

2. improving public welfare

3. strengthening social harmony

4. realizing the potential of most countries in the world in the development of democracy

5. ensuring international stability and responsible governance in the world community.

Informatization of society provides:

· active use of the ever-expanding intellectual potential of society, concentrated in the printed fund, and the scientific, industrial and other activities of its members;

· integration of information technologies into scientific and production activities, initiating the development of all spheres of social production, intellectualization of labor activity;

· high level of information services, accessibility of any member of society to sources of reliable information, visualization of the information presented, the materiality of the data used.

Society's awareness of the priority of information over other products of human activity.

The fundamental basis of all areas of human activity (economic, industrial, political, educational, scientific, creative, cultural, etc.) is information.

Information is a product of the activity of modern man.

Information in its pure form (in itself) is a subject of purchase and sale.

Equal opportunities in access to information for all segments of the population.

Security of the information society, information.

Intellectual property protection.

Interaction of all state structures and states among themselves on the basis of ICT.

Management of the information society by the state and public organizations.

In addition to the positive aspects, dangerous trends are also predicted:

the increasing influence of the media on society;

information technology can destroy the privacy of people and organizations;

there is a problem of selecting high-quality and reliable information;

many people will find it difficult to adapt to the information society environment.

there is a danger of a gap between the “information elite” (people involved in the development of information technologies) and consumers.

Table 1. Computer generations

Computer literacy presupposes an understanding of the five generations of computers, which you will receive after reading this article.

When they talk about generations, they first of all talk about the historical portrait of electronic computers (computers). Photos in a photo album after a certain period of time show how the same person has changed over time. In the same way, computer generations represent a series of portraits of computing technology at different stages of its development.

The entire history of the development of electronic computing technology is usually divided into generations. Generational changes were most often associated with changes in the elemental base of computers and with the progress of electronic technology. This always led to increased performance and increased memory capacity. In addition, as a rule, changes occurred in the computer architecture, the range of tasks solved on a computer expanded, and the method of interaction between the user and the computer changed.

First generation computer were tube machines of the 50s. Their elemental base was electric vacuum tubes. These computers were very bulky structures, containing thousands of lamps, sometimes occupying hundreds of square meters of territory, consuming hundreds of kilowatts of electricity.

For example, one of the first computers - ENIAC– was a huge unit with a length of more than 30 meters, contained 18 thousand vacuum tubes and consumed about 150 kilowatts of electricity.

Punched tapes and punched cards were used to enter programs and data. There was no monitor, keyboard or mouse. These machines were used mainly for engineering and scientific calculations not related to the processing of large volumes of data. In 1949, the first semiconductor device was created in the USA, replacing the vacuum tube. It got the name transistor.

Transistors

In the 60s, transistors became the elemental base for Second generation computer. Machines have become more compact, more reliable, and less energy-intensive. The performance and capacity of internal memory have increased. External (magnetic) memory devices have received great development: magnetic drums, magnetic tape drives.

During this period, high-level programming languages ​​began to develop: FORTRAN, ALGOL, COBOL. Compiling a program no longer depends on a specific car model; it has become simpler, clearer, and more accessible.

In 1959, a method was invented that made it possible to create transistors and all the necessary connections between them on one plate. The circuits obtained in this way became known as integrated circuits or chips. The invention of integrated circuits served as the basis for the further miniaturization of computers.

Subsequently, the number of transistors that could be placed per unit area of ​​an integrated circuit approximately doubled every year.

Third generation of computers was created on a new element base - integrated circuits (ICs).

Microcircuits

Third-generation computers began to be produced in the second half of the 60s, when the American company IBM began producing the IBM-360 machine system. A little later, machines of the IBM-370 series appeared.

In the Soviet Union in the 70s, the production of machines of the ES (Unified Computer System) series began, modeled on the IBM 360/370. The operating speed of the most powerful computer models has already reached several million operations per second. On third-generation machines, a new type of external storage device appeared - magnetic disks.

Advances in the development of electronics led to the creation large integrated circuits (LSI), where several tens of thousands of electrical elements were placed in one crystal.

Microprocessor

In 1971, the American company Intel announced the creation of a microprocessor. This event was revolutionary in electronics.

Microprocessor is a miniature brain that works according to a program embedded in its memory. By connecting a microprocessor with input-output devices and external memory, we got a new type of computer: a microcomputer.

Microcomputer refers to machines fourth generation. Personal computers (PCs) are the most widespread. Their appearance is associated with the names of two American specialists: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. In 1976, their first production PC, Apple-1, was born, and in 1977, Apple-2.

However, since 1980, the American company IBM has become a trendsetter in the PC market. Its architecture has become the de facto international standard for professional PCs. The machines in this series were called IBM PC (Personal Computer). The emergence and spread of the personal computer in its significance for social development is comparable to the advent of book printing.

With the development of this type of machine, the concept of “information technology” appeared, without which it is impossible to do in most areas of human activity. A new discipline has emerged - computer science.

Fifth generation computer will be based on a fundamentally new element base. Their main quality should be a high intellectual level, in particular, speech and image recognition. This requires a transition from traditional von Neumann computer architecture to architectures that take into account the requirements of the tasks of creating artificial intelligence. Thus, for computer literacy it is necessary to understand that at the moment four generations of computers have been created:

1st generation: 1946 creation of the ENIAC machine using vacuum tubes.

2nd generation: 60s. Computers are built on transistors.

3rd generation: 70s. Computers are built on integrated circuits (ICs).

4th generation: Started to be created in 1971 with the invention of the microprocessor (MP). Built on the basis of large integrated circuits (LSI) and super LSI (VLSI).

The fifth generation of computers is built on the principle of the human brain and is controlled by voice. Accordingly, the use of fundamentally new technologies is expected. Huge efforts have been made by Japan in developing the 5th generation computer with artificial intelligence, but they have not yet achieved success.

IBM also does not intend to give up its position as a world leader, for example, to Japan. The global race to create a fifth-generation computer began back in 1981. No one has reached the finish line since then. Wait and see.

Features and problems of the information society

The information society is a stage of historical development leading from a post-industrial society to a knowledge society. According to modern ideas, the information society is a society in which:

· production and consumption of information is the most important activity;

· information is recognized as the most significant resource;

· ICTs become basic technologies;

· the information environment, along with the social and ecological environment, is becoming a new systemically important human environment.

The main distinctive features of the information society are:

· information economy, which is characterized by new organizational forms, as well as a higher speed of development;

· high information culture and a high level of information needs of all members of society and their actual satisfaction for the bulk of the population;

· possibility of more successful human development thanks to free access of every member of society to information, limited only by the information security of the individual, public groups and the entire society; Thus, the sphere of individual freedom and the scope of its capabilities in exploring the world and interacting with society increases.

The information one is built on the active use of ICT in the production, socio-political and individual spheres. It is an open or civil society, politically open to global processes, and has a high overall level of human capital development, a high comprehensive indicator of human development, or the human development index.

On the modern map of civilization, the most successful and developed countries are not those countries that have large territories or populations, but primarily those where science, education, and the innovation sphere are well developed - first of all, societies with dynamically developing economies that are competitive at the international level. So, this is not Brazil, India or Russia, which have large territories. And not China: China’s economic success so far is due to the huge number of economically active population, along with significant restrictions on the needs of the population, i.e. due to the low cost of labor and production volume, and not due to developed knowledge-intensive and high-tech industries).

Sociologist Robert Cohen noted the following features of the modern era: “We have the right to admit that the present times, in at least two important respects, differ from the past. Firstly, a certain quantitative growth has reached a critical point, beyond which, as they say, quantity turns into quality, growth enters some new phase... The second vitally important characteristic of our time is the worldwide nature of social and technical problems.”

There are 7 significant characteristics of the information society.

1. Development of the country’s network economy (production, trade, services) and its integration into the modern global economy.

2. Formation and development of the country’s innovation system, in which the state plays a significant role, determining the country’s innovation policy.

3. Technological development of the country, this characteristic reflects the development of the country through the development of new technologies, their introduction into production and trade in technologies. This requires an information infrastructure.

4. The presence of civil institutions that are necessary for the regulation and development of new relations.

5. Increasing the level of human development, which reflects the level of human capital, education, healthcare, etc.

6. International competitiveness of the country: the country must have certain competitive advantages in the production of goods and services, both informational and production.

7. Openness of the economy to global processes. The advent of the Internet accelerated the exchange of information, including global information, and contributed to the development of network structures and network business.

Information society is a society in which the majority of workers are engaged in the production, storage, processing and sale of information, especially its highest form - knowledge.

Compared with industrial society , where everything is aimed at the production and consumption of goods, in the information society intelligence and knowledge are produced and consumed, which leads to an increase in the share of mental labor. A person is required to be creative, and the demand for knowledge is increasing.

The material and technological base of the information society are various kinds of systems based on computer equipment and computer networks, information technology, and telecommunications. Information is easily and quickly distributed according to the requirements of interested people and organizations and is given to them in a form familiar to them. The cost of using information services is low, so they are available to everyone. The computerization process frees people from routine work and allows for a high level of automation of information processing in the industrial and social spheres.

Scientists predict the transformation of the entire world space into a single computerized and information community of people living in electronic homes. Soon every home will be equipped with all kinds of electronic devices and computerized devices. Human activity will be focused primarily on information processing, while material production and energy production will be entrusted to machines.

A number of scientists highlightcharacteristic features of the information society :

- the problem of the information crisis has been solved, i.e. Almost any information is available;

- the primacy of information in comparison with other resources is ensured;

- the information economy becomes the main form of development;

- the basis of society is the automated creation, storage, processing and use of information using the latest information technology and technology;

- information technology is increasingly becoming global in nature, covering all areas of human social activity;

- the information unity of the entire human civilization is being formed;

- With the help of computer science, every person has free access to the information resources of the entire civilization.

The transition to an information society does not promise any changes in social benefits. There will remain a stratification of the population into more affluent and less affluent, who are able to benefit from the fruits of informatization to varying degrees.

The introduction of new information technologies and robotic systems into industrial production is gradually changing the nature of work in industry, sharply reducing the number of people employed in this area, and changing the technology itself and the organization of production.

In addition to the positive aspects,dangers of informatization :

- the increasing influence of the media on society;

- information technology can destroy the privacy of people and organizations;

- there is a problem of selecting high-quality and reliable information.

The closest countries on the path to the information society are countries with a developed information industry, which include the USA, Japan, England, Germany, and Western European countries. In these countries, one of the areas of government policy for a long time has been the direction related to the financing of the information industry, the development of computer systems and telecommunications.