Peripheral View: Conceptualizing the Information Society as a Postcolonial Subject

Abstract

This article looks into the information society from a postcolonial subject position. It uses concepts from a postcolonial perspective and critical political economy of communication to investigate the information society. It perceives the information society as a discourse of social progress, and places it in historical context to show how imperial powers use discourses of progress to establish their control. It argues that when the information society is perceived from the South, it turns out to be a new imperial project designed to create markets for multinational corporations that own and operate information technologies, the engine of the information society. It also proposes an amendment — an anti-market utopia — to the information society to make it meaningful for the people of the South.