The post-industrial society is designated as

Concept: Daniel Bell's thesis in The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973) defines a social order not by its machines but by its axial principle — the resource around which the whole society organises itself. In a post-industrial order the economy's centre of gravity moves from producing goods to providing services, the professional and technical class becomes pre-eminent, and codified theoretical knowledge replaces machinery as the main source of innovation and of policy.

Application: the stem asks what that same social formation is called. Since its axial resource is codified information and knowledge — generated, processed and distributed by professionals over communication networks — the post-industrial society is standardly designated the information society, a label used by Bell himself and developed further by Yoneji Masuda, Marc Porat and Manuel Castells.

The three-stage sequence makes the axial resource explicit:

Contrast with the other designations offered:

• Technology society names a social order after machines and technique; mechanised production on that description already characterises the industrial era.

• Mediated society is a communication-theory description of experience reaching people through media channels rather than face to face; it characterises how content travels, not the economy's axial resource.

• Non-agricultural society states only that farming is no longer the leading sector, a description that fits industrial economies too.

Hence the post-industrial society is designated the information society.