Information society: networks, collective action and the role of institutions

Fitzsimons, Vincent G. (2006): Information society: networks, collective action and the role of institutions. Published in: International Journal of the Humanities , Vol. 3, No. 6 (2006): pp. 19-32.

Abstract

The knowledge economy and knowledge society depend on the development of networks of communications in terms of both physical possibilities of national and international infrastructure, and the inclination of individuals to participate in these. The rapid spread of such technical capacity, and the rise of wireless methods of communications enables many countries that might previously have been prevented from developing such an infrastructure to rapidly develop capacity. This physical development has reduced the costs of communications and consequently information, as well as the freedom to communicate internationally and, implicitly, inter-culturally. It is also recognised, however, that a range of social and economic factors influence the attitudes of individuals towards such communication, and also the possibilities of collective action both within and across nations, depending on the economic and social costs and ‘payoffs’ of such activities. The growth of low-cost information provision and low-cost international communications using the internet has raised the potential benefits of such facilities so that it is changing much of the nature of economic interaction in modern, as well as more traditional societies. Whether or not it will demonstrate a similar significance for the development of an information society remains to be seen, but parallels can be drawn between such changes and the existing analysis of networks, organisations and political ‘collective action’ from the grass roots level. Networks form a significant complement to the existing media that are also seizing on the potential of this modern technology, and constitute a source of general, or more specifically valuable information to individuals in society.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: institutions; networks; information society
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D0 - General > D02 - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact; Z - Other Special Topics > Z1 - Cultural Economics ; Economic Sociology ; Economic Anthropology > Z13 - Economic Sociology ; Economic Anthropology ; Social and Economic Stratification; D - Microeconomics > D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty > D85 - Network Formation and Analysis: Theory

References

Aburdene, Patricia (1994) ‘Megatrends for the information age,’ Bulletin of the Medical Librarians Association. 82/1: 12-17.

African Development Forum (1999) ‘The challenge to Africa of globalisation and the information age: Annex 1 – the way forward to a people-centred African Information Society’ [http://www.uneca.org/adf99/adf99reportannex1.htm accessed 21 July 2005]

Akhtar, S (2001) ‘Internet technologies in the Himalayas: lessons learned during the 1990s,’ Journal of Information Science. 27/1: 9-17.

Angyal, A. (1941/1981) ‘A logic of systems.’ Chapter 1 in Emery (1981) pp.27-40.

Albert, R. & Barabási, A-L. (2002) ‘Statistical mechanics of complex networks,’ Reviews of Modern Physics. (January 2002): 47-97.

Becker, Gary S. (1993) Human Capital: a theoretical and empirical analysis with special reference to education. (3rd ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press)

Berlo, D.K. (1960) The Process of Communication. (NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston)

Bremner, Charles (2005) ‘French classics enter cyberspace,’ The Times. 18 March 2005 [accessed from the timesonline 18 June 2005]

Castells, Manuel (2004) ‘The information city, the new economy, and the network society.’ Chapter 11 in Webster (2004a) pp.150-164.

Coleman, James (1988) ‘Social capital in the creation of human capital,’ American Journal of Sociology. 94: S95-S120.

DOT Force (2001) ‘Digital Opportunities for All: Meeting the Challenge - Report of the Digital Opportunity Task Force (DOT Force) including a proposal for a Genoa Plan of Action, 11 May 2001 [G8 Digital Opportunities for All programme, accessed at http://www.g8.utoronto.ca/summit/2001genoa/dotforce1.html, 21 July 2005]

Drucker, Peter (2001) ‘The new workforce,’ Economist. 1 November 2001, cited in Information Society Commission (2002) pp.24.

Dunbar, R.I.M. (1993) ‘Co-evolution of neocortex size, group size and language in humans,’ Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 16/4: 681-735.

Emery, F.E. (1976/1981) ‘Causal path analysis.’ Chapter 13 in Emery (1981) pp.293-298.

Emery, F.E. (ed.) (1981) Systems Thinking: Volume One. (Revised edition, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books)

Fehr, Ernst & Fischbacher, Urs (2003) ‘The nature of human altruism,’ Nature. 425: 785-791.

Florida, Richard (2002) ‘The rise of the creative class,’ The Washington Monthly (May) [http://www.washington-montly.com/features/2001/0205.florida.html accessed 22 May 2006]

Gorman, Michael (2004) ‘Google and God’s mind,’ Los Angeles Times. 17 December 2004

Granovetter, Mark (1973) ‘The strength of weak ties’, American Journal of Sociology. 78/6: 1360-1380.

Greif, A. (1994) ‘Cultural beliefs and the organization of society: a historical and theoretical reflection on collectivist and individualist societies,’ Journal of Political Economy. 102/5: 912-950.

Griffin, E. (1997) A First Look at Information Theory. (3rd ed., NY: McGraw-Hill)

Gupta, D. (1997) ‘Civil society in the Indian context: letting the state off the hook,’ Contemporary Sociology. 26/3: 305-307.

Henderson, S. L. (2002) ‘Selling civil society: Western aid and the nongovernmental organization sector in Russia’, Comparative Political Studies, 35/2 (March): 139-167.Keane, John (ed.) (1988) Democracy and Civil Society. (London: Verso)

Information Society Commission (2002) Building the Knowledge Society: report to government, December 2002. (Dublin: Information Society Commission)

Information Technology Advisory Group (1999) The Knowledge Economy. (Auckland, New Zealand: Minister for Information Technology’s Office)

Keane, John (ed.) (1988) Democracy and Civil Society. (London: Verso)

Keynes, John M. (1936) The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. (London: Macmillan)

Keynes, John M. (1937) ‘The general theory of employment,’ Quarterly Journal of Economics. 51/2: 209-223.

Knack, S. (1999) ‘Social capital, growth and poverty: a survey and extensions.’ (Washington: World Bank Social Capital Initiative Working Paper No.7, 1999)

Knack, S. & Keefer, P. (1997) ‘Does social capital have an economic payoff? A cross-country investigation,’ Quarterly Journal of Economics. 112/4 (Nov): 1251-88.

Knight, Frank H. (1921) Risk, Uncertainty and Profit. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin)

Kogut, B. & Spicer, A (1999) ‘Institutional technology and the chains of trust: capital markets and privatisation in Russia and the Czech Republic’, Working Paper No. 291, William Davidson Institute, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Lewis, P.G. (1992) ‘Introduction’ in Lewis, P.G. (ed.) Democracy and Civil Society in Eastern Europe. (London: Macmillan)

McFadden, Daniel (2001) ‘Economic choices,’ American Economic Review. 91/3: 351-378.

Milgram, Stanley (1967) ‘The small world problem,’ Psychology Today. (May 1967): 60-67.

Mirrlees, James A. (1997) ‘Information and incentives: the economics of carrots and sticks,’ Economic Journal. 107 (Sept): 1311-1329.

Moodley, S. (2005) ‘The promise of e-development? A critical assessment of the State ICT for Poverty Reduction discourse in South Africa,’ Perspectives on Global Development and Technology. 4/1: 1-26.

Naisbitt, John (1984) Megatrends: ten new directions transforming our lives. (New York: Warner books)

Newman, N.E.J. (2001) ‘The structure of scientific collaboration networks,’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2002. 98/2: 404-409.

North, Douglass C. (1971) ‘Institutional change and economic growth’, Journal of Economic History. 31/1: 118-25.

North, Douglass C. (1984) ‘Government and the cost of exchange in history’, Journal of Economic History. XLIV/2 (June 1984): 255-64.

North, Douglass C. (1990) Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)

Odlyzko, Andrew & Tilly, Benjamin (2005) ‘A refutation of Metcalfe’s Law and a better estimate for the value of networks and network interconnections.’ Digital Technology Center, University of Minnesota (mimeo) [available at http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko]

OECD (1996) The Knowledge-based Economy. (Paris: OECD)

Olson, M (1965) The Logic of Collective Action. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press)

Olson, M. (1982) The Rise and Decline of Nations. (New Haven: Yale University Press)

Pietrzyk, D. I. (2003) ‘Democracy or Civil Society?’ Politics. 23/1: 38-45.

Popper, K.R. (1945/2002) The Open Society and its Enemies. (London: Routledge)

Pritchett, L. & Kaufmann, D. (1998) ‘Civil liberties, democracy, and the performance of government projects,’ Finance and Development. (March): 26-29

Putnam, R.D. (1993) Making Democracy Work: civic traditions in modern Italy. (Princeton: Princeton University Press)

Putnam, R.D. (1995) ‘Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital,’ Journal of Democracy. 6/1: 65-78.

Schramm, Wilbur & Donald F. Roberts (eds.) (1954/1965) The Process and Effects of Mass Communication. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press)

Shannon, Claude & Weaver, Warren (1949) The Mathematical Theory of Communications. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press)

Solow, Robert M. (1962) ‘Technical progress, capital formation, and economic growth,’ American Economic Review. 52/2: 76-86.

Stark, J. (2002) ‘Book Review. Small Worlds: The dynamics of networks between order and disorder,’ UK Nonlinear News. 29 (August 2002)

Stigler, George J. (1961) ‘The economics of information,’ Journal of Political Economy. 69/3: 213

Stiglitz, Joseph E. (2002) ‘Information and the change in the paradigm in economics,’ American Economic Review. 92/3: 460-501.

Tuomi, Ilkka (1999) ‘Data is more than knowledge: implications of the reversed knowledge hierarchy for knowledge management and organizational memory,’ Journal of Management Information Systems. 16/3: 107-121.

UNDP (1997) Human Development Report, 1996: From plan to market. (Oxford: Oxford University Press/United Nations Development Programme)

Urry, John (2004) ‘Is Britain the first post-industrial society?’ Chapter 9 in Webster (2004a) pp.121-132.

Veblen, Thorstein (1899) ‘The preconceptions of economic science,’ Quarterly Journal of Economics. 13/2: 121-150.

Vernon, R. (1966) ‘International investments and international trade in the product life cycle’, Quarterly Journal of Economics. (May): 190-207.

Watts, D. & Strogatz, S. (1998) ‘Collective dynamics of small-world networks,’ Nature. 393.

Webster, Frank (ed.) (2004a) The Information Society Reader. (London: Routledge)

Webster, Frank (2004b) ‘The Information Society’ in Webster (2004a), pp.9-12.

White, H.C., Boorman, S.A., & Breiger, R.L. (1976) Social structure from multiple networks I: block models or roles and positions’, American Journal of Sociology. 81/4: 730-80.

Williamson, Oliver E. (2000) ‘The new institutional economics: taking stock, looking ahead’, Journal of Economic Literature. 38/3 (September): 595-613.

Woolcock, Michael (1998) ‘Social capital and economic development: toward a theoretical synthesis and policy framework,’ Theory and Society. 27: 151-208.

Zak, P.J. & Knack, S. (1998) ‘Trust and growth’ mimeo, IRIS, University of Maryland.