The normative crisis of the information society.

The information society thesis, as a set of sociological propositions pertaining to a range of advanced nations, is now widely accepted. Attention, therefore, should increasingly be focused upon the normative dimensions of that thesis. The article claims that the information society is subject to multiplied, acute modes of confusion amounting to nothing less than a normative crisis. Symptoms of the crisis can be observed in such areas as: copyright, whose foundations are breaking down; privacy, under unprecedented threat in cyberspace; and the woefully-misunderstood phenomenon of the digital divide. The article argues that what is required is a new normativity to orientate the social and political framework of the information society. What should be its content? A good answer would be an updated theory of distributive justice anchored in progressive thought. While difficult to prove philosophically, such a normative theory of the information society seems more attractive than its chief rivals, critical theory and neo-liberalism. Normative thinking at any rate provides an antidote to the pervasive influence of technological determinism