Well-being in the Information Society: Are We Creating a Gilded Cage?

Information technology is continuously making astounding progress in technical efficiency. The time, space, material and energy needed to provide a unit of ICT service have decreased roughly by a factor of 1000 within the last 20 years. However, experience shows that it is difficult to translate ICT’s efficiency progress into progress for individuals, organizations and societies due to various rebound effects (Hilty et al. 2006). The impact of ICT efficiency progress on quality of life is a complex issue. There is no clearly defined concept of an “information society” that would be linked in an obvious and indisputable way to the ICT development and diffusion trends. All we know is that our way of production and consumption is undergoing a deep transformation that is somehow interlinked with ICT. Where this transformation will lead us, and where we want it to lead us, is an open question. It is open not only due to the complexity of the underlying socio-economic mechanisms, but also because society can and should govern this development ‐ instead of just relapsing to technological determinism. I therefore define “information society” simply as the future (and still unknown) result of the ongoing transformation of production and consumption enabled by ICT. However, some properties of the information society can be assumed with some plausibility (although they are still depending on how we will use in ICT in the future):