Increased reliance on activities directly associated with the production, distribution, and utilization of information has led to characterizing many advanced countries of the world as information societies. The term information society and related concepts, such as information age and knowledge economy, describe a social system greatly dependent on information technologies to produce and distribute all manner of goods and services. In contrast to the industrial society, which relied on internal combustion engines to augment the physical labor of humans, the information society relies on computer technologies to augment mental labor.

Trends in labor-force composition both define and measure the extent to which a nation can be described as an information society. Machlup (1962) was perhaps the first to describe U.S. society in these terms. He estimated that nearly one-third of the labor force in1958 worked in information industries such as communications, computers, education, and information services...