ABSTRACT
History is full of instances where classes or interest groups, attempting merely to defend their positions in a changing economic environment, have become the catalysts of social transformation. So corporations in Japan and other advanced industrialised countries, by reacting to the economic challenges of the late 1960s and early 1970s, have brought about a technological transformation which has had profound implications for the social system. The outcome of this transformation is the structure which Masuda, Hayashi and others call 'information society', but which I should like here to analyse, in a slightly different way, by using the notion of 'information capitalism'.
