The article begins with a discussion of the concept of "information society" that stresses the characteristics of the new techno-economic paradigm and criticises determinism and the evolucionist approach to social change. Discussing the great expectations from the information society, the author explores the reasons for a global effort to be put into its development. Utopian excesses of a "computopia" apart, reasons for building an information society stem from the possibilities it allows for significant advances in individual and social life, raising the level of knowledge produced and put into use in society, stimulating continuous change and learning, helping the recovery and maintenance of diversity and providing a kind of economic dynamism that is more in tune with sound environmental policies. Good promises, satisfactory as they might be, cannot, however, cover up the existence of various problems and challenges. Some of them are technical, while others are of a social nature. Economic challenges will require deep political commitment to guarantee access to the less privileged. Finally, it is a great challenge to build an international framework to minimise global inequalities in information access.
Information Society; Access to informação; Democratization of informação; Information technology; Social change; Information dissemination; Information search
