The concept of «information society» was launched by the Commission’s White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment (1993).

This term was chosen deliberately in preference to «information highways», which stresses infrastructure aspects; it alludes not only to the networks, services and content conveyed, but also to the social, societal and cultural transformations brought about by the development and dissemination of information and communication technologies (ICT).

This choice of term was no accident. It is indicative of a sea-change in public policy-making with respect to ICT.

Because of their anticipated impact on the economy, employment and quality of life (new services), ICT - which were previously viewed in sectoral terms (telecommunications, research and development) - are now identified as an overall political priority of the EU and its Member States, incorporating the various aspects covered by this new concept.

The term Information Society describes a normative moral and social vision, based on "flow", interactive flow, as central moral value. It claims that: it is a primary moral duty of humans to exchange information, that it is a primary goal of the state to facilitate this, that culture should value flow of information, and that an infrastructure for information flow should be provided, if necessary by the state.

Note that, in this definition, pre-modern or pre-industrial societies can also be information societies. Historically, however, such societies follow on the European liberal tradition, and the "Information Society" concept is a part of that tradition. It is not a neutral sociological term.

Frank Webster lists 5 categories of definitions of the Information Society, in "Theories of the Information Society" (1995, London: Routledge):

• technological

• economic

• occupational

• spatial

• cultural

The book was published in 1995 and does not cover the definitions in the Bangemann Report and subsequent EU policy. It is accurate on the way the IS is approached in the research and philosophical traditions quoted. However, I think it misses two important categories. The first is that of political philosophy: there is an overlap between liberal ideas of society, and the later Information Society. The second is the entire category of new cyberspace beliefs, some of which now appear regularly in official policy (in the EU). And for instance in the attitudes of Manuel Castells, the most influential EU advisor: note his comment on New Age harp music, as the classical music of the new society.

A new IS definition, based on these quasi-religious attitudes, is displacing the earlier "political economics" definitions, as the main source of policy ideas. They include the biological metaphor of the Internet, syncretist belief in the value of fusion, global pan-syncretism, belief in the real possibility of a global organism, the approach to the IS a the emergence of a brain-like entity, the emphasis on collective memory in electronic form, the emphasis on the holism of the new society, belief in organic principles of society, belief in the Internet as an eco-system filled with life-forms, belief in the evolutionary nature of the Internet or the new society, and the use of a network metaphor for history.