political identity separate from that of the middle classes as a whole.
Information in the broad sense may well be a crucial source of power
in the twenty-first century, but its control is as yet predominantly
vested in the executives of corporate bodies like business cor-
porations, government departments and universities. A ‘new’ source
of power, surely, only creates opportunities for power brokers to
bargain and negotiate over; it does not determine who rules.
The concept of information polity has interesting consequences for
our understanding of power. One school of thought, the normal-
isation hypothesis, associated with Margolis and Resnick (see for
example Margolis et al., 2003), suggests that the existence of the
Internet has maintained the power of existing elites. Whereas the
‘level playing field’ hypothesis (Rheingold, 1993) suggests that new
technologies such as the Internet provide opportunities for previ-
ously less powerful groups and organisations to build up a power base
online. The reality is that in different countries with different
political systems, cultures and use of technology either the normal-
isation or level playing field viewpoint may be more accurate.
In a different sense, however, the ‘information polity’ may be said
to have arrived. Taylor and Williams (1990) define it as ‘a system of
governance within which the development of innovative information
systems is producing, and will continue to produce, new rationales for
the restructuring and changing focus of government’. They add that
governments have always been ‘data heavy’; now they are becom-
ing ‘information rich’ – able to effectively convert their data into
information for decision making.
Governments are increasingly using the new information and
communication technologies to deliver 24-hour, 365-days-a-year
online services to citizens. It has also been argued that these new
technologies are increasingly fundamentally modifying old styles of
public administration based on bureaucracy (see Chapter 8: Box 8.2)
to a new customer-focused networking one (Table 5.4).
Similar considerations to those just applied to information tech-
nology may be applied to the likely future influence of technological
developments more generally. Too great an air of inevitability may
easily be invested in predictions about both the likely development of
technology and its impact upon our environment. Research on the
development and use of energy resources, for instance, may focus
upon the employment of nuclear fission and existing fossil fuels to128 PROCESSES