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3:1

(In »The four paradigms in the history of metaphysics«)

Since information technology is the most important instrument of power in existence, it is both productive and in every respect correct – particularly in connection with the transition to an informationalist paradigm – to divide the history of humanity into four, distinct information technology paradigms. So forget the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age and the other mythological constructions of industrialism, produced for precisely the purpose of writing history so that it culminates in the smoking factories of industrialism. Let us instead regard all societies in all forms and stages of development as various kinds of information societies, and let us view history as a story of the battle for power over the means of communication. Because whoever controls the channels for communicating truth and ideas also can be said to own and dictate the truth and the ideas.