Week 4 - Information Society: What's the Difference?
I have always been interested in the idea and prediction of future technological trends. In this article, I will introduce the main ideas of the report "Challenges Of The Global Information Society" by Pekka Himanen.
Pekka Himanen is one of the cited researchers in the world in the field of philosophy. He was the youngest PhD-holder in Finland when he graduated. He is currently pursuing his research and work at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology.
In the first paragraphs, the writer illustrates 10 global trends of the world in bullet points. Currently, there are only 3 technological and economic dynamic models - “Silicon Valley model”, “Singapore model”, “Finnish model”. "Silicon Valley model" is also referred to as the neo-liberalist model of the United States. It is mainly practiced in the western world. An interesting fact is that in the year 1990, 60 millionaires were produced from the Silicon Valley area. The second model, the "Singapore model" is developed for Asian countries such as China, India. It has the purpose of attracting multinational companies to the eastern region. The third model, the "Finnish model" is based in Finland as it is more developed in terms of information society but applied in other European nations as well.
Moreover, the writer mentions the drawbacks of not living a healthy lifestyle in the information society. Many physical activities are being replaced with virtual ones. The screen time of people has increased, making the obesity rate drastically increase as well. In fact, 20% of people in this field are overweight and suffering from cardiovascular diseases.
To conclude, some of the key points are valid in today's world, however, part of them have a slight potential to exist. Overall, for an article from 2004, it has a great prediction of the future.
Resources:
http://pekkahimanen.net/bio
Himanen, P., “The Challenges of the Global Information Society”, 2004
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