revolution a dramatic and wide-reaching change in conditions, attitudes, or operation (english...

Revolution a dramatic and wide-reaching

change in conditions, attitudes, or operation (English Oxford Dictionary)

Castells’ (1996) provides an analysis of the impact of new technologies on

economy and society

From ‘Material’ culture

‘Information Society’ “inducing a pattern of discontinuity in the material basis of economy, 

society and culture”

Comparison between the information technology revolution and the

industrial revolution

Converging technologies

MicroelectronicsComputing

TelecommunicationsOptoelectronics

Genetic engineering

Characterized by their “pervasiveness”

- information technology is as important to this revolution as new sources of

energy were to the last ones

The internet of things / case study >>>

Not information as central but rather what can be done with that

information as tools and technological processes

“users can take control of technology”“users become doers”

“What we think, how we think become expressed in goods,

services and intellectual output”

This revolution has been much more globally pervasive and much quicker

1st – steam engine – towards the end of the 18th century

2nd – development of electricitya period of accelerating

unprecedented technological changethat brought about a sudden

transformation in the production and distribution of goods

Castells calls this a “new socio-technological paradigm”

Microelectronics!

From centralized data storage to networked interactive computer power

sharing

Social roots of technology – the information technology was American with a Californian inclination (Silicon Valley) key

technologies

This has ideologies, some proponents, some vehemently against

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“Because information is an integral part of all human activity, all processes of our individual and collective existence are

directly shaped…by the new technological medium”

Andrew Keen on Web 2.0

Krotosky argues that the web is a platform and isn’t inherently good or bad – neither

is it neutral.

Case studies >>>

“techno-fundamentalists”

Case studies >>>

Krotoski says, rather than asking how technology has changed society we should

be asking how do the ways in which we use technology reflect or change our

behaviors…

>>>

Thiereridentifies two types of internet pessimism;

“net skeptics” – pessimistic about the internet improving conditions for mankind

And…

“net lovers” – appreciate the benefits but also fear that those benefits are

disappearing – i.e. the internet is getting more closed

Thierer asserts that we are better in an information abundance than we are in a

society in which we are starved of information

We should also not underestimate the “disruptive effects of technology” but we should learn to cope and adjust to it in a proactive fashion, rather than harp back

for a time before.