International Journal of Current Social Science

Abstract

Throughout history, societies around the world have experienced the stages of hunter-gatherer society, agrarian society, and industrial society in various forms. In particular, in parallel with the transformations brought about by the Industrial Revolution, societies have come to be classified as developed, developing, and underdeveloped. During this period, the nature of knowledge underwent significant transformation, and especially after the Industrial Revolution, knowledge—whose meaning and importance increasingly expanded—accelerated technological developments and contributed to the emergence of a new social structure. This cultural transformation—referred to as information culture and emerging as a product of the extraordinary advances in information and communication technologies (ICT)—has introduced into the literature a new form of social organization known as the Information Society. Our world is undergoing profound transformation, and the institutions and norms of the Information Society are being shaped upon those of the Industrial Society. Advancements in the field of information and communication technologies profoundly influence the perspectives put forward by social scientists regarding the pace of social change. Whereas processes of social change were once described in terms of decades, today they can be explained within a span of only a few years; differences that were previously interpreted as generational conflicts have now become observable even among siblings only a few years apart in age. Technology is the driving force of social change, and knowledge is the determinant of technology. Building on this theoretical framework, the study will attempt to explain the direction of transformation by drawing on the relevant literature and Wallerstein’s ‘Modern World-System’ theory.