Wersig grouped possible definitions of the term and rejected a lot of them:

He rejected definitions that say that information is a quality to all things, or that information is elements of human knowledge. These understandings of the term are far away from common use of the word, because it did not assume transmission. He also rejected other meaning because we have other terms which are more precise, like news, meaning, thinking or data processing.  He ended up with what he called wirkung-definition that will say that information is the result of what is happening with the receiver after a transmission, the increase of knowledge the receiver gets - or the reduction he gets of possible answers which is left after the communication. After a long discussion and examination he forms the definition: Information is what reduces the receivers doubt.

In an article from 2002 (Wersig, 2000) Wersig criticizes the term information society. The term refers to information technology, says Wersig.  This can be regarded as the last highlight of the industrial society, which sees a possibility in information technology to make a growth in industrial consumer production. The history of the information society started much earlier than the history of information technology, Wersig claims. It started with the fight for democracy in the beginning of the 19th Century. It was a fight which was concentrated on the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press, about information as a necessity for civil liberties. This meaning of the information society reached its peak in Germany in 1961 when the German Constitutional Court made a verdict that guaranteed free press and broadcasting without any intervention from the government. Later the rights of the individual has been enlarged to the right - and partly exclusive right - to personal information like letters, telephone speeches and other personal data.  Up to the end of the 1970 the arenas of information society was power and politics. Later the other side - economy - has taken over as the dominating force.  

While arguing for the importance of diversity, the number of radio- and TV-stations that just broadcasts soap-operas has increased. The internet has expanded together with the building of information highways - broadband. This increased access to information centre around already known information, partly incorrect or not relevant information, or advertising and entertaining information.

Wersigs critic of the information term cooperates with the critic against the traditional behaviorist oriented information paradigm, where information is something objective that can be measured and transferred, where the meaning of the content for the receiver, has no importance.

The dominating characteristic of today’s information in the sense of soap-operas, is that the content could be called”not-information”. When it is called information it is because of the reduction of the meaning of the term referring to information technology.  Claude E. Shannon - the father of information theory - (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon) reduced information to something that technically can be transferred as bits and bytes. This means that the demand for information freedom has been reduced to the demand for the right to build transferring capacity and technological solution.

Wersig points to the two German sociologists Max Weber and Georg Simmel. He means that they agreed upon that what created society in the time of industrial society, was the vocation or the craft. Vocational education for all, vocational status hierarchies - was important instruments for the industrial society. This conception has been weakened. Instead come conceptions like lifelong learning, what Wersig calls Patchwork-existence, status insecurity. Wersig points at Anthony Giddens and says that this shows that we are on our way to a new society with a more complex structure and with new forms for understanding.

When information as a term or conception, has lost its visionary power and its utopian potential on reducing uncertainty, Wersig proposes that we shall use the term knowledge instead. Everybody have a close, natural and intimate relation that that term. Knowledge is a term that is more difficult to technify or commercialize.

Wersig points out that what he calls culture technique is important to stress the difference between the ability to use the technique and a more technological or commercial anticipation of the term. It does not help to give people books if they can’t read.  Although one could claim that they have got information, they cannot make use of it. Correspondent does it not help to deliver information technology either it is hardware, software or texts or databases, if people cannot make use of it. This culture technique will develop: Slowly or fast - democratic for all - or just for the elite. The point is to stress that this skill is an intellectual skill, not only a technological one.

To launch the term knowledge instead of information does not solve problem with the abundance of information. How can we distinguish between knowledge that has a value, and the knowledge with no other objective than to entertain or influence for a commercial product?  Or the storing-problem.  How do we retriever the knowledge in the great amount of information? This - according to Wersig - is another problem than what have dominated the science of information-retrieval the last 30 years.  Instead of concentrating on the retrieval of isolated objects, knowledge will depend on navigating in coherence, which is much more difficult.

Wersig claims that the solution lays in a convergence of the mla-institutions (museums, libraries and archives). That is an organization on the users terms - they do not ask what institution supplies me with the knowledge, they ask for the knowledge.  To store knowledge has been organized after knowledge source, so that the museums have been responsible for the objects, archives for the uniqates, and libraries for the publications.  The postindustrial society will define these institutions in new ways and create new combinations. There will still be publications, objects and uniqates - but Wersig asks whether those differences demand a division between the mla-institutions.

The division of these institutions into different types can only be justified if we also can make in division between information society object forms, Wersig claims. One could image that the libraries took hand of the cd-records, the archives took hand of the e-mails, while the museums took hand of the cellular phones. But the web - the internet - makes this division difficult.  The MLA-institutions have stick to the early modernistic phase that is the 19-century, when it comes to documenting the stages of development in society.  Documenting the changes that takes place today, have then been left for the online-enthusiasts. Wersig says: Librarians, archivists, documentalists will disappear, but knowledge will remain in what form it might be condensed.

 (Wersig 2000, p. 465[1])

Wersigs main point is to launch the term knowledge as an alternative to information and information society. The purpose is to focus on the content as an alternative to the technological understanding of information, an understanding which he means belongs to the vanishing industry-society.

Why is this relevant to the term learning? Because Wersigs basic critic of the information society is that it no longer focuses on the changes that takes place in the receiver, - what one could also call learning.  Wersig draws up new objects for the mla-institutions which centers on to converge storing of knowledge, knowledge production and knowledge impart in a way which will lead to extended knowledge with the receiver - that is learning.

References:

Wersig, Gernot (2002)  “Skizze zur Theorie der individualisierten Gesellschaft”. Gernot Wersigs Fazit zum Hauptseminar “Individualisierung und Gesellschaftstheorie” WS 2001/02. Nettutgave: http://www.kommwiss.fu-berlin.de/%7Egwersig/publi-pro/www/01hs-individualisiert.htm  [3.11.03]

Wersig, Gernot (2001). Medien- und Wertewandel, Vortrag 8.9.2001, 10 Uhr, Berliner Sommer-Uni, Humboldt-Universität. Nettutgave: http://www.kommwiss.fu-berlin.de/~gwersig/publi-pro/www/Werte.htm  [3.11.03]

Wersig, Gernot (2000). Perspektiven der Informationsgesellschaft : Die Zeit des Wandels I: NfD Information, Heidelberg, vol. 51,  s. 461-465.

Wersig, Gernot (2000). Wege aus der Informationsgesellschaft”, 4.12.00. Vortrag. Version 11.11.00. Nettutgave:  http://www.kommwiss.fu-berlin.de/~gwersig/publi-pro/www/WersigWege.html [3.11.03]

Wersig, Gernot. Information-Kommunikation-Dokumentation. - München -   Pullack : Verlag Dokumentation, 1971. 350 s.

Globalization is real and important. It’s just not the central force driving economic change…Capital does indeed flow around the world. But .. 90 percent of fixed investment around the world is domestic. Companies open plants overseas, but that’s mainly so their production facilities can be close to local markets.. the U.S. share of global manufacturing output has actually increased slightly since 1980. The chief force reshaping manufacturing is technological change .. Thanks to innovation, manufacturing productivity has doubled over two decades. Employers now require fewer but more highly skilled workers. Technological change affects China just as it does America. .. between 1994 and 2004 the Chinese shed 25 million manufacturing jobs, 10 times more than the United States.The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age.

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