The making of the information society: driving forces, 'Leitbilder' and the imperative for survival

In the field of science-technology-society, there are three one-sided approaches to analyzing the spread of the Internet: technology-push, economy-pull, and community-pull. Information science, when dealing with the transformation of our societies, will have to cover all of them and even try to find out missing links. We propose adding the analysis of metaphors accompanying the introduction and diffusion of new technologies, and evaluating metaphors and technologies using the criterion of how well they are shaped to meet global challenges. We conclude that contrary to ideological promises the capability of society to generate survival-relevant information will not be improved by establishing the so-called data highway per se, unless additional requirements are met which refer to higher information levels of knowledge and wisdom.