ABSTRACT
The concept of information society emerged in the 1970s and throughout the 1980s, and it rapidly gained widespread currency. Postindustrial society was characterized by a shift from goods producing to service industry, and by the codification of theoretical knowledge, with knowledge and innovation serving as the strategic and transforming resources of society. The best-selling status of populist accounts of the information society stemmed from more than just the skill and passion of their authors. In 1984, the European Commission drew attention to the dangers of alienation in an information society in a series of papers published under its FAST Programme. Apart from avoiding the more extreme manifestations of technological determinism, this allows for the possibility of there being more than one type of information society, depending upon the existence of different social and cultural milieux. Several writers have questioned the extent to which the information society can in fact be differentiated from industrial society.
