Nowadays, it seems obvious that theories of social change, at least those most recognised and abundantly discussed – especially in unprofessional public discourses – dwell on the presupposition of the information society as a real phenomenon and its unmatched importance. Here, consciously or not, two things of methodological importance are carried out. Firstly, an ontological assumption of some special social entity, i.e. of the existence of unprecedented information society, which exists at least in status nascendi. Following the famous herald of the present revolutionary changes Manuel Castells, one would insist even more resolutely that we have encountered not the reality of a loosely defined information society, but that of a highly idiosyncratic informational society (Castells 1996; 1997; 1998). Secondly, following the logic of a hundred-year-old social philosophy and eo ipso theoretical thematisation of social change, the understanding of "information society" as a fundamental social term is also volens nolens moulded by axiological (first of all ideological) assumptions. These are enacted in multifarious "information society" discourses, ranging from highly professionalized metaphysics and science to journalism and politics. Thereby this existential presumption is articulated also in terms of mainstream (modern) ideological discourse and thus turns into a fundamental existential-axiological attitude.

The "soft" and the "hard" forms of such existential-axiological presupposition should be distinguished (Saulauskas 2002). They correspond to the distinction between the de jure and de facto information society theses introduced by Alistair Duff (Duff 2000) from the point of view of modus of existence only. The former would claim "only" the hitherto unseen, but comparatively continuous processes of informatisation of the whole fabric of social habitat; the latter would proclaim a qualitatively novel social condition, a new era, historical period, particular social formation, etc. Both the soft and the hard version assume a process of radical and unique transformations and/or their prediction – only the intended range of changes and the level of the accomplished or possible progress are different.

However, not a single noteworthy theory, already articulated in academic discourse and based on this existential-axiological presumption, proves flawlessly either the reality of such progress or the good or evil of its results. Moreover, the most academically valuable sections of information society discourse consist mostly not only of attempts to prove the correctness of some version, but also the slashing criticism of such attempts. The polemic zest is only heightened by the fact that many concepts that are trying either to prove the hard presumption of the existence of the information society or just accept it uncritically do not succeed in escaping from sheer pomosophic (post+modern+philosophy=pomosophy) pessimism (e.g. Schiller 1973; Roszak 1986; Sardar 1996) and utopianism (e.g. Illich 1971; Masuda 1980; Toffler 1980; Naisbitt 1982). Thus the superstitious and dreamy spell of Homo informaticus has long since become the dominating force in both the academic discourse and mass culture (Saulauskas 1999 and 2000).

As to the ontological underpinnings of new, informationized social habitat, I do believe it could be satisfactorality defined in strictly counterfactual terms. In my opinion, the information society should be linked not with information (and even less with "knowledge", "news" or otherwise knowledgeable insights), but only with the digital-communicational implication of social interaction. Moreover, telematics inexorably penetrates the fabric of the social habitat becoming a constitutive component of social life. This means that a society, where four fifths of all the work force are involved in stamping chips or assembling personal computers, but which does not have a free circulation of information and where personal telematic equipment is not available for some reason (for instance, political or religious), should by no means be considered as an embodiment of the information society, although it satisfies the conditions of the employment structure characteristic of the information social habitat as indicated by Machlup-Porat. On the contrary, a society, where four out of five jobs produce butter and crisps, but heavily practice digital networking as their everyday mode of life, is an unquestionable example of the genuine information society. Or: a society, where all adults have PhDs, are employed in services and possess all human rights, including the right to a free exchange of information, but for some (let us say religious or cultural) reasons do not use telematic technologies, does not live yet in the epoch of informationized social habitat. Yet a society, where not a single member has secondary education, but almost everyone spends a large amount of their work and leisure time in the digital network, could, perhaps, be considered as a full fledged member of the information age.

It is clear from this, that a form of social habitat based on digital-communicational social interaction is a necessary constituent of the concept of an information society. This means that the information society should be considered as a configuration resulting from the fundamental transformation of social, and not technological structures of social habitat. If so, then it is impossible to define such a society only by quantitative sociometric methods: not only because the results obtained in this way do not themselves say what they really mean, but also because it is ex definitio impossible to quantitatively calculate the complicated hierarchical systems of values, i.e. to unveil basic axiological structures of any social habitat. A society becomes an information society if, and only if, telematic technologies become a decisive constituting component of daily interaction. An information society is that variety of social habitat, which – in genetic, morphological and functional terms – is determined by the social implementation and working of digital communicational technologies. That is, it is not just the existence of such telematic technologies and their development per se, but by their constitutive integration into the economical, cultural, political and stratificational fabric of the social habitat.

Consequently, in general, an adequate criterion for an information society cannot be only sociometric, based on quantitative criteria – it should be at least also or even only qualitative. Furthermore, it should take into account a counterfactual dimension as its last resort: we will live in an information society not when there will be fifteen personal computers in each house, connected into a perfectly functioning global network, but only when a significant decrease in telematic interactions or a massive disorder in their functioning would trigger the inevitable collapse of the actual order of the social habitat. Thus the necessary criterion for the existence of an information society can be only formulated in qualitative and/or counterfactual terms: by proving that telematic penetration already acquired the social status of conditio sine qua non such that if it suddenly stopped functioning properly it would necessarily and radically destroy the current configuration of the social habitat and/or cause its essential conversion.

Quantitative, and even more so normative arguments, to prove such an importance of telematic technologies are too weak. Due to the lack of empirical evidence, they cannot be satisfactory without (a) the ontological concept of informatization and by the same token of the information society, (b) a counterfactual grounding of the critical degree of informatization making such a society possible and, finally, (c) a precise theoretical and empirical specification of both the info-social habitat itself and its inevitable collapse.

Thus an adequate concept of an information society should be qualitative, that is ontological, based on counterfactual criterion. It cannot be only quantitative, based on sociometrics and/or just normative, most often ideological, as inter alia is clearly shown in the criteriological typology suggested by Duff (Saulauskas 2002). Only such a qualitative conception could serve as a foundation for the necessary, though perhaps not sufficient legitimation for information society studies molded along Aristotelian lines, studies based on the existing specific realm of being posited as a subject for an idiosyncratic scientific research.

Considering the fundamental nature of such theoretical derivatives as social habitat, information society, collapse, etc., these depend upon the most general methodological pre-suppositions which therefore necessarily are based more or less on ideological assumptions. Hence, it must be presumed that there is no, and cannot be any, general concept of an information society. By the same token there can be no "basic" theory of an information society grounded on such a concept unanimously accepted in the academic human and/or social science discourse – at least until it itself continues to enjoy a mature condition filled with sharp controversies. Thus, due to the ex definitio controversial nature of qualitative formulations, information society studies will also remain not only multi- and interdisciplinary, but also methodologically heterogeneous. At the very centre of this new field of study the question of the preconditions, possibilities and perspective of an information society’s existence will continue to hover. The old methodological wineskins, sewed in socio-theoretical discourse and already tested by time, perhaps, will not be essentially changed at all: the conceptual scaffolds, controversially articulating the nature of social structure and change will have only to continue patiently to bear the fermentation of new info-studies; the numbing inertia of the over-institutionalized academic discourse cannot yet overcome, thank God, the vivid plethora of the ever changing social habitat, its real as well as virtual challenges, daring essays and promises (Saulauskas 2000).

The beginnings of technological pessimism are altogether found in the famous manifesto by Rousseau, Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts, which in 1750 proclaimed the inevitably malign nature of science and technology. Contemporary argumentation for info-pessimism has not changed a great deal: it is still based on romantic idealisation of the past, conservative fear of any slightly more daring innovation, moral weakness of human nature branded so painfully by experience, and pessimistic evaluation of the hazardous potential of social engineering. Authors living in modern welfare states often ground info-pessimism by combining the analytical principles of the Marxist Frankfurt School targeting the exposure of prevailing interests with the assumptions of leftist sociology of control. This overemphasises what we could call, following Jack Gibbs, "trichotomy of control", that is, a nodus of state administration, system of education and mass communication (Gibbs 1989, 436-438). Thus, the info-pessimist point of view sees the triumphant Information Revolution as a fierce promise of further concentration of capitalist evil necessarily embracing economic, political and social, as well as educational layers of social life (Robins 1999).

On the other hand, contemporary info-utopias are cemented by an uncritical reception of technological utopianism promoted by the Enlightenment. Here, we can presume: (a) that innovations, technologies and machines are altogether a virtually sufficient condition for social eudaimonia; (b) that the fundamental institutions of the good social order, including normative assumptions, should be defined by technological innovations and their right application; and (c) that, as delineated already by the Enlightenment, the proper development of humankind is defined by the inexorable march of progress, sketched out by the development of technologies etc. (Segal 1986).

A typical expression of info-pessimism is Ziauddin Sardar’s attitude, which sees the telematic (or informational-communicational) medium as a new, especially powerful and, by the same token, too dangerous form of colonisation as if "particularly geared towards the erasure of all non-Western histories. Once a culture has been "stored" and "preserved" in digital forms, opened up to anybody who wants to explore it from the comfort of their armchair, then it [the digital form] becomes more real than the real thing", and "hypertext generates hyper individuals: rootless, without a real identity, perpetually looking for the next fix, hoping that the next page on the Web will take them to nirvana" (Sardar 1996, 19). Here, we are talking not about the fact that info-technologies are not yet and, perhaps, will never be accessible to everybody and always, that is, not about the obvious lack of equality in global information society, but about the pandemic nightmare of the sneaking "information age".

In its own turn, an especially useful substantiation of info-utopianism are the noisy declarations of John Perry Barlow, although, to tell the truth, they have only radicalised the predictions of Marshall McLuhan – the father of current info-enthusiasts, who like his enigmatic aphorisms as much as they hate his sober-minded argumentation. McLuhan was relentless in declaring the forthcoming death of the state, large business and strong governments. Not accidentally, these insights of McLuhan’s are frequently quoted: "if it works, it’s obsolete"; "one can stop anywhere after the first few sentences and have the full message, if one is prepared to "dig" it"; and, finally, this one, perhaps most of all resounding in the enquiring ear of the incredulous specialists and gullible amateurs – "Heidegger surfs along on the electronic wave as triumphantly as Descartes rode the mechanical wave" (McLuhan: 1962, 248). Barlow’s formula is much clearer, although it is nonetheless quoted no less frequently: "we are in the middle of the most transforming technological event since the capture of fire. I used to think that it was just the biggest thing since Gutenberg, but now I think you have to go back farther" (Barlow 1995).

It is not surprising then that the quality of the classic info-enthusiasts’ argumentation does not always meet the highest standards. Of course, if the number of those working in the field of new technologies should include, as happens quite often, carpenters producing computer desks, drivers using, say in Belarus, telematic meters for long distance voyages, and even nurses (as was resolutely and fearlessly done by Marc Porat, the follower of Fritz Machlup, who so liked scrupulous accounts [Porat 1977]), then not only the information era, but also the "post-information" era predicted by the popular Nicholas Negroponte (Negroponte 1995) will seem like a most vivid reality by now willingly accessible at arm’s length.

All the same, the discourse thematising the transition of the information society is abundant with much more careful evaluations, cautiously avoiding the radical oratory of utopian enthusiasm and the nostalgic rhetorical of despair. A good example of the most moderate version of the existential presuppositions of the information society is the carefully worked through formula suggested by Wolfgang Hofkirchner: "The emergence of societies centred around national states, and the covering of the earth’s surface with communication and information technology networks, may be the material preparation for a leap in quality affecting the highest levels of societal organisation, but will not necessarily bring this about" (Hofkirchner 1999). While interpreting the "Information Revolution" as a rational spread of capitalist practice and its intensification, Krishan Kumar points out succinctly that "current changes are seen according to a model derived from (assumed) past changes, and future developments are projected following the logic of the model. So just as industrial society replaced agrarian society, the information society is replacing industrial society, more or less in the same revolutionary way" (Kumar 1995, 13). In general, the voice of the supporters of moderate attitude is heard much more better in present academic debates, which avoid radical one-sided fortissimos. Perhaps this otherwise hopeful state is caused also by the fact that the information age is being pressed more and more by the newfangled up to date assortment of bio-geno-psycho-para-technologies.

In fact, the results of generously financed and abundant research shows not what was expected: although the information industry and the industry of "higher" technologies have in many ways influenced the growth of the US economy in the last decades of the 20th century, it has not been yet proved, convincingly and unambiguously, that computerisation and informatisation could even slightly improve the general level of welfare or at least raise the efficiency of the economy. Social differentiation and the costs needed to create one workplace are only growing, the predicted economic leap has not happened and so far does not appear to be happening (Chomsky 1996; Mishel 1944). This radical critics’ evaluation is confirmed by the famous Solow paradox, named after the Nobel Prize winner, and professor of economics: "you can see the computer age everywhere these days except in productivity". Moreover, there is abundant research based on statistical data that demonstrates, that in reality during the last decades of the preceding millennium social differentiation, calculated according to the income on the bottom and top deciles, has grown approximately 20% (Garnham 1997, 63). The same applies to the "economic disparities between regions" even in most informationally developed countries (Moss & Townsend 2000). It seems that at least at the moment the information society – like all previous societies – meets best the interests of the flourishing minority leaving the unfortunate majority in even more aggravated condition. This proportion is apparent both at the national and international level: the interests of traditional political and economic elites are similar everywhere – to increase the power of their states with regard both to its own citizens and other countries, as well as to raise the business potential and its profits thus building an integrated global market (Kumar 1995).

Both Peter Drucker’s vision, which attracted much attention but perhaps is still not properly appreciated, and Daniel Bell’s concept of the post-industrial "knowledge society" have not yet proved correct. The latter inter alia claimed that universities will replace banks as large holders of capital – besides, it is based not so much on the significance of knowledge, but on the importance of its political management, that is, it follows the all too familiar, barely modified, out-of-date Marxist principle of the primacy of the means of production and not, let us say, the far more subtle and reasonable understanding of economic processes of Joseph Schumpeter.

All the same, the evidence shows rather the contrary. By the end of the 20th century it had become clear that academic institutions are more and more dependent on commissions coming from external capital. This is obvious in Japan and the US, as well as in EU and Lithuania. There are more and more studies demonstrating that the proud homo academicus nowadays experiences and suffers from, following the far reaching phrase of Albert Henry Halsey, "proletarization" (Halsey 1992), and not the much desired "elitization". In other words, academic community and universities are rapidly transforming into more and more obedient, according to celebrated Ostap Bender’s (a manipulative character from Soviet fiction) saying, proletarians of mental work, and not into unhampered and sovereign decision makers, enlightened kings of the sturdy info-elites. Without a doubt, here as in every other corner of academic discourse, we have also opposite opinions. In the end, even if the status of the academic community has diminished, it is still higher than, let us say, the position of the wearers of blue and white collars in all the social hierarchies of liberal democratic societies.

So what is the raison d’etre of the constantly repeated and not factually substantiated statements, which turn into mantras persistently declaring the end of the old production era and the beginning of the unseen era of knowledge (in Lithuania – only the era of information and "news")? More precisely: why do these statements, which are of modest value from the scientific point of view as well as with regard to common sense, receive so much attention across all hemispheres? Why are they already included in the standard weaponry of political populism and why are dissimilar people, living in such different societies prone to believe them so willingly? Why, let us say, in Lithuania are the miraculous power of information believed not only by those who are at least basically computer literate, but also those who do not know what the Internet is all about (Saulauskas 2001)? These questions are as important task of information society studies as the critical scrutiny of the above mentioned ontological problem of the status and possibility of the information society itself or a sober enquiry into futurological involutes of impending future.

The need for information society studies could be grosso modo outlined in the following argumentation. Firstly, up till now we do not know, whether there is or ever will be what we could substantially call information, knowledge, network or a netted etc., society. Secondly, it is not clear whether to expect – good or bad. Thirdly, we know that despite the first two points, the concept of an information society is becoming a more and more influential factor forming the changing patterns of social habitat, including the local social habitat and global international politics.

This is so because it is already an important structural component of everyday populist folklore as well as of the ideological, literary and academic discourses; and also because huge private and public funds are abundantly allotted for the multifaceted institutionalisation of this far from coherent conceptual entity in almost all the fields imaginable – education, business, politics, culture, sports, etc. If so then we should not doubt that the phenomenon of the information society is a worthy subject of study. Even if it does not yet have any loci that could be determined empirically, this does not mean that it will not have them in the near or far future. Finally, its coming could be evoked also by the obviously powerful self-fulfilling prophesy mechanism, whose effective action and, unfortunately, the unpredictable nature of the repercussions of such action, which we have repeatedly observed so many times. In this sense, the information society is an already empirically recorded form of social habitat – it suffices to start counting words, papers, departments, money and people involved in the whirlpool of the new global information society campaign. Thus, the need for interdisciplinary information society studies, from social informatics to social psychology and art history, is obvious.

Finally, since the information society studies are first of all studies of society and only then of the forms of information and knowledge as they are instituted throughout the complexity of social habitat, it is only natural to expect that social theory will always remain its true spiritus movens. This, however, does not preclude the more loosely defined scope of information society studies, which implicitly gravitate towards philosophical discourse (Duff 2000; 2001).

It is not completely clear until now, to whom the authorship of the concept of information society and its derivatives should be ascribed. This is, gratefully, not the case with the notion and elaborate paradigm of information society studies, whose author is already referred to Prof. Duff. However, it seems that more and more authors agree that the first to formulate the social problems in the field of informatisation and also of the present information society studies were not Americans, but Japanese. As far back as in 1960 the basic categories of informatisation (johoka) and information society (johoka shakai) were registered – the latter belongs to a professor of Kyoto University, Umesao Tadao, and was publicized in 1963 by a popular magazine that launched a discussion on the perspectives of information technology industry (Takagi: 1997). Only quite recently Manuel Castells has popularised more widely (Castells 1996) the term bunshu shakai (segmented society) coined already by Yonouchi Ito, which demonstrates the proliferation mechanisms of information streams. The new media is not treated here any longer as traditional mass media; the latter supplies its audiences with one and the same information, whereas the former operates with information individualised up to its maximum, i.e. specialized for different audience groups (Ito 1978). The voice of Europe became audible in the discourse on information society much later, at the end of the 1970s (Duff 2000). However, it acquired here original features and influence – first of all because the development of information communication technologies and the analysis of their social effects have, doubtlessly, become a priority for the European Union: this immediately resulted in the high funding and substantial public attention in EU countries and, although to a lesser extent, throughout the continent.

This topological specificity could be easily demonstrated by comparing concepts used in Japan, USA and Europe. The new world traditionally observes individualistic, liberal, sometimes libertarian and even daring anarchist attitudes – although this does not mean that it lacks concepts, zealously defending the values of American liberalism, that is, of the European tradition of critical social democracy. Hence the fearless offspring of the bohemian flirt between two proud neighbours – the pragmatic Silicon Valley and the romantic sacred grove of dreams, Hollywood: the famous "Californian Ideology" (Barbrook 2002). The ecstatic spirit of this creature is most precisely revealed in the 1994 manifesto, titled no less pretentiously: "Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Charta for the Knowledge Age". this was signed by four conservatives, following civil concerns: Esther Dyson, George Gilder, George Keyworth and Alvin Toffler. It states not only that "the central event of the 20th century is the overthrow of matter" and the advent of "a Third Wave economy", that is, the information age, as the true saviour of all. It speaks also about "the death of the central institutional paradigm of modern life, the bureaucratic organization" and about the fact that "unlike the mass knowledge of the Second Wave – "public good" knowledge that was useful to everyone because most people’s information needs were standardized – Third Wave customized knowledge is by nature a private good" (Dyson 1994).

The old continent, on the contrary, emphasizes (of course, not unanimously always) the communal, social and therefore guided nature of the informatization processes. Here the most important categories in understanding the information society are social differentiation, digital divide, global computer literacy, e-government programmes and, of course, maximising the penetration of telematic access points, called to realise the most daring desires of egalitarian eudaimonia. For instance, the Lithuanian, in perfect accord with European directives "scientifically grounded" finds approved by the governmental vision of the bright info-future – the National Information Society Development Strategy "Lithuania – a Country of Global Possibilities" (NISD Strategy). It reads as follows: "Development of information technologies has opened essentially new possibilities of global communication and interaction – it has created the space for world communication without usual time and space restrictions... When the NISD Strategy is successfully implemented, Lithuania will become a full-fledged member of the global informational society (knowledge society), and conditions will be created for every citizen to realize his or her needs by using resources accumulated all over the world" (LRS 2001). Thus the famous Bangemann report is repeated almost word for word (Bangemann 1997).

The official ideological attitude of the European Council is stated in detail, here as in many other successive national and international documents, sometimes supported also by more trustworthy academic accounts. Didactically, they point out that, although information technologies might alleviate the fate of the suffering humanity, they will at first only enlarge intolerable social inequalities. They maintain that uncontrolled technological expansion incipiently contradicts Christian precepts and thus necessarily requires the most careful moral supervision and support from the firm loving hand of the state (Hamelink 1986). Thus, in accord with the moral imperatives of the French revolution, the priority not of personal freedom and individual welfare, but of equality and brotherhood is conspicuous not only in the statements of academics and spontaneously formed groupings of intellectuals, but also in strategic projects, tactical documents and colourful visions officially approved by various bureaucratic instances.

Besides, in the beginning of the third millennium, two info-utopian clichés have finally taken root in Lithuania: "informational society" and "knowledge society" following vigilantly and imitating, though not very skilfully, the fashions propagated by EU bureaucracy.

The spread of the concept of informational (in Lithuanian: informacinis) and not information (informacija) society and news-knowledge (zinios), rather than knowledge-knowing (zinojimas) society could be explained by the simplest, and therefore most viable and persistent, intellectual negligence and chronic lack of educational preparation of our post-soviet elites. The conception of informational society as opposed to information society was introduced and popularised by Manuel Castells in the last decade of the 20th century. In Europe the completely different – much more loose – concept of information society was and is still in use. The latter by no means emphasizes the syncretic transfigurations of global capitalism such as managemental, urban, military, related to transport, crime control, etc. In contrast, according to Castells’s paradigm of informational society the prominence of these phenomena constitute the gist of his informational parlance. In Europe one speaks, and hence, for that matter, it would be appropriate to speak in Lithuania, only of the information society, which first of all consists of the rapid development and massive penetration of telematic technologies as well as of the need to democratize and socialize these processes, that is, here information society is concerned with the appropriate growth of new high-tech potential and its accessibility to everybody, everywhere and always.

In turn, the category of knowledge society was suggested by the famous new management maestro, Peter Drucker, as far back as the 1960s (Drucker 1969, 247-355). He claimed that in such a society the business management should change radically its relationships with hired knowledge workers, for they are far less in need of business institutions and even traditional knowledge management than the latter are in need of them. However, in the ideologized tradition of European information society this category has never been and is not interpreted as the quintessence of the new management. It was treated neither in the spirit of Japanese school, that is consistently quantitatively and technically informational. All program documents of the uniting Europe insist not on information per se and its structures as in the johoka shakai school of information flows, which will be discussed shortly, but on human knowledge and, what is especially important, on a special, that is constantly modified – renewed and developed quality of knowledge, more precisely understood as a condition of knowing, not of bits or petabydattes of a. As far back as in 1995 the European Union distributed The White Book, entitled resonantly Teaching and Learning – Towards the Learning Society. It only added to, but did not change, the already existing notions of the information and knowledge society according to the present political conjuncture of affairs. The addendum to knowledge society here was perceived rather specifically – and this understanding served as the basis for many promptly prepared and undertaken programmes of informatization – as information society plus life long learning. The latter is considered as first of all flexibility and advancement of qualification and as proficiency in three European languages, which should make social mobility possible, when the labour market will be finally liberalized in the coming European Union.

It seems that the only way to avoid not only terminological, but also conceptual confusion is to ask at least the numerous and otherwise proactive Lithuanian linguists to remember that Lithuanian informacinis can also be the equivalent not only to the English word "informational", but also "information"; that zinios can stand not only for information units and news, but also for knowledge and, most importantly, knowing, i.e. for a dynamic plexus of epistemic competences and open readiness to care that for their consolidated promotion (and in case of knowledge society – to do that on an intentionally institutionalized societal footing). Or, much easier and perhaps even better, simply to admit honestly that the semantic potential of political rhetorical and ideological claims are and, perhaps, have to be not of propositional-cognitive, but of performative-ritual in nature. The most numerous, and therefore not at all necessarily more intelligent team, wins as always, and so far none of the rules of human interaction are designed effectively to equalise the number of those playing to take account of the intellectual minority, if at all needed.

We can only comfort ourselves that even the strangest neologisms, when they began their lives, continue to change and become more customary. We were close to using today’s tolimatis (far or distance -seer, an equivalent of German Fernseher) not only to call a measuring tool a range-finder, but also, as suggested by the pre-war linguists of the Republic of Lithuania, television. We are already used to ziniasklaida (news-spread, an equivalent of English mass-media). Thus perhaps we will also get used to ziniu ukis, ziniaukis or ziniaverslas (economy of news, news economy or news business) as an equivalent of the English knowledge economy.

Unlike in Lithuania, official documents of the Japanese government use not rudely imported, but original rhetoric that have been polished for almost half a century. It is often emphasised there that any changes, and especially those of revolutionary scope, demand gigantic concentration, patience and selflessness. Such sober prudence or, more precisely, politically considered cautiousness do not restrict the scale of info-utopian vision: "An advanced information and telecommunications society is a new socio-economic system whereby people can realize free creation, circulation, and sharing of information and knowledge (the products of human intellectual activities) and harmonize daily life, culture, industry, economy, nature and the environment." Its main task is "to make a transition from a post-industrial-revolution economic society, which attached the greatest importance to mass production and mass consumption, to an economic society which is based on the creation and distribution of information – processes made possible by the digital revolution." Besides that, it is stated that Japan has already started this transition: "We are in the midst of a paradigm shift that will create a whole new set of values." (AI&TSPH 1998). Later documents of 2000 emphasize also that e-Japan should irrevocably enter the new era until 2005: catching up with USA, surpassing it, and thus finally becoming the absolute global leader. (This rhetorical is used despite the fact that Japanese economy has been seriously troubled during the last decades).

Despite obvious ideological differences, any country where informatization initiatives of this kind are carried out implicitly or explicitly refers to the principles of rational choice theory. First of all, at the basis of such an action lies the alloy of personal benefit and idealistic values, realised by "calculating" the effects of actions according, on the one hand, to the logic of economic benefit and its acceptability, and on the other hand, according to the logic of public benefit and its correspondence to a accepted deontological norm. Precisely in this way – by underscoring institutionalised and thus generally recognised and accepted values – the effectiveness of one or another public campaign and its possible success is warranted. This means that both the basis of action and the structural components of the principle of choice are mostly determined not by the logic of everyday behaviour, based on common sense, but by norms, mediated by the long historical experience of ideology, religion and culture – this is especially clear in the reconstruction of the rational choice model suggested by Zenonas Norkus (Norkus 2000, 31-32). Therefore, it is not strange that the Japanese informatization campaign has acquired a unique shape – conceptualised by the terms of informaticized society (johoka shakai). It emphasizes not the priorities of social equality legitimised by utilitarian thinking of the homo politicus typical to Europe; not the liberal values of an individualised homo oecconomicus seeking palpable and personalised benefit as it often happens in USA; but a normative complex of homo sociologicus and homo oecconomicus not widely accepted in Western culture and thus uniquely combining decontextualised and a-historical duties with the goal of personal welfare. Thereby the Japanese ideology of the segmented society of information flows (bunshu shakai) and the popularity of its principles. Contrary to a European or American, a Japanese repairing cars, raising rice or working as a hospital attendant will not be surprised if called an industrious hand on the information front, constructing straw by straw the upcoming reality of national info-welfare.

After all, the information society per se is not the source of good or evil. Like any other human invention, the global penetration of telematics might become the most zealous maid of both feared oppression and desired freedom. Even the abundant campaigns of the European Union promoting the vociferous vision of a federal info-utopia, serve as a good example for this statement: obviously there is a reason, why they are filled not only with incitements to develop, explore and otherwise support the birth of the information society, but also with a simple word of everyday political rhetorical declaring the, although fragile and patched, yet still irreplaceable values of the liberal democracy.

Thus despite the understandable wish not to pour the young wine of information society studies into old, and therefore unfit wineskins the warmth of the mature vessels is not only restful, but also doubtlessly useful: whatever one might say, it feels good to discover familiar and thus more easily captured notions under the unrestrained rhetorical of info-newspeak.