[Impressive Dutch site and think tank on ICTs -- English pages etc. Asnippet of the mission statement and so on below. John.]
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http://www.infodrome.nl/english/
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Part I: Infodrome's Mission

1. Introduction
Infodrome is a think tank. The rapid increase of the use of information and
communication technology (ICT) is causing dramatic changes in society,
creating the need for government policy that reflects current social and
industrial developments. Infodrome wishes to stimulate the debate on the
strategic choices the government must make in order to meet those changes.
In order to do so, it is necessary to have an understanding of what the
transition society is going through. Infodrome, a project sponsored by the
Dutch government, was started in 1999 and will run for two years. Its
objectives and philosophy are explained in the following pages.

2. The Information Age
Information and communication technology - ICT - is sometimes thought of as
the steam engine of the 21st century. To many, current developments in
technology and the use of ICT evoke associations of the industrial
revolution. Back then, the objective - simply put - was to make energy and
energy carriers cheaper and more broadly usable. Today, the revolution is
about making knowledge and information cheaper and more broadly usable. How
this will affect society as a whole remains an open question.

A host of statistic information is available to illustrate the spectacular
development in products and prices witnessed in recent years. The figures
demonstrate, for instance, the dramatic fall in (intercontinental) telephone
rates, while capacity has increased as spectacularly. They also show that
the processing capacity of computer chips has doubled about every 18 months,
for the past 30 years, at an ever lower cost. Other statistics reveal the
vast expansion of the number of television channels, computer ownership, and
- icon of our age - the exponential growth of the Internet, not only in
terms of number of users and Web sites, but also in its economic
significance (Cairncross, 1997). The above factors - i.e. reduced costs,
increased economic importance, and the growth of electronically transmitted
information - have given rise to terms like 'information society' and
'information age'.

This does not mean that information transfer was an unknown concept in
previous technological developments. The advent of agriculture would have
been impossible without some form of information exchange. The invention of
the wheel, and its subsequent use in numerous places, attests to an early
form of knowledge development and dissemination. However, when we speak of
an information revolution, or the emergence of an information society, the
distinction lies in the fact that technological progress in the past, and
especially in the industrial revolution, was primarily associated with
technologies that were kept outside the process of knowledge development and
information dissemination; the price of information therefore always
remained relatively constant. Today, technological development and its
associated innovative activities relate directly to the process of knowledge
development and information transfer itself (Castells, 1997). Likewise,
information contributing to the advance of the information exchange
processes is disseminated ever faster and more efficiently, spurring further
innovation in the process. The result has been a self-powering, invertible
process; in other words, the information revolution is self-driven, and this
process by no means appears to be exhausted.

The industrial revolution caused a social landslide. Everything changed:
property and ancestry no longer determined the material wealth and social
status of individuals; there was an exodus from rural areas, and, while
large groups prospered, social abuse was widespread. Government intervention
- viewed with the benefit of hindsight - fulfilled an important role in
dealing with the social complexities of industrialisation. Protective
measures, imposed by government, proved effective in controlling to a large
extent the exploitation of large groups in the community. Social security
provisions were instituted to provide a shield against the most serious
forms of poverty and to keep economic fluctuations in check. Through
systematic government regulation, economies were able to function better. In
addition, the government appeared to be the most qualified party for the
provision of certain products and services.

In the course of the 20th century, government regulation saw many shapes and
forms, including the collective system, with the state as sole producer of
goods and commodities. For all its apparent faults, the system survived for
decades, eventually to disintegrate as the information revolution began its
global conquest.

At this point, technology may appear to have powered all our social
developments, but the reality is more subtle. Technology is the work of
people, pursuing answers to technological challenges. This has been the case
in particular with the technological changes in the area of information
technology. Castells, in this context, describes in great detail the culture
and ideological concept underlying the creation of the first real Personal
Computer (Apple II). The possibilities, already present in the technologies
of the day, were fused in a very deliberate attempt to develop an appliance
that would be typically anti-hierarchical, especially vis-`-vis the
hierarchy called Big Blue (IBM). But, we are not all of us a Steven Jobs,
that is, we are not all capable of creating our own technological miracle,
therefore, the technological wizardry that surrounds us seems to be reaching
us from outside. To some extent, this is true. But it is also a fact that,
of all technological novelties conceived, only those applications which, for
some reason or other, we wish to use in our daily environment eventually
make the grade. Therefore, the choices we make as consumers will affect the
development and social impact of the technologies our society embraces.
Such, and like-minded observations concerning the relationship between
technological and social development, have produced a more or less general
consensus over the years. Social development, it is held, is not purely
technology-driven, and technology is not solely a result of social needs.
Technological development is thus viewed as an interactive process of mutual
shaping. Nevertheless, the sum total of the choices we make as individuals,
and the technical applications we accept, can generate a social dynamism,
the implications of which may supersede the intentions of society, as a
collective of individuals.

What, then, is the precise nature of the technological development and
respective social changes that have incited the formation of Infodrome?
There are those of us who take the information revolution to apply
exclusively to certain aspects of technology, for instance the digitisation
of telephony, television and computer technology. Others take a broader
view, including such developments as genetic engineering; genetic
information, after all, is essentially a form of (digital) information. An
even broader definition is that which, within the wider concept of
technological development, distinguishes the development of the so-called
knowledge society or knowledge economy. The difference between knowledge and
information is not always clearly demarcated, but when people talk about the
knowledge economy, it is clear that they refer to human resources or human
capital, and that the definition includes all possible forms of tacit
knowledge, i.e. social standards, cultural values, etc.

Irrespective of what words are used to define the information society, most
of those whom we have endowed with a certain authority on the subject seem
to agree that the use of ICT, in all aspects of society, is set to expand
dramatically in the coming decades. The impact of this is perhaps best
illustrated in the transaction cost concept, formulated by Coase (1937). If
all our social structures and institutions are seen as the result of an
on-going effort designed to minimise transaction costs, and if subsequent
measures are then imposed to control the price and availability of the
information (or, possibly, to regulate certain information, or certain forms
of availability), then it follows that, in pursuing lower transaction costs,
society's established structures will be tested to the core, fuelling other,
perhaps entirely new social relationships.

If the analogy between the industrial revolution and the digital revolution
stands, we are finding ourselves on the brink of a turbulent era, in which
old social structures will be ripped apart, creating problems nobody can
anticipate. Optimistic as our expectations of the information revolution as
a source of further prosperity may be, history teaches that it is the very
process of change and adaptation that holds the greatest risk of negative
side-effects. The challenge for society is to timely identify such
side-effects, and, where necessary, to intervene at government level in
order to neutralise the situation. By the same token, it is conceivable that
the information revolution might itself make certain forms of government
intervention, designed to control possible negative consequences of the
industrial society, redundant.
Traditional forms of government intervention might become counter-productive
in the new context. However, it is of essential importance to establish what
function the national government can play, particularly in light of the fact
that the information society has a typical disregard for boundaries,
national or other. Governments therefore must brace themselves for what the
WRR calls the 'government losing ground'.

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Distributed through Cyber-Society-Live [CSL]: CSL is a moderated discussion
list made up of people who are interested in the interdisciplinary academic
study of Cyber Society in all its manifestations.To join the list please visit:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/cyber-society-live.html
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