Hassan The Information Society

Cyber Dreams and Digital Nightmares
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7456-5528-4
Verlag: John Wiley & Sons
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 280 Seiten, E-Book

Reihe: DMS - Digital Media and Society

What are we to make of the information society? Many prominenttheorists have argued it to be the most profound and comprehensivetransformation of economy, culture and politics since the rise ofthe industrial way of life in the 18th century. Some saw itsarrival in a positive light, where the dreams of democracy, of'connectivity' and 'efficiency' constituteda break with the old ways. But other thinkers viewed it more interms of the recurrent nightmare of capitalism, where the processesof exploitation, commodification and alienation are given muchfreer rein than ever before. In this book Robert Hassan, aprominent theorist in new media and its effects, analyses andcritically appraises these positions and forms them into a coherentnarrative to illuminate the phenomenon.
Surveying the works of major information society theorists fromDaniel Bell to Nicholas Negroponte, and from Vincent Mosco toManuel Castells, The Information Society is an invaluableresource for understanding the nature of the informationsociety--as well as the meta-processes of neoliberalglobalisation and the revolution in information technologies thatmade it possible.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hassan, Robert

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface vii
1 The Information Society Today: The Acceleration of Just About Everything 1
2 The Coming of the Information Society 32
3 Information Takes Over 75
4 A Shrinking Planet 109
5 Commodification and Culture in the Information Society 135
6 Faster and Faster 159
7 Who Rules?: Politics and Control in the Information Society 190
Glossary 224
References 237
Index 253

Über Autor(innen)

Robert Hassan is Senior Researcher in Media and Communications at the University of Melbourne.