INFORMATONALISM

DEFINITION
Industrialism
• Informationalism is Technological
a techonological paradigm that
paradigm paradigm
replaces and subsumes the previous paradigm of
industrialism
IMPORTANT NOTE
However, the rise of informationalism, as the new paradigm, does not
suggest that industrialism disappears as a material fact; it only suggests
that industrialism loses centrality in discourses of technology; indeed,
informationalism subsumes and transforms industrial technologies from
within.

For example: the automobile

• (an important industrial artifact) does not become less important

• it retains its role and appearance while undergoing an informational
transformation
• whereby the automobile becomes an assemblage of computers and data‐
communication networks that begin to mediate its basic functions,
including acceleration, breaking, and steering.
 INDUSTRIALISM INFORMATIONALISM
Production economy Digital Economy

-land, labor, capital - technology, knowledge and networks

Materialism “Mind Age”

-marked by a revolution in materials - connected with the information revolution

engineering triggered by the Industrial that begins after World War II, covering
Revolution developments associated with computer science
and its various expressions in electronics and
telecommunication networks.

Our global society and organizational systems have morphed into a

dynamic, interconnected and abstract entity that is based on the flow of
information created, processed, transmitted and then regenerated in new forms
at incredible speeds and in a constant state of flux.
• At the heart of this social/global enterprise is information,
a new form of power and an abstract force due to its state of
state of constant change, instant transmission and
immateriality which exists out of space and time.

INFORMATION

When we engage in our cyborg routines of checking emails, texting,

using the internet, we exchange flows of information and interact in a new
mode of existence. In experiencing this powerful exchange, new information
technologies revolutionize our capacity for thinking, which becomes an
expansion and augmentation of the brain and body to the whole world of
production and communication.