Introduction

Extract

The last few decades of the twentieth century witnessed a rapid development in information and communication technologies (ICT), which has contributed to such drastic economic, social, and cultural changes that they are commonly referred to as the “Information Revolution”. This Information Revolution is believed by many to be so influential and comprehensive that it is bringing about an epochal rupture in global economic, social, cultural, and political history comparable to the previous major historical shifts of the Agrarian Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. Naturally, a development so pervasive has been analysed by a great number of scholars from various disciplines, among whom social theorists, in all their diversity, have been the most numerous. Here is not the place for even a concise overview of the rich variety of theorizing and analysis of the Information Revolution and the resulting Information Society, but much of the theorization of the relationship between work and the most recent information revolution can still be traced to the initial statements about “postindustrial society”, “de-industrialization” and “globalization”.