From the “information society” to the “society 2.0”: the permanent return of the “mythical” discourses about the role of ICTs in societies

Abstract

In this paper, I will show, at first that the expression “information society” integrates well within a wider set of discourses that relate to the “networked society”, the “information age”, the “information highway” and the “knowledge society”, and discuss the reasons for the use of these terms over the past forty years. In a second moment, we see that if the term “information society” now seems less widespread, it is because now it is losing ground to the notions of “web 2.0” and even “society 2.0” in a closer discursive register.