A person's need for information at different stages of the development of society had different specifics. If in an agrarian and industrial society, awareness meant only awareness, then in modern society information becomes a product that can bring material income.
The society has gone through several stages of development. The modern information society was preceded by an agrarian and industrial society. A person has always had a need for information, but the category of necessary information and the sources of its formation were different.
Sources of information of the agrarian and information society
Information need means the need for knowledge about a specific phenomenon or subject - this definition is true for the characteristics of an agrarian society. In this case, it was enough to use printed products of a cognitive and informational nature as sources of information.
Even earlier, before the invention of the press, the main informants were heralds, who conveyed to the main masses the decrees of royal persons. This kind of information did not play a fundamental role in the way of life of the people.
With the transition of society to the industrial stage, the structure of information needs began to change. It became necessary to obtain generalized knowledge accumulated by society.
At this stage, radio, television, books and other printed materials began to perform the functions of distributing information.
The specificity of information sources of this period is the author's processing of information. The user receives a certain amount of information that he can use at his own discretion.
However, the amount of knowledge accumulated by the society began to exceed the capabilities of their author's analytical and synthetic information processing.
Information as the basis for the existence of the information society
In connection with the development of communication technologies, any subject with access to the network can become a source of information. Naturally, the reliability of such information must be closely checked. The consumer has two options - to use the available data or to process the information on his own.
The representative of the information society forms the information product himself. If you try to explain this "on the fingers", then in order to obtain reliable information, the user must collect, if possible, all information about the subject of interest and analyze the information, guided by his own instinct and previously accumulated knowledge.
After analytical processing, the formation of its own information product takes place, the appropriation of knowledge and, the delivery of information to the community through technology.
