Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.6, 2018

 

Information Civilization: A Key to a New Understanding of “Development”

(Abstract)

 

Wang Tian’en

 

The exploration of information civilization will provide a key to a new understanding of contemporary development. Based as it is on a higher level than physical energy civilization, information civilization represents the development of human civilization along the dimension of information. It involves development from physical energy to information, from individual ownership of resources to the collective sharing of resources, from people’s ownership relations with resources to utilization relationships, from the formation of the physical energy of people’s activities to the informatization of people’s activities, etc. The opening up of information in human civilization exhibits the development of an information civilization consisting of man’s mode of existence, information ecology, and the mechanisms underlying the impetus for social development. Information civilization highlights the profound meaning of the fact that when it comes down to it, development is human development. The basic mode of man’s development is from external conditions to internal needs through an internal mechanism, and the basic mode of social development is from increases in quantity to qualitative progress. Consequently, contemporary development presents an accelerated two-way cycle of human development and social progress in which the former is increasingly becoming a priority. The renewal of development momentum shows an increasingly direct link to the development of human needs, and the overall level of social progress is increasingly becoming the key to development. In the course of China’s rise to the position of leading the development of information civilization, the country has unique advantages, but at the same time faces the key task of emancipating creativity.