The Post-Industrial Society, Subcultures, and Recommender Systems

Abstract

Since the early 1960s, a discourse on the emergence of a post-industrial society has addressed the ways in which the growing importance of information, and innovations in digital communications technology, are changing our society. The coming of the post-industrial society after the World Wars has changed the forms of human interaction, production, consumption, and community forming. Networked communication and informational economy are creating possibilities for arbitrary alliances between individuals beyond locality and class-structures. Yet, in some aspects, the logic behind human activity still remains as it has always been. Consumption does not merely satisfy our basic needs, but functions also as a part of identity formation and a marker of distinction.

The Internet age is characterized by increasing masses of information that are managed through various technologies. Along hypertext linking, search engines and community-oriented interaction tools, one of the most essential technologies for managing consumption are recommender systems. Recommender systems automatically recommend items, such as movies, films, or news articles, to users, based on their perceived tastes and interests, as well as the tastes and interests of their fellow users. Besides helping us in discovering interesting new information, recommender systems may deeply affect our ways of living, by making us more aware of the various subcultures and lifestyles that surround us, globally. As information becomes detached from its original context, the social, cultural, and economic issues concerning the production, consumption, and different practices of sharing it, are bound to change as well.

Asiasanat:post-industrial society, sociology, reciprocity, cultural capital, subcultures, recommender systems, collaborative filtering