Inside the digital society

Too much debate about the Information Society is binary. To advocates, anything digital looks good. Others are spooked by impacts that are uncontrolled and unbenign. If we’re serious, we need to be more nuanced. Some reflection on this where social media’s concerned this week; next week, the Internet’s impact on politics.

In a previous post, I looked at different ways to measure the internet. This week, we'll look into measuring the Information Society.

Last week I looked at the big picture on the digital economy, in the light of UNCTAD’s latest Information Economy Report. This week: some of the issues the digital economy raises for policymakers at a national and local level.

This week’s post is the first of two on the digital economy. UNCTAD – the UN Conference on Trade and Development – published its two-yearly Information Economy Report (IER) last week. It’s consistently one of the more interesting UN publications on the Information Society. Well worth a read.

Robots are talked of more and more these days. Like implants, they’ve moved from science fiction to present reality. Instead of fantasizing over them, we need to understand the role they’re playing in our lives and going to play in them in future.

This week’s blog post concerns what might happen if the Internet of Things begins to get under your skin.

Last week I wrote about the need to shape our thinking on the Internet around its future rather than its past. This week I’m asking what that means for how we think about security.

It’s time for ‘Inside the Information Society’ to resume after its Northern-summer/Southern-winter break. There’s no shortage of issues. I’ll start this week by asking if/how we should rethink the Information Society?