1995年 9月14 日
Shumpei Kumon
INTRODUCTION
Since 1970s a series of major social changes that can be generically called "information revolution" have been taking place in industrialized societies. This information revolution seems to have a number of different aspects. Here I will particularly pay attention to the following two aspects, that is,
In the following sections I will briefly explain each of them and consider the impacts these two revolutions have on broadcasting.
1. THE THIRD INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN THE INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
The first aspect of information revolution is that of the third industrial revolution, an information-oriented industrial revolution, in the modern society. Today, the wave of a digital revolution in information processing--integration and networking--that first was given rise to in computer industries are reaching the fields of communications and broadcasting. Within a few decades to come a global network of computers (ODN = Open Data Network, or Open Digital Network) connected by way of fiber-optics and wireless electric waves will cover the world over and most part of functions such as communications, broadcasting, or publishing, will be integratively realized on this network of networks. During this process analog broadcasting of today will be digitized and broadcasting as media will be deprived of its independence as a network, being absorbed into various broadcasting activities on the ODN.
Looking back the history of past industrialization we find that waves of major industrial revolution have emerged roughly every one hundred years, of which the first 50 years represented a breakthrough stage causing paradigm-changes in technology and industry. It was also the era in which new technologies gave rise to new social infrastructure, industries, and business organizations. Its outcomes were mainly utilized as inputs to industries, contributing drastic increases in industrial productivity and bringing down of costs outputs. The second 50 years represented a maturing stage in which the fruit of an industrial revolution was embodied in goods and services filled the market, meeting popular demands. The second industrial revolution (or the 20th century system of industrialization) that began in the late 19th century produced in its breakthrough stage networks of electricity and roads, heavy-chemical industries, and oligopolistic big business organizations. During its maturing stage, consumers durables, namely, machines for consumers, represented by passenger cars and household electric appliance, diffused, fundamentally changing people's lifestyles. The mass-media represented by today's TV broadcasting is one of the industries typical to the maturing stage of the second industrial revolution.
Today, we have just entered the breakthrough stage of the third industrial revolution leading to the 21st century system of industrialization. Namely, since 1970s new social infrastructure with information infrastructure at its core has been constructed, a new industry called multimedia has been given rise to, and new forms of business organizations such as network-type industrial organization or virtual corporations.
Its outcomes have mainly been utilized for everyday's businesses of industrial enterprises and governments, thus rapidly increasing productivity of white collars in office as well as blue collars in factory. A substantive amount of time will still be needed, however, before the outcomes of the third industrial revolution widely spreads in the social life of people, fixing new lifestyles. So-called video-on-demand (VOD) and full-service networks (FSN) will, both from technological and demand-oriented points of view, will bloom in earnest only in the maturing stage of the third industrial revolution. The same can be said also with respect to technologies such as virtual reality (VR) or artificial life (AL) that have been attracting people's attention in recent years.
2. THE THIRD SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN THE MODERN SOCIETY
The second aspect of the information revolution is that of the third social revolution, an information-oriented social revolution, in the modern society that contains industrialization as one of its evolutionary phases (the second phase). Namely, the modern society is about to meet with a period of the third broad social revolution following the military revolution that brought about establishment of modern sovereign states and the industrial revolution that brought about establishment of modern industrial enterprises. In this third phase of evolution of the modern society, in addition to enterprises seeking profits, social actors of intelprise-type (modern information intelprises) that seek intellectual influence will began its rise in earnest, supported by new information technology and new information infrastructure. The recent phenomenon called a rise of NGOs (Non- Governmental Organizations) and NPOs (Non-Profit Organizations) can be construed, according to the present context, as a large-scale occurrence of modern information intelprises.
Information revolution in this sense is closely related to the new forms of behavior developed by a new class of netizens (net-citizens) who have emerged among citizens. These netizens are not as passive as masses in the 20th century but intend to live a more active life. As buyers and consumers of commodities they do not passively wait for information provided by their producers and sellers but actively look for and collect information on commodities they take interest and make decisions to purchase based on their own judgment. Rather than satisfied as a couch-potato type consumers of information they want to behave as active creators/senders of information.
The ODN of the future that has today's Internet as its prototype is the information infrastructure that exactly meets information-communication demand of these netizens. To some extent, today's digital revolution has already been making it possible for individuals and small groups to do programming and broadcasting at a small cost. But once ODN is built in full-scale, it will be made even easier.
Needless to say, information revolution as a social revolution has just begun as information revolution as an industrial revolution. In that sense it is not very likely that a large number of netizens suddenly rise everywhere and change all at once people's way of communication and collaboration. This implies that the forms of mass communication and personal communication represented by existing broadcasting and telephone industries will still continue, at least for some time to come, to prevail. However, a process of paradigm change, so to speak, in the field of social communications is clearly occurring right before us.
3. A PARADIGM CHANGE IN COMMUNICATION
The communication paradigm in the industrial society so far can be summarized by the concept of individual communication in the sense that one can further classify this individual communication into the well-known dichotomy of personal and mass communications. In the industrial society there was a tendency for communication media corresponding to these two sub-functions of individual communication to differentiate into specialized media, that is, mass media and personal media. Differentiation between broadcasting and telephony are most typical examples. (When it comes to other kinds of communication functions, particularly those related to community communications to be referred to later, media for individual communications, particularly mass media, undertook most of those functions, simply because specialized media were lacking.)
With the advent of information society, however, people's attention will be attracted to those communication functions that may be called community communications, in addition to those related to individual communications. Community communication functions themselves can be further subdivided to public communications and group communications.
The former form of communication, as will be typically observed in the provision of information utilizing today's WWW servers, can be characterized as the kind of communication in which providers of information openly store only the information that they are ready to share with others and the acquirers of information by themselves actively look for the kind of information they want to obtain and actually fetch it. In comparison with today's mass communication one may say that the behavioral patterns of information providers are more reserved while those of information acquirers are much more active. The latter, on the other hand, is communication aiming at support of people's collaboration as a group, of which typical examples are electronic mail and electronic conference, or groupware such as Lotus Notes.
In the coming information society it seems that the communication media corresponding to the two additional functions of communication will be developed over the ODN in a more or less integrative way. We may safely conclude so judging from today's tendency that electronic mail and conference functions are going to be added to the WWW server. Moreover, as was already mentioned, not only community communications functions but also functions concerning existing individual communications will eventually be integrated into there. In my view, netizens of information society, when compared with citizens of industrial society, will have characteristics as a whole person more clearly. The "prosumers" in Toffler's sense is a result of paying attention to the tendency for people to be more whole-person like. But I want to argue that people in the information society will moreover begin to act seeking for achievement of whole person's way of existence, or seeking for self actualization. In that sense, construction of the ODN as an integrative information infrastructure has been made possible not only technologically but also in order to respond to social needs for self-actualization.
4. CONCLUSION
Having developed during the maturing stage of the 20th century system of industrialization, today's broadcasting industry must cope with the social changes briefly described above.
On the one hand it has to adopt achievements the third industrial revolution as soon as possible. Namely, it is indispensable for this industry to make best efforts to actively incorporate new information technology so that quality of broadcasting may be improved further while its costs are reduced.
On the other hand, the broadcasting industry must change itself to come to grips with advent of the third social revolution. Granted that, no matter how thoroughly this social revolution proceeds, there will continue to remain demands for mass communication in its original sense, that is, the needs for simultaneously provided programs to satisfy common emotional desires of people such as real time reporting of various events in the form of newscasts or standard programs provided on the Christmas or New Year's eve. Also, if the speed of qualitative development of the ODN is not so fast, the demand for such mass communication will still be met by existing mass media, at least for the time being, albeit their relative weight in the overall social communications will decrease, gradually but inevitably. Moreover, even if the demand for mass communication itself will never disappear, the media to satisfy it will eventually integrated into the ODN. On the other hand, at least some of the functions of community communication (particularly, individuals fulfilling those functions) that have so far been handled by the mass media will quickly separate themselves from the mass media, looking for their new and independent sphere of activity in the ODN.
If the analyses given above are correct, then the broadcasting industry, that is now facing a rise of new communication functions as well as new integrative media to realize them, must have the resolution and a strategy to peacefully coexist with these newly arising forces in the short run while being absorbed in new media in the long run.