The theory of post-industrial society the authors of the main ideas. scientific and technological achievements in the field of electricity and chemistry in the 19th century

widely used in Western political science and sociology to refer to modern society.

The concept of an industrial society was developed in the works of R. Dahrendorf (post-capitalist society), J. Bell, Z. Brzezinski (technotronic society), A. Turen (programmed society), K. Boulding (post-industrial society), O. Toffler, representatives of the Club of Rome.

According to the concept of post-industrial society, social development is divided into three stages: pre-industrial, industrial and post-industrial. Pre-industrial society is defined by the agricultural factor as the main factor in social production, with the church and the army as its main institutions; industrial society is defined by industry dominated by a corporation, a firm; in a post-industrial society, information and theoretical knowledge influence the formation of social structures. Universities as centers of knowledge concentration become the main institutions of society.

One of the well-known futurologists, J. Nesbitt, agrees that "the post-industrial society is an information society." Associated with the spread of the latest information technologies, such a society is considered in the context of a qualitative breakthrough of mankind into a new historical state. An adequate description of the proposed breakthrough, according to Toffler, is only possible taking into account the spasmodic processes of world development in the form of successive wave bursts.

There are three such waves in history: from the agrarian revolution (the first wave) to the industrial society (the second wave), and from it to the information age (the third wave). The technological basis of this triad is presented in the following form: plow - machine - computer.

Such a concept gave a certain value to the idea of historical periodization, which makes it possible to localize the general vices of bourgeois society within the boundaries of a certain phase of its development, to reveal the role and content of social movements.

At the stage of the pre-industrial stage of the development of society, social movements and protests arise mainly in the sphere of consumption. Bread riots in cities and other regions are recognized as typical. In an industrial society, production, the sphere of relations between labor and capital, becomes the center of conflicts. In a post-industrial society, conflicts move from the sphere of production to the sphere of services. Requirements are related to the problem of leisure, consumption, primarily knowledge, family life. The main conflict manifests itself in the line of possession of education and control over information.

The term "post-industrialism" arose at the beginning of the century in the works of the English scientists A. Coomaraswamy and A. Penty, and the term "post-industrial society" was first used in 1958 by D. Risman. However, the founder of post-industrialism is the American sociologist Daniel Bell (born in 1919), who developed a holistic theory of post-industrial society. The main work of D. Bell is called “The Coming Post-Industrial Society. The experience of social forecasting” (1973).

Both from the title and from the content of the book it clearly follows predictive orientation of the theory proposed by D. Bell: “The concept of a post-industrial society is an analytical construct, not a picture of a specific or concrete society. It is a kind of paradigm, a social scheme that reveals new axes of social organization and stratification in developed Western society”, and further: “Post-industrial society ... is an “ideal type”, a construction compiled by a social analyst on the basis of various changes in society.”

D. Bell systematically considers the changes taking place in three main, relatively autonomous spheres of society: the social structure, the political system and the sphere of culture (at the same time, Bell refers the economy, technology and the employment system to the social structure somewhat unconventionally).

The concept of post-industrial society, according to Bell, includes five main components:

in the economic sector - the transition from the production of goods to the expansion of services;
in the structure of employment - the dominance of the professional and technical classes, the creation of a new "merigocracy";
the axial principle of society is the central place of theoretical knowledge;
future orientation - the special role of technology and technology assessments;
decision-making based on new "smart technology".

The characteristics of the post-industrial society in comparison with the previous types of societies are presented in Table. one.

The fundamental work of Manuel Castells (born in 1942) “The Information Age. Economy, Society and Culture” (1996-1998, in the original - a three-volume edition). M. Castells is a true "citizen of the world." He was born and raised in Spain, studied in Paris with A. Touraine and worked in France for 12 years. Since 1979, Castells has been a professor at the University of California, while for several years he simultaneously worked at the University of Madrid, and also lectured and conducted research in many countries, including the USSR and Russia.

Table 1. Types of societies

Characteristics
Main production resource			Information
Basic type of production activity		Manufacturing	Treatment
The nature of the underlying technologies	labor intensive	capital-intensive	knowledge-intensive
a brief description of	Playing with nature	Game with transformed nature	game between people

The subject of Castells' research is the understanding of the latest trends in the development of society associated with the information technology revolution, globalization, and environmental movements. Castells fixes a new way of social development - informational, defining it as follows: “In the new, informational way of development, the source of productivity lies in the technology of generating knowledge, processing information and symbolic communication. Of course, knowledge and information are critical elements in all modes of development ... However, specific to the informational mode of development is the impact of knowledge on knowledge itself as the main source of productivity.

The informational theory of Castells is not limited to technological and economic analysis (otherwise it would not be sociological), but extends to the consideration of cultural, historical, organizational, and purely social spheres. Developing the ideas of D. Bell, Castells notes that in the information society a special social organization arises, in which operations with information become the basic sources of productivity and power. Another key feature of the information society is its network structure, which replaces previous hierarchies: “Not all social dimensions and institutions follow the logic of the network society, just as industrial societies have for a long time included numerous pre-industrial forms of human existence. But all societies of the information age are indeed permeated - with varying intensity - by the ubiquitous logic of the network society, whose dynamic expansion gradually absorbs and subjugates pre-existing social forms.

The body of research in the field of post-industrial theory is very extensive, and its boundaries are rather vague. You can get a more detailed idea of the work in this area with the help of the anthology edited by V. Inozemtsev "The New Post-Industrial Wave in the West" (M., 1999).

Theory of post-industrial society

The theory of post-industrial society (or the theory of three stages) appeared in the 50s and 60s. 20th century This period is called the era of total industrialization, when the main driving force behind the transition of civilization to a qualitatively new state was the scientific and technological revolution. The founder of this theory is considered a prominent American sociologist Daniela Bella(b. 1919). His main works: "The End of Ideologies", "The Coming Post-Industrial Society". He divided world history into three stages: pre-industrial (traditional), industrial and post-industrial. When one stage replaces another, the technology, mode of production, form of ownership, social institutions, political regime, culture, way of life, population, social structure of society change. Thus, a traditional society is characterized by an agrarian way of life, inactivity, stability and reproducibility of the internal structure. And industrial society is based on large-scale machine production, has a developed system of communications, where the freedom and interests of the individual are combined with generally accepted sociocultural norms.

The transition from traditional to industrial society in modern sociology is called modernization, distinguishing between two types: "primary" and "secondary". And although the theory of modernization was developed by Western sociologists (P. Berger, D. Bell, A. Touraine, etc.) in relation to developing countries, nevertheless, it largely explains the process of reforming any society, its transformation along the lines of the advanced countries of the world. At present, modernization covers almost all spheres of society - the economy, social and political spheres, spiritual life.

At the same time, the guidelines for the development of an industrial society should be:

in the sphere of human activity, the growth of material production;
in the sphere of organization of production - private entrepreneurship;
in the sphere of political relations - the rule of law and civil society:
in the sphere of the state - the provision by the state of the rules of public life (with the help of law and order) without interfering in its spheres;
in the sphere of social structures - the priority of the technical and economic structures of society (professional, stratification) over class-antagonistic ones;
in the sphere of organization of circulation - market economy;
in the sphere of relations between peoples and cultures - mutual exchange as a movement towards mutual understanding on the basis of compromises.

Other scientists offered their own versions of the triad, different from the theory of D. Bell, in particular the concept of premodern, modern and postmodern states (S. Crook and S. Lash), pre-economic. economic and post-economic societies (V.L. Inozemtsev), as well as the "first", "second" and "third" waves of civilization (O. Toffler).

The idea of a post-industrial society was formulated at the beginning of the 20th century. A. Penty and introduced into scientific circulation after the Second World War by D. Riesman, but it received wide recognition only in the early 70s. of the last century thanks to the fundamental works of R. Aron and D. Bell.

The determining factors of a post-industrial society, according to Bell, are: a) theoretical knowledge (and not capital) as an organizing principle; b) "cybernetic revolution", which caused technological growth in the production of goods. He formulated five main components of the model of the future:

the sphere of the economy - the transition from the production of goods to the production of services;
sphere of employment - the predominance of the class of professional specialists and technicians;
axial principle - the leading role of theoretical knowledge as a source of innovation and policy in society;
forthcoming orientation - control over technology and technological assessments of activities;
decision-making process - the creation of a new "intelligent technology" associated with electronic computers.

Today the theories of post-industrial capitalism, post-industrial socialism, ecological and conventional post-industrialism are known. Later, the post-industrial society was also called postmodern.

Formed in the 1960s–1970s. the theory of post-industrial, or information, society (E. Toffler, D. Bell, J. Fourastier, R. Heilbroner, D. Drucker and others) is a very interesting version of the current stage of development of a society undergoing profound technological, economic, political and cultural changes , many essential aspects of which are captured by this theory. According to V.L. Inozemtsev, "the theory of post-industrial society has become in fact the only sociological concept of the twentieth century, fully confirmed by historical practice."

Due to the well-known dogmatism of politicians, economists, philosophers, and social scientists who occupied responsible leading positions in the USSR, D. Bell's book "The Coming Post-Industrial Society" was published in 1973 in a narrow edition of 300 copies and received a false assessment, up to the label of "anti-Marxism", to no small to the surprise of D. Bell, who stated in the preface to the Russian edition of 1999 of his book: “But I am not an anti-Marxist at all. How can a social scientist be anti-Marxist? Much in the Marxist analysis of social and production structures has retained its significance and entered into modern theories ... I would rather call myself a post-Marxist, in the sense that I accepted quite a lot of Marxist ideas about society.

Bell's book represents, in our opinion, the most thorough study of post-industrialism, which can be attributed to a kind of "first wave" of this theory.

In 1996–1998 M. Castells publishes a three-volume monograph “The Information Age. Economy, Society and Culture”, the first volume of which, with the addition of a chapter and the final conclusion of the third volume, was published in Russia (2000). The most prominent representative of the “new wave” of post-industrialism, Castells, introduced a number of significant refinements to this theory.

From the point of view of the theory of post-industrialism, human society goes through three stages or stages ("waves") of development: agricultural or pre-industrial, industrial based on machine production, post-industrial, or informational. According to Toffler, the first is associated with substance, as the main product and resource of production, the second - with energy, the third - with information. The classification of the stages of social history bears a clear imprint of technological determinism, but the theory of post-industrialism goes far beyond this methodology.

According to Bell, pre-industrial society is basically mining, it is based on agriculture, mining, logging, and so on. Industrial society is primarily producing character, uses energy and machine technology to produce goods. Post-industrial society is processing, here the exchange of information and energy takes place with the help of telecommunications and computers. Bell notes that these modes of existence of society are not only steps that replace each other, each of the previous ones is preserved to a certain extent in the composition of the subsequent ones.

A slightly different classification of the stages of the history of society - "ways of development" of society - was given by Castells, who connects the agrarian method of development with the leading role of "the amount of labor and natural resources", the industrial one - with new energy sources, the information one - with the generation of knowledge. In addition, he believes that the difference between industrial and post-industrial ways of development is not as significant as agrarian and industrial, since industrial and post-industrial ways of development are associated with the use of science.

Leading theorists of post-industrialism proceed from similar, although in many respects different, sociological concepts of social development, which they somehow compare with Marxism. In our opinion, the theory of post-industrialism is undoubtedly closer to Marxism than to any civilizational concepts of social history.

According to Bell, the classical theory of post-industrialism is based on the concept of society as a set of three spheres: technical and economic system, political system and culture. Bell does not consider himself a supporter of the "technological determinism" methodology. “Of course, the technical and economic system has an impact on other areas of society, but it does not determine them. Politics is relatively autonomous, while culture is historical.” Bell declares his disagreement with the Marxist concept of society, which in his understanding is "economic determinism", the meaning of which Bell does not explain.

Considering the three spheres of society as "axial lines" of analysis, Bell, however, recognizes that the impact of the techno-economic sphere "on other aspects of life is enormous."

Much more interesting is the sociological concept of Castells. According to Castells, "societies are organized around the processes of human action, structured and historically determined in relation production, experience and authorities.

Production- this is the impact of man on matter (nature) to create a product that is partially consumed and partially accumulated as an "economic surplus" for investment. Experience - the impact of human subjects on themselves, "determined by the relationship between their biological and cultural identities", is aimed at "an endless search for the satisfaction of human needs and desires". Power- relations between subjects that "on the basis of production and human experience impose the will of some subjects on others through the potential or actual use of violence, physical or symbolic."

"Production is streamlined class relations defining the process by which some actors, by virtue of their position in the production process, decide on the division and use of a product aimed at consumption and investment. Human experience is structured around gender/sex relations. Power is based on state.

In the social aspect, production is a complex process. Mankind as a "collective producer includes the labor force and the organizers of production." "Matter includes nature, human-modified nature, and human nature itself." “The relationship between labor and matter in the process of labor activity includes the use of means of production to influence matter on the basis of energy, knowledge and information. Technology is a specific form of this relationship.” The rules for the appropriation, distribution and use of economic surplus "constitute modes of production, determining the existence of social classes."

In the twentieth century we lived under two modes of production - capitalism and statism, by which Castells means socialism in the USSR and other countries.

"The social relations in production, and therefore the mode of production, determine the appropriation and use of economic surplus."

From production methods Castells distinguishes ways of development- "technological schemes through which labor affects the material." With the agrarian mode of development, the source of the growing economic surplus is the quantitative growth of labor efforts and natural resources (especially land). With the industrial mode of development, the introduction of new energy sources becomes the main source of productivity. “In the new, informational way of development, the source of productivity lies in the technology of generating knowledge, processing information and symbolic communication.”

It is impossible not to notice the very significant proximity of the sociological concept of Castells to the materialistic understanding of history. The concept of Castells is undoubtedly a major step in modern sociological thought from the currents of "technological determinism" of the twentieth century. to Marxism, a consistently scientific sociological concept of society. However, it should be noted that there are a number of points in which these two theories diverge. In the materialist understanding of history, as the Marxist sociological (social-philosophical) theory of society is usually called, more rigorous and clear concepts are built socio-historical process(formation concept), socio-economic formation, with its strictly designed structure productive forces and industrial relations, including their basis - relations property. Marxism created a deeper and more developed concept labor, labor paradigm, the determining role of labor as the most important essential power human, in relation to industrial relations, development living human individuals, economic and superstructure structures, the most important phenomena or factors of social life - value, surplus value, money, capital, exploitation, etc. Philosophy and logic of Marx, which absorbed the best achievements of philosophical thought, are "an order of magnitude" higher.

Bell characterizes the post-industrial society with the following main features.

The central role of theoretical knowledge. Every society has always relied on knowledge, but only in modern society does theoretical research “become the basis of technological innovation”. Bell especially emphasizes the leading role of the fundamental sciences.

Creation of new intelligent technology– new mathematical and economic methods (computer linear programming, Markov chains, stochastic processes, etc.), which allow “finding more efficient, “rational” approaches to economic, technical and even social problems.”

Growth of the class of knowledge carriers. The "technical and professional classes" are becoming the fastest growing group in society. If in the USA this group, together with managers, made up 25% of the labor force (8 million people) in 1975, then by 2000 it should become, according to Bell, "the largest social group."

The transition from the production of goods to the production of services. In a post-industrial society, in addition to the previously existing types of services: household, transport, financial, household, new types of services are added, primarily in the field of health, education and social service.

Changes in the nature of work. Bell believes that if in an industrial society labor is “the interaction of a person with a transformed nature, when in the process of producing new goods people become an appendage of machines”, then “in the post-industrial world, labor is primarily an interaction between people ... Thus, from the process of labor and direct practice, nature, artificially created objects are excluded, and only people who learn to interact with each other remain. In the history of human society, this is a completely new, unparalleled situation.”

The role of women is growing sharply, "for the first time a woman received a secure basis for economic independence."

Science reaches its mature state. The connection between science and technology has become stronger, which is the most important feature of a post-industrial society.

If earlier the subject of sociology were classes and strata, then in a post-industrial society, according to Bell, more important structures become situses, or "upright units". Bell Distinguishes four functional situs: scientific, technical(engineering, economics, medicine), administrative and cultural, and five institutional: economic enterprises, government agencies, universities and research complexes, the army. The situs structure of society, according to Bell, is increasingly coming to the fore.

Meritocracy. In a post-industrial society, "a person can occupy a prestigious position not so much by inheritance (although it can confer wealth or cultural advantage), but by education and qualifications."

The end of limited goods?“K. Marx and other socialists argued that abundance is a prerequisite for socialism, and argued that under socialism there would be no need to regulate distribution for the sake of justice, since there would be enough funds to meet the needs of everyone. In this sense, communism was defined as the elimination of the economy, or as the material embodiment of philosophy. However, it is quite clear that we will always live in conditions of scarcity.” In a post-industrial society, "there will always be a lack of information and time."

Economic theory of information.“Information by its very nature is a collective and not a private product (property)… Optimal social investment in knowledge, allowing it to be more widely disseminated and used, requires the development of a cooperation strategy. This new problem concerning the role of information in a post-industrial society poses difficult theoretical and practical tasks for economists and politicians.

According to Castells, a post-industrial society is characterized by the following main features:

1. A source of productivity and growth new stage of social development are knowledge extended to all areas of economic activity through information processing.

2. Economic activity is shifting from the production of goods to the production of services. The service industry stands out as the new largest area of economic activity, consisting in the impact on man, and not on nature.

3. In the new economy, professions associated with a high saturation of knowledge and information play an ever-increasing role. The core of the new social structure is made up of professionals and technicians.

Castells considers that the main feature of the information age is not use of information, which also takes place in the industrial era, and the emergence of information processing technology, information technology. He believes that in the 1970s. “Processes of economic, political and cultural change have been amplified and augmented by an extraordinarily powerful information technology that has changed the world as a whole over the past 20 years.” Information technology played a key role in the crisis of the Soviet Union.

Clarifying his general theoretical position, Castells argues that “technology does not predetermine the development of society. But society does not prescribe a course of technological change either, for many factors, including individual ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit, intervene in the process of scientific discovery, technological innovation and its social applications, so that the final result depends on the complex structure of their interactions. Leaving aside for the time being other significant aspects of the sociological concept of the scientist, we note that in explaining the above and other equally theoretically significant problems, Castells never touches on the most fundamental aspects of sociological theory - the natural nature of the development of society, generic human essence, property.

At the end of the twentieth century. society is experiencing one of the rare moments in its history - the transformation of its material culture due to the work of "a new technological paradigm built around information technology." information technology- This convergent set technologies in microelectronics, creation of computer technology (machines and software), telecommunications/broadcasting, optoelectronic industry, genetic engineering.

The essence of the new technological paradigm is information impact technology, and not just information designed to influence technology, as was the case in previous technological revolutions. Emphasizing this fundamental feature of the new technology, instead of defining the post-industrial society as informational Castells introduces its definition as informational. In the information society, information–it is a raw material and a product of production.

Castells notes a number of important features of the informational paradigm.

1. Information acts as raw material and product technology, and not just as information intended to influence technology, as was the case in previous technological revolutions.

2. inclusiveness effects of new technologies.

3. network logic any system. In place of the most difficult pyramidal structures in the economy in the era of informationalism comes network structure, which provides the greatest dynamism and flexibility of economic systems. Castells quotes a vivid characterization of the role of network structures given by K. Kelly: “The atom is the past. The symbol of science for the next century is the dynamic network... While the atom is the epitome of perfect simplicity, the channels of the network are inherently monstrous complexity... The only organization capable of unencumbered growth or self-learning is the network. All other topologies limit what can happen. A web swarm is all edges, and therefore open to whatever path you take to approach it… No other arrangement—chain, pyramid, tree, circle, wheel with hub—can contain a true manifold that works as a whole.”

4. The information technology paradigm is based on flexibility, which is provided not only by the network principle.

5. Growing convergence of specific technologies in a highly integrated system. The information system integrates microelectronics, telecommunications, optical electronics, computers, the Internet, and biotechnology.

It should be noted a remarkable feature of Castells's theoretical approach, which distinguishes his position from the classics of post-industrialism that preceded him. The integration of specific subtle technologies covering various fields of science and technology, in particular machines, animal organisms and human nature, makes us put the fundamental question of the unity of nature, technology, human essence. Castells attaches significant importance to the discussions of the 1980s. on the problem of "chaos theory", the emergence in the 1990s. groups of scholars who have converged on a common epistemological approach identified by the code word complexity. This group brings together highly qualified physicists from Los Alamos, joined by a group of Nobel laureates. This "intellectual circle aims to integrate scientific thinking (including the social sciences) into a new paradigm." It is easy to understand that the series of questions that the science of post-industrial society has led to is the problem of development (“complexity”), a single regular world process (a regular sequence of physical, chemical, biological and social), the solution of which allows creating a new paradigm that unites the entire system. sciences, science and technology. Such a theory has been created in domestic philosophical science, in particular, by the work of a team of researchers to which the authors have the honor to belong.

Castells draws attention to the huge role of the state in scientific and technological progress: its heyday or, conversely, its deceleration. Thus, a huge role in the technical development of China up to 1400 was played by the state strategy. Key inventions were created in China for centuries and even one and a half millennia earlier than in Europe, which was in the fourteenth century. clearly at a lower technical level than China. Blast furnaces were mastered in China in 200 BC. Castells quotes Jones as saying that "China in the fourteenth century was a hair's breadth from industrialization." It is known that after 1400 the Chinese state lost interest in technical innovation, which was the reason for China's long backwardness. "In the last quarter of the twentieth century. under the strategic leadership of the state, Japan has become a world leader in the information technology field.” The failure to develop an informational paradigm was the cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union. "The industrial and scientific superpower - the Soviet Union - failed this fundamental technological transition." Looking ahead, we note that the Russian reforms carried out since 1992 not only did not advance the country, its leadership and ruling elite to a new development paradigm, but rather threw the country far back. They are based on the paradigm of deindustrialization of the country. The only clearly defined task of the Russian reforms was the redistribution of state, public and, to a large extent, personal (the savings of the population in Sberbank) property among 5–15% of the population, which was usually called “the creation of a class of effective owners.”

The "first wave" of post-industrial research sparked a lively discussion about the nature of the post-industrial, or information, society. Ideas were expressed about a new stage in the development of society as post-bourgeois, post-capitalist(Drucker and others) not capitalist and not socialist, non-economic based on individual rather than public property (V.L. Inozemtsev), etc. From our point of view, these interpretations had certain grounds and cannot be simply discarded. However, Castells gives, apparently, a more thorough assessment of the post-industrial, or, in his definition, informational, society.

Castells notes that information technology, which spread across the globe "at lightning speed in less than two decades, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s," became "the fundamental basis of the socio-economic restructuring of capitalism." "For the first time in history, human thought has become a direct productive force."

Unlike the theorists of the "first wave" of post-industrial theory, Castells believes that true essence restructuring of capitalism, the emergence of informational capitalism is deepening the capitalist logic of striving for profit, profit maximization.

In direct terms, the restructuring consisted in decentralization and the emergence of network structures based on information technology, which made it possible to sharply intensify economic activity, in a trend - up to the speed of fiber optic communications. B. Gates put it even more strongly - to the speed of thought.

This led to a significant strengthening of the role of capital in relation to labor and, as a result, to the decline of the labor movement.

Informational capitalism left behind the Keynesian economic model that brought "unprecedented economic prosperity and social stability to most market economies in the nearly three decades following the Second World War." The result of the restructuring was the dismantling of the social contract between labor and capital.

In its deepest essence, informational capitalism is aimed at "deepening the capitalist logic of the pursuit of profit", at profit maximization.

The restructuring was accompanied by a "widespread deterioration in the living and working conditions of workers", "a stunning progress in income inequality in the United States." Informational capitalism completely excludes the model of the "welfare state».

The deterioration of living and working conditions of workers in the process of transition to the information society takes various forms in different countries, largely depending on their position in the global economy. Thus, in Europe there is an increase in structural unemployment, in the United States - a decrease in wage rates, an increase in inequality and job instability, there is underemployment and labor force segmentation in Japan, inclusion in the informal economy and a decline in the status of the new urban workforce in industrializing countries, growing marginalization agricultural labor force in stagnant underdeveloped economies.

An illustration of "the stunning progression of income inequality in the United States in 1980-1989. the scheme given by Castells is used, according to which for 60% of the population (considered by quantiles of 20, 20 and 20%), income fell by 4.6 - 4.1 - 0.8%, and for the top 1% - increased by 62.9% . Let us note in passing: the picture is somewhat familiar to us!

Let us also note the idea persistently repeated by Castells and requiring serious reflection that “the spread of information technology in the economy does not in itself lead to an increase in unemployment”, that the negative trends listed above “do not follow from the structural logic of the information paradigm, but are the result of the current restructuring of relations between labor and capital." That new technologies on their own do not lead to negative social consequences, to a decrease in the standard of living of the population, we hear a motive that has long been familiar to us, to which we will return.

Attention should also be paid to the far-reaching assertion of Castells that "never has labor played such a significant role in the process of value creation." But at the same time, "workers (regardless of their qualifications) have never been so vulnerable to the organization, for they have become "tight" individuals who are at the mercy of a flexible network and whose location in this network is unknown to it itself." The individual, the "I" becomes part of the Network. " Our societies are increasingly structured around a bipolar opposition between the Net and the Self.”.

Contrary to the idea that is still widespread in Russian literature, Castells argues that in the post-industrial era there is an increase in the upper and lower layers of the professional structure with shrinking middle. In the depths of the emerging social structure, “a more fundamental process was set in motion by information work: the disaggregation of labor, proclaiming the emergence of a network society.”

post-industrial society bell toffler

There are a number of works concerning the post-industrial or information society. One of the founders of the concept of post-industrial society is also Alvin Toffler.

Alvin Toffler (born October 4, 1928) is an American sociologist, philosopher, and futurist. In his book "The Third Wave", which consists of 28 chapters, he predicted many features of modern society in the early 80s of the XX century.

Like Daniel Bell, Elvin Toffler identifies three waves of civilization in human history: agricultural, industrial, and informational.

The first wave of changes, from the point of view of the author, the agricultural revolution is associated with the transition from a pre-agrarian society to an agrarian one, took a millennium. The second wave, the rise of industrial civilization, represents the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society and took only 300 years. However, the author is most interested in the third wave. It is to her that Alvin Toffler dedicates one of his books. The author emphasizes that we are witnessing the birth of a completely new civilization, which the American sociologist describes in his book The Third Wave.

Alvin Toffler talks about a post-industrial civilization in a society in which the parameters of the existing power are changing. There are three sources of it: coercion, wealth, knowledge. Knowledge is the main source that becomes the determining factor in its implementation. In modern society, knowledge is turning into real wealth and into that explosive force that will produce a power shift. The entire social organism is subject to drastic transformations, the division of the world into capitalist and communist goes into oblivion. What is being replaced by systems of fast and slow economies. The former are based on innovation and renewal, while the latter are usually stable and passive in their development. The new economic world is based on human knowledge and abilities, as well as on a sense of freedom and the idea of creative self-development. Society acquires a completely different structure: instead of the former classes, many social groups are formed, each group develops its own values and way of life.

In the Third Wave civilization, according to Alvin Toffler, there will not be a single institution that would play a major role in it. For a mass society, which is characterized by a high degree of standardization of lifestyle, behavior, language, will go into the distant past. The Third Wave civilization will open up scope for decentralization and deconcentration. Gigantomania, so characteristic of its predecessor, will also have no place. The bureaucracy will be replaced by a whole series of new-style organizations, although in some places the hierarchical structures will still be preserved. The role of the nation-state will also be greatly reduced. It will become just one institution among others, and not the most important, as it is now. The same important changes will take place in the sphere of super-ideology. The mechanistic view will become a thing of the past, a person will begin to evaluate the world in terms of such concepts as “process”, “feedback”, “lack of balance”.

Alvin Toffler's theory is only a prediction, although as the Third Wave approaches, we are witnessing two growing trends: the diversification of society and the acceleration of change. The future is approaching too fast for a person to prepare for it. That is why the researcher calls his other book: "Futuroshock", the shock of a collision with the future, published in 1970.

O. Toffler identifies three fundamental "features of tomorrow": transience, novelty and diversity. He notes that "temporality is a hallmark of human relations on the way to a post-industrial society." In a new, post-industrial society, many of its members will never feel “at home” in it, they will forever remain travelers who have only a temporary home.

What does it mean when a person becomes "modular"? When we buy shoes from a seller, writes Alvin Toffler, we are not interested in the identity of the seller. Only one "module" is significant - that he sells shoes to us. Nowadays, a person has to meet with more and more other people. Of course, the individual is simply not able to establish a more or less close relationship with each of them. And the less deep our connections with the people around us become, the more we need “substitutes for communication”. This role may well be played by the characters of books, films, television series. He calls them "substitute people". Celebrities can also perform a similar function - people seem to be alive and real. But if you think about it, for an ordinary person who does not know famous people personally, then these idols are not much different from fictional characters. Whatever it was, and "substitute people" can not change the situation, because people quickly forget former celebrities.

The very nature of the information that a person has to process is also changing. Alvin Toffler identifies two types of signals and messages that we receive. The first type is uncoded. These are the kind of signals that can be called "messages". Yet, in reality, such named "messages" are not meant to convey anything at all. You can get ideas from them, construct images, but you can not do this. In other words, it is "raw material".

Another kind of signals - encoded. “Code messages are those that depend on social agreement about their meaning.” In other words, we are talking about languages. It doesn't have to be a language that is made up of words. Their role can be performed by gestures or any instructions. It is obvious that encoded messages are more saturated than unencoded ones. Alvin Toffler identifies two types of coded messages: random and pre-composed. An example of a pre-written message is a book or newspaper, or television news. A person is not just bombarded with information. This information is compressed to the limit, and at the same time, they strive to submit it at an ever-increasing speed.

The meaning of the new culture grows out of the destruction of the systems characteristic of the classical industrial society, which outwardly determine the life of the individual. A person ceases to be an element of economic, technological or political systems, where his activity is firmly determined by qualities external to his personal culture. Such a deterministic scheme is not only weakening, but a new situation is being born, which means that socio-economic development already depends on the state of the spiritual world of the individual and on its development.

It is believed that the possibility of choice is a positive factor. E. Toffler warns us that this rule is true only up to certain limits. If a person is faced with an over-choice, then the individual may simply be paralyzed, not knowing what to choose. Diversity is already on the rise. Before television appeared in the West, there were mass magazines that professed the same worldview, the same ideas and carried them to millions of readers. It is not surprising that after such a “processing”, readers of mass magazines also began to think in the same way. The advent of television completely destroys them as a class. They are being replaced by other magazines. This process is closely related to the formation of a number of different subcultures. Alvin Toffler even speaks of their abundance.

In the beginning, man highly valued stability. On the one hand, it is economically beneficial, but on the other hand, a person developed an appropriate attitude. Man saw that everything in the world around him was steadily unchanged. In modern society, there is every reason to talk about the "economy of instability."

At the moment, items that could serve from generation to generation, passing from older to younger, have not been made for a long time. Why is this happening? Today technology is developing very quickly. The cost of producing goods decreases much faster than the cost of repairing them, because repairs most often involve manual work. Thus, it becomes much more profitable to make and purchase disposable items than those designed for many years of use.

Firstly, objects can become obsolete and obsolete morally: if a person has the opportunity to purchase something much better, then he will do it. But we should also not forget that the moral obsolescence of one item often forces us to change not only it, but the entire system in which it is included.

Secondly, the item gets old due to the fact that it has gone out of fashion or because another one appears on the market, which is many times better than the existing one. Alvin Toffler cites ordinary erasers as an example. Children prefer to buy those that are flavored. It would seem that we are talking about simple things, but they can affect a person's life. But do not forget that things are what forms the world in which we live and which surrounds us. And if this world is constantly changing, a person feels instability, i.e. he feels insecure about the future.

A similar situation is associated not only with global threats to the existence of mankind, but also with the main turn in the system of relations "man - production". The modern economy is innovative in nature, which means that the material and material factors of production cease to be the main carrier of values. Techniques, machines, machine tools are changing before our eyes. The main factor in the renewal of production and profit is a person, his intellectual and creative capabilities. The development of personal qualities, creativity and capabilities, a highly skilled workforce becomes the most profitable investment.

Previously, human life was monotonous. Once and for all established habits dominated it, but if life is constantly changing, there is no room for habits. If earlier a worker every day, going to the office, could once and for all choose a route, a mode of transport, and having made a choice once, follow it automatically. Now this same employee has to fly all over the world, change from plane to plane, and every week he has a new route and a new task. Alvin Toffler points out that every decision has its own value. The more and the more often a person has to make decisions, the more he has to pay for it.

According to Alvin Toffler, the society that is emerging before our very eyes marks a significant and important turning point in history, comparable in scale only to the transition from ignorance to civilization. In such a society, there is not only a reassessment of all already existing values, but also a revision of the very code of civilization, when all the parameters that establish the organization of the life of the former society must change.

From the foregoing, it can be noted that one of the founders of the concept of post-industrial society is also Alvin Toffler. In his work “The Third Wave”, he singled out three main waves of human development through which he passes: agrarian (pre-industrial), industrial and post-industrial (information), associated, according to Toffler, respectively with matter, energy and information as the main resources and products of production.