The major question in the French way of developing its information society is how to catch up with the United States without losing social values, such as equality and solidarity.

This paper examines the relation between communication technologies and social framework, especially decentralization, from the history of the development of French information society, which is under the influence of the dirigisme legacy.

There are two kinds of driving force that lead France to informatization. External forces refer to the economic dominance of the United States and the cultural invasion of the Internet; both are akin to a decentralization tendency. Internal forces refer to an ideal of social welfare and Minitel, which is a French government-led medium.

Although these factors are interlinked and influence with each other, French society is getting decentralized, and Minitel, not to mention the Internet, played an important role in the transformation of French society.