Threats or Opportunities?
Whether this paradigmatic shift from industrial to information society is viewed as a threat or an opportunity is largely a matter of attitude. To use the language above, the same process in the objective world can be either a threat or an opportunity in our various subjective maps of that objective world. A recent book entitled Crises are Opportunities has a graphic on the cover containing the almost identical Chinese characters for the words "crisis" and "opportunity".
Whether the pessimistic or the optimistic visions of our physical environments in the information society will prevail is, once again, largely a function of our various subjective maps. Engineers and architects, who are responsible for creating convivial physical environments for human activities like learning, working and playing can influence the information society with their positive and negative visions of that society. Those visions will, consciously or unconsciously, be built into the places where we learn, work, and play in the future.
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