Società digitale/società della conoscenza. Per una ulteriore analisi tra progresso e crisi

In the crossing decades from 20th to XXIst century, Information and Communication Technologies have seen an extraordinary development. This phenomenon originated the so-called «digital society» and the more comprehensive «knowledge society». In the occidental world there was the fall of the long and fundamental industrial age, with the decline of «fordism» and the definive transition to supremacy of the advanced third sector in economic more developed contries. At its origin, during the Seventies, it is produced a particular storytelling in which to image a future of wellness, freedom and general improvement of individual and collective life. At what degree/step of that path are we now arrived? Were those promises maintained? This essai focuses from the sociological point of view some central issues concerning that evolution. Specially, the debate on continuity/discontinuity between the digital code and the analogic representation of the reality; the consequences of the progressive digitalization of the culture (and its instruments of building, consolidation and dissemination) on the social balance, and above all on collective memory: a basic element of society solidity and surviving in the history; and so on. In the final part, the Author wonders if this evolution requires a new anthropological model; if culture and speed are really compatible; if it is necessary to re-think former and established ideas and patterns of social relations.