Chapter 8: The Information Society PDF

CHAPTER 8 THE INFORMATION SOCIETY Contents: A. What is Information? B. The Characterization of an Information Society C. Impacts of the Information Society D. Rise of E-Waste: an Effect of The Information Society A. WHAT IS INFORMATION? A person with in...

CHAPTER 8 THE INFORMATION SOCIETY Contents: A. What is Information? B. The Characterization of an Information Society C. Impacts of the Information Society D. Rise of E-Waste: an Effect of The Information Society A. WHAT IS INFORMATION? A person with information holds power. That information will enable a person to be aware and make most appropriate decision. Thus, the most valuable commodity in this age is information. Humans now utilize more information in daily living than before. The volume of information available through different media like the radio, television, internet, books, newspapers, and magazines has enlarged. Such happening has heightened the flow of information between groups and individuals, especially with the advent of social media. There is no single definition for information. Still, it can be understood based on how different sources characterized information: 1. Information can be said as a representation of any entity. 2. A semantic definition of information highlights three aspects of information: (1) information is meaningful data (about something or someone) that may result from a systematic investigation; (2) communication and reception are integral parts of information; and (3), information has effects. 3. As to technological definition, information is defined in terms of the probabilities of occurrence of symbols and its quantity is measured in bits. 4. In the economic exposition of the information society, information is defined as the data that have been organized and communicated. 5. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines information as: a. the communication or reception of knowledge or intelligence; b. the knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction; c. the attribute inherent in and communicated by one of two or more alternative sequences or arrangements of something (as nucleotides in DNA or binary digits in a computer program) that produce specific effects; d. a signal or character (as in a communication system or computer) representing data;  e. something (as a message, experimental data, or a picture) which justifies change in a construct (as a plan or theory) that represents physical or mental experience or another construct; or f. a numerical quantity that measures the uncertainty in the outcome of an experiment to be performed. B. THE CHARACTERIZATIONS OF AN INFORMATION SOCIETY Information Society is defined as a society based on information and knowledge. It is an evolving concept and paves the way towards a much bigger scope – the Global Information Society where information societies from various regions or groups become interconnected on a worldwide scale. The information society is governed by knowledge, competence, and only informed decisions and actions. It demands and promotes clarity, precision, honesty, and openness. There are six analytically separate definitional criteria or characterizations used by authors on the information society. Technological Economic Occupational Spatial Cultural Theory Characterization Characterization Characterization Characterization Characterization Characterization 1. Technological. The most common definition is to highlight an increase in information and communications technologies (ICTs) as signalling the emergence of an information society. It is suggested, often implicitly, that ICTs both define and create the information society. 2. Economic. This suggests that the information society is one in which the contribution of information businesses and trades has expanded over time to now outweigh manufacture and agriculture in terms of contribution to Gross National Product. Generally such analysts adopt the term information economy to describe a situation in which information industries command the major proportion of GNP. 3. Occupational. This approach is most closely associated with Daniel Bell's theory of post-industrialism. Bell's book The Coming of Post-Industrial Society delineates an information society as one in which most jobs are informational. Thus occupations such as researchers, lawyers, counsellors, and teachers are  information intensive, involving information production, analysis, and communication, and the outcome is a changed condition rather than an object, compared to other occupations. 4. Spatial. Here the focus is on networks along which information flows. Information networks have profound effects on the organization of time and space, as well as on other relations, allowing real-time communication on a planetary scale. 5. Cultural. This approach is one which stresses the growth of symbols and signs over recent decades, an information society being one in which there is pervasive television, advertising, a plethora of lifestyles, multiple ethnicities, many hybridized musical expressions, the World Wide Web, and so on. 6. Theory. This suggests that an information society is one in which theoretical information/knowledge takes precedence over the practical and is constitutive of virtually everything that is done. This is contrasted with previous societies in which practical exigencies, know-how, and custom predominated. C. IMPACTS OF THE INFORMATION SOCIETY With the premise that information provides power and the information society is growing, it has its known impacts. Some of these include, but are not limited to: Electronic Banking and Medical Informatics School Reform in the Commerce Cyberspace Information Age 1. Electronic Commerce. There are implications of the internet for business practice and strategy. To save time and resources, consumers opt to purchase goods or order services online. For instance, we have Amazon, an American multinational technology company which focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It is one of the Big Five companies in the U.S. information technology industry, along with Google, Apple, Meta (Facebook), and Microsoft. In the Philippines, a lot of Filipinos got used to ordering goods thru Lazada and Shopee. There are also other service providers like Food Panda, Grab, and Lalamove. 2. Banking and Cyberspace. Online banking, also known as internet banking, web banking or home banking, is an electronic payment system that enables  customers of a bank or other financial institution to conduct a range of financial transactions through the financial institution's website. Banks have invested for such modality to make their services accessible for consumers. 3. Medical Informatics. This is the field of science and engineering that aims at developing methods and technologies for the acquisition, processing, and study of patient data, which can come from different sources and modalities, such as electronic health records, diagnostic test results, and medical scans. This will help patients and specialists communicate with one another more efficiently, saving time, resources and more lives. 4. School Reform in the Information Age and Universities in the Digital Age. Distance learning, also called distance education, e-learning, and online learning, form of education in which the main elements include physical separation of teachers and students during instruction and the use of various technologies to facilitate student-teacher and student-student communication. Such modality has enabled education in the time of pandemic. It has also increased exchange of students at an international level without the participants leaving their countries physically. D. RISE OF E-WASTE: AN EFFECT OF THE INFORMATION SOCIETY Rapid development and the coming about of the information society has enforced the mass consumption and indispensability in the society of electrical and electronic equipment or EEE. When EEE reach the end of their usefulness, they disposed of, creating a waste stream of hazardous and valuable materials known as Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), electronic and electrical wastes, or more commonly, e-waste. As the most common way of disposing e-waste is recycling them and failure to do so might pose danger to human lives and to the environment in general, there is reason to shed light on the awareness, attitude and behavior of electronic product users, especially students who have embraced the technological culture of the world. EEE and E-Waste There are six general categories of EEE products associated with their waste management characteristics (Forti, Balde, Kuehr & Bel, 2020). There categories are 1. temperature exchange equipment like refrigerators and heat pumps; 2. screens and monitors like televisions, laptops and tablets; 3. lamps like fluorescent lamps and light-emitting diode; 4. large equipment like washing machine, large printing machines and photovoltaic panels; 5. small equipment like electric kettle, calculators and video cameras; and 6. small IT and telecommunications equipment like mobile phones, printers and routers.  Since such EEE products make human lives and activities easier, the consuming public is enticed to purchase such products and eventually upgrade what they already have. Even if various EEE are useful, the e-waste which is generated from them comprise the largest growing waste stream around the globe (Lundgren, 2012), and there are serious issues associated with e-wastes. There is the generation of high volumes of e- wastes pushed by rapid obsolescence of electronics brought by the increasing demand in technology (Basel Action Network [BAN], 2011) which are also hazardous by nature (Tsydenova & Bengtsson, 2011) due to their compositions. Another is that the complexity of e-wastes challenges recycling efforts since e- wastes contain different materials connected together (Smith, Sonnenfeld & Naguib Pellow, 2006) and there is not enough value in most e-waste to cover the costs of managing it in an environmentally-safe way. What is alarming too is that there is a lack of strong policies to regulate e-wastes considering that in 2019, there are only 78 out of 193 countries with national e-waste policy, legislation, or regulation (Forti, Balde, Kuehr & Bel, 2020). E-Waste in the Philippines In the Philippines, consumption EEE products drastically increased over time, thus generating more obsolete products, thereby e-waste. For instance, a pioneering study on Philippine domestic e-waste generation (Peralta & Fontanos, 2006) revealed that in the period of 1995 to 2005, an approximated 25 million units of five major electronic products reached obsolescence. Said five major products include air conditioners, radios, refrigerators, televisions and washing machines. Another was that from 1991 to 2007, mobile phone ownership surged from 34,000 units to 52 million units (Carisma, 2009). A more recent estimate by Galang and Ballesteros (2017) divulges that waste mobile phones will reach 24.9 million in 2021, which is disturbing because even if mobile phones are small in weight compared to other EEE products, they have higher replacement rates driven by societal demands. The final disposal of electronics in the in Philippines include reusing, recycling, storing and landfilling. However, no data is available showing the amount of e-waste stream to each type of disposal. Also, the Philippines has not yet legislated a policy directly addressing e-wastes. Although the Environment Management Bureau of the country’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources tells that e-waste management falls under Republic Act 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, and RA 6969 or the Toxic Substances and Hazardous and Nuclear Wastes Control Act of 1990 (Environment Management Bureau [EMB], 2020). * * * END * * *