An Exploration of Technology and its Social Impact [1 ed.] 9781443891721, 9781443898782

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An Exploration of Technology and its Social Impact

An Exploration of Technology and its Social Impact Edited by

Savvas A. Katsikides

An Exploration of Technology and its Social Impact Edited by Savvas A. Katsikides This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Savvas A. Katsikides and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-9878-3 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-9878-2

CONTENTS

Preface ........................................................................................................ xi Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1 Technology through Social Processes Savvas A. Katsikides Abstract .................................................................................................. 1 Introduction............................................................................................ 2 1.1 Social Change .................................................................................. 4 1.2 A Theoretical Approach to Social Class .......................................... 7 1.3 Social Theory around Technology ................................................... 9 1.4 Empirical Studies on Technology and Labour ............................... 10 1.5 The Conceptualisation of Innovation ............................................. 13 Conclusion ........................................................................................... 14 Bibliography ........................................................................................ 15 Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 21 Social Transformations of Organisations Savvas A. Katsikides Abstract ................................................................................................ 21 Introduction.......................................................................................... 21 2.1 Organisation and Change ............................................................... 22 2.2 Implications and Requirements in the Age of Computerisation .... 23 2.3 Explaining Technology in a Sociological Context of Analysis...... 26 2.4 The Autonomous Reflexion System (ARS) ................................... 27 2.5 Social Actions in the Technical World .......................................... 30 2.6 Interests and Participation .............................................................. 31 Conclusion ........................................................................................... 31 Bibliography ........................................................................................ 33 

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Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 37 Technological Changes and Societal Impact Savvas A. Katsikides Abstract ................................................................................................ 37 3.1 Sociology of Technology ............................................................... 37 3.2 A Conceptual Framework of Technology ...................................... 40 3.3 Cooperative Work in the Age of Technology ................................ 43 Conclusion ........................................................................................... 44 Bibliography ........................................................................................ 46 Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 51 Globalisation, Technology, and Social Sustainability Savvas A. Katsikides and Kyriakos Demetriou (University of Cyprus) Abstract ................................................................................................ 51 4.1 New Forms of Democratic Participation........................................ 51 4.2 Transnational Urbanisation ............................................................ 53 4.3 Migration ....................................................................................... 54 4.4 The Global Village......................................................................... 55 Conclusion ........................................................................................... 58 Bibliography ........................................................................................ 59 Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 61 Technological Society in the Information Age Savvas A. Katsikides and Dean Constantinou (Department of Transport, Chicago) Abstract ................................................................................................ 61 5.1 Technology and Discrimination ..................................................... 61 5.2 Social Informatics .......................................................................... 62 Conclusion ........................................................................................... 66 Bibliography ........................................................................................ 67 Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 69 The Impact of New Technological Tools on Social Mobilisation Maria Ioannou (University of Cyprus) Abstract ................................................................................................ 69 Introduction.......................................................................................... 69 6.1 The Dynamics of Online Social Networks..................................... 71 6.2 Identifying the New Side of Technology and Web 2.0 Tools ........ 72 6.3 Mobilisation through the New Technological Tools...................... 73 6.4 Activists’ Role and the Technological Obstacles ........................... 76 6.5 The Public Space in the Internet Age............................................. 77

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Conclusion ........................................................................................... 78 Bibliography ........................................................................................ 79 Chapter Seven............................................................................................ 85 Connotations on Castells’ Internet Galaxy Nektarios Partasides (University of Cyprus) Abstract ................................................................................................ 85 7.1 The Internet as History................................................................... 87 7.2 Internet, Identity, and the Network Society ................................... 90 7.3 The “Space of Flows” and the New Economy ............................... 92 Conclusion ........................................................................................... 95 Bibliography ........................................................................................ 97 Chapter Eight ............................................................................................. 99 Technological Innovation, Creative Destruction, and the Future of Human Labour Georgia Yiangou (University of Cyprus) Bibliography ...................................................................................... 105

PREFACE

The book An Exploration of Technology and its Social Impact is composed of a collective volume of articles dealing with sociology and technology. The author believes that the contributions will lead to a wider discussion on these issues. In this respect, it is hoped that this collection of studies will be of interest to those who are inner- and inter-disciplinary involved in the areas of both social sciences and computer sciences. The contributions are of analytical and critical value to vital research issues within the context of the emerging information age. The central idea was to draw together research devoted to key questions examining the relationship between the various and widely discussed new developments of technological systems and their social impact. The author’s intention is not for this book to be a highly specialised text covering a narrow subject area. Rather, it aims to provide a view of current research within a wider scope. Unlike many texts, which are a collection of “definitive” and perhaps even “tired” works, this book contains new papers reflecting the current state of research in diverse yet related fields of study. The author has decided against producing a highly specialised text because that would have a very limited appeal, and his wish is to bring together several complementary subject areas. Much of today’s research and many of the university courses offered are interdisciplinary, and the author wished to reflect this through this book. The very nature of research is such that the availability of more perspectives can build on findings from a wide spectrum of related interests. Major social and technological changes are currently reshaping everyday life all over Europe. Just as there are differences between regions, there are also various concepts of how to study and understand what is usually called the importance of technological progress. Recent developments, particularly in the political and economic systems in the global society, propel new ideas and increase the demand for studying the interaction between social and technological processes.

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In this book, the collection of chapters presented aims to explore the following topics and perspectives: social and cultural factors relating to technical progress; the role and prospects of social research; developments concerning specific professions linked to technological changes; technological standards compared to social structures; cultural identities and economic performance; female and male perceptions of technology; labour relations and developments in the labour market; social limits to technological progress; the social impact of theoretical conceptions and sociological paradigms; further analysis of structures and trends in technological and global societies; innovative strategies in technology transfer and research; politics and European integration; and European cohesion and social and political change. The social foundation of technology is a newly established interest area of sociology and contributions have only recently been made. Increasing interest and research in information technology—and its euphoric assumptions—are creating a wide spectrum of societal criticism. Computer-supported work, for instance, has led to the development of innovative organisational processes based on technological developments and new communication paradigms. With the increasing economic, political, and social integration in Europe, the EU member states are also confronted with a fundamental change in labour and industrial relations. European work councils are one example of a new form of industrial relations. Since the Hofstede studies, the question remains: how far will integration go in guarding cultural specificity and identities? Is there a common European legacy to be defended? Though this situation is well known and, fortunately, there has been a large increase in university courses and training centres on this subject, there is no book which presents the issue from a European rather than just a national perspective. The book is primarily addressed to lecturers and students in sociology, business administration, economics, law, organisational psychology, political science, and computer sciences at the university level. It is also conceived for intensive courses and seminars taught by training centres of chambers of commerce and industry, employer associations, and trade unions, or naturally for self-study.



CHAPTER ONE TECHNOLOGY THROUGH SOCIAL PROCESSES SAVVAS A. KATSIKIDES

Abstract In the first edition of Benjamin Kidd’s Principles of Western Civilisation: A Sociological Study (1902), various ideas and theories were strongly criticised, and it conveyed to the interested reader ideas and assumptions about the evolution of society. Kidd tried to present a civilisation as a developing system of life, possessing a characteristic meaning of its own in the evolutionary process, and having an organic unity far deeper than of any of the nations or political states in it (1902, vii). According to this concept, the individual is only to be understood through the meaning of social processes. It is in the social process alone that we have the meaning of the human and of the laws that govern its development. Kidd had the concept of social evolution in mind, which he had published on years before, indicating that: It is one of the commonest sayings of the time that the distinctive feature in which human evolution differs from all previous evolution is that the human mind is itself consciously constructing the social process. This is the most pregnant idea in Western thought at the present time, and it is with preliminary aspects of it that recent developments like Pragmatism are beginning to be occupied. (Kidd 1902, vii)

He refers to Darwin and the early Darwinians, pointing out that they made no systematic study of society in any organic sense and were occupied, even when they considered species, mainly with the struggle for existence between individuals, with the resulting conflict between individual interests, and therefore with the resulting evolution of individual types of life (Kidd 1902, ix).

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Introduction This chapter discusses a general view of sociological work, drawing on recent approaches to technology and social processes. It reviews different arguments about the sociology of technology and examines the path to social change. Social change is determined by several social processes grounded in external economic and political factors. Social change may be driven by cultural, religious, economic, scientific, or technological forces, to which we can add language, geographical area, and status of education. Societies create a knowledge grounded in history, constitutional order, and the checks and balances system. After reviewing classical and contemporary theories, which define the impact of technological processes, this paper explores the effects of sociological theory on technology and reviews Kuhn’s suggestion that technology derives from different societal traditions, and accumulates and reflects social processes and cultures. According to Kuhn, society is a “panorama” society,1 indicating global business networks, NGOs, diasporas, global cities, trans-boundary public spheres, and the new cosmopolitanism, which dominates first the political arena and demonstrates its quasi-liberalism by using this as a platform for technological domination. Some argue that these views could build the basis of an analysis of societal and policy conflicts. Further in his analysis, Kuhn asks about the invisibility of revolutions and “how the scientific revolutions close,” giving a simple explanation based on the source of authority: “I have in mind principally textbooks of science together with both the popularizations and the philosophical works modelled on them” (Kuhn 1962, 136). Two examples of different perspectives of the social shaping of technology are demonstrated; the macro-level and the micro-level. At the macro-level, the perspective developed is based on a dynamic view of the social shaping of technology. According to Salzman (1994), the main argument here is that technology is socially shaped and is part of a larger network of things and people. Using the framework sometimes referred to as a social construction of technology perspective, and building on the traditional studies of science, technology, and society, several studies have examined how technological decisions are shaped by non-technical factors. Undoubtedly, research within the emerging field of the social shaping of technology varies dramatically in the approaches used, especially in defining the range of social factors considered as relevant. On the micro-

 1

This is the author’s own term.

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level, the focus is on the usage of technology, which is based on the user’s perceptions. Two main factors are key issues for the problems relating to sociology: the individual and the group. Social groups are teams of individuals who interact and form social relationships. In this case, an important goal for sociology is to understand these larger social collectives and groups, an effort which is still to appear in sociology. While examining the impact and history of technology, C. W. Mills (1956) argues against empiricism remaining in a clear theoretical position, and H. Marcuse (1994) revitalises and elaborates Weber’s perception of developing the Western world by labelling human beings in modern society as a "onedimensional man." He identifies that the process of rationalisation in modern society leads to a more or less systematic elimination of all alternatives. From another point of view, which focuses more on the theory of technological evolution and is based mainly on economic history and anthropology, G. Basalla, in his book The Evolutions of Technology (1988), presents “an evolutionary theory of technological change based on recent scholarship in the history of technology and on relevant material drawn from economic history and anthropology.” He challenges the popular notion that technological advances arise from the efforts of a few heroic individuals who produce a series of revolutionary inventions that owe little or nothing to the technological past. Therefore, the book's argument is shaped by analogies drawn selectively from the theory of organic evolution, and not from the theory and practice of political revolution. Three themes appear, with variations, throughout the study: diversity: acknowledgment of the vast numbers of different kinds of made things2; necessity: the mistaken belief that humans are driven to invent new artefacts in order to meet basic biological needs such as food, shelter, and defence; and technological evolution: an organic analogy that explains both the emergence of the novel artefacts and their subsequent selection by society for incorporation into its material life without invoking either biological necessity or technological process. Basalla conversely recognises the larger changes often associated with inventors as well as smaller changes made over a long duration. His theory is rooted in four broad concepts: diversity, continuity, novelty, and selection. Diversity can be explained as the result of technological evolution because artefacts’

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Referring to “artefacts,” which have been available to humanity for a long time.

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continuity exists; novelty is an integral part of the constructed world, and a selection process operates to choose artefacts for replication and addition to the stock of made things. The argument here is very much related to the first traditional separation between sociology and technology. It seems attractive to split the world into "material" and "social.” More precisely, perhaps the nature and relationship between technology and society are divided in the classical approach to technological and social determinism.

1.1 Social Change Although social change (Abercrombie 1994, 190) is one of the major concerns of sociology, the question of how, why, and in what specific ways societies are changing remains one of the most intriguing and difficult problems in the discipline. While answering the question of how we can define social change, Robertson (1989, 425) argues that it is important to understand the alteration in patterns of culture, social structure, and social behaviour. However, additional complications derive from the role of technology, which has gained great importance and has been put into a key position when it is used to explain technological determinism and its meaning in social change (Smith and L. Marx 1994, 85; Fuller 1997). For this reason, in this section the aim is to shed light on a definition of social change based on the development of new technologies. As Buchanan (1994) stated, this process of social change is linked to innovations in sources of power and manufacturing techniques, and changes in the way which people communicate in modern societies. To begin with, it is possible to identify three waves of technological innovation that created a systematic social change in many modern societies. Based on Alvin Toffler’s (1980) argument, the first was the Agricultural Revolution, the second the Industrial Revolution, and the third the Information Revolution. The second and third waves are more recent and have led many theorists to believe that information and communication tools and technologies are able to move the social world forward. This means that technology is able to promote success and bring changes to all spheres of a society. It has to be acknowledged that although many academic analysts and theorists of social change from the 1980s onwards tried to introduce the its meaning by combining it with technological inventions happening in real time, critics of their arguments were and still are inevitable. Pessimistic views are based on the idea that technology cannot be seen as a major social dynamic nor a process of change.

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Furthermore, among those thinkers who tried to understand the meaning of social change, highlighting that a new sort of society is emerging due to the expansion of information, communication tools, and technology, is Daniel Bell, who undoubtedly wrote a lot on this subject between 1973 and 1999. In The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973; 1999), Bell’s main point is that in order to understand the effects and opportunities in the new information age it is important to first understand the age of postindustrialism. Specifically, Bell stated that people have entered a new system, a post-industrial society, which is characterised by the presence of information (1979; 1999). Taking into consideration all of the above, theories of the information society have distinguished two basic types of thinker. Firstly, there are those whose aim is to understand the meaning of social change, and specifically systematic change, by evoking the concept of information society. Secondly are those who believe that the past may provide answers so as to understand what changes are happening in the present and what may appear in the future. According to Castell’s statement (2000, 693), the information age announces changes in society and introduces a new society thanks to the development of networks enabled by different types of information and communication technologies. Castells believes that this transformation is not just a matter of globalisation; rather, changes occur due to the expansion and growth of networks, changes in work practices, and employment patterns. For this exact reason, people must get used to being flexible in what they do and what they expect to be doing in the future, since technology—and specifically the network society—is changing continuously. Besides Castells’ contemporary social thinking approach about network society, Alain Touraine’s (1977) writings on social change have also proven to be very important for understanding the conceptual framework linked to the analysis of social change and collective action in the modern age. Touraine’s theory of social change has emphasised the shift from the industrial to the programmed society.3 According to Touraine, “the programmed society is characterized by the struggle no longer being over goods but rather over information. Hence, the central social struggle has moved from the sphere of production to the cultural arena” (Brinker and Gundelach, 2005, 366). Furthermore, Touraine’s main contribution to contemporary sociology is based on the fact that he explained the term of social change while emphasising those different social movements, events, and tensions that occurred at intervals

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The term about programmed society is directly connected to the characteristics of post-industrial society.

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with the aim of bringing beneficent changes in society. These tensions and events in society have been developed in the era of industrial society in which rationalisation and subjectivity are linked together. In this case, according to Touraine’s writings, when rationalisation and subjectivity split and become autonomous, modernity leads to its disintegration (Hamanishi 2014). At this point we may get a better idea of how modernity is linked to social change if we investigate Ulrich Beck’s theory of “reflexive modernization” (1992). To simplify, reflexive modernisation refers to “the modernization of modern society” (Beck, Bonss, and Lau 2003). In other words, reflexive modernization represents the transformation of modern societies within modernity. By this, Beck emphasises all the changes of societal structures that the second modernity absorbed from the first. These changes happening in society affect the entire construction and as a result new kinds of society, state, global order, norms, rules, and everyday life are being produced. Along with these changes, the new modernity gives rise to a risk society, which more or less makes science and technology responsible for it. In this case, in Beck’s Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (1992), it is highlighted that individuals must make their own decisions about these hazards which globally exist in Western societies. Beyond the different arguments about the meaning of social change in modern ages, in which technology plays an important role in all the spheres of modern societies, there is a general agreement that modernity and the development of information and communication tools have made dramatic changes to the social structure. This argument indicates that the theories of modernisation belong in the same category as theories of social change. For this reason, in studying the theory of social change and trying to understand its definition in a sociological sense and framework, it becomes clear that this context of analysis is linked to arguments associated with post-industrialism, post-modernism, and social movement theories. Although the intention in this chapter was to restrict the analysis of “social change,” a few words about the theory of social movements may help this discussion end smoothly. Through social movement theory, we can understand how and why people aim to join together in a collective manner in order to claim their requirements, chase their goals, and resolve different issues happening in society, and the ways in which these manage to bring social change. Within this context of analysis, it is useful to clarify the character of social movements as a set of collective actions, which finally have as their goal to achieve changes in society. In The Blackwell Companion to Social

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Movements (2004), the authors highlight three mechanisms of strategic change due to the expansion of social movements in society. The first is called strategic anticipation (contenders anticipate the reactions of other actors and choose the option that provides the optimal balance of costs and benefits), the second refers to adaptation (contenders are connected through mobilisation processes), and the third concerns the environment selection, which is needed due to the fact that a free circulation of information in some polities is prevented (Snow et al. 2004, 30–1). Social movements as vehicles of social change were also argued by the so-called Chicago School led by Robert E Park, Herbert Blumer, Ralph Turner, and Ernest W Burgess (Porta 1999). Another contribution to the definition of social change based on social movement theory in the programmed society was made by Alberto Melucci between the years 1985 and 1995. Melucci described modern societies as highly differentiated systems which invest in the creation of autonomous centres of action. Finally, it could be said that society is not a steady process but a continuous and unending stream of movements and events (Sztompka 1994). Taking all of the above into consideration, social change theory owes many of its insights to the theorists who tried to explain changes happening in the social structure by stressing the meaning and importance of collective actions along with the meaningful acts of social movements. Therefore, the search for a system based on theory is still incomplete and much sociological work in our field is a synthesis of scientifically guided endeavour on society and nothing more.

1.2 A Theoretical Approach to Social Class In the 1990s, the class issue became an outdated interpretation and broke from the consisting tradition of sociological work. As Clark and Lipset stated: Social class was the key theme of past stratification work, yet class is an increasingly outmoded concept. Some reasons for this devaluation were the increasing importance of other themes and issues, such as the starting discussions on global societies and their impact, or technology and society, and the formulation of a simple question like who drives whom? (1991, 397)

Specifically, in Max Weber’s The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (1947) there is an extensive analysis of the notion of class, and Weber’s definition will help us move further with our analysis. Weber

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(1964, 424–5) defined a class as any group of persons occupying the same class status. These types of classes may be distinguished as: (a) a property class when class status for its members is primarily determined by the differentiation of property holdings; (b) an acquisition class when the class situation of its members is primarily determined by their opportunity for the exploitation of services on the market; (c) the social class structure is composed of the plurality of class statuses between which an interchange of individuals, personally or in generations, is readily possible and typically observable. On the basis of any of the above three class status definitions, associative relationships between those sharing the same class interests, namely corporate class organisations, can be developed. However, the concepts of class and class status only designate identity or similarity in the typical situation, in which an individual and many others find their interests defined. In principle, control over different combinations of consumer goods, means of production, investments, capital funds, or marketable abilities constitutes class statuses which are different with each variation and combination. Anthony Giddens’ (1973) new theory and definition of social class have also played an important role in social sciences. Giddens’ aim was to add new knowledge to the context of sociological theories which were based on social class arguments. He added a new analysis which stated that social structures are dependent on rules and resources and underlined that social life, which is based on human activities, is formed and shaped by this structure. From Giddens’ assumptions about social classes and the structure of society, it is clear that he rejects materialism and believes that political influences are the main reason for forming society and developing class structures. Furthermore, Bourdieu states that “a class is defined as much by its beingperceived as by its being” (Bourdieu 1984, 483). In particular, Bourdieu provides a theory that incorporates the material aspects of social class in the conceptual form of fields and practices. Bourdieu's theoretical model of society revolves around four concepts: (1) “fields,” or aspects of social life that generate complex networks of rules and relations, and support specific practices necessary to maintain themselves; (2) “habitus,” or the system of dispositions to action produced out of past conditioning and the structuring of one's actions towards stimuli in the field; (3) “practice,” or actions that manifest through the mechanism of habitus in order to navigate the field; and (4) “capital,” or various resources the individual attempts to acquire, convert, and use in practice (Ritzer 2008, 329).

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Moreover, Bourdieu aims to reject the identification of social classes according to “discrete groups” or “simple countable populations separated by boundaries” (Bourdieu 1984, 483). He instead prefers to refer to social class based on the “practical knowledge” of agent-subjects and refers to the social world while emphasising “the division of the work of domination” (ibid., 466).

1.3 Social Theory around Technology As Anthony Giddens (1986) indicates, “social theory” is not a term with any precision, but it is very useful. From Giddens’ point of view, social theory involves the analysis of issues which can be connected to philosophy, but it is not primarily a philosophical endeavour. The social sciences are lost if they are not directly related to philosophical problems by those who practise them. Social theory has provided perspectives of human social activity and the human agent, which can be placed in the service of empirical work. The main concern of social theory is the same as that of the social sciences: the illumination of concrete processes of social life. As has been pointed out in previous works (Katsikides 1998a), an effort must be made to understand societal transitions and methodological means, or, as Talcott Parsons advocates, in using sociology to study the relationship of an individual’s experience in society and history, the starting point for the sociology of technology must be through science. Holmwood, in an article dealing with feminism and epistemology (1995), outlines the argument that the challenge for social theory is to reconstruct its explanatory categories rather than deconstruct the explanatory undertaking. Postmodern theory is a capitulation in the face of our problems rather than any solution to them, and according to many theorists postmodernism embeds contradiction in its theory of knowledge. Specifically, Salzmann and Rosenthal (1994) focus on the design of workplace technology and show how software design and usage lead to essential tasks of engineering involving social values. These social values reflect the economic and political structures of organisations, and provide the background assumptions shaping people’s perspectives of their world of work. Social critics also addressed this issue at an early stage, such as Lewis Mumford (1934) who saw it as a problem of technological society and autonomous technology. Moreover, Jacques Ellul (1964) has warned against the technological dominance of human life and the ensuing impoverishment of the human spirit. From a critical point of view, we can mention David Noble (1984), who observes that "although it has belatedly become

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fashionable among social analysts to acknowledge that technology is socially determined, there is very little concrete historical analysis that describes precisely how." Noble's pioneering work has developed a growing interest in a body of research regarding the social shaping of workplace technology. Other useful works in this direction are Bijker, Hughes, and Pinch (1987), Corbett, Rasmussen, and Rauner (1991), and Rammert (1992). Generally, sociological theories should fulfil various functions. As Glaser and Strauss (1967, 3) mentioned: the interrelated jobs of theory in sociology are: (1) to enable prediction and explanation of behaviour; (2) to be useful in theoretical advancement in sociology; (3) to be usable in practical applications, with explanations being able to give the practitioner understanding and some control of situations; (4) to provide a perspective on behaviour; and (5) to guide and provide a style for research on particular areas of behaviour. This theory in sociology is a strategy for handling data in research and providing modes of conceptualisation for describing and explaining.

Adorno (1972, 83) wrote that "the application of theory remained uninfluenced by the examining practice. Theory and empiricism cannot enter the same continuum." According to the empiricism of technological development processes (Hochgerner, 1986, 11), it was usual in sociology to take technical equipment and facts into account almost exclusively as external societal factors. Few exceptions existed outside the dominant development lines of the discipline. The systematic consideration of technical aspects within social norms, the observation of technology as a societal endogenously produced element, implies a transformation of the structures and modes of operation of social relations on a long-term basis. Bearing these points in mind, the question here is: should the issue, the tasks, the theoretical and methodological points of sociology be extended and partly revived on this foundation? In addition, what happens with complex positions to which a medium range theory cannot offer satisfactory solutions? (Merton 1968). A synthetic theory is required which can neither be postulated in a systemic theoretical form nor be gained through the state of societies theory. For this exact reason, the general voice for a system theory has become stronger than ever (Bertalanffy 1978; Miller 1978).

1.4 Empirical Studies on Technology and Labour Until the end of the 1970s, traditional thinking in industrial relations focused more on the sociology of work and carried out remarkable studies

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which analysed the relationship between employment and the institutions associated with it. At the core of this argument, these analyses managed to explain the relations between workers, work groups, and worker organisations and managers, companies, and employer organisations. Undoubtedly, the study of industrial relations is an interdisciplinary enterprise, drawing heavily on industrial sociology, labour economics, trade union history, and, to a lesser extent, psychology and political science (Abercrombie 1994, 213). Moving forward to analyse the position and values of technical workers, several ideas and notions can be made. Crawford (1989) has pointed out that only two empirical studies compare the position and values of technical workers in old and new industries. Crawford introduces a study of French technical workers, publishing the findings of an investigation into the work, careers, and ideologies of French engineers and managers employed in two industrial settings; a traditional metal working firm and an advanced telecommunications firm. What makes this notion so interesting is the passage from theoretical considerations to real life on technological systems. Whether technology drives society or vice versa seems to have reached a dead end; a new discussion is required which includes ideas on social media and changes in associated behaviour, and their impact on social processes. The social accessibility of technological tools is a pre-requisite for new social groups to form and has to undergo both adoption and familiarisation by actors in these groups. Several empirical studies,4 as Crawford (1989) stated, have tried to describe the largely unsuccessful struggles of American mechanical, electrical, and other engineers to develop codes of ethics and unity, and form an association powerful enough to represent the interests of employers and the state. It must be highlighted that other aspects of the advanced society and its industrial system are constructing the main protagonists. In trade unions, for instance, education and training, collective agreements, and market performance play a vital role in technological decisions. Contemporary status and the identity of engineers were the aims in Calhoun’s work in The American Civil Engineer (1960) or Layton in The Revolt of Engineers (1971), as well as Noble in his pioneering America by Design (1977). Further studies in France, such as Grelon’s work on the history of French engineers in "La Modele de l école d ingénieurs comme formation: la technologie et comme insertion dans la société" (1987), have

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See, Zussman (1985), who managed to evaluate the meaning of position and values, and Whalley's (1986) volume on British engineers.

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provided an analysis of the historical structures of the time. The outcomes of all these works were considered as pioneering, as the emerging ideas highlighted that if we cannot change the industry or the capital behind it then we must change the engineers instead. This concept, however, finally failed. Furthermore, Salzman (1994) stated that the main view of engineering is that it is an "applied science"; it is the application of scientifically and objectively determined principles. The "scientific view" of technology is based on the fact that advances in knowledge are largely independent of subjective influences. Technology reflects engineers' calculations of the most economic and efficient designs to utilise that knowledge. This is the dominant view of engineering as expressed by the US Board for Engineering and Technology, as "the profession in which a knowledge of the mathematical and natural sciences gained by study, experience, and practice is applied with judgment to develop ways to utilize, economically, the materials and forces of nature for the benefit of mankind." Where social choices or values are considered, they are important for decisions about the use or development of technology, but not as an integral part of the design process. All of the above constitute the formation of technology within the social context. Furthermore, the example of introducing matchlocks in Japan (Perrin 1989) has clearly shown the distinction between the social change and the technological push, because technological change handles the rapid changes in work and in society.5 From the time of the first industrial

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The Europeans brought with them two matchlock muzzle-loading hand guns. The introduction of these novelties to a traditional complex system of values within the Japanese society created such turmoil that the Japanese decided to abandon them until 1855. Basalla, in The Evolution of Technology, argues that the process to adopt weapons in Japan had found a place immediately. "The Japanese were so impressed by these primitive firearms that they purchased them on the spot and set their swordsmiths to work duplicating them. Within a decade, gunsmiths all over Japan were turning out firearms in quantity. The warring feudal factions in Japan, eager to obtain weapons superior to their swords and spears, encouraged these developments.” Noel Perrin (1978, 78) gives a totally different view of this historical event. After a time of liberalisation of the production of guns, the government’s monopoly was stabilised by1625 and the central government decreased the orders for weapon production. In 1673, for example, only 53 big and 334 small matchlocks were manufactured. To maintain the traditional life and power in the Japanese society, the government abolished the use of guns and after 1637, for the next two hundred years, no wars were carried out with guns in Japan.

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revolution until the third microelectronic revolution, which we are experiencing today, only a few sociological works have attempted to explain the phenomenon of technology in its social construction. At the same time, social surveys were conducted by Charles Booth (1840–1917) using a combination of early survey techniques and other less statistical methods. In the twentieth century, the Chicago School and various anthropologists studied the way of life by living among them and viewing these societies from the inside (participant observation). Following the Second World War, Paul Lazarsfeld (1901–1970) gave greater emphasis to the importance of data being objective. The review of various other methods, ideas, and models was considered. Within this context of analysis, McNeill (1990) argued that when testing the ideas in the real world, the choice of research methods is often decisively affected by choice of topic, and the amount of time, money, and work hours available.

1.5 The Conceptualisation of Innovation A further step was the theoretical approach to political technology and designer technology, which ended with actor networks and contingent technology. Elster (1983) stated two main approaches on this point; first, that technical change may be conceived as a rational goal-directed activity and as the choice for the best innovation among a set of feasible changes. Second, technical change may be the cumulative addition of small and largely random6 modifications of the production process. Freeman (1987) has contributed to this argument by proposing a third approach to technical change. While recognising that both of the previous two approaches have a domain of validity, he agrees that they arise from rational choice and changes in production. He further argues that new combinations of radical innovations related to both major advances in science and technology and organisational innovations could be the third dimension to the approach discussed above. He continues by saying that: Such new technological systems can offer such great technical and economic advantages in a wide range of industries and services that their

 The history of Japan demonstrates the fact that technological progress in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries was developed in another mode than the West. Japan has undertaken a selective steering of technology and has developed other techniques and technologies in different fields. 6 Statisticians usually use the terms “random” and “stochastic” as synonyms. However, stochastic originates from a Greek term that means aiming an arrow. It has a dynamic directionality lacking in randomness.

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Chapter One adoption becomes a necessity in any economy exposed to competitive economic, social, political, and military pressures. Increasingly this century, the worldwide diffusion of such new techno-economic paradigms dominates the process of technical change for several decades and powerfully influences economic and social developments, even though it does not uniquely determine them. Although the accumulative prerequisites of innovation should influence the technical change, they say nothing on existing concepts as demand pull or technology push ideas concerning paradigmatic thoughts on technological descriptions.

These views, however, have been split into two large categories; first, the theory of the autonomous development of technology (demand pull) and those who claim that it is the market and other economic and social influences which primarily determine the scale, the rate, the direction, and sometimes even science itself (Freeman, 1987). On the other hand, Schmookler, in Inventions and Economic Growth (1966), demonstrates with statistics and figures on patent inventions that the invention activity lagged behind the peaks and troughs of investment activity. Based on this connection, Schmookler wrote in his influential work that the main stimulus to invention and innovation came from the changing pattern of demand, measured by investments in new capital goods. Within this point of view, he outlined the external events as the main argument, rather than the invention push, which handles the consistency of investments and plays the major role in the demand-pull theory. Later on, Mowery and Rosenberg (1979) in “The Influence of Market Demand upon Innovation,” stated that human needs are almost infinite and often long felt, and cannot explain the emergence of the particular invention at a certain time. Also, they criticise the underlying confusion in various studies in the 1960s and 1970s which attempted to show market demand as the driving force of innovation. Finally, all this led Mowery and Rosenberg to the belief that innovation results from the interaction between science and technology push factors.

Conclusion What has been said about the social and technological impact could link the ideas discussed and their association to the distinctive schools of thought, and shows a new analytical perspective in the sociology of technology and information. Yet, the final word remains to be seen; the creation of the digital world and its impact on social processes invented cyberspace as the extension of the real old world. The result of this is that

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traditional societies are losing this space in the existing structures of their society. Sassen (2002, 382) points out that: Cyberspace is, perhaps ironically, a far more concrete space for social struggles than that of the national political system. It becomes a place where non-formal political actors can be part of the political scene in a way that is much more difficult in national institutional channels. National politics needs to run through existing formal systems, whether the electoral political system or the judiciary (taking state agencies to court). Non-formal political actors are rendered invisible in the space of national politics.

The context of the virtual political system varies substantially across representative democracies, both new and old. As we have seen in countries such as the United States, Australia, and Sweden, multiple parties are now on the web with hundreds of interest groups, social movements, and news media, and thousands of LISTSERVs, chat rooms, and discussion groups flourish. According to Norris in Digital Divide (2001, 220), if the political system varies then we are standing in front of a new communication environment, and the internet galaxy, as Castells (2002) argued, is the new gate to it.

Bibliography Abercrombie, N. 1994. Dictionary of Sociology. London: Penguin. Adorno, T. 1972. Der Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie. Darmstadt, Neuwied: Luchterhand. Basalla, G. 1988. The Evolution of Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beck, U. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage Beck, U., W Bonss, and C. Lau. 2003. “The Theory of Reflexive Modernization: Problematic, Hypotheses and Research Programme.” Theory, Culture and Society 20 (2): 1–33. Bell, D. 1973. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. Harmondsworth: Penguin. —. 1979. “The Social Framework of the Information Society.” In The Computer Age: A 20 Year View, edited by Michael L. Dertouzos and Joel Moses, 163–211. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. —. 1987. “The World in 2013.” New Society 18 December: 31-37. —. 1999. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. New York: Basic Books.

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Bertalanffy, L. 1978. General Systems Theory, 6th revised ed. New York: George Braziller. Berry, B. 1991. "An Account of a Professional Ethics Violation in Sociology." The American Sociologist 22 (3/4): 101–6. —. 1994. "The Relationship Between Infringements on the Freedom to Research and Teach and Poor Sociological Practice." The American Sociologist 25 (3): 53–64. —. 1999. Social Rage: Emotion and Cultural Conflict. New York: Garland. Bijker, W., P. Hughes, and T. Pinch. 1987. The Social Construction of Technological Systems. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Brinker, B and P. Gundelach. 2005. “Sociologists in Action: A Critical Exploration of the Intervention Method.” Acta Sociological 48 (4): 365–75. Buchanan, R. A. 1994. The Power of the Machine: The Impact of Technology from 1700 to the Present. London, New York: Penguin Books. Calhoun, D. Hovey. 1960. The American Civil Engineer: Origins and Conflict. Cambridge MA: Technology Press and Harvard University Press. Castells, M. 2000. “Toward a Sociology of the Network Society.” Contemporary Sociology 29 (5): 693–9. —. 2000. The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell. —. 2002. The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clark, T. N. and S. M. Lipset. 1991. "Are Social Classes Dying?" International Sociology 6 (4): 397–410. Corbett, J. M., L. B. Rasmussen, and F. Rauner. 1991. Crossing the Border: The Social and Engineering Design of Computer Integrated Manufacturing Systems. London: Springer Verlag. Crawford, S. 1989. Technical Workers in an Advanced Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elster, J. 1983. Explaining Technical Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ellul, J. 1964. The Technological Society. New York: Vintage Books. Freeman, C. 1987. “The Case of Technological Determinism.” In Information Technology: Social Issues, edited by R. Finnegan, G. Salaman, and K. Thompson. Cambridge: The Open University Press.

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Fuller, S. 1997. Science: Concepts in the Social Sciences. Buckingham: Open University Press. Giddens, A. 1973. The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies, 2nd ed. London: Hutchinson. —. 1986. The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Glaser, B. and A. Strauss. 1967. The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Chicago: Aldine Transaction. Grelon A. 1987. “La question des besoins en ingénieurs de l’économie française. Essai de repérage historique.” Technologies, Idéologies, Pratiques VI/4, VII/1. Hamanishi, E. 2014. “Late-Alain Touraine's Theory of Modernity, New Subjects and Cultural Movements: Toward Theorizing Social Transformations in Contemporary Asia.” XVIII ISA World Congress of Sociology. Hochgerner, J. 1986. Arbeit und Technik. Einfȩhrung in die Techniksoziologie. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag. Holmwood, J. 1995. “Feminism and Epistemology: What Kind of Successor Science in Sociology?” The Journal of the British Sociological Association 29 (3). Katsikides, S. 1994. Informatics, Organization and Society. Wien-Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag. —. 1998a. The Societal Impact of Technology. Aldershot: Ashgate. —. 1998b. “Socological Context and Information Technology.” International Review of Sociology 8 (1): 39–49. Kidd, B. 1902. Principles of Western Civilisation. London: Macmillan. Kuhn, T. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Layton, E. 1971. “The Revolt of the Engineers: Social Responsibility and the American Engineering Profession.” Technology and Culture 49 (4). Lewis, A. C. 1977. Masters of Sociological Thought. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Marcuse, H. 1941. "Some Social Implications of Modern Technology." Zeitschrift fuer Sozialforschung, Jg. 9/1941, Nr. 3/41: 414–39. —. 1967. Der eindimensionale Mensch. Berlin: Neuwied. McNeill, P. 1990. Research Methods. London: Routledge. Melucci, A. 1985. “The Symbolic Challenge of Contemporary Movements.” Social Research 52 (4): 789–816. —. 1988. “Getting Involved: Identity and Mobilization in Social Movements.” In From Structure to Action, edited by B. Klandermans, H. Kriesi, and S. Tarrow, 329–48. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

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—. 1994. “A Strange Kind of Newness: What’s New in New Social Movements?” In New Social Movements. From Ideology to Identity, edited by E. Larana, H. Johnston, and J. Gusfield, 101–30. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. —. 1995. “The Process of Collective Identity.” In Social Movements and Culture, edited by H. Johnston and B. Klandermans, 41–63. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press/UCL Press. Merton, R. K. 1968. Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press. Miller, J. 1978. Living Systems. New York: McGraw-Hill. Mills, C. W. 1956. The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press. Mowery, D. and N. Rosenberg. 1979. “The Influence of Market Demand Upon Innovation.” Research Policy 8 (2). Mumford, L. 1934. Technics and Civilization. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Noble, D. 1977. America by Design. Oxford: Oxford University Press —. 1984. Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation. New York: Oxford University Press. Norris, P. 2001. Digital Divide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Parsons, T. 1951. The Social System. Glencoe IL: Free Press. Perrin, N. 1989. Keine Feuerwaffen mehr: Japans Rückkehr zum Schwert, 1543 - 1879. Athenaeum Verlag: Frankfurt. Porta, D. D. 1999. Social Movements: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Rammert, W. 1992. Entstehung und Entwicklung der Technik, Stand der Forschung zur Technikgenese in Deutschland. Berlin: WZB. Ritzer, G. 2008. Modern Sociological Theory. New York: McGraw-Hill. Robertson, K. 1989. Society: A Brief Introduction. New York: Worth Publishers Inc. Salzmann, H and S. Rosenthal. 1994. Software by Design. New York: Oxford University Press. Salzman, H. 1994. “The Social Context of Software Design.” In Informatics, Organization and Society, edited by S. Katsikides. WienMunich: Oldenbourg Verlag. Sassen, S. 2002. “Towards a Sociology of Information.” Current Sociology 50 (3): 365–88. Schmookler, J. 1966. Inventions and Economic Growth. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Smith, E. and B. Bonnie. 1996. "Problems Real and Imposed in the Discipline of Sociology." Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology 24 (1): 77–84.

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Smith, M. R. and L. Marx. 1994. Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism. London, Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Sztompka, P. 1994. The Sociology of Social Change. Oxford, Cambridge MA: Blackwell. Toffler, A. 1980. The Third Wave. London: Collins. Touraine, A. 1977. The Self-Production of Society. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Weber, M. 1964. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Edited with an Introduction by Talcott Parsons. New York: Free Press. Whalley, P. 1986. The Social Production of Technical Work. Albany: Suny Press. Zussman, R. 1985. Mechanics of the Middle Class. Berkeley: University of California Press.

CHAPTER TWO SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF ORGANISATIONS SAVVAS A. KATSIKIDES

Abstract The major changes taking place in the world of organisations and technology are creating new research areas and questions for traditional thinking in social sciences and methodology. The emerging important aspects of organisations are culture, strategies, production, and human potential. This chapter provides an examination of the structures within organisations, labour, and participation procedures. It is a critical introduction and deciphers a discourse from the manufacturing to the postindustrial society; from the industrial to the highly-qualified sectoral worker; from a system based on manual product-orientated work to one of service. Why is the work changing in this way and not in any other way? Is it because the obsolete system of societal organisation and its policies are being eliminated and new, redefined, emerging systems are being considered?

Introduction One of the central questions is whether using technology causes changes in organisations. Throughout this chapter, the idea developed is that telework, for instance, is not an entire status but will create implications and effects in organisational structures, to be seen as a permanent process later. The development and extension of enterprises, on both national and international levels, brought about many changes in the structure of workers. The complex structures within enterprises deregulate the

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possibilities and participation of employees firstly on a local level, and then on an international scale: “It is possible that decisions having important consequences for employees must be conceived and made by higher level employees (from the same country, but sometimes from another country as well), and these conceptions remain free from the influence of local employers. Normally, in such a case employees obtain further information concerning the business status of this local unit, through which they perceive a limited, incomplete, and, sometimes, even a false picture of the real activity of the enterprise in its entirety.” (Zeller & Carmines 1980, 5)

The core aim of this chapter is to shed light on the deregulation of working relationships by progressive industrial employment and methods of management. The formation and analysis of these criteria are presented in the system of a Logo Model, which particularly enlightens this process.

2.1 Organisation and Change The classical argument that the organisational structures of enterprises could be constant can no longer be accepted since other parts of the firm’s life incorporate more external parameters. As Flusser argued in 1985, the way by which the technical pictures emerged can be transferred in a symbolic way, and in our case into the classical acceptance of how the enterprises' environment is being developed. By relating this to the working environment we can identify three main phases. The first phase is the engagement of huge masses of humans into the working process, in which the work is a constant and the working environment a variable; the variables represent the tools and the executive human power. The second phase is developed and shaped based on the dynamics of the first phase but converts the human to a variable. The human is the executive power and is dependent on the constants of the enterprise’s organisation. The systematic Taylorism and other management and organisation theories standardise the inner life of the enterprise. The third phase, which is supported by maximum technological equipment, transfers humans and tools to the position of variables. It leaves the continuously changing organisation, the macrosystem, looking like a constant. According to this argument, the organisational structures of an enterprise follow a dynamic model in which permanent compatibility allows the increasing mechanisation to take hold of the firm. For example, the highly computerised office forced various activities towards a certain standardisation. Wobbe (1977) emphasised this by saying that "EDP is a way of organisation or a way of

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organising technology.” At the same time, a political discussion emerged due to the creation of employment it generated. During the process of mechanisation and organisational changes, different workers and working interests have been automatically affected. As Walton argued, "The necessity of an organisational model is based on the fact that innovation cannot be effective unless it is guided by a vision made manifest in a model” (1987, 17). At the core of this argument, a model is a general concept for the future of an organisation and evolves from understanding the limitations of traditional organisation and experimentation with alternatives. The model must be strong. An organisation cannot work well unless all of its policies, technical systems, and structural features are adequately aligned. Moreover, the social power of the macrosystems is very important since new organisational structures still incorporate the whole view of the market, technology, and personnel, so strategic competition can build up further (Nakos 1990, 133). The reaction of the organisational structure based on the market signs to compatibility has been defined by Nakos as "Strategic Human Resources Management" (ibid., 135). Strategic Business Administration is not possible without Strategic Personnel Management (SPM). The transformation of the enterprise strategy succeeds within the human component. Consequently, the human function handles success and establishes one of the important sources of enterprise strategy. An organisation is compatible, or successful, by these means when it is not static. From Tuerk’s (1989, 25) point of view, organisations are only rudimentary in the long term much more than they are permanently in motion; they never reach their surface stability, neither by balance nor by static, rather only by movement. New organisational images produce a constantly changing social reality because their duties, due to the changing market variables, must be redefined continuously. These processes target the working class with a determined effect.

2.2 Implications and Requirements in the Age of Computerisation In the twentieth century, using computers and, in particular, software was widely accepted. Within this period, some recognised that this situation reduces manpower to a common status absent of any social or organisational

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context (Salzman 1994, 282). Salzman1 points out two main fields of distinction while recognising differences in power, position, function, and organisational structure, all of which are central to the analysis of the workplace or society. These dimensions of the social context are important for the analysis of computerisation and the design of software. Generally, questioning concepts on how organisations are functioning now becomes not only a scholastic term for effective management, but for the first time shows serious implications regarding the practical daily use of computersupported technology. The implementation of technology requires more skilled workers and judgement, initiates new job qualifications based on technological innovations, while eliminating the non-updated compatible human capital. The rapid technological changes and their applications in many sectors of the economy demand and create qualifications, which can be extended over the lifecycles of hardware and software. Many more qualifications emerging among the administration processes are system eminent. The questions which arise here are the following: How can new knowledge be both adopted and skilled? What is the current state of these qualifications, which are shorter than the lifecycles of hardware and software? What can the common point between profit-orientated organisations and those offering social services as part of the welfare state, such as hospitals, be? Further approaches, such as skill-based design, lead to organisational effectiveness and gain more interest in the aspect of how to turn technology into a tool (Salzman 1994) or how to create symbolism in organisations as an emerging asset of establishing realities within the firm, based on their own professional histories, personalities, and value systems (Astley 1985). Kling (1994)2 states that many organisations are adopting

 1

When Salzman introduces his contribution, he writes that “understanding computer technology as it is designed for and used in the workplace requires analysis of organisations, the labour process, and technology” (282). While some outstanding work has been done on how technology and organisations interact during implementation, there is still a need for further development of a dynamic model of the social process of technology creation and use. His article outlines some of the important elements for such a model developed from empirical analysis of the development and use of mission critical software systems. 2 Kling states that professional responsibility in society is essential. Some computer specialists are especially concerned that computing technologies should be "sound products." According to this view, computing professions should be responsible towards their clients by delivering practical systems which are usable, reliable, and safe. The main focus of attention has been to identify computer systems which can be major threats to physical safety or civil life, and to identify

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computing equipment more rapidly than they understand how to actually organise. However, some fervent advocates of computerisation portray the actual pace of computerisation in schools, offices, factories, and homes as being slower than they wish. These "computer revolutionaries" argue that many key institutions—such as schools, businesses, family life, and public agencies—can be progressively reformed through the application of computer-based systems. It should be made clear that changes in organisations might deliver the reason for other compatible tasks, which are included in the planning and might be adopted and implemented at a later stage. Furthermore, the aspect of the social construction of technological systems (Bijker, Hughes, and Pinch 1987) among technologists arose, and people today acknowledge that culture, language, and ideology are definitely terms of management. According to Kolodny et al. (1990), the uncertainty of technological systems has affected organisational concepts, because organisational structures should have become more organic and less mechanistic. On the expansive vision of technology, Scott (1992) points out that conceptual clarity must understand how technology impacts organisational structures. He argues that "technology, technical systems, task environment, and the environment" are analytic concepts with much overlap that often leads to confusion. He states that technologies impact organisational processes in several ways, including inputs, transformations, and outputs. Such initiatives have generated new organisational skills and methods, such as Computer Supported Cooperative Work (Schmidt and Bannon 1992). The macroeconomic effects of technical change are also important as the aggregate effects on productivity, output, prices, wages, profits, and international competitiveness are felt. As with diffusion, the overall effect, a priori, is uncertain, as it depends on market efficiency, the efficacy of government policy, and the overall demand conditions in the economy. The organisational structures are based partly on computer-

 discrete solutions to reduce these risks. Some forms of computer technologies can be harmful because of unreliable software (e.g. life-critical information systems, election counting systems, social security payments, fly-by-wire aircraft, and military command and control systems). Other kinds of computer-based systems threaten to diminish personal privacy. Both kinds of threats have been the subject of a specialised body of literature, and the concern of organisations like Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility and special forums like the ACMsponsored "Risks" computer bulletin board. In this perspective, the primary reforms will come through improved software quality and certain changes in organisational practices (e.g. privacy protections, administrative guidelines to ensure safe software, and data handling practices).

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supported cooperative work, and the production idea is also based on subproducts as well as standard products with high retail and service costs (i.e. large computer firms). More frequently, innovation comes from small companies. Since different innovative products have found their way to the market, large enterprises react with the same technical and strategic policy and bias to rudimentary organisation models. The uncertainty of markets maintains itself and a non-static qualification wave from the large enterprises moves down to the small- and medium-sized enterprises. In addition to all of the above, other perspectives on a computer-directed economy argue that buyers are also buying a piece of culture in this enterprise. Based on this assumption, small firms are more dependent on high-paid manpower with advanced qualifications that may have gained these advances and further knowledge in large enterprises. A new realisation has dawned regarding the transferable learning processes within the firm and the international transfer of technology. Kern and Schuman (1984, 157) argue that the high innovative potentials hide in the highly qualified human capital of the existing production work.

2.3 Explaining Technology in a Sociological Context of Analysis In order to understand technology in a broader sociological context, one may question what drives society towards social change—society or technology? To make this analysis clear, six assumptions are made by Basalla (1988, 211): (1) technological innovation brings improvement in the artefact undergoing change; (2) technological advancements directly contribute to improvements in our material, social, cultural, and spiritual lives; (3) the progress made in technology and in civilization can be gauged by reference to speed, efficiency, power, or other quantitative measures; (4) the origins, direction, and influence of technological change are under human control; (5) technology has conquered nature and forced it to serve human goals; and (6) technology and civilisation have reached their highest forms in the Western industrialised nations. In Marcuse’s writings in 1941 and 1967, he stated that technology is historically a societal project that cannot be reduced to a material dimension. As many scholars have argued, understanding technology as a social process slowly became integrated into sociology, despite some exceptions (Habermas 1968; Ogburn 1969). The well-known societal system was to be ideologised, despite Daniel Bell and Jean Baudrillard already announcing the end of the bourgeois society or middle class. The

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death of the bourgeois ideology (Blumberger 1989) was caused by the calculated rationality of technology, in which no irrationalities are welcome. It looks like a way out of the dilemma of exploitation and oppression, though technology followed the very strict demands of the natural science laws and did not aim at irrational human assets. From this point of view, the traditional understanding of technicians emerged: the consideration of technology as the applied transformation of natural science knowledge. Moreover, also important is what Weingart stated: “if technology is an element of social action or … a process in which social relations are to be constituted … then technology must be considered in the theory of social change” (1989, 11). Following this argument, the separation between models of technology as causal factors of social change and models of social determination of technology must be eliminated. A theory of social action should integrate and cover aspects such as the societal change and the technological development, two conflicting processes in a closed and analytical explanatory form. Concerning technology and its formation, we are now in the position to define two possible hypotheses. The first is about its application and scope (because of the development of the natural sciences), in which the societal consequences can be applied by their use. The second hypothesis states that technologies result from social action processes which imply the implementation of natural science knowhow. A representative of the first position is Heinz Huelsmann (1985, 9), who believes that the creation of technology is possible only under the circumstances of developed societies. Only by them and through these societies can technology be carried out. Natural sciences are technological by definition and co-exist with technology in a specific structural and functional connection. The transition from the natural sciences to technology is at the same time the passage to sociality. This means that technology is a social reality, and by that it engenders a real sociality.

2.4 The Autonomous Reflexion System (ARS) Katsikides et al. (1994), in their essay on the Autonomous Reflection System (ARS), analysed the techno-social structures by emphasising the fact that technology is a system of conditions which reproduces itself in a quasi-autonomous way (and with increasing compatibility). The system develops itself as an autonomous structure in which humans act as secondary beings. The dynamics of the ARS within an organisation reflects

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the result of the changes within this enterprise, its external relations, and finally the organisational structure. Reflexive systems proceed more quickly than other sectors or fields of the economy and can interest investors, who quickly realise capital returns and profits. Moreover, ARS affects various activities in the firm because it becomes a tool for rationalisation and due to this change new compatible structures emerge across all of its sectors. Beyond this, ARS demonstrates the dependencies of this system, which leads to coercive detention for investments in new technologies. Investments cause certain rationalisations within the ARS that cannot be found in machines, but rather in humans. In the dynamic crisis potential, following this starting point, the old system and its couriers will be eliminated. However, the already established ARS assists in this process by regulating the market. Basically, the first perspective of the ARS, named the structural perspective of the logo model, concerns the organisational structure, which can be found in every enterprise or organisation. The second, extroverted perspective shows the sphere of action of the organisation in the outside world. The third, the controversial perspective, covers the sphere of action in the inner life of the organisation where all processes within the organisation are functioning. As we have seen, the structural changes of organisations are covering more enterprises. The public and private organisations are building their organisational structures on a common criterion. As a functional connection of all management and administrative starting points, joint criteria can be observed in the inner life of organisations, except for their size. The observation of this coherence will be shown in a shaping logo model, where the minimum of an organisational structure will be taken for new technology as the next logical path of other forms. The results of the adaptations and applications of information technology, (i.e. in productions such as CAD, CIM, and CAM3) lead to the argument that (a) automation and rationalisation effects were the first points, and (b) the final result was the flexibly oriented production. All these systems require a new method of administration of the organisation. A new theme of the organisation includes fields and approaches, such as data transmission,

 3

CAD refers to Computer Aided Design; CIM refers to Computer Integrated Manufacturing; and CAM refers to Computer Aided Manufacturing. For more information see Laplante (2005).

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telecommunication, innovation of production, and rationalisation of working operation and employers. Keen (1990, 298) argued that: The very idea of using telecommunications for business innovation means not automating the status quo but explicitly trying to change entire aspects of the organisation or its interactions with its business environment. Most businesses recognize they need to have strategies for telecommunication. They can guess at the organisational outcomes or simply go ahead and later deal with unanticipated consequences. But they have to make their choices.

In the same way, Wagner, amongst others, in 1988 and 1991 suggested the necessity of finding the whole concept of telecommunication, which could be found in the airways sector, public administration, social insurance, and hospitals. The effect of rationalisation itself shows a certain change in the organisation. This means that telecommunication already affects the core part of their organisation. They have already begun a process of radical organisational change. In banking, cash management, and fee-based services changes have been made to corporate bankers’ skills and roles. They brought the banks back office and operations and its marketing units together. They alter the basis for compensation and measure of profitability. This is a simple example of the often implicit hidden organisational changes. (Keen 1990, 301)

It should be clear now that changes in organisations are the reasons for other compatible tasks, which are included in the planning and can be adopted later. Hartmann (1986, 180) makes the point that the crisis within the administrative work forms the compulsion of continuing production. The second point concerns the administrative operations, which must proceed quickly when necessary. The third point refers to the assistance of the administrative operation and the flexibility of the enterprise. This means that it is important to proceed quickly with the collection and distribution of concrete transformations of the information and data. Therefore, it is not surprising that the installed system was established as an instrument which operates independently from political and social decisions. This means that the organisation cannot control the system anymore. The decisional parameters lie outside of their action fields. The previous sections focused on technology and its impact on the organisation, as well as the logo model and its formation. The second perspective after the structural perspectives of the logo model focuses on the external action radius of the organisation. The organisation analyses

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the relationships of the enterprise with the world outside. Examples are mother and daughter companies, the relations to the state, the law, trade unions, and other interesting organisations, and last but not least the customer. The compatibility of an enterprise is made apparent through the synergies at the level of employment, the concepts management, and finally the sales and the marketing area. The third observation concerns the action sphere found in the internal structure of the enterprise or organisation. Aspects such as trade unions, content of work, working time, collective bargaining, agreements, security, the creation of work, and economics are analysed. Bearing these points in mind, the question here is whether the US and the European technological concepts can be compared and measured in the same way, according to the guidelines of the European Union for the creation of a United Europe.

2.5 Social Actions in the Technical World The technical world—as we know it—was created by humans with special interests. These human activities caused effects that sealed the working environment of social sciences. Hoerning (1989, 90) maintains that it is ironic that we do not possess enough sociological tools to foster analytical thinking. This means that technology is a decisional factor for the societal action. Technology caused a lot of things, which are excluded by technicians from their systems when looking at things, even though they themselves are the creators of such structures. However, the question here is: can the technological development be an independent action and vice versa, with the societal cultural action as a dependent issue, when both belong to different fields of the societal reality? Furthermore, the implication is: How and through which methods can theories be shifted or transmitted into societal processes? How does technological development influence organisations? The usual mode of scientific concepts uses theories to describe reality and understand societal actions. The quality of these theories always presents a problematic issue. Willke argued in 1989 that, if these theories were measured on their usage, then we would have a more or less second-hand set of theories. Willke (1989, 10) also stated that during the periods of Marxism and Neo-Marxism, the relationship between capital and work was the main problem; as far as phenomenology is concerned, it is the problem of daily life. The critical theory here is liable to the problem of emancipation and, in terms of the theory of action, the problem of social action. Willke believes that it is important to make a distinction between

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the theories that were en vogue and those that had to remain in the background. Many theories which have survived the test of time are measured by Popper’s criteria, and it is assumed that theories must allow the construction, examination, and falsification of hypotheses.

2.6 Interests and Participation Changes in the economy use new conditions for the inner life of organisations, which include trade unions and other relevant associations. According to Windolf (1989, 367), "a former homogenous working class is disintegrated into a multitude of professional groups, which exist far away from each other according to their professional, economic, and political interests; so that a huge bureaucratic organisation can not represent them effectively anymore." The global interests of the firm focus on the liberation of the way that employment operates, namely when the workers work, finish work, and the contents of the transformed working actions. Galbraith (1972, 225) argued that, "these (aspects) are not to be found anymore under the innovation and modernisation effect of the free market economy," and Windolf (1989, 367) argued that, “the trade unions belong to a specific development level of the industrial system. When this level has been superseded, trade unions lose their original powerful position." However, should participation be taken to a new course, where it can act against the deregulation process, which was described above? An extension of participation of working organisations, the creation of work, as well as technology and protection against unlawful dismissal could constitute the first step. In the 1970s, in order to reduce costs from travelling long distances, a movement was established through which some high-technology organisations allowed their employees to access their computers from home via remote terminals over telephone lines (Galbraith 1972). The name of this new phenomenon was called telecommuting, and Toffler (1980) later called it the "electronic cottage.”

Conclusion The effects of new technology, its reproduction, and its adaptation in the production process affect various sectors of society. The main effect is the societal deregulation of labour relations. For this reason, various interests act on the sphere of the employer's activities. The industrial process was integrated within the bourgeois society, which formed the socioeconomic

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system. Due to this process, the political formations were established. The permanent reorganisation of the labour’s real goal was the circulation and accumulation of capital, which was financed by them, and the perpetuation of the existing societal structures. The technical systemic structure of work was not planned initially (either on the technical intention or on the previous forms of a labour organisation). Mumford (1977, 493) argued that: Trade and agriculture have possessed a freedom and flexibility like no other system before mechanisation, because they have worked manually as opposed to other sectors which were dependent on expensive machines etc. Tools were a personal property and selected based on the needs of the respective worker and often were reconstructed, or if not then a new one was made. In contradiction to complex machines these were cheap, replaceable and easily transportable, but without manpower, effectively worthless.

Later on, the causers of the system allowed human power and its work to appear as less important, subordinating it to a secondary mean. It is difficult to give an answer to the question of the causer, although the big decisions are taken on positive and negative developments mainly from the technological and military elites. However, the mainstream social sciences expressed less interest in investigating these processes. Moreover, motivation and proof of motivation can be found in specific economic fields. As Wobbe (1977, 37) stated, "the adaptation of new technology was mainly affected by increasing productivity, cost savings and work savings. This is the core of the capitalistic enterprise rationalisation. If the production level remains the same in the enterprises then this will lead to the reduction of labour posts." Two possible ways can be observed in terms of management concepts due to using the power of labour. The first way is totally technologically oriented and the management invests only in this direction using the labour power as an aid to the machines, demanding strict control and centralisation of the decision making. The second way is based on an empirical unideological concept; here, the management discerns the weak structures in technology and invests in the human competency for technology, accepting local decentralised decisions. Both systems are based on economic efficiency criteria; the formation of the established industrial society delivers the frame for such decisions. Interests that reflect these concepts can be realised in the environment of the firm. The technical systematisation of work in enterprises is a result of these pre-conditions on the level of macro-structures. In a model where the perspective of a logical construction of enterprises or organisations will

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conclude both their extrovert and introvert perspectives, it could also analyse the more and less successful structures. Such structures show not only various dynamic aspects but also find themselves in a continuing change. Therefore, enterprises will proceed to dynamic elements of macrostructures and, as a result, will have to be developed in ARS. These can develop autonomously (they reflect the basic societal conceptions) and force employers and other organisations to similar reactions. Through the ARS, this final self-interest can obtain a character and be realised.

Bibliography Astley, W. C. 1985. “Administrative Science as Socially Constructed Truth.” Administrative Science Quarterly 30 (4): 497–513. Bannon L. and K. Schmidt. 1991. “CSCW: Four Characters in Search of a Context.” In Studies in Computer Supported Cooperative Work, edited by J. M. Bowers and S. D. Benford. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Basalla, G. 1988. The Evolution of Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bijker, W., T. Hughes, and T. Pinch. 1987. The Social Construction of Technological Systems. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Blumberger, W. 1989. “Die technologische Ideologie. Versuch ihrer Darstellung samt Konnotationen und Zeichen." In Technisierte Kultur, edited by Josef Hochgerner and Arno Bammé, 43–57. Wien: VWGO. Flusser, V. 1985. Ins Universum der technischen Bilder. Goettingen: Europ. Photograph. Galbraith, J.K. 1972. The New Industrial State. New York: New American Library. Glaser, B. and A. Strauss. 1967. The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Chicago: Aldine Transaction. Habermas, J. 1968. Technik und Wissenschaft als Ideologie. Frankfurt am Main:Suhrkamp. Hartmann, M. 1986. "Strategien und Resultate der Verwaltungsrationalisierung." In Journal fuer Sozialforschung, Heft 2, 180. Hoerning, K. 1989. "Vom Umgang mit den Dingen." In Technik als sozialer Prozeȓ, edited by Peter Weingart, 90. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Huellsmann, H. 1985. Die technologische Formation. Berlin: Verlag Europäische Perspektiven. Katsikides, S. 1994. Informatics, Organization and Society. Wien-Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag.

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Katsikides, S., Campbell, M., & Hochgerner, J. (1994). Patterns of Social and Technological Change in Europe. Aldershot: Avebury Keen, P. G. 1990. "Telecommunications and Organisational Choise." In Organisations and Communication Technology, edited by J. Fulk and Ch. Steinfield, 298–301. London: Sage Publications. Kern, H., & Schumann, M. (1980). Industriearbeit und Arbeiterbewußtsein. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Kling, R. 1984. “Assimilating Social Values in Computer-based Technologies.” Telecommunications Policy (June): 127. —. 1984. “Usability versus Computability: Social Analyses by Computer Scientists.” In Informatics, Organization and Society, edited by S. Katsikides. Wien-Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag. Kolodny, H. F., Liu, M., Denis, H., & Stymne, B. (1990). Organization Design for Technological Change. Human Relations 43 (1): 7-22. Laplante, A. P. 2005. Comprehensive Dictionary of Electrical Engineering, 2nd ed. Chicago: CRC Press. Marcuse, H. 1941. "Some Social Implications of Modern Technology." In Zeitschrift fuer Sozialforschung, Jg. 9/1941, Nr. 3/41: 414–39. —. 1967. Der eindimensionale Mensch. Neuwied-Berlin:Luchterhand. Nakos, P. 1990. "Informatik und Human Resources Management." In Informatik in der Verantwortung der Unternehmensfȩhrung, 135. Institut fȩr Informatik der Universitaet Zuerich, Nr. 990.02. Ogburn, W. 1969. Kultur und sozialer Wandel. Neuwied-Berlin: Luchterhand. Russell, B. & J. P. Pertti. 1987. Technology and Social Change, 2nd ed. Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press. Salzman, H. 1994. “The Social Context of Software Design.” In Informatics, Organization and Society, edited by S. Katsikides. WienMunich: Oldenbourg Verlag. Schmidt, K., & Bannon, L. (1992) Taking CSCW Seriously: Supporting Articulation Work. Computer Supported Cooperative Work 1 (1): 7-40. Scott, W. R. 1992. Organizations: Rational, Natural and Open Systems, 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Toffler, A. 1980. The Third Wave. London: Collins. Tuerk, K. 1989. Entwicklungen in der Organisationsforschung. Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke Verlag. Walton, R. 1987. Innovating to Compete. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Weingart, P. 1989. Technik als sozialer Prozei. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Willke, H. 1989. Systemtheorie entwickelter Gesellschaften. Muenchen: Juventa.

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Windolf, P. 1989. "Vom Korporatismus zur Deregulierung." Journal fȩr Sozialforschung Heft 4: 367. Wobbe, W. 1977. Menschen und Chips. Goettingen: Sovec Verlag. Zeller, R. A., & Carmine, E. G. (1980). Measurement in the Social Sciences: The Link between Theory and Data. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER THREE TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGES AND SOCIETAL IMPACT SAVVAS A. KATSIKIDES  

Abstract Most of the traditional theories regarding the nature and relationship between technology and society, and subsequently innovation, are divided into two classic approaches; technological determinism and social determinism. However, in both cases, there have been significant advances over the years towards integrating factors from both the “social” and the “material” realms. The only partial consideration of relevant factors in research and the unclear direct connection between theoretical and empirical investigations on the macro and micro level of analysis remain problematic. The systematic consideration of technical aspects within social facts, the observation of technology as a societally produced element, involves the transformation of the structures and modes of operation of social relations on a long-term basis. However, it could be said that this argument is very much related to the first traditional separation between sociology and technology; from the time of the first industrial revolution until today, only a few sociological works have attempted to explain the phenomenon of technology in its social construction.

3.1 Sociology of Technology Linking social sciences and technology together is not a new idea. Past social scientific work has been rethought and reworked into technological discourse, such as the work of Gehlen (1986), Loewith (1964), Marcuse (1941; 1967), Habermas (1968), Linde (1972; 1982), Ulrich (1979), Bamme (1983), Rammert (1983; 1991; 1993), Huelsmann (1985), and Tschiedel (1989; 1990). Basically, they have all focused on issues regarding the

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development, implementation, and further consequences of technology, primarily from a social and an ecological perspective. Regarding the relevance of the sociology of technology, Hochgerner and Berka (1994) showed that, first of all, sociology of technology should not and cannot investigate technology itself, but rather a technologically structured technical society, and secondly that the sociology of technology is about social structures and features, which make technology a powerful source. The above ideas suggest that the influence of the sociology of technology was significant for the establishment and maintenance of sociology. Undoubtedly, these ideas may be a reconstruction of sociological thinking concerning technology. It is very important here to state that the sociology of technology must establish its parameters within the discipline; it must move from a peripheral position within the science to hold a more central place within sociological knowledge. However, defining these parameters cannot derive from the traditional—the discussion of theories at the "centre" of science. It must focus on "research praxis" whereby these limits are defined and continually relocated. It is also important to note that if technology is an element of social action or a process in which social relations are to be constituted, then it must be encompassed within the theory of social change (Weingart 1989, 10). Additionally, the problem with explaining social change is also not new; it was a central issue in nineteenth-century sociology. It seems, however, that the radical social effects of new industrialisation and technologisation of societies are creating fundamental gaps between existing social systems and the new social evolution of technology. No definitive explanation has been given regarding the second part of this historical hypothesis; namely, the theories of revolution. In a comparative perspective, Comte, Spencer, and Durkheim developed different aspects of a revolutionary theory.1 Theories of “revolutionary social change” derive particularly from Marx, who emphasised the importance of class conflict, political struggle, and imperialism as the principal mechanisms of fundamental structural changes (Abercrombie 1994, 12).

 1

The use of the terms “evolutionary” and “historical” to describe systems assigns two properties to them: first, they change over time and usually change by becoming more complex (the evolutionary property), and second the changes are irreversible—time is an arrow—and the current state of the system is a product of irreversible evolutionary changes and the emergent properties at each stage (the historical property).

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An interesting key point is the one made by Hochgerner (1990, 86), who referred to the "formative principles" which can create both a source and a framework. Formative principles as a theoretical concept cannot offer a normative, fixed, and true picture of societal developments. The reason for this is based on the fact that this concept was developed and is strongest in industrial countries, where the principles of hierarchism, objectivism, and growth are at the heart of the theoretical frameworks (and subsequent empirical analysis). However, these signs do not pretend to show the direction that development will take, nor do they describe normative expectations referring to the historic dynamics of civilisation. Rather, they represent a practical implementation in large social systems; as a result, they are related to the further development of the micro-sociological term "figuration." This term includes the transformation models in which individuals act according to the situation, "not only using their intellect, but also with their complete body and their every action in their relationship to each other" (Elias 1978, 42). Hochgerner and Berka (1994) explain why hierarchism, objectivism, and growth are termed as formative. For industrial societies, which recognise "growth" as a constitutive necessity, constant change could even guarantee preservation. Such a societal development can only be maintained continuously if it can remodel itself by adapting to constant change in a controlled way. This regulating mechanism, which controls human behaviour according to the specific needs of a certain given societal development, is termed a formative principle. It organises existence and changes in social behaviour over several historical eras without itself being restricted to the respective form of that time. Objectivism deals with human behaviour when this is standardised or "functioning." Finally, the study of the sociology of technology does incorporate elements of sociological methods, since they can illustrate social behaviour in a regulated societal system where technology and formal foundations create the context and the perspective. Based on all of the above, it is obvious that there are many theoretical issues which can be directed to the mainstream sociology of technology. In a former published work by the author (which attempted to show that there are many theoretical issues that concern the mainstream sociology of technology), a common understanding that derived from research in this field indicates that most sociological studies on technology use the comparative method, whereas the remaining surveys rely on the field of technology assessment (Katsikides 1998). Existing structures mean that a certain sociopolitical and economic span will continue to construct the system since modernisation still has a long way to go. If technology can be viewed as a social phenomenon in terms of sociological analysis, then this

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means that it is socially constructed. Undoubtedly, this is a case of socialisation and therefore could be socially "taught and learned." To conclude, the study of the “sociology of technology” incorporates elements of sociological methods, since they can illustrate social behaviour in a regulated societal system where technological and formal foundations create the context and the perspective. It is a fact that technology reflects the synergy of power and societal processes and these must be analysed under the terms of the sociology of science or even of the emerging sociology of information. Although the sociology of information should address many theoretical perspectives that can be directed towards the social phenomenon of information, they alone do not give sufficient insight into information, either as an object of disciplinary discourse or as an object of nature (Balnaves 1993, 108). For this reason, an entirely new concept is required, and there is a vital need for an improved analysis regarding the assessment of technological issues. Perhaps theoretical considerations must be linked to practical methodology in order to evaluate technological and societal approaches, because different complexities exist between the cultural and the operational aspects of the functional role of technology. However, the issue here is more complex and the argument can be summarised as the following: the first problem relates to methodology, in the sense that a global approach— whether theoretical or empirical—quickly reaches its limits. The second problem is a more general issue that refers to all the social sciences; a common direction to resolve common social phenomena, which is lacking. Third, perhaps a new approach is needed which could focus on a detailed evaluation and provide a synthesis of all the intervening variables involved in the technological discussion. The necessity of this approach is directly connected to the ARS model (Katsikides 1994), which has already been discussed. Finally, technological developments, like other social, economic, and technical approaches, are not socially neutral and ultimately deal with different traditions (European, United States, Scandinavian, Japanese, etc.). They accumulate social processes and reflect on them, or as Thomas Kuhn (1970) states, "a failure to assimilate fully new conditions and technology will strain the existing structures" of society.

3.2 A Conceptual Framework of Technology Hulin and Roznowski, in their work "Organizational Technologies: Effects on Organization Characteristics and Individuals Responses" (1985, 47), define technology as the "physical" combined with the "intellectual" of

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knowledge processes, by which materials are transformed into outputs used by another organisation or sub-system within the same organisation. According to Law (1987, 115), technology was considered as a family of methods for associating and channelling other entities and forces, both human and non-human. It is a method, and specifically one method, able to conduct heterogeneous engineering and constructing a relatively stable system of related bits and pieces with emergent properties in a hostile or indifferent environment. Other theorists, such as Berniker (1987, 10), claimed that technology refers to a body of knowledge about how we work in the world, our arts, and our methods. Essentially, it is the knowledge about the cause and effect relations of our actions. Moreover, technology is the knowledge that can be studied, codified, and taught to others. Weick (1990, 2) defines technology as an equivoque that admits several possible or plausible interpretations and therefore can be esoteric, subject to misunderstandings, uncertain, complex, and recondite. He provides a context that illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of prevailing thought about technology. Specifically, Weick provides three definitions of technology. The first underlines the explicit notion of raw materials and a transformation process; aspects that are often implicit in other definitions. This means that any output might be used within the same organisation. Weick states that it is possible to have diverse technologies and also argues that different concepts within the same organisation could exist. Finally, this definition is noteworthy because of its emphasis on the processes rather than the static knowledge, skills, and equipment. By equating technology with the process, Hulin and Roznowski steer our attention towards the importance of changes, which are able to be developed over time and sequence. Furthermore, the German Philosopher Heinz Huelsmann, in his welldiscussed book Die technologische Formation (1985), which has not yet been translated into English, points out that technology is not only based on someone’s ability, culture, proficiency, and knowledge. Technology is also about slyness, violence, and domination, as their relation can be seen as gaining efficiency from form to subject. Huelsmann’s book was published in the mid-1980s and underlines the distinction between the European and the American contexts. In addition, Salzman (1994) notes that the Scandinavian approaches could provide a model able to reorient design, and also shows that their approach reflects a particular industrial culture (socialisation of workers, engineers, etc.) shaped by, among other factors, a long-standing craft tradition, a workplace environment of 90% unionisation, and requirements for labour union participation in many basic decisions that are considered to be management prerogatives in the

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United States. Furthermore, Jahn (1994) highlights the differences between the German and the Swedish trade unions and his findings demonstrate the differences between the two countries. Contrary to the assumption expressed in the 1970s, in Sweden technological progress has not been challenged to a larger degree. As a consequence, there has been no increasing tension between labour and capital or within the trade union movement. A further definition of technology made by Law (1987), and analysed by Weick, implies that the design and operation of technology do not exhaust the character of the process as it is unfolded in politicised organisations. Lastly, Berniker (1987) states that every technical system embodies a technology; this is derived from a large body of knowledge, which provides the basis for design decisions. Weick (1990), in his own analysis, argued that the first definition forces us to re-examine our knowledge of cause and effect relations in human actions and the choice of a different combination of machines, equipment, and methods to produce the outcomes for which new technologies are instrumental. He continues by pointing out Berniker's argument and stating that technology follows rather than precedes a technical system, and that technology is both an a posteriori product of lessons learned while implementing a specific technical system and an a priori source of options that can be realised in a specific technical system. Within this context of analysis, other works, for instance, Scott (1987), Hancock, Macy, and Peterson (1983), and Perrow (1986), are equivalently important and undoubtedly provide helpful summaries when definitions of technology have been translated into survey items intended to capture variations in skills, equipment, and technique. On this issue, Weick (1990) concludes that new technologies introduce a set of issues that organisational theorists have yet to contemplate. Unless they do so, the power of technology as a predictor of organisational functioning will diminish. From Buchanan’s point of view, technology is the study of human techniques for making and doing things. In his book The Power of Machine, Buchanan underlines that: Technology deals with the when and the where, the how and the why of such techniques: it aims at interpreting them within a social context, at explaining how they arose and flourished the manner of their interrelationships, their ramifications and the reasons of their decline. Technology is concerned with understanding techniques within the environment of their social development. (1994, 3)

Nowadays, organisations are concerned with the introduction and usage of new technology, whereas old industries or other enterprises can neither be

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compatible, as previously stated by Law (1987), nor follow a certain new form of organisational change, which is influenced by external parameters. Emerging technologies force both the organisational structure and external relations to become more efficient and proceed to optimisation. Reddy, who analysed the new forms of organisation concerning the United States car manufacturing industry, came to the conclusion that, "If the United States continues to take four to five years to introduce a new car while Japan can do it in half the time, then obviously Japan will continue to increase its market share" (1990, 249).

3.3 Cooperative Work in the Age of Technology Further analysis has been undertaken by Egger (1996) in CSCW: The Bargaining Aspect. From the informatics' designing point of view, Egger has carried out a set of surveys which contribute to Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW); that is, they contribute to the development of technical systems, which at the same time are supportive of the work of groups. CSCW integrates tools for working teams. This implies the creation of new measurements for work also based on the social environment. Through CSCW, this could become a vital issue for sociologists. As Egger (1996, 13) points out, it is important to examine not only obvious technological systemic aspects but also the role of sociology. CSCW claims to support the working processes of groups. It is therefore interesting to analyse how people work together and which aspects of group dynamics must be considered when designing technical systems, especially those focusing on planning processes. Therefore, the contribution of sociology in defining design guidelines for CSCW systems must cover working groups and group processes, bargaining situations, and the role of time in groups. Controlling and monitoring were the first goals of the first generation of computer technologies, which have been implemented in production processes. Sydow (1992) used the term "joint optimization" to describe combining the advantages of technical systems and human qualifications. Later, the new idea to match principles stemming from the movement of industrial democracy, industrial psychology, and usability of technical systems, was carried out by Kling (1984a), Olson (1983), and Shaiken (1985). Bannon and Schmidt (1991), while trying to define the work process, stated that "cooperative work is constituted by the work processes that are related to content; that is, processes pertaining to the production of a particular product or service." Specifically, in their work “CSCW: Four Characters

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in Search of a Context,” they defined CSCW as a work of multiple active subjects sharing a common object, supported by information technology. A common object of work is to draw a need to a "shared goal" that is criticised as being too restrictive, and to "shared material" that is criticised as being too loose (Egger 1996, 28). Furthermore, Holand and Danielson (1989) suggested three kinds of cooperation perspectives: (a) Cooperation as a strategy: Cooperation is based on solving disagreements and conflicts in which the participants state their position clearly. In the processes of solving conflicts, some participants try to persuade the others or try to push their interests by building coalitions. (b) Cooperation as coordination: Cooperation is described as a method for a group to solve a joint problem, or perform a common task. The process of cooperation is based on sharing—among all participants involved—the responsibility of reaching the goal. (c) Cooperation as reflection and creativity: Cooperation is interpreted as a group process in which the partners are encouraged to contemplate and reflect on the matters being discussed. All participants are described as being potentially of equal interest for the observer.

Conclusion Edge (1995, 15)2 has pointed out two interesting approaches concerning the social shaping of technology. The first deals with the history and sociology of science and goes back to Pinch and Bijker (1984). The concept is to study the development of technological fields, whereby it is



2 For Britain, Edge states: "How, then, might Britain’s performance be improved in this respect? How can we increase attention to the entry into use, and more widespread adoption, of new technologies, and to strengthen the influence of the exigencies of these processes on the generation of new ‘basic’ knowledge, and the development and design of new products? Exhortations to ‘do better,’ or to be ‘more like the Japanese,’ are simply not going to be enough. For, typically, the different knowledge involved in the different phases of the product-cycle model are possessed by different people, and a hierarchy of prestige rises as we move from right to left across our diagram. ‘Basic research’ is more prestigious than the mundane—but commercially crucial—tasks of implementation, marketing, distribution, maintenance and repair. All these involve technological knowledge, but it is knowledge our culture typically devalues.’

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essential to identify points of contingency or interpretative flexibility wherever ambiguities are present. When such "branch" points have been identified, the researcher then seeks to explain why one interpretation succeeded over another or why one way of designing an artifact triumphed over others. The second approach works “in" from the context. Here, the starting point is the particular social context within which technical change takes place. The focus is on everything that contributes to shaping technology. Senker (1995)3 makes an interesting point concerning IT and the role of the developing countries in perspective. Moreover, Mackay and his colleagues in their contribution "Theorising the IT and Society Relationship" (1995, 41) summarise that sociologists have until recently avoided technology, but this changed significantly in the late 1980s with the growth and development of both (physical) IT and the (social) debate surrounding it. The authors are on the right path when they state that: "Sociologists of technology are concerned with explaining how social processes, actions, and structures relate to technology. The theories and concepts developed are increasingly recognised by value to technologists, notably in information systems design." Finally, if technological determinism implies the concept that technology is autonomous, then symptomatic technology, as explained by Williams (1974; 1989), states that technology is a symptom of social change. Although from lab invention to wide market consumption it might sometimes take up to 17 years (Profil 1997, 19), other sociopolitical and economic factors play a vital role in determining whether or not a certain technology is adopted. Braverman (1984) also makes a contribution within this context of analysis by saying that technology cannot be focused only on individual

 3

Senker makes an interesting note on the role and its perspectives and of the developing countries. He notes that Japan shows every sign of maintaining its technological lead in IT and advanced materials, with the United States following, and, perhaps, a growing gap between Japan and the United States on the one hand and Europe on the other. New technologies are likely to be exploited mainly to provide better-paid and more interesting jobs in the countries, which dominate their initial development and exploitation. The main benefits in production and development are likely to accrue to the more advanced countries; in the next few decades, some newcomers might be prominent, such as South Korea and Brazil. Many developing countries seem likely to fare relatively badly. Biotechnology, for instance, increased rapidly in significance in the early years of the twenty-first century. Developing countries will probably not benefit proportionately in terms of employment: such trends, as it is possible to discern, indicate that advanced countries may well benefit at the expense of developing countries.

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inventions. It is crucial to examine how broader socioeconomic forces affect the nature of technological problems and solutions.

Bibliography Abercrombie, N. 1994. Dictionary of Sociology. London: Penguin. Balnaves M. 1993. “The Sociology of Information.” ANZJS 29 (1). Bamme A. 1983. Maschinen-Menschen, Mensch-Maschinen, Grundrisse einer sozialen Beziehung. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. Bannon, L. and K. Schmidt. 1991. “CSCW: Four Characters in Search of a Context.” In Studies in Computer Supported Cooperative Work, edited by J. M. Bowers and S. D. Benford. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Basalla, G. 1988. The Evolution of Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Berniker, E. 1987. “Understanding Technical Systems.” Paper presented at the Symposium on Management Training Programs: Implications of New Technologies. Geneva, Switzerland. Bijker, W., P. Hughes, and T. Pinch. 1987. The Social Construction of Technological Systems. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Braverman, H. (1998). Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press Buchanan, R. A. 1994. The Power of the Machine: The Impact of Technology from 1700 to the Present. London, New York: Penguin Books. Edge, D. 1995. “The Social Shaping of Technology.” In Information Technology and Society, A Reader, edited by N. Heap. London, Thousand Oaks CA: Sage. Egger, E. 1996. CSCW: The Bargaining Aspect. Vienna, Frankfurt, New York: Peter Lang. Elias, N. (1978). What is Sociology? London: Hutchinson Freeman, C. 1987. “The Case of Technological Determinism.” In Information Technology: Social Issues, edited by R. Finnegan, G. Salaman, and K. Thompson. Cambridge: The Open University Press. Gehlen, A. 1986. Die Seele im technischen Zeitalter. Sozialpsychologische Probleme in der industriellen Gesellschaft. Hamburg: Rowohlt. Habermas, J. 1968. Technik und Wissenschaft als Ideologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hancock, W. M., B. A. Macy, and S. Peterson. 1983. “Assessment of Technologies and Their Utilization.” In Assessing Organizational

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Change, edited by S. E. Seachore, E. E. Lawler III, P. H. Mirvis, and C. Cammann. New York: Wiley. Hochgerner, J. 1986. Arbeit und Technik. Einfuehrung in die Technksoziologie. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag. Hochgerner, J. 1990. Soziale Grenzen des technischen Fortschritts? Vergleiche quer durch Europa. Hg., Band 1 der Schriftenreihe "Neue Soziologie". Wien: Falter-Verlag. Hochgerner, J and G. Berka. 1994. “The Social Environment of Technical Progress.” In Patterns of Social and Technological Change in Europe, edited by S. Katsikides. Aldershot: Avebury. Holand, U and T. Danielson. 1989. “The Psychology of Cooperation: Consequences and Descriptions.” TF-Report 58/89, Oslo. Huelsmann, H. 1985. Die Technologische Formation. Berlin: Verlag Europäische Perspektiven. Hulin, C. and M. Roznowski. 1985. “Organizational technologies: Effects on Organizations Characteristics and Individual’s Responses.” Research in Organizational Behavior 7: 39–85. Jahn, D. 1994. “The Role of Organizations in the Establishment of Ecological Consencus in Industrialised Countries.” In Society and the Environment, edited by U. Svedin and B. Hägerhöll, 215. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Katsikides, S. 1994. Informatics, Organization and Society. Wien-Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag. —. 1998. “Sociological Context and Information Technology.” International Review of Sociology 8 (1): 39–49. Katsikides, S., M. Campbell, and J. Hochgerner. 1994. Patterns of Social and Technological Change in Europe. Aldershot: Avebury. Kling, R. 1984a. “Assimilating Social Values in Computer-based Technologies.” Telecommunications Policy (June): 127. —. 1984b. “Usability versus Computability: Social Analyses by Computer Scientists.” In Informatics, Organization and Society, edited by S. Katsikides. Wien-Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag. Kuhn, Thomas. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Law, J. 1987. “Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering: The Case of Portuguese Expansion.” In The Social Construction of Technological Systems, edited by W. E. Bijker, T. P. Hughes, and T. J. Pinch. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Linde, H. 1972. Sachdominanz in Sozialstrukturen. Tuebingen: Mohr.

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—. 1982. “Soziale Implikationen technischer Gerįte, ihre Entstehung und Verwendung.” In Techniksoziologie, edited by R. Jokisch. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Loewith, K. 1964. “Das Verhįngnis des Fortschritts.” In Die Philosophie und die Frage nach dem Fortschritt, edited by H. Kuhn and F. Wiedmann. Verhandlungen des Siebten Deutschen Kongresses fȩr Soziologie, Mȩnchen. Mackay, H., N. Heap, G. Einon, R. Mason, and R. Thomas. 1995. “Theorising the IT and Society Relationship.” In Information Technology and Society, edited by N. Heap. London, Thousand Oaks CA: Sage. Marcuse, H. 1941. “Some Social Implications of Modern Technology.” In Zeitschrift fȩr Sozialforschung, Jg.9, Nr.3/41. —. 1967. Der eindimensionale Mensch. Berlin: Neuwied Mowery, D and N. Rosenberg. 1979. “The Influence of Market Demand upon Innovation.” Research Policy 8 (2). Olson, M. 1983. “Remote Office Work: Changing Work Patterns in Space and Time.” Communication of the ACM 26 (3): 182. Perrin, N. 1989. Keine Feuerwaffen, Japans Weg zurueck zum Schwert, von 1543 bis 1879, Athenaeum. Perrow, C. 1986. Complex Organizations. 3rd ed. New York: Random House. Pinch, T. & Bijker, W. (1984). The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other. Social Studies of Science 14 (3): 399-441 Profil. 1997. Technische Revolution, Nr. 27, 30 Juni1997, 28 Jg. e19, Wien. Austria. Rammert. W. 1983. Soziale Dynamik der technischen Entwicklung. Obladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. —. 1991. Entstehung und Entwicklung der Technik, Stand der Forschung zur Technikgenese in Deutschland. Berlin: WZB. —. 1993. Technik aus soziologischer Perspektive. Obladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Reddy, R. 1990. “A Technological Perspective on New Forms of Organizations.” In Technology and Organizations, edited by P. S. Goodman and Lee Sproull, 249. San Francisco, Oxford: Jossey-Bass. Salzman, H. 1994. “The Social Context of Software Design.” In Informatics, Organization and Society, edited S. Katsikides. WienMȩnchen: Oldenbourg.

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Salzman, H and S. Rosenthal. 1994. Software by Design. New York: Oxford University Press. Schmookler, J, 1966. Inventions and Economic Growth. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Scott, W. R. 1987. Organizations: Rational, National and Open Systems. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall. Senker, P. 1995. “Technological Change and the Future of Work.” In Information Technology and Society, A Reader, edited by N. Heap. London, Thousand Oaks CA: Sage. Shaiken, H. 1985. “The Automated Factory: Vision and Reality.” Technology Review 1 (85). Spencer, H. 1891. The Study of Sociology. New York: Appleton. Sydow, J. 1992. Strategische Netzwerke: Evolution und Organisation. Berlin: Gabler Verlag. Szell, G. 1994. “Technology, Production, Consumption and the Environment.” International Social Science Journal 140. —. 1994. “Sociology: State of the Art II, Political, Economic and Sociodemographic Dimensions.” International Social Science Journal 140 (xlvi) (2). Tschiedel, R. 1989. Sozialvertraegliche Technikentwicklung. Obladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. —. 1990. Die technische Konstruktion der gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit, Muenchen: Profil. Ulrich, O. 1979. Technik und Herrschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Weick, E. K. 1990. “Technology as Equivoque: Sensemaking in New Technologies.” In Technology and Organizations, edited by edited by P. S. Goodman and Lee Sproull, 1–44. San Francisco, Oxford: JosseyBass. Weingart, P. 1989. Technik als sozialer Prozess. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Williams, R. 1974. Television Technology and Cultural Form. London: Fontana. Williams, R. (ed.). (1989). The Politics of Modernism. London and New York: Verso

CHAPTER FOUR GLOBALISATION, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY SAVVAS A. KATSIKIDES AND KYRIAKOS DEMETRIOU

Abstract This chapter aims to explore the potential of new information technology and its ability to establish and promote environmental, economic, and social sustainability in the new "global" cities. Furthermore, it aims to identify and critically discuss many obstacles hindering sustainability in cities with distinct social, economic, cultural, and political backgrounds.

4.1 New Forms of Democratic Participation The widely used and accepted metaphor of the “Global Village” in new urban planning and studies dealing with the future and the potential strengths of European cities (particularly the concepts of the “Metropolis” and the “Global City”) provides to the sociologist and historian ideas about analytical instruments and often fresh insights. This section will focus first on the potential of telecommunication and related technologies in establishing and promoting environmental, economic, and social sustainability in European cities; second on the variety of relevant obstacles hindering sustainability in cities with different social, economic, cultural, political, and technological backgrounds; and third on presenting ways of understanding social and cultural integration/disintegration, particularly in the wake of increasing migration. This section also argues that it is possible to develop a framework within which human needs, as well as social and cultural activities, can be connected creating a powerful societal integration perspective.

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The rapidly growing urbanisation, urban way of life, social movement, and urban ecology are some of the major themes of modern sociological research; themes that concentrate on the new role of cities, the urban areas, and the individual. Undeniably, periods of intensive industrial and economic activities are mirrored in labour, the sometimes uncontrolled growth of cities, and unemployment. It is noteworthy that Karl Mannheim (1954) used the term “utopia” to describe the beliefs of subordinate classes, especially beliefs in the “future collapse of the established order.” However, whereas Mannheim suggested that utopian thought1 would not be characteristic of the twentieth century, some sociologists claim that modern pessimism over nuclear warfare represents dystopian thought, i.e. a collapse of civilisation without a subsequent social reconstruction. Weber (1922) traced the development of the urban community into a secular association, whose members enjoyed civic rights and received economic advantages in return for their payment of taxes. Such cities differed in many subtle ways from those in other cultures. He pointed out that some urban developments were more conducive to the development of capitalism than others. A characteristic model in European cities of the nineteenth century was reflected in their rapid expansion and the subsequent decrease in the intensity of suburban development. The proportional increase in urban populations in the nineteenth century was largely by migration from the countryside. Urbanisation has negative consequences for economic growth since it reduces the cost of providing services, such as health and education, while increasing the cost of labour that can no longer supplement its wages by small-scale agricultural production. The movement from the urban areas to the accumulated centres of labour and capital forced people in the nineteenth century to flee from their traditional places to new environments. The labour market and its connection to unemployment, poverty, and refugees are the classical social exclusion patterns in contemporary cities. The role of cities has come to a turning point and must develop itself into a regulatory instrument wherever its social role is to be underlined. Cities in the past could not envision and develop social programs, because central governments possessed the legislative power to incorporate these programs into their central policy approach. Local government policies

 1

Utopia involves a belief that all social problems could be solved if they arose from urban development or, as Max Weber (1922) proposed, through the comparative study of civilisations.

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were fading away. Yet, several sociopolitical and administrative structures have changed around us in modern Europe: new ideas connected to mobilisation and the notion of multiculturalism or the relationships to ethnic minorities have recently emerged, whereas other closely related ideas are still being shaped.

4.2 Transnational Urbanisation The breakneck speed of information and communication technology in modern Europe, and its diffusion with the increasing information process to which all society is subjected, has affected not only the fields of material and intellectual production but also countless areas of activity and experience. Through them, they exert an impact on lifestyles, life spaces, power relations and societal structures, as well as on the social environment itself and cultural manifestations. Information technology networking drives possibilities for change in the fundamental categories of the space and time of human life. The obsolete technologies have unfolded their sphere of activity only on the place of their existence. Computers may characteristically have the function of a chapel. The entrance to the chapel leads to the same remaining metaphysical spheres; hence, developing technology is not limited to the information-processing professions. It is a particular technology with relevance to all spheres of human activity and productivity, and therefore remarkably changes space-time life samples. What are the myths about telecommunication, in particular? A commonly created understanding is the saga about the home office and homework in electronic houses. Castells (2010) writes that: We are told, for example, that telecommunications allow work at home in “electronic cottages,” while forms become entirely footloose in their location, freed in their operations by the flexibility of information systems and by the density and speed of the transportation network; or that people can stay at home and yet be both open to an entire world of images, sounds, and communication flows, and potentially interactive, superseding the need for cities as we have known them until the coming of the information age.

Historical optimism and moralistic pessimism both convey in different tones an equally simplistic message of technological determinism; be it the liberation of the individual from the constraints of the locality, or the alienation of social life disintegrating in the anonymity of suburban

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sprawl. None of these prophecies stands up to the most elementary confrontation with actual observation of social trends. Telecommunication reinforces the commanding role of major business concentrations around the world. Salaried work at home in effect means mainly sweated labour in the garment industry, while “telecommuting” is practiced by a negligible fraction of workers, as for example in the United States. Intensely urban Paris constitutes the success story for home-based telematic systems, while the American equivalent of the French Minitel failed to attract customers in the Los Angeles area, the ultimate suburban frontier. High-technology industries are key ingredients of new economic growth in some regions, but cannot generate a developmental dynamic in other contexts. Societies and economies stubbornly resist being moulded by the application of new technologies: they mould the technologies, selecting their patterns of diffusion, modifying their uses, and orienting their functions. New information technologies have a fundamental impact on societies and therefore on cities and regions, but their effects vary according to their interaction with the economic, social, political, and cultural processes that shape the production and use of the new technological medium.

4.3 Migration Two main streams are basically useful in the migration debate; the internal migration movement (i.e. the regional flows to the accumulative centres) and the external mobilities (i.e. from one society to another). In the classical argument, labour movements from the south went mainly to the north. The industrialised north created labour and living conditions for huge potentials of labour power, mobilising them to the assembly lines of production. Taylorism became a key issue for the efficient method of production. Specialisation and discipline were integral parts of the concept. Ford, as the successor of Taylor (1911), states that: “We expect our men to do what they are told. The organisation is so highly specialized and one part depends so much upon another, that we could not for a moment consider allowing men to have their own way” (1923, 11). In Europe, the migration issue became a central theme, when in the 1980s multiculturalism was reinvented as a further step for the welfare state. Any discussion about migration and multiculturalism in different European countries is to be in the tense field of migration, nation state, and welfare state. A further argument is that external migration can be classified into push and pulls factors. In the latter, the size and structure are of the indigenous labour force. Increases in full-time education postponed the entry of young people into the labour market, creating a gap for unskilled

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migrants while indigenous workers also moved into better-paid, whitecollar skilled occupations. Push factors are unemployment, poverty, and the underdevelopment of exporting countries, with high rates of population increase, high unemployment, and low per capita incomes. Finally, migration does not provide economic development for poor regions that remain underdeveloped and dependent on the centres of industrial capitalism. Local and external migration is strongly connected to multiculturalism. Multiculturalism emerged as a social phenomenon initially of this century, and modern or, even better, postmodern societies have developed a political and economic structure in which the immigrants and ethnic minorities play an important role. Several projects2 carried out in the United Kingdom, Austria, Switzerland, France, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands give an insight into the diversity of experience in different cities and countries.

4.4 The Global Village McLuhan’s (1964) Global Village statement is that the periphery has a less important role to play, and that the word “village” can only be a metaphor in a symbolic way for the telematic connection of economic and central spaces in cities. These central spaces possess not only large enterprises with structures, which can implement communication technology but also a vast production capacity in a very efficient way, which is in effect for the use of market potentials based on telematics. Big enterprises in industrial regions are increasing their market shares on the cost of small and medium size enterprises (SME) in the rural areas. Teleports are spectacular examples of the conversion and development of telecommunications technology. The meaning of this is important, because these intelligent buildings are not an avoidable factor in modern city planning. The question of what a Global Village looks like and where it lies also implies the questions of who belongs in the Global Village and who owns it? Who can exploit the immense possibilities of the network? Can it be a small minority? Does the data highway also possess some other pathways or, finally, will the existing social and regional disparities in the access to technology be entirely frozen, and will information affluence and information poverty perpetuate this condition?



2 For more information see Innovation, The European Journal of Social Sciences 9 (1) (1996), “Multiculturalism and Political Integration in European Cities.”

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The problem is complicated and cannot be handled in a superficial way. The expansion and interweaving of markets for more services are for capital strong suppliers and consumers. It is incontestable that introducing telecommunications threatens the existing local economy. As Sassen (2005) writes: One way of thinking about the political implications of this strategic transnational space anchored in global cities is in terms of the formation of new claims on that space. The global city particularly has emerged as a site for new claims: by global capital, which uses the global city as an "organizational commodity," but also by disadvantaged sectors of the urban population, frequently as internationalized a presence in global cities as capital. The "de-nationalizing" of urban space and the formation of new claims by transnational actors raise the question: Whose city is it?

Eventually, it could be said that cities belong to their citizens. The global city is unambiguous. Some distinctions are emerging within the wired city. As Castells (2010) writes, “because the network society is based on networks, and communication networks transcend boundaries, the network society is global; it is based on global networks. So, it is pervasive throughout the planet, its logic transforms, extends to every country on the planet, as it is diffused by the power embedded in global networks of capital, goods.” Moss and Townsend (2000, 35) have argued that, “Major cities are points of intense investment in telecommunications technology, because the production, exchange, and dissemination of information are critical to the function and purpose of the modern metropolis.” Most discussions, however, of new communication technologies emphasise the opportunities presented for decentralisation; large cities are the hubs of the new telecommunications systems in the United States and are the sites for the most advanced applications of information technology. Through the revolution in communications, such global cities should be in a position to overtake and create the so-called transactional activities over national and global markets. They exercise power over them and concentrate exactly on where the demand for such technologies is emerging. The biggest part, which deals with communication, is still city-internal. The expansion of telecommunication and the “Data Highway” are creating one of the main technological factors which may change the picture and the images of the future city. As in the past, the infrastructural traffic developments have rendered new mainframes as channels, highways, streets, and air traffic. Moss and Townsend (2000, 36) further explain that, “In opposition to the

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global cities concept, a long tradition of antiurban utopian thought has been resurrected, arguing that the rapidly declining cost and expanding capability of telecommunications eliminate the need for the face-to-face interactions that are the lifeblood of cities.” The main distinction between the above-mentioned processes is that the new era cannot be seen and processed in an isolated focus and in particular in a certain country or city, but, in contradiction, in a worldwide global frame. Furthermore, we should understand the complexity of these new dimensions and cultures, which are increasingly promoting the realisation of the modernist vision.3 All things considered, integrating new social environments and the lack of cultural identity are the basic obstacles for a prosperous city development. But, owing to the technological changes around us, the city—the polis—is bound to develop. To sum up, from the perspective of the sociology of technology, five points give form to the basic argument of the present rejoinder: (1) Cities are gaining more importance due to the decreasing significance of the national states. We can speak of the transition from a state Leviathan to the preponderance and revival of the significance of cities. (2) The importance added to the cities is linked to their regions: cities and the areas around them cannot be split up in a clear-cut way. (3) Big cities will no longer compete with their neighbouring communities but only with other big cities. (4) The economic competitive mechanism will be extended through new samples of global cooperation and ideas. This interaction of forces shows the critical factor for the future of cities.

 3

Regional development is strongly connected to theories of comparative advantage and trade, cumulative causation, growth poles and centers, and entrepreneurship. Creative regions, stages, waves, and cycles are consistent with observed imbalances in economic development among and within countries. Seven types of interventions are commonly used by industrialised countries to affect the regional distribution of economic activity, consistent in different ways with theory: subsidising capital and/or labour, investing in specific large-scale projects, enhancing the development of propulsive industries, improving the entrepreneurial milieu, facilitating international partnering, developing communications and/or transportation networks, and developing knowledge infrastructure.

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(5) The transition from a political to a post-political regulation will systematically gain more power. Cities and their administrations will be the centre of this development.

Conclusion It is not an easy task to assess the degree to which the development of the apparatus of centralised governance in Europe endangers democracy. The problem is very complex and must involve a multi-disciplinary study of such themes, like the bureaucratic apparatuses, the role of administrative elites, the legal frameworks, the technocratic influence in policy-making, and questions pertaining to the accountability and rights of local governments around Europe. This chapter has attempted to offer two possible working interpretations of the political changes in the European model of co-existence and cooperation. The main issue is the interrelationship between democracy and the globalised (European in this case) giant state. Can democracy—that is, the democratic state itself— survive the radical reforms and the other omnipresent central control of European unionism? The answer could be that the new powerful entity creates a complex of institutional provisions and an administrative structure, which ultimately alienates ordinary people from the meaningful sources of power. The idea of representation survives in the systematic model of efficient centralisation, but it eventually becomes distinctively weaker at the expense of local democracy. If our assumption in this analysis is the work and ideology of liberal democracy, which is based on key concepts of the participatory rule (such as local autonomy and citizen self-rule), then the steadily growing central government in Europe inescapably appears to be undemocratic so far. The second part of this argument argues, from the perspective of the sociology of technology, that the policy of integration, by means of which the union absorbs locally oriented political wills, is neither static nor essentially undemocratic. It can be affirmed that globalisation is associated with a new technocracy that ultimately transforms the cities in many fruitful and imaginative ways, revitalising them as collective entities. The most consequential feature of this development is that the large European city is ranked higher in terms of efficiency, productivity, and selfdetermination due to the decreasing significance of the national states on the one hand, and the technological upheaval on the other. To that extent, European unionism and globalisation are becoming consolidated; the city naturally obtains a political conscience of its own. Large cities compete in

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a world of increasing economic and cultural activity. The "Global Village" statement leads to a consideration of post-political regulations, in which the roles of individuals and social groups in the mechanism of decisionmaking are more direct and more evenly distributed. In conclusion, it seems (and is hoped) that democracy in a changing unitary Europe—a world of modernist social and political settings—still has the potentialities of resistance, in harmony with a concept of such a long and glorious ancestry. It is confronted, however, with many challenges that threaten to alienate people at the sub-national level from considerable previously enjoyed powers. The ongoing political and institutional regulations of the EU are expected to not be harshly indifferent to the economic and sociodemographic variations between different regions; otherwise, they would lamentably distort the essential logic of the democratic rule. Fear of democratic deficit is a genuine democratic feeling. As Europe is ineradicably and predominantly associated with democracy, such a fear reflects a critical apprehension about the fate of the European identity itself.

Bibliography Castells, M. 2010. The Rise of the Network Society. Chichester, Malden MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Ford, H. and S. Growther. 1923. My Life and Work. London: Heinemann. Katsikides, S. 1998. “Socological Context and Information Technology.” International Review of Sociology 8 (1): 39–49. Mannheim, K. 1954. Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Harcourt, Brace, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. McLuhan, M. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1st ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Moss, L. M. and M. A. Townsend. 2000. “The Internet Backbone and the American Metropolis.” The Information Society 16: 35–47. Sassen, S. 2005. “The Global City: Introducing a Concept.” Brown Journal of World Affairs XI (2): 27–43. Taylor, W. F. 1911. The Principles of Scientific Management. New York, London: Harper & Brothers. Weber, M. 1922. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press.

CHAPTER FIVE TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY IN THE INFORMATION AGE SAVVAS A. KATSIKIDES AND DEAN CONSTANTINOU

Dedicated to Rob Kling (1944–2003) Rob Kling PhD was a US professor of Information Systems and Information Science at the School of Library and Information Science and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Indiana University.

Abstract This chapter shows how Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have changed the ways in which modern social scientists examine the impact of technology. The chapter gives a background of social technological thought and examines how ICT can be explained using theoretical conceptions. This is achieved through the examination of previous social scientific theories about labour and technology, and by placing those theories which explain modern-day society. Additionally, it explores the ways in which traditional thought has explained how new technologies are used and created. By doing this, the chapter explains how classical theories of sociology have converged to create the modern models of analysis and empirical collection, focusing on the methodology used in most social informatics case studies.

5.1 Technology and Discrimination The information age continues to have as its real goal the circulation and accumulation of wealth. This is evident from the so-called “digital divide” (Norris 2001) between the industrialised and developing nations.

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ICT continues to be observed as a way for middle-class merchants to maintain their accumulation of capital in a society that becomes increasingly integrated, and therefore competitive, in the world market. Despite all of the above, it is true that the personalisation of the workplace has increased efficiency. Also, improved quality of information seems to be one of the advantages recognised by a society increasingly dependent on ICT. Conversely, higher levels of stress and unwillingness and inability to adapt to new technologies are partially involved in the transition period from an industrial to an information age, and some drawbacks of information technologies in the workplace include the loss of revenue due to internet abuse.

5.2 Social Informatics In the post-classical era, sociology evolved to define more analytical concepts. People like Parsons and Homans attempted to further the field by creating models of sociological theory that could be studied through analytical research. “The keynote for Parsons and Homans was the creation of an analytical sociological theory that was based upon the classical phase of sociology and on related empirical research not only in sociology but also in related fields, particularly anthropology” (Fararo 2000). One aspect of recent theoretical sociology is the use of combinations of different models in developing theories (ibid.). It is not the scope of this chapter to explain each of these structures. The aim here is to focus solely on the structure of networks, which seems to be the major way in which the study of social informatics is modelled. The structure of networks model is primarily concerned with how actors interact in small populations, whether by analysing behavioural aspects in conjunction with the theories of human behaviour or through network diagrams. Over time, it became common for the measured properties of networks—for instance, centrality (Freeman 2004)—to be employed in the formulation and testing of empirical hypotheses regarding the behaviour of actors.

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Concerns of decentralisation and centralisation repeatedly appear in papers and journals that present research related to social informatics. These papers include a list of actors and their goals, but beyond that they also provide an account of other unknown factors related to social informatics that are relevant and become apparent throughout the research. Social informatics has maintained its relatively fixed field of interest while incorporating and identifying the expansive causes of the social phenomenon that it studies. Perhaps the evolution of the sociological examination of technology has gone from examining the evolution of technologies in a limited sense that incorporated few actors, to a more diverse and varied field that examines many actors. Social informatics is the most current field in this evolution of sociology to a more diverse and varied thought, because it is “the interdisciplinary study of the design, uses, and consequences of information technologies that takes into account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts” (Kling 1999). The emphasis on interdisciplinary study allows social informatics to examine all the factors that go into creating, using, and evaluating new technologies. Moreover, social informatics is primarily concerned with how different organisations use and implement ICT according to their specific social construction. It rejects technological determinism, because “humans develop and interact with technologies, and social structures are formed as a result of those interactions” (McIver and Rachell 2001). The nature of the research and analysis methodology used is contextual and empirically grounded, which is far superior to the “standard tool model” which tends to both “underestimate the costs and complexities of computerization, and overestimate the generalizability of applications from one setting or group to another” (ibid., 228). “It asks contextual questions such as when, under what conditions, for whom, and for what purposes does a specific technology improve or degrade the quality of life or work?” (Chakrapani and Ekbia 2004). The methodology by which this is done usually requires several case studies that implement the Structure of Networks model. In these studies, the social actors, technology, and various other factors are identified, leading to an evaluation of the end result that discusses a particular outcome. The main goals of social informatics are to study the “Information Society,” the way it functions, its characteristics, and how ICTs are developed within various institutional contexts. McIver and Rachell (2001) state that social informatics includes:

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Three principle areas of focus: 1) the development of models and theories which explain the social and organisation uses and impacts of ICT; 2) the development of methodologies which improve the design, implementation, maintenance and the use of ICT; and 3) the study of philosophical and ethical issues which arise due to the use of ICT in social and in organisation contexts. .

The case study examines all of the actors involved and includes actual diagrams of the organisational structures of the virtual communities. An example of the second area of focus is provided by Maloney-Krichmar, Abras, and Preece (2002), who explain the importance of a moderator. According to them, “A community with a clearly stated goal has a good start, but people make up a [virtual] community, and therefore for them to survive an online community needs to have active members and active moderators to keep discussions going.” They explain that the level of activity will vary depending on the different actors. The authors emphasise that each case is different and that revitalising an online community involves a comprehensive understanding of all the actors; this is done in the quintessential social informatics fashion. Finally, the third focus of social informatics deals with philosophical and ethical issues that arise from ICT in different organisational contexts. For example, one study of relevance to this idea examined the prevalence of internet abuse in various corporations: In a survey of 224 corporations by Web-sense Inc., an electronic monitoring firm, 64% of the companies were disciplined, and more than 30% have terminated employees for inappropriate use of the internet. Specifically, accessing pornography (42%), online chatting (13%), gaming (12%), sports (8%), investing (7%), and shopping at work (7%) were the leading causes of disciplinary action or termination. Furthermore, Vault.com estimates surfing costs of 54 billion annually in lost productivity. (Young and Case 2004)

Studies such as the one mentioned above examine the profound philosophical and ethical consequences of introducing ICT into the workplace. In addition, while examining a case study of social informatics more closely, the question of how social informatics explains the ways in which ICTs are being developed and used should undoubtedly be clarified. In Kling’s work (1999) there is a comparison of how two identical electronic journals developed at approximately the same time; there is, however, a difference in the way that ICTs were used. Specifically, the two journals

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studied were The Electronic Transactions of Artificial Intelligence (ETAI) and The Electronic Journal of Cognitive and Brain Science (EJCBS). The purpose of the study was to find out which organisational structures were viable and sustainable. In order to assess this, Kling examined how these two electronic journals established their peer-review process. The ETAI used a “2-phase process”; once the papers were turned in, an online forum was created to evaluate the papers and give the authors a chance to make revisions. After a three-month period, a “confidential peer review” session took place in which specialists evaluated which articles would be published. Meanwhile, the EJCBS used a different approach. EJCBS desired to create a process that allowed authors to get immediate feedback on their papers; this was done by creating “an interactive ‘vote’ in which those with comments and suggestions post them along with the article” (Kling 1999). The averages from the vote were tabulated and those with the highest averages were accepted. The developer of the EJCBS program wished to create a system that was autonomous and served as “interactive publishing.” Although these two journals were relatively similar, the ways in which developers wished to implement ICT varied distinctively. The developers had two clearly different ideas of how to organise the peer-review process and organised their ICTs accordingly. These different goals and how they were implemented reflect the success and failure of the two journals. In this case, it is evident that the actor’s role and their goals played a significant part in the process. ETAI wished to create a more stringent process that utilised a review board and forum. As Kling concludes, “Both ETAI and EJCBS were initiated in 1997. Finally, the ETAI accepted five articles for publication in 1997 while EJCBS posted two short articles in September 1997, but has not accepted any. The ETAI continues to receive a steady stream of submissions while the EJCBS does not” (Kling 1999). Social informatics case studies almost always (though not exclusively) document the role of the actors; most of the time, it is this aspect that sociologists point to when evaluating the reasons behind the failure or success of an ICT-implementation project.

Conclusion This chapter has examined the development of social informatics as an ultimate culmination of various social theories, especially those concerning the sociology of technology. It has presented the case that past models of the sociology of technology are still relevant and can be adapted

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to present ideas about the emerging “information society.” This was done by examining questions about labour and technology, in which it was clarified that past notions related to the effect of technology still exist today, and more information has been added since ICT in the workplace become available. The chapter analysed the motivating factors for the creation and use of new technologies. It was determined that most theories that were applied in the past still motivate the means of ICT development today. This was evident from the terminology of centralisation and decentralisation that litters the papers of the past, in which these terms were used to describe how different organisations dealt with the problem of a reduction of work posts due to the implementation of new technologies. These terms are still used today, as they explain how the capitalistic system and specific actors formulate the organisation of their “virtual communities.” It also explained how contemporary models play a central role in social informatics, specifically the Network Structure model. Finally, it explained how social informatics has developed from past social technological theories to incorporate a more interdisciplinary approach that explains the interaction of technology and society. Technology is a social reality and for this exact reason it engenders a real sociality. This became obvious with the creation and mass adoption of social media. Taking into consideration all the points discussed above, social informatics examines the work of the sociology of technology and applies those findings to the current applications of society. Recently coined phrases like “Digital Divide” exemplify the remnants of an industrial bourgeoisie society that continues to monopolise the means of production, as is evident in the disparity of ICT infrastructure between developed and developing nations. Social informatics attempts an interdisciplinary approach to examine how information technologies are being used. By evaluating the technology, users, developers, and cultural behaviours, as well as other factors, social informatics attempts to also explain how these information technologies should be used.

Bibliography Campbell, D. 2001. “Can the Digital Dived be Contained?” International Labour Review 140 (2): 119–41. Chakrapani, P. and H. Ekbia. 2004. “Opening up Technological Education: The Perspective from Social Informatics.” International Symposium on Technology and Society, 144–147. IEEE.

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Fararo, T. 2000. “Theoretical Sociology in the 20th Century.” JoSS Article: Vol. 2. Freeman, L. C. 2004. The Development of Social Network Analysis: A Study in the Sociology of Science. Vancouver: Empirical Press. Gripenberg, P., I. Skogseid, F. Botto, A. Silli, and V. K. Tuunainen. 2004. “Entering the European Information Society: Four Rural Development Projects.” The Information Society 20 (1): 3–14. Hochgerner, J. 1986. Arbeit und Technik. Einführung in die Technksoziologie. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag. Hochgerner, J. and G. Berka. 1994. “Social Environment of Technical Progress.” In Patterns of Social and Technological Change in Europe, edited by S. Katsikides. Aldershot: Avebury.. Katsikides, S. 2001. “Technological Change and Limitations of Theory.” European Labour Relations vol. I: Common Features, edited by György Széll, 82–100. Aldershot: Gower. Kling, R. 1994. “Usability versus Computability: Social Analyses by Computer Scientists” Informatics, Organization and Society, edited by S. Katsikides, 108–19. Wien-Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag. —. 1998. “Organizational Analysis in Computer Science.” In International Perspective on Information Systems: A Social and Organisational Dimension, edited by S. Katsikides and G. Orange, 43–66. Aldershot, Brookfield, VT: Ashgate. —. 1999. “What is Social informatics and Why does it Matter?” D-Lib Magazine January 1999. —. 2000. “Learning about Information Technologies and Social Change: The Contribution of Social Informatics.” The Information Society 16 (3): 217–32. Kuhn, T. 1970 [1962]. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Maloney-Krichmar, D., C. Abras, and J. Preece. 2002. “Revitalizing an Online Community.” International Symposium on Technology and Society, 13–19. IEEE. McIver, W. and T. Rachell. 2001. “Social Informatics and ServiceLearning as Models for Teaching Ethical and Social Issues in Science and Engineering.” Technology and Society, 235–43, IEEE. Norris, P. 2001. Digital Divide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Young, K, and C. Case. 2004. “Internet Abuse in the Workplace: New Trends in Risk Management.” CyberPsychology and Behaviour 7 (1).

CHAPTER SIX THE IMPACT OF NEW TECHNOLOGICAL TOOLS ON SOCIAL MOBILISATION MARIA IOANNOU

Abstract This chapter examines a strand of literature concerning today’s importance and interest in using new communication tools, and specifically Web 2.0 tools, as direct channels for finding new directions in participation, mobilisation, and democracy in the physical world. While focusing on the structural aspects of social media and the functions of online communication tools, it is comprehensible that, nowadays, these constitute a dynamic role in structuring human actions and behaviours in society. The interactivity taking place in blogs, online forums, and platforms allows us to consider whether, if these new technological tools did not exist in the twenty-first century, humanity in particular and societies in general would be progressive. Consequently, this article explores the effects of new communication tools in modern societies based on a broader sociological sense. Within this context of analysis, it is highlighted that these new technological tools play an important role in developing collective action, and for enhancing people’s engagement with important issues happening in real life. Undoubtedly, in a constantly changing social, political, and economic landscape, these new technological tools open up new directions for democratisation in the contemporary era.

Introduction Technology and in particular new communication tools, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, have shaped and changed people’s lives in a beneficial way by allowing them to take different actions in society without relying on traditional communication tools and old-term movements.

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Nowadays, human beings rely on multimedia tools to raise awareness, support causes and campaigns, mobilise people, engage in political, economic, and social issues, coordinate movements, and lead to social change (Joyce 2011). In the contemporary digital era, technological platforms, email lists, forums, blogs, wikis, and networking sites have strengthened social relationships both online and offline; they have enhanced collective human interactions and have managed to bring people together and link them in a dynamic manner (Caschera, Ferri, and Grifoni 2008; Connor 2009; Gustavo and Ilan 2006; Nicholas and Flower 2009). The way in which interactions, collaboration, connections, and communication are developed via platforms mirrors the various communication behaviours in this current period (Hoskins 2009; Murthy 2013), and reflects what José van Dijck (2013) has called the “culture of connectivity.” From 2004 onwards, the new technological tools and online platforms set up a democratic public field in which people can voice concerns over and generate awareness of various social issues (Lazakidou 2012). The interactive nature of Web 2.0 applications has broken the barriers of time, space, and scale, and no longer limits offline interactions (Kraut and Resnick 2012). At the core of this argument, the current state of research on online communities, online platforms, and the “liberation of technology” (Meier 2011), which was recently developed, indicates four important key areas: (1) within the digital sphere social ties have been strengthened between people; (2) modern technological tools have enhanced the engagement between citizens and policy-makers; (3) citizens are able to take actions around sociopolitical and economic issues; and (4) citizens are now transferred to the public sphere. While examining the impact of these new communication tools and the revolutionary changes made in society through technology, it is also easy for someone to comprehend that individuals nowadays are in a better state in comparison to their ancestors. Under the same reasoning, web tools and internet applications, such as Google Maps, have made people’s lives easier in finding their way around sociopolitical movements and demonstrations in real life. These technological inventions have proved to be powerful tools for organising activists, protestors, volunteers, and citizens around different social issues and phenomena (Cammaerts 2012; Petray 2011). Additionally, the importance of these digital applications, web forums, and online platforms is that these online maps can push online activists within developed countries to help and offer support to people that come from non-democratic countries. Indeed, offline activists and volunteer organisations are gaining benefits in this digital era, since it has given them the opportunity to achieve their aspirations. It is a fact that,

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today, offline activists have been transferred to the online arena in order to participate in online discussions (Alberici and Milesi 2016) to express their views, lift up their voices to a large audience, and shape the world’s opinion around important social issues happening in real time, such as today’s migration crisis taking place in Europe.

6.1 The Dynamics of Online Social Networks The existence of online networks, forums, blogs, and other new communication tools has become particularly interesting for sociologists since it has enabled them to analyse the structure of society and examine individuals’ actions. In other words, the expansion and wide usage of new technological and communication tools by individuals have led sociology to explain humans’ behaviours and interactions in a contemporary manner. Undoubtedly, through the study of online social networking, one is able to recognise how individuals join groups and cluster together in social spaces, as well as how human beings organise their actions and activities in a collective way, both in the online and offline worlds. For this exact reason, recent theorists and scholars have used the social network theory as a starting point to explain additional revolutionary and technological changes in societies and individuals’ attitudes that were developed through the changes in the world wide web in 2004. Empirical studies that were conducted after 2004 have presented these new communication tools as important vehicles for enhancing social, political, and economic change worldwide. These studies, in comparison to older ones, have also demonstrated a change in the balance of society and government, meaning that nowadays citizens feel free to express their opinions and assert their rights when the state fails to fulfil their requirements. Generally, these new communication tools and platforms are changing social realities, since they are giving superiority to the individuals who use them. Additionally, any discussion about the effects of these tools on human behaviour, actions, and social change is analysed based on existing sociological theories, such as: social capital (Bourdieu 1986; Burt 2000), power and visibility (Thompson 2000), social status (Podolny 2001; Weber 1964), social change and collective action (Touraine 1977), social relations (Buchanan 2002), ego-centred network analysis, dyadic level, and whole network analysis (Buchanan 2002; Monge and Contractor 2003; Moody and Douglas 2003; Otte and Rousseau 2002), structural holes (Ahuja 2000), linkages (Barabasi 2002), centrality based approaches and position views (Borgatti and Foster 2003;

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Kilduff and Tsai 2003), structural cohesion and embeddedness (Moody and Douglas 2003), communication theory (Habermas 1979), spaces and identity (Faust and Skvoretz 2002; McPherson, Lynn, and Cook 2001; Morley and Robins 1995), motivation (Delli 2000), collective action and social movement theory (Tarrow 1994), and inequalities due to literacy in technology (Norris 2001). Thus, the embeddedness of online network theory in all of the above important theories of sociology sheds additional light on how and why individuals act and perform the way they do in societies in the modern age. In addition to all the studies that help us illustrate and acknowledge how social clusters, social structures, and individuals’ actions are constructed in recent years, another important point to state here is the fact that studying the online network theory also helps researchers discover if and how the virtual world is connected to real life. For this reason, the question that arises is: do modern information and communication technologies, such as mobile devices, short message services (SMS), emails, and instant messages via online platforms such as Facebook form and motivate activities in offline life as well or vice versa? The answer to the above question is still incomplete and much work in sociology must be completed in order to find out if the online world is connected to the offline macro and microsystem of society in reality.

6.2 Identifying the New Side of Technology and Web 2.0 Tools The wide usage of Web 2.0 tools has helped citizens in different geographical locations to stay informed about and take actions towards humanitarian crises and tragedies happening in different countries and societies. This equally means that the online platforms and online communication tools serve different social classes in societies, allowing them to participate in matters concerning themselves and thus enabling them to openly claim for identity when that is denied. The above statement demonstrates the fact that today individuals are becoming active citizens in their own world. As Browne, Stack, and Ziyadah (2015) state, “ordinary citizens, eyewitnesses, activists, and governments are producing content every day through the online communication tools in order to organise, document and communicate events happening on the ground to audiences both near and far."

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It could be said that the nature of these new communication tools is directly related to the ways that Benkler (2006) has described the democratic principles concerning freedom, liberty, and autonomy. Benkler argues that individuals in the contemporary digital era have the ability to achieve their goals in political or cultural conflicts without restraints. According to these principles, individuals are able to engage in online tools in order to organise different forms of collective action and strengthen social movements from which they could benefit collectively in enhancing social change in real life (Joyce 2010). These new forms of interaction enabled by technology are explored in Shirky’s (2008) work Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. He highlights that contemporary digital tools extend group actions and movements in ways that affect society positively in real life as a whole, unlike Hindman (2009) who, one year later, opposed the democratic features of digital tools. Hindman argues that social media tools rank low in delivering democratisation, have done little to broaden political discourse, and have done much more to empower a small set of elites. Furthermore, Hindman’s “myth of digital democracy” was summarised two years later in Morozov’s (2011) internet-sceptic work The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, who argued that the internet has led to easier surveillance, censorship, and propaganda on behalf of authoritarian regimes. Within this context of analysis, Blood (2004) argues that activism through online technological tools is nowadays becoming a lifestyle for the few rather than a means to engage the public at large.

6.3 Mobilisation through the New Technological Tools The idea of spreading movements on the ground by using the new technological and communication tools could be further explained through the presentation of selected cases and by looking at a few recent examples of social movements that took place worldwide. Starting from the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the Haiti earthquake, the so-called Facebook and Twitter revolutions of the Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street movements in New York, and the current events in Europe involving ISIS terrorists and the migration crisis, many have suggested that digital architecture and platforms in general, and social media in particular, have shaped citizens’ actions and activism in a collective manner. Specifically, the attacks in Mumbai, India that occurred on November 26, 2008 were witnessed through new technological tools and mobile phones (Ibrahim 2009). The explosion of reports and images of terrorist attacks

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through Facebook and Twitter and the development of Google Maps have provided visual access to the buildings and landmarks at the centre of the incidents. This indicates the ability of Web 2.0 tools to mirror pictures and events happening in real life and their ability to spread information and humanitarian actions worldwide (Jewitt 2009). Additionally, social media tools became powerful weapons for those who wanted to take a stand and fight for tranquillity and democracy in Mumbai. Furthermore, the socalled Haitian earthquake in 2010 is another example illustrating the contribution of digital technological tools and the power of online maps for humanitarian crises. In this case, online maps were traced by volunteers, governments, and aid agencies in order to help the victims of the earthquake (Rojek 2014; Shemak 2014). Online campaigns, such as “Hope for Haiti Now” and “CNN” and which were reposted on the Red Cross account, became viral on social networking platforms (Facebook, Twitter) and called for citizens’ donations for the Haiti victims (Gross 2010). During the 2011 Arab Spring, countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Morocco, Algeria, Oman, and Bahrain, as well as Syria, Iran, and Lebanon, started to create action plans, organise movements, and post videos through social media tools and platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, which undoubtedly became powerful weapons for their salvation. One of the strongest and most well-known quotes illustrating the beneficent role of Web 2.0 tools came from an Arab Spring activist from Egypt, who announced that “we use Facebook to schedule our protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.” These words highlight the fact that abused civilians and indignant citizens embrace all sorts of technological inventions in order to voice their concerns. Furthermore, a Tunisian blogger, Sami Ben Gharbia, who operates the website Nawaat, reported that most Tunisian activists are used to collecting content from Facebook for translation and then putting it in context and reposting it on Twitter for journalists and others (Ghannam 2011). Social movements in Egypt such as “Kefaya,” “April 6th Youth,” and “We are all Khaled Said,” became popular through social media with the aim of expanding networks of unsatisfied Egyptians, enhancing relations between activists, globalising resources, and reaching opposition leaders (Lim 2012). Undoubtedly, social movements within the Arab world demonstrate ways in which communication flows nowadays and indicate how citizens are becoming a part of sociability and modernity in the contemporary era. On the contrary, public displays of political opinions on the social web in countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria in 2010–11 gave an opportunity for governments to shut down the network communication channels (DeNardis 2012; Grundberg 2015).

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An additional protest movement named “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS), that was developed in 2011 in New York City’s Wall Street at Zuccotti Park, also benefited by using different online resources in order to voice concerns regarding growing inequalities, economic crisis, and religious disparities in New York (Campbell, Torpey, and Turner 2015). People who viewed the movement through online resources and platforms had the ability to express support, understand the objectives of this reaction, and coordinate their own actions towards all the issues expressed in the specific movement (Creech 2014). As Sorkin (2012) argues, the movement soon turned into a “media frenzy,” with some comparing its importance to that of the Arab Spring which led to the overthrow of leaders in several Middle Eastern and African countries, spurred by social media. Furthermore, Islamist extremist terrorist attacks that first began in France in November 2015 also became known around the globe through social media tools. ISIS attacks in France and other European countries have contributed to both online and offline demonstrations, social interactions, and social movements towards Islamists’ violent actions (Hallet 2015). Terrorists’ images through YouTube, hashtags on Twitter, and prayers on Facebook have outlined the dark images of where the terrorist attacks took place and more. On the other hand, they have managed to create a more connected world. Whilst all this is happening in Europe, the United States has commenced a formation of social media accounts to battle ISIS misinformation, and spies are mapping ISIS networks in order to gain knowledge as to what they are revealing about themselves online (Singer and Brooking 2015). Similarly to the above cases, online communication tools and platforms have allowed global audiences to witness today’s migration crisis and the tragedies on Europe’s borders. Recently, refugees fleeing war-torn countries have gained much of their support from social media tools. Activists for migration issues in Europe have used online platforms to create groups in order to raise awareness and fund websites to launch wide-ranging campaigns. As Toor (2015) argues, while politicians continue to debate, some activists have taken matters into their own hands. In addition, social networking sites have also enhanced the opportunities for migrant communities to be organised online (McGregor and Siegel 2013). This means that online channels equally serve migrants’ interests by helping them gain information about their country of origin and that of their residence (Kissau 2012).

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6.4 Activists’ Role and the Technological Obstacles Discrimination in the sociological sense of the term refers to the fact that, in the digital world, inequalities exist not only between users of digital applications and elite groups but also between the users themselves. The maps of social networks mentioned before can differ widely from one user to another due to factors such as lack of knowledge, materials, and skills. These factors differentiate the opportunities between users and non-users of Web 2.0 tools (Kilduff and Tsai 2003). As Leurs (2015) stated, in offline life and across digital space, norms and decisions remain as certain dominant users who differ from others due to nationality, gender, ethnicity, and religion. Following this case point, the internet is far more likely to create “weak ties” and oppose what social movement theorists argue (Kavanaugh et al. 2005; Lewis, Gray, and Meierhenrich 2014; Malcolm 2010). From this point of view, the appearance of digital divides in the new communication era makes it harder for activists to take collective actions in real life. In recent literature records about digital applications and technological tools, one can notice a variety of theoretical approaches related to “technological hierarchies” (Gilbert 2010), gaps between “information haves” and “information have-nots” (Selwyn 2004), the production of “privileged identities” (Sims 2013), digital discriminations due to “religion” (Campbell 2012), distribution of blogs and hyperlinks to benefit a small number of “elite blogs” (Farrell 2012), and the power of “digital codes,” referring to preferences in what language to use within online networks (Sivitanidis and Shah 2011). The above structure demonstrates that various empirical studies have indicated and identified that the nature and the spirit of Web 2.0 tools for developing “two-way communication” (Waters and Lemanski 2011) and collective interactions have in many cases failed to fulfil the main purpose of its expansion. This means that the online channels are more likely to spread information than contribute to the development of social engagement and encourage dialogue and communication (Wonsun, Pang, and Kim 2015). The asymmetric effect of technology makes the work and vision of online activists difficult in collecting a large number of ordinary citizens through the internet and achieving rational and collective action in real life. For this reason, it could be assumed that social media and the rise of new technological tools and platforms have failed to transmit and spread quantitative activism in real life. As Morozov (2011) highlighted, new technologies and Web 2.0 tools are useful for networking with other

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activists and raising awareness among the general public, but it is more about communicating than mobilising revolution. This means that Web 2.0 tools have not extensively reached new groups of citizens. Although there is no doubt that users in the digital era are more creative today than in the past, the main idea here is to acknowledge the number of users who are active and recognise the degree of creativity that their actions and practices have in real life. Morozov (2009) argued that clicking, uploading, linking and the like on Facebook are not enough. All these are not essential actions. He personally named these online activities “slacktivism,” which means that they have zero impact in real life. This term has been used by many scholars, who have tried to explain the disconnection between awareness and action through the use of contemporary social media tools (Glenn 2015).

6.5 The Public Space in the Internet Age The expansion of the role of new technologies has also contributed to the modification of the obstacles between the public and the private sphere. The liberation of new technologies has helped citizens take control of important aspects and issues of life which were previously left to the autonomous regulation of the government and elite groups. In the new technological era, people are able to assert their rights and gain opportunities relating to freedom of expression as well as political and social benefits relating to the right of voicing concerns about important arguments happening in real life. Additionally, individuals from different social classes have the ability to gain access to education without necessarily having prior qualifications. Based on all of the above, important theorists such as Castells (2002) assert that we have now entered a new epoch which highlights individuals’ ability to transcend bureaucratic barriers in society. Moreover, in The Digital Divide (2001), Norris leaves an underlying message stating that the internet could facilitate opportunities for direct democracy. This means that, nowadays, chat groups, emails, and multi-user domains represent a new public space available to exchange ideas, debate issues, and mobilise opinions. In the same vein, we can also argue that the communication model of the public sphere, which is developed in the contemporary digital era, is also connected to Habermas’ (1992) past work The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: an Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Based on Habermas’ definition, the public sphere is the discursive space in which the participation of individuals in social and

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political issues takes place freely. From this perspective, new technologies have the ability to connect the public to democratic processes and allow for civic commons to emerge (Chadwick 2006, 25), as well as introduce a constantly reformed version of contemporary democracy (Marsh, Hart, and Tindall 2010, 326). Based on Papacharissi’s (2010) recent argument about democracy in the digital age, technologies help individuals to expand the scope of their social activity, modify the depth and structure of social networks, allow people to communicate while in motion, and rearrange boundaries between public and private spaces. Within this context, it is claimed that new technologies facilitate individuals to openly build their thoughts and take their own actions in society. Viewing the effects of new technologies, based on their beneficial role towards individuals’ lives, it can be acknowledged that these new technologies manage to create new public spaces and form new types of power relations in society. From this point of view, modern technologies serve as tools that manage to transform individuals into collective actors in an open space as well as balance hierarchies in societies.

Conclusion Considering the fact that more has to be learned about if and how the online world is connected to the offline world, this chapter has presented the new communication tools as dynamic mechanisms which enable citizens’ actions in the physical world, despite the obstacles and discrimination (lack of knowledge, material skills, access to the internet) that exist in the online world. As discussed, new technology has greatly influenced individuals’ lives and managed to provoke many changes within all spheres of society. Nevertheless, in order to understand the effects of social media and specifically the implications of Web 2.0 tools in daily life within modern societies and the contemporary era, it is critical to understand the sociality that these tools provide to all human beings that have access to them and can use them. By proving the sociality of the new technological tools, one will be able to simultaneously understand the opportunities which these ICT offer today, both towards individuals and society as a whole.

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with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. Hallet, N. 2015. Watch: Anti-Islam Demonstrators Take to the Streets of France. http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/11/15/watch-anti-islamdemonstrators-take-to-the-streets-of-france. Hindman, M. 2009. The Myth of Digital Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hoskins, A. 2009. “Digital Network Memory.” In Mediation, Remediation and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory, edited by A. Erll and A. Rigney, 91–108. Berlin: de Gruyter. Ibrahim, Y. 2009. “City under Siege: Narrating Mumbai through Non-stop Capture.” Culture Unbound 1: 385–99. Jewitt, R. 2009. “The Trouble with Twittering: Integrating Social Media into Mainstream News.” International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 5 (3): 231–44. Joyce, M. 2010. Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change. New York, Amsterdam: International Debate Education Association. —. 2011. The 7 Activist Users of Digital Technology: Popular Resistance in Egypt. http://www.nonviolentconflict.org/images/stories/webinars/joyce_webi nar.pdf. Kavanaugh, L., D. D. Reese, J. M. Carroll, and M. B. Rosson. 2005. “Weak Ties in Networked Communities.” The Information Society 21: 119–31. Kilduff, M and W. Tsai. 2003. Social Networks and Organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kissau, K. 2012. “Structuring Migrants’ Political Activities on the Internet: a TwoǦdimensional Approach.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 38 (9): 1381–1403. Kraut, R. and P. Resnick. 2012. Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lazakidou, A. 2012. Virtual Communities, Social Networks and Collaboration. New York: Springer. Leurs, K. 2015. Digital Passages: Migrant Youth 2.0. Diaspora, Gender and Youth Cultural Intersections. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Lewis, K., K. Gray, and J. Meierhenrich. 2014. “The Structure of Online Activism.” Sociological Science 1: 1–9.

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Lim, M. 2012. “Clicks, Cabs and Coffee Houses: Social Media and Oppositional Movements in Egypt 2004–2011.” Journal of Communication 62 (2): 231–48. Malcolm, G. 2010. “Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted.” The New Yorker 4: 42–9. Marsh, D., P. Hart, and K. Tindall. 2010. “Celebrity Politics: The Politics of the Late Modernity?” Political Studies Review 8 (3): 322–40. McGregor, E. and M. Siegel. 2013. Social Media and Migration Research. Maastricht Economic and Social Research institute on Innovation and Technology (UNUǦMERIT). McPherson, M., S. Lynn, and M. J. Cook. 2001. “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Neworks.” Annual Review of Sociology 27: 415– 44. Meier, P. 2011. “Do ‘Liberation Technologies’ Change the Balance of Power between Repressive States and Civil Society?” PhD Thesis, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Moody, J. and R. W. Douglas. 2003. “Structural Cohesion and Embeddedness: a Hierarchical Concept of Social Groups.” American Sociological Review 68 (1): 103–27. Monge, P. and S. N. Contractor. 2003. Theories of Communication Networks. New York: Oxford University Press. Morley, D. and K. Robins. 1995. Spaces and Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries. London: Routledge. Morozov, E. 2009. The Brave New World of Slacktivism. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104302141. —. 2011. The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. New York: Public Affairs. Murthy, D. 2013. Twitter: Social Communication in the Twitter Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Nicholas, A. C. and J. H. Fowler. 2009. Connected: The Surprising Power of our Social Networks and how they Shape our Lives. New York: Little Brown. Norris, P. 2001. Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Otte, E. and R. Rousseau. 2002. “Social Network Analysis: a Powerful Strategy, also for the Information Sciences.” Journal of Information Science 28 (6): 441–53. Papacharissi, A. Z. 2010. A Private Sphere: Democracy in a Digital Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Petray, L T. 2011. “Protest 2.0: Online Interactions and Aboriginal Activists.” Media, Culture and Society 33 (6): 923–40.

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Podolny, J. M. 2001. “Networks as the Pipes and Prisms of the Market.” American Journal of Sociology 107 (1): 33–60. Rojek, C. 2014. “Leaderless Organization, World Historical Events and their Contradictions: the ‘Burning Man City’ Case.” Cultural Sociology 8 (3): 351–64. Selwyn, N. 2004. “Reconsidering Political and Popular Understandings of the Digital Divide.” New Media and Society 6: 341–62. Shemak, A. 2014. “The Cartographic Dimensions of Humanitarianism: Mapping Refugee Spaces in Post-earthquake Haiti.” Cultural Dynamics 26 (3): 251–75. Shirky, C. 2008. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. New York: Penguin Books. Sims, C. 2013. “From Differentiated use to Differentiating Practices: Negotiating Legitimate Participation and the Production of Privileged Identities.” Information, Communication and Society 17 (6): 670–82. Singer, P. and E. Brooking. 2015. “Terror on Twitter: How Isis is Taking War to Social Media and Social Media is Fighting Back.” http://www.popsci.com/terror-on-twitter-how-isis-is-taking-war-tosocial-media. Sivitanidis, M and V. Shah. 2011. “The Era of Digital Activism.” Conference for Information Systems Applied Research CONISAR Proceedings Wilmington North Carolina, United States. Sorkin, R. A. 2012. “Occupy Wall Street: A Frenzy that Fizzled.” http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/occupy-wall-street-a-frenzythat-fizzled. Tarrow, S. 1994. Power in Movement: Collective Action, Social Movements and Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Thompson, B. J. 2000. Political Scandal: Power and Visibility in the Media Age. Cambridge: Blackwell. Toor, A. 2015. “Europe’s Refugee Crisis Spurs Online Activism but few Long Term Solutions: As Politicians Continue to Debate, Some Activists Have Taken Matters in to Their Own Hands.” http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/11/9311133/europe-refugee-crisisonline-activism-volunteer. Touraine, A. 1977. The Self-Production of Society. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Van Dijck, J. 2013. The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Waters, R. D and J. L. Lemanski. 2011. “Revisiting Strategic Communication’s Past to Understand the Present.” Corporate Communications, International Journal 16: 150–69.

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CHAPTER SEVEN CONNOTATIONS ON CASTELLS’ INTERNET GALAXY AUTHORED BY NEKTARIOS PARTASIDES

Abstract Capturing what has been extensively discussed in the book up to now, this chapter seeks to approach Castells’ philosophy on “The Internet Galaxy” (taking after the notion of “Gutenberg Galaxy”) in a general perspective, as well as elaborate on the digital divide in particular, which makes up an important part of his argument-building process. It is the author’s primary concern to present the internet as a complete and independent system, which attains complicated social features for human activity. In other words, this in-depth analysis suggests that the “online” realm begins as a story “of an extraordinary human adventure. It highlights people’s capacity to transcend institutional goals, overcome bureaucratic barriers, and subvert established values in the process of ushering in a new world” (Castells 2001, 9). It is critically discussed that the internet becomes a powerful communicative tool where “the network is the message,” paraphrasing thus McLuhan’s famous quote that “the medium is the message” (1964, 7). This is not to be understood as simply an element of significatory indices management, but rather as having multi-stage implications at various levels of social life. The impact of technological artefacts and their expanding effects have become basic human necessities in contemporary societies. Without these, social evolution—not in biological terms, but rather as an indicator of the process of continuous development—could not have been possible. That is why the scientific paradigms of Castells tend to build on the historic idea of the sociology of information, where “a key element of his analysis of the ‘informational mode of development’ is the conclusion that it represents a new mode of capitalist development that … has shifted from

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labour (and machines) to information” (Hassan 2008, 93–4). Information is the new format where, in contemporary societies, the fabric and patterns of knowledge are (re)synthesised or transmitted by traditional and new media and through miscellaneous levels of interaction and communication in human relations, thus establishing channels of semiological “data sets.” Even the systematisation of social structures and institutions is profoundly influenced by the seemingly unending possibilities of a symbiotic capacity between technological breakthroughs and bits of information. In order to stress such a correlation as being part of a digital culture, instead of bracketing the idea of information society, Castells invokes that the internet is a winding path under exploration, aiming to locate the network society and map net structures or institutions, new forms of social relations, innovative tools of capitalist economy, and the communication of political processes. Even the sense of personhood is disrupted or transformed, especially if we take into consideration the liquidity of human identities, in a highly globalised scenery. This due to the fact that, “to be at ease in the world a person requires inter alia a comfortable concept of who one is, where one belongs, and what one wants to become, together with a confidence that the surrounding society will respect and preserve these ways of being, belonging and becoming” (Scholte 2005, 304–5). Similarly, within the interdependent boundaries of history and of specific historical events following technological advancement, Castells caused personal identity—either individual or collective—to acquire a fundamental social meaning based on its idea of being. Therefore, the internet experience as a social phenomenon is viewed on the whole as a set of intertwined ongoing processes, whereas it may also be speculated that “people are made visible as pieces of digital data. They are individuals, but their individuality is rationalized and normalized in a system of signs that also homogenizes them as a mass and makes them interchangeable and manipulable as data” (Gere 2008, 42). That is why the notion of the Panopticon, initially developed by Jeremy Bentham,1 becomes in modernity and postmodernity a recurring theme of “quiet control.” This “occurs through the particular conditions that mould relations between those who produce the controlling effect (without necessarily intending it)

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Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) was a renowned English philosopher, who is best remembered for being the founder of utilitarianism. During his lifetime, he proposed the idea of the Panopticon to serve as a social reformation measure. Later, theorists such as the French social theorist and historian Michel Foucault elaborated on this concept to develop their own theories. In the case of Foucault, the Panopticon was perceived as a mode of coercive power exertion.

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and those who experience it (without necessarily seeing it as controlling) … control is viewed as a side-effect of both managerial activities and goals and our willingness to partake in offered choices” (Los 2006, 72).

7.1 The Internet as History Nonetheless, today the internet is often considered as a source of “providing a democratic forum for underground subcultures and organizations to communicate their desires, beliefs, and political agendas” (Jary and Jary 2005, 316), although this might not always be the case due to the justified fear of technology, information, and networks monopolisation by affluent international actors (e.g. states, conglomerates, etc.). In particular, Castells makes a distinction between how the internet functions across three major areas: (a) development of the internet and the fabrication of an internet culture that is evoking changes in the marketplace and interpersonal social relations; (b) political engagement and state operation within the value framework of civil society, personal freedom—both at an individual and a collective level—and the new media; and (c) the much argued and debated digital divide as a defining line on a macro-scale that functions as a hindrance against the information society by sustaining social inequalities worldwide. It is therefore underlined “that the Internet is a malleable technology, susceptible of being deeply modified by its social practice and leading to a whole range of potential social outcomes to be discovered by experience not proclaimed beforehand” (Castells 2001, 5). This statement records a fear that the challenges synthesised by the “Internet Galaxy” may, in fact, materialise as a latent lack of reflection on the social world in which we live, in terms of surveillance technologies. Depending on their level of malleability, for example, some writers consider these technologies to result in “a surveillance-oriented society based on ICT. Surveillance-oriented society usually targets the people who are excluded or marginalized and criminalizes them” (Ogura 2006, 292), in the way that a sovereign state may exercise coercive governance towards its citizens (e.g. ethnic/religious minorities, sub-cultural or disadvantaged groups, etc.). Others give voice to the perspective that the internet is a new habitat of political action, “a new virtual space which allows action, interaction and, crucially, exchange of resources to take place” (O’Hara and Stevens 2006, 33). In reality, this is a space that has yet to be clearly defined, or is difficult to define as to its real extension, since the contemporary social world in many aspects is completely different from the one left in the shadows of the past.

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The internet’s historical development, especially in recent years, has had a strong impact on the connotations of democracy and the capacity of citizenship within the perspective of civil society. As a matter of fact, countries like Japan, Denmark, Finland, and Malta have, to a certain degree, conjoined the internet to an e-governance model by invoking anticorruption policies. However, many governments in Europe and across the world pertain to keep control of the internet in order to investigate its uses and paths of communication. Yet, the information age is marked by an increasing democratic deficit, in many cases holding citizens entrapped in a superficial political rhetoric without “face-value.” This pinpoints the internet as an instrument of revising conventional democracy and superficial politics for the better. For example, “the internet could be used by citizens to watch their government, rather than by the government2 to watch its citizens. It could become an instrument of control, information, participation, and even decision-making from the bottom up” (Castells 2001, 185). It seems that there is an endless struggle between state and citizens to gain sovereignty over the internet providing global freedom and economic power; this, according to Castells, is the “electronic panopticon” (2001, 180) that even has the ability to acculturate users in adopting censorship. Interestingly enough, the state, alongside e-conglomerates, is also attempting to control the conduct of commerce as opposed to the libertarian view and ethos, merely for instituting an enterprise monopoly. Against these configurations is a whole kinesis of users and even technoelites, who promote software and technologies reflecting anonymity and libertarian prospects. In practice, this can be witnessed in relation to personal e-mail management, personal settings on social media (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram), and owned copyrights online (e.g. websites, blogs, etc.). After all, “the control of communication networks becomes the lever by which interests and values are transformed in guiding norms of human behaviour. This movement proceeds, as in previous historical contexts, in a contradictory manner. The internet is not an instrument of freedom, nor is it the weapon of one-sided domination” (Castells 2001, 164). In this—very much theoretical—exploratory approach, Castells begins by composing the historical traces of how the internet initially came into

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Castells describes the example of Singapore, which imposes restrictions via Internet Protocols (IP) or based on Domains (IDN), despite the fact that civil society relies on the internet to secure human rights and political polyphony. A characteristic of this is the YouTube engine whereby, due to legal implications, some countries are excluded from watching specific videos (e.g. song clips).

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existence before becoming widespread around the globe. As is widely known, today’s internet owes its existence to the foundation of the US military program ARPANET, which was a limited network established back in 1969 for the sharing of information resources. The whole project lasted until 1990 and was thereafter passed on by the US government to the National Science Foundation (NSF) to continue its operation, likewise opening new perspectives of connectivity and the use of an artificial web. Not much later, “with computer networking technology in the public domain, and telecommunications in full deregulation, NSF quickly proceeded with the privatization of the Internet … in the early 1990’s a number of internet service providers built their own networks and set up their own gateways on a commercial basis. Thereafter, the Internet grew rapidly as a global network of computer networks” (Castells 2001, 12), rapidly forging an expanding online cultural tradition, also responsible for new forms of personal expression for human beings. However, Castells prefers to keep his analysis on the internet and its surrounding topics grounded on secondary research data and figures, avoiding predictive structuring and most likely reaching any unsafe conclusions. Moreover, the historical part of the book extends to technological advancements that have been taking place, primarily in the computing and other related industries, by key figures such as Tim Berners-Lee or Marc Andreessen,3 also stressing the contribution of hackers4 in the early stages of the internet evolution. By contemporary digitalisation standards, one can safely support that “the Internet decisively undermined national sovereignty and state control … after all control of information has been the essence of state power throughout history …” (Castells 2001, 169), becoming a fact once information at large became openly public and relatively free to explore, transmit, or shape.

 3

Tim Berners-Lee is a renowned computer expert and a senior researcher, who is credited with the invention of the World Wide Web, which started off as a system to regulate and process information. Currently, he is the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium; a mechanism of monitoring the internet’s progress. Mark Andreesen is an entrepreneur and software engineer, best known for his contribution as the co-author of Mosaic, which was the first Web browser on the internet. 4 Today the term “hacker” is most likely understood as a negative one and related to cybercrime. However, hackers were initially involved with the Free Software Movement. Since then, hackers were the ones to design or build prototype browsers and online texting networks. The Free Software Movement is a social movement promoting the free dissemination of software programs (including copying) and similar goals that are essentially understood as securing the freedom of users and an “open” internet.

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7.2 Internet, Identity, and the Network Society For Castells, the internet fabricates a new type of societies where their predominantly central feature is the (re)creation and process of networking. Therefore, as the next step in establishing human communication and behavioural expression, the internet is no more or less than a neutral platform of digital possibilities. And these digital possibilities need to be deciphered in their socio-cultural sense, because “technological systems are socially produced. Social production is culturally informed. The Internet is no exception. The culture of the producers of the Internet shaped the medium” (Castells 2001, 36). These digital possibilities also hold advantages and disadvantages, which at first glance may be translated as a technological gap of inequalities between humans or, better, a digital divide between the technologically literate and the technologically illiterate. However, socio-digital inequalities concern far more deeply rooted differences in matters of age, gender, race, income, or social group, and have a cross-geographical dimension as well. This suggests that internet accessibility varies greatly by country, with the United States having the largest percentage of users, while at the other end in African countries like Uganda, users represent a mere fraction of the population. Even so, “within countries, there are also major spatial differences in the diffusion of Internet use. Urban areas come first, both in developed and developing countries, and rural areas and small towns considerably lag behind in their access to the new medium …” (Castells 2001, 212). This is inevitably leading to social discrepancies and the segmentation of people within such contexts. Castells suggests that in what he calls “the network society” there are several issues to be addressed. For example, in the contemporary world the internet does not comprise a commodity anymore; rather, it comprises a basic human need without which social exclusion is availed. Internet absence is translated to dissociation from the public sphere. It is, of course, discussed that such a problem may arise only if there is the political will to mostly empower and promote civil engagement. The digital divide does not uniquely concern access to the internet, which would be too simplistic a view. To this point, research data used by Castells evidently suggests that ethnic differences play a major role in terms of marginality outcomes. In the United States, for example, white students attain higher accessibility options in various places besides their homes. Based on this, “studies have also shown that African-Americans and Hispanics were less likely to own computers at home, and fewer access opportunities, translated into lower access to the Internet” (Castells

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2001, 253). Hence, the digital divide seems to resemble a pivot for reproducing limited access “checkpoints” by favouring a substantial “cultural elitism.” Despite any opportunities for the less privileged social layers or groups of people, this suggests the existence of subtle, institutionalised, or structural discrimination in terms of ethnic characteristics. It is yet argued that the internet, since before the new millennium and during the rise of consumerism, has been ubiquitously fashioning market-related activities and economic purposes, and, by “following a model of consumption and social organization anchored in the affluent groups of the most advanced Western societies, may have biased the practice of the Internet in specific ways …” (ibid., 256), stemming from differentiating socio-economic statuses and the affordance of connectivity media on a set of various “locales.” To this end, virtual communitarians present a social group arising from the need to gain technological solidarity and share the common benefits of its use as a response to the limited internet access, especially for people identifying with the lower layers of the social stratum. Because of this, “while the hacker culture provided the technological foundations of the Internet, the communitarian culture shaped its social forms, processes, and uses” (ibid., 53). An example of such use and social bonding is the Simputer,5 a type of personal computer (PC) which, as a contemporary paradigm, verifies how the network society operates. In this sense, social power is to be found and established not in social structures but in the very building blocks of networked interactivity and the geographical space of the internet. When Castells first wrote about the network society, he refined a vista where individual and collective human activities are organised around a technoculture or, better, around techno-digital networks. According to Castells, these techno-digital networks shape a contemporary designation of social units and labour force diversity, bypassing older forms of social organisation. Yet, the pertaining correlation between technological, social, or historical factors is not deterministic in nature. When it comes to social change, this occurs due to the interplay of society with ICT. However, he notes that “in the absence of social mobilization, and policies guided by the public interest, the splintering networks resulting from unfettered deregulation of telecommunications and the Internet, threaten to contribute

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Simputer (Simple, Inexpensive, Multilingual, Computer) is widely used in India and more particularly in rural or remote areas of the country, with Open Source Software (OSS). Likewise, this software can be altered or conceded to any person to meet their personal needs.

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to a new, and fundamental, social cleavage: the global digital divide” (Castells 2001, 241), which already poses a number of systemic perils. At the same time, online open interactivity substantiates an information sociality and is to some degree responsible for changing the traditional nature of male and female identities. It is worthwhile noting that the classic view of the man as the breadwinner and the woman as the homemaker has irreversibly shifted to an egalitarian mode of social roles, not only because of political action but also due to the content of information circulated, without saying that this has not operated the other way around. On top of that, understanding of individual behaviour and social relations has been moulded in a new image as networked individualism via the internet’s dimension. Moving a step further, the notion of online individualism could very well have introduced an ethos of “communication for many who feel somehow alienated from society, or even from their own bodies” (O’Hara and Stevens 2006, 20), offering the freedom to move beyond one’s self and adopt a multiverse of identities. The experience of a multiverse of identities alongside globalisation has often “created more room for the expression of elements of identity besides state nationhood, such as class, disability, gender, generation (especially youth), minority nationalities, profession, race, religion and sexual preference” (Scholte 2005, 305). At the same time, this very globalising multiverse notion has “undermined the security of identity through cultural destruction. Various life-worlds have succumbed to an invasion of electronic mass media, transplanetary tourism, global English, global consumerism, and other supra-territorial interventions that have contradicted local traditions” (ibid.).

7.3 The “Space of Flows” and the New Economy Cyberspace does not work counter-socially; instead, it is potentially meshing with human lives, presenting more opportunities and insecurities for online or offline encounters. Take social media for example; they are a digital way of eroding conventional boundaries of personal relations restricted in a certain space, “so people do not build their meaning in local societies … because they select their relationships on the basis of their affinities. Furthermore, spatial patterns do not tend to have a significant effect on sociability. A number of studies by urban sociologists … showed years ago that networks substitute for places such as supports of sociability both in suburbs and in cities” (Castells 2001, 126). Thus, real time and space are entering what is dubbed as the “space of flows,” a term coined to “reconceptualize new forms of spatial arrangements under the new

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technological paradigm” (Castells 1992, 146), including means of commuting. The logic behind such an idea is founded on the notion of a global city. Such types of cities in the social world (e.g. Tokyo, New York) stand as facilitators of the global economy and major centres of cosmopolitanism, aggravating enough socio-economic power capable of affecting world politics and decision-making processes. Once more, it is observed that while the internet breaks down physical barriers, “a new urban dualism is emerging … the space of flows that links places at a distance on the basis of their market value, their social selection, and their infrastructural superiority; the space of places that isolates people in their neighborhoods as a result of their diminished chances to access …” (Castells 2001, 240–1). In the same way, cities across the world, depending on their categorisation, operate as hubs that embed new models of adaptive business organisation, in contrast to older economy patterns. An entrepreneurial organisation before the digital era was inflexible, corresponding to a complex chain of command and vertical hierarchy structure. In contrast, a contemporary entrepreneurial organisation following more horizontal—yet larger—management levels offers chances for professional status, career-oriented labour, and lifelong self-taught education. An even more peculiar entrepreneurial paradigm is the federal organisation model proposition. If highlighted: The federal project organization might seem similar to the divisional form but there is one essential difference. Accountability, as well as responsibility, is delegated to the units. So, the federal organization involves not just decentralization (while the centre delegates tasks to the units while retaining control) but gives considerable autonomy to the smaller organizational units. (Harrison and Lock 2004, 78)

Furthermore, the internet within the frame of a networked society has led to the immigration of highly educated and technologically literate human capital from expanding to developed countries. At the same time, this has been contributing to increasing monetary flows while decreasing the load of work, thus enabling the economic system to utilise the internet as an entrepreneurial regulator when it comes to adjusting working relations and legal rights or obligations among employers and employees, in a New Economy capitalist cycle, partly because the capitalist cycle is driving a process which, as some authors stress, has well-wrought Export Processing Zones (EPZs).6 The importance of the EPZs is that, next to the internet,

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As referred to by Philip McMichael, these are rather geographical domains which mainly operate under the legal framework of regional or other international level agreements (e.g. ongoing treaties such as NAFTA and GATT) between states on

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“electronic products such as computers and digital telecommunications technology enable the global dispersion and coordination of production and circulation in other industries, from banking to textiles to automobiles” (McMichael 2008, 93). In any case, “the expansion of capitalism is no longer based primarily, as Marx thought it would be, either on the working class or the manufacture of material goods. Instead, telecommunications and computers are the basis of production” (Giddens 2006, 121). Taking this perspective into account, it seems that development is concurrently more and more dependent on an internet-based market. Actually, this is related to the enterprise transforming into, “a lean agency of economic activity, built around specific business projects … while the firm continues to be the unit of accumulation of capital, property rights (usually), and strategic management, business practice is performed by ad hoc networks” (Castells 2001, 67). Yet, even if this holds true for the First World’s developed societies, overall it does not apply to developing societies of the so-called Third World due to the interconnectivity of various market and economic forces on a global scale. The freedom that the entrepreneur wields via an internet-based economy weighs on the shoulders of both the professional and the working classes. It is not by chance that “key urban centers, globalized activities, and the highereducated social groups are being included in the Internet-based global networks, while most regions and most people are switched off” (Castells 2001, 262). Furthermore, less-developed societies, by definition, lack resources and sophisticated and meritocratic state mechanisms, thus failing to intercept conditions of social inequalities that lead to even worse prospects than primary poverty. So, as an intellectual appealing to a Marxist voice, in his works, Castells believes that technological development in any given society must synchronise with the “collective efforts of international organizations and countries which have a common interest in regulating international capitalism” (Giddens 2006, 122). An interesting case made by Castells is that the digital divide becomes a phenomenon, of which the consequences are profound, due to the fact that social inequalities predated the rise and expansion of cyberspace via the

 reducing trade obstacles, custom controls, and so on (e.g. through avoidance of double taxation). More importantly, these or other similar reciprocal interstate policies have contributed greatly in the promotion of outsourcing when it comes to conglomerates and transnational corporations. The EPZs are, however, heavily criticised for the creation of “enclaves.” For more on this see also McMichael (2008, 93–5).

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internet. He argues that the internet in comparison to other technological apparatuses and software has always been a “fluid medium,” constantly changing through its plethora of individual users. That is why “first users may have shaped the Internet for the latecomers, both in terms of content and of technology … As the technology of access becomes more complex with more sophisticated technologies (for example, graphic user interface), it may slow down the rate of adoption among less-educated groups” (Castells 2001, 255). Beyond the digital divide, Castells argues that there is another outlook for tracing inequalities related to the access to broadband services, such as ISDN, DSL, and so forth. Here again, a differentiated access can be observed, since only a small percentage of households can financially afford to have quality service providers in relation to maintaining the faster speeds, based on new internet protocols. Hence, the near future may prove to be a source of even greater sociocultural inequalities given that every next generation of children will be socialised and stimulated by dissimilar digital backgrounds. Closely connected to this aspect of the digital divide is a “knowledge gap” since, according to the author, the internet introduces a pioneering and indispensable educational method in schools for children to acquire useful information through retrieving and processing capacities that they will, later, manage effectively as adults in their professional and social spaces. Still, there seems to be a lack of adequate feasibility of the technological potential in improving human skills. The reasons or this are, firstly, because various schools in the public and private spheres presuppose students with different ethnic backgrounds, thus leaving: A substantial cleavage in terms of technology among schools. Secondly, Internet access requires better teachers, and yet the quality of the teachers … is unevenly distributed among schools. Thirdly, the differential pedagogy of schools contrasts those systems that focus on the intellectual and personal development of the child with those essentially preoccupied with the ability to maintain discipline, warehouse children, and process them through their graduation. (Castells 2001, 259)

Conclusion In conclusion, it must be emphasised that the internet is definitely here to stay, though it may transform into something other than a merely digital medium. But, “until we rebuild, both from the bottom up and from the top down, our institutions of governance and democracy, we will not be able

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to stand up to the fundamental challenges we are facing” (Castells 2001, 282). These transformational challenges are as innovative as ever before in human history, especially if combined with the internet as a medium of digital violence, as they usually aim to eliminate political and social stability and bring about civil unrest and ideological propagation; simply put, for economic reasons. Besides, “the internet has provided organised crime a new lease of life allowing it to evolve adapting to its uniqueness along the way. The way such groups are loosely and anonymously formulated, cutting down on expenses and attacking wider audiences for larger returns, mirrors the needs of terrorist organisations” (Calafato and Caruana 2015, 211). As indicated above, while time progresses marking the evolutionary spiral of technology, more complex threads than organised crime will constantly (re)generate. Electronic crime and terrorism, virus spreading, copyright infringements, online humanitarian relief donation, stalking, e-public services, e-banking, e-commerce, and much more digital-based phenomena suggest that the internet is a multifarious “cybernet language.” As such, an intangible expression not confined by any means in space and time, “because of its capacity to transcend the ‘here and now,’ language bridges different zones within the reality of everyday life and integrates them into a meaningful whole. The transcendences have special temporal and social dimensions” (Berger and Luckmann 1966, 39), thus bearing their own systemic implications, advantages, and drawbacks. If we are to decipher this “cybernet language,” then we should first keep in mind that it is a continuously built-up process, where “the construction, design, and maintenance of the internet will have correspondingly increasing political dimensions” (O’Hara and Stevens 2006, 27). Any predictions made there would definitely become outdated as there are so many issues involved, with the digital divide signifying how deeply the internet can positively or negatively affect social life and its trends. That is also why: The concept of the digital divide is understood as a multidimensional phenomenon encompassing three distinct aspects. The global divide refers to the divergence of internet access between industrialized and developing societies. The social divide concerns the gap between the information rich and poor in each nation. Finally, within the online community, the democratic divide signifies the difference between those who do and do not use the panoply of digital resources to engage, mobilize, and participate in public life. (Norris 2001, 4)

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Otherwise, we might not be able to comprehend the future evolution or the issues surrounding the internet, since the online cyberspace creates a whole universe that keeps expanding, a real simulation entering the earthly plane of space and time, forever changing these dimensions. As Castells states, “for as long as you want to live in society, at this time and this place, you will have to deal with the network society” (2001, 282); or, in the case of what his book argues, the inevitable impact of technology. In a social world that requires gaining technological momentum for securing a viable future and wielding digital tools with profound social power inclination, one needs to start with the internet.

Bibliography Berger, L. P. and T. Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor Books. Calafato, T. and P. Caruana. 2015. “Terrorism in Transition: The Implications of Cyber-Terrorism.” In Societies in Transition: Economic, Political and Security Transformations in Contemporary Europe, edited by S. Katsikides and P. I. Koktsidis. New York: Springer. Castells, M. 1992. The Informational City: Information Technology, Economic Restructuring, and the Urban Regional Process. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. —. 2001. The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business and Society. New York: Oxford University Press. Gere, C. 2008. Digital Culture. London: Reaktion Books. Giddens, A. 2006. Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Harrison, F. and D. Lock. 2004. Advanced Project Management: A Structured Approach. Aldershot: Gower. Hassan, R. 2008. The Information Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Jary, D. and J. Jary (eds.). 2005. Collins Internet Linked Dictionary of Sociology. Glasgow: Harper-Collins Publishers. Los, M. 2006. “Looking into the Future: Surveillance, Globalization and the Totalitarian Potential.” In Theorizing Surveillance: The Panopticon and Beyond, edited by D. Lyon. Devon: Willan Publishing. McLuhan, M. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. McMichael, P. 2008. Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective. California: Pine Forge Press. Norris P. 2001. Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Ogura, T. 2006. “Electronic Government and Surveillance-Oriented Society.” In Theorizing Surveillance: The Panopticon and Beyond, edited by D. Lyon. Devon: Willan Publishing. O’Hara, K. and D. Stevens. 2006. Inequality.Com: Power, Poverty and the Digital Divide. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. Scholte, A. J. 2005. Globalization: A Critical Introduction. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

CHAPTER EIGHT TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION, CREATIVE DESTRUCTION, AND THE FUTURE OF HUMAN LABOUR GEORGIA YIANGOU

Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday. —Steve Jobs

On July 7, 2016, during a protest rally against police-related violence in Dallas, a sniper went on a shooting spree killing five police officers and injuring many others. When the hideout of the sniper was located, the police sent a bomb disposal robot armed with explosives. The remotely guided robot eventually blew up, killing the perpetrator while protecting police officers from bodily harm. The idea of using robotics to protect police officers from such incidents has earned great respect due to its numerous capabilities, as well as generous subsidising by the American government. Despite its obvious benefits, increasing reliance on machines has alarmed various sceptics and neo-Luddites about the consequences of over-reliance on modern technology. Around the world, various jobs held by humans are being replaced with automated devices, giving the impression that human labour will eventually become obsolete. In 2011, President Obama attributed job disappearance to new technologies. There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers … You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don't go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you're using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate. (Roberts 2011)

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MIT professors Brynjolfsson and McAfee expressed similar concerns with respect to the relationship between modern technology and employment. They argued that companies preferred replacing humans with machines and predicted further use of digitalisation in the industry (2011). Technological scepticism is not a new phenomenon. Since the advent of the industrial revolution, people have been puzzled by the use and abuse of technological advancements. Increasing mechanisation at the factories threatened to render skilled workers unemployed, who in turn would often resort to violence in order to retain their position. One of these historical anti-technology initiatives involved groups of English textile workers, the Luddites, who destroyed industrial machinery as retribution for their impending replacement or wage reduction. In reality, these seeming technophobes were mere “labour strategists,” trying to advance the interests of their guilds by going on a rampage and causing labour chaos (Merchant 2014). The government responded by prohibiting industrial sabotage and sending the rioters to trial. Inspired by the movement of the Luddites, Marx explained in his seminal work Capital the relationship between the worker and the machine and their inevitable clash: The instrument of labour, when it takes the form of the machine, immediately becomes a competitor of the workman himself … So soon as the handling of this tool becomes the work of the machine, then, with the use value, the exchange value too, of the workman’s labour power vanishes … Therefore, it is with the advent of machinery that the workman for the first time brutally revolts against the instruments of labour. (2007, 471–2)

Hostility towards technology did not only concentrate on the working masses. Aristocrats despised the fruits of the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment. For them, technological advancements were a source of evil as they took away many of their privileges and threatened to replace them with a new wealthy social class; the industrialists (Wending 2009, 202). As with the Luddites, “technophobia” among the aristocrats was the natural reaction to a force capable of altering the very essence of society. During the second wave of industrialisation, the speed of technological change thoroughly swept society. Scientists such as Pasteur and Curie, as well as inventors like Tesla, paved the way for modern science. Due to the fast pace of change, people reacted with fear and anxiety. Characteristically, the Romantics expressed their contempt for technological evolution and longed for the “old, simple days.” Romanticism, a staunch enemy of rationalism, could not go hand-in-hand with science as it annihilated its

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fundamental worldview of excessive attachment and worship of nature. Poets, such as Wordsworth (1807), demonised the onset of new technological advancements as overly materialistic and emphasised nature’s superiority over man. This contrast between technology and nature has been widely embraced by philosophers such as Lukacs, who described the concept of reification of this uneasy relationship as a “second nature” to humans (Sheehan 2005). Undeterred by critics and sceptics, technology kept evolving, especially after the Second World War. Innovation brought about by the third Industrial Revolution had such a disruptive effect on society that it added to the existing paradigm shift of Ford’s assembly line. Disruptive innovation is an influential force capable of altering existing market products, services, and concepts, ultimately causing an unprecedented societal impact. The term was popularised by Clayton Christensen in his book “The Innovator’s Dilemma” (1997). In this book, Christensen describes disruptive innovation as the formation of new markets by creating new types of customers: Generally, disruptive innovations were technologically straightforward, consisting of off-the-shelf components put together in a product architecture that was often simpler than prior approaches. They offered less of what customers in established markets wanted and so could rarely be initially employed there. They offered a different package of attributes valued only in emerging markets remote from, and unimportant to, the mainstream. (Christensen 1997, 15)

Companies susceptible to the effects of disruptive innovation are usually profitable businesses that exhibit overreliance on customer care and tend to neglect the impact of innovation markets, underestimating their disruptive capabilities. According to Christensen, these companies prefer to follow the path of “sustaining innovation” which focuses on enhancing existing technologies. A great example of disruptive technology is the personal computer, as it created a market shift for computers away from costly and gigantic machines previously affordable only to large enterprises. Indeed, many businesses have faced the dilemma of continuity or change: play it safe by retaining the existing customer share or open up to innovation and explore new market opportunities? Innovators start at the bottom by offering competitive prices for their products. As their investments catch up with the leaders of the industry, their share of profit increases and they are able to enlarge their customer base. The outcome of this process is further refinement of the innovative products and industrialscale transformation. Notable examples of this industrial shift are the taxi

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giant Uber, the internet television network Netflix, and the online social networking service Facebook. Elaborating on Christensen’s concept, Zeleny focused his research on the disruptive force of high technology (2009). Products falling under the high-tech category are characterised as high-risk large profit investments and include, but are not limited to, advanced computer electronics. Exploration and accessibility of cutting-edge technology can lead to the formation of high-tech societies, leading to a comparative advantage. Such societies are Silicon Valley in California, institutions like DARPA and CERN, and technological universities like MIT. Disruptive high tech emerges through the Technology Support Net (TSN), which acts as a supporting mechanism and facilitates its development. Without a solid technology support net, any emerging technology is doomed to fail. When the technology matures, TSN acts as a protective barrier, limiting its usage and exploitation by outsiders. All TSNs are unique and specific to the related technology and they depend on the people involved in the making of the technology, thus forming a special social tech-TSN relationship (Zeleny and Blahova 2013). Technology is an evolving social organism; it constantly changes, overpowers, or perishes (Gassmann 2006). In effect, new high technologies threaten incumbent TSNs. Once the novice establishes its dominance over these networks, it switches to preservation mode and struggles against disruption. Electric cars can be seen as a TSN disruption technology, threatening to replace conventional, gas-dependent vehicles and their related network. More often than not, high-tech novelties are met with discontent. According to Zeleny (2009): This resistance is well understood on the part of active participants in the requisite TSN. The electric car will be resisted by gas station operators in the same way automated teller machines (ATMs) were resisted by bank tellers and automobiles by horsewhip makers. Technology does not qualitatively restructure the TSN and therefore will not be resisted and never has been resisted. Middle management resists business process reengineering because BPR represents a direct assault on the support net (coordinative hierarchy) they thrive on. Teamwork and multi-functionality is resisted by those whose TSN provides the comfort of narrow specialization and command-driven work.

In an era where knowledge is replacing traditional economic resources such as labour and capital, new technologies are constantly changing to accommodate this transformation by moving away from centralisation.

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Individuals are now in a position to make optimal use of knowledge and thus innovate. The very nature of technology is changing to facilitate global demand for knowledge and machines. However, the social relationship with technology remains complementary, as humans are not mere ancillary extensions, but rather guide the process of innovation. Disruptive innovative technologies are a form of creative destruction. Substituting one technological regime for another can lead to the collapse of industrial strongholds—such was the case with Xerox copiers, cassette tapes, and Polaroid instant cameras. When a form of technology is rendered obsolete, companies find it difficult to adapt and catch up with new trends. The term “creative destruction” was popularised by Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter in his book “Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy.” Creative destruction is the “process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one” (1994, 82–3). For Schumpeter, constant innovation is the essence of capitalism; through its disruptive power, capitalism maintains its leading position in the economic sphere, leading to growth and development, despite the forceful altering of the existing organisational and economic status quo. Schumpeter expressed fears as to whether this systemic alteration can sustain the institutions supporting the capitalist process: In breaking down the pre-capitalist framework of society, capitalism thus broke not only barriers that impeded its progress but also flying buttresses that prevented its collapse. That process, impressive in its relentless necessity, was not merely a matter of removing institutional deadwood, but of removing partners of the capitalist stratum, symbiosis with whom was an essential element of the capitalist schema. The capitalist process in much the same way in which it destroyed the institutional framework of feudal society also undermines its own. (1994, 139)

Relevant to the modern fast-paced world, companies require creative destruction to constantly rediscover themselves. Economic monopolies like Microsoft heavily invest in innovation to sustain the relative comparative advantage of their products. Other companies, like Yahoo, expanded their horizons by purchasing blogging leader Tumblr, a company that eventually cost the internet giant one billion dollars. Unfortunately, Yahoo could not sustain the company’s profitability and as a result lost its leading position in the industry and was acquired by Verizon in July 2016. Aside from companies, cities can also experience

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the effect of creative destruction. In 1999, Paige analysed the conditions of change in Manhattan, a process he labelled “creative destruction.” The evolution of the Parisian neighbourhood was the focus point of Wakeman’s research (2007). Finally, Hart and Milstein (1999) and Hartshorn et al. (2005) connected sustainable innovation to creative destruction in their analysis on sustainable industries. Inevitably, technological change can lead to creative as well as job destruction. Neo-Luddites and sceptics argue that unemployment is exacerbated by labour-saving technology and automation. In the 1930s, economist Lord Keynes coined the term “technological unemployment” to describe the phenomenon. Yale University scholar and technophobe Wendell Wallach is alarmed about the fast pace of job disappearance. Unemployment, caused by the sweeping wave of technological advancements, refers to the imbalance between job creation and destruction. The absence of governmental regulation exacerbates the effect of technological unemployment. Wallace warned of the negative externalities of new technology. Newly introduced technologies can lead to disastrous situations mainly due to complexity and unpredictability. In addition, the speed of techno-scientific change— the “tech storm”—renders governmental control impossible, causing technology to expand at intractable margins (2015). Economists argue that this is merely an old but persistent fallacy (Jerome 1934), exploited by ideologues who deplore the structural societal changes brought about by technological innovation. According to Edwards (2015), there is no link between the introduction of new technologies and the increase in the unemployment rate. Societies have adopted new technologies since the dawn of time, whereas unemployment remains outside the primary influence of technology as it tends to follow economic rules. Sceptics point to the low employment rate of tech companies like Google and Apple to support their thesis. In reality, tech companies create interrelated spontaneous job markets like advertisers. Thus, job destruction can have a temporary effect on employment whilst being compensatory in the long run by creating new jobs. Technology enables companies to lower operational costs and thus create new improved products. As a result, new jobs emerge. Economist Russell Roberts (2011) explains this as a process of innovation: Why do new jobs get created? When it gets cheaper to make food and clothing, there are more resources and people available to create new

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products that didn't exist before. Fifty years ago, the computer industry was tiny. It was able to expand because we no longer had to have so many workers connecting telephone calls. So many job descriptions exist today that didn't even exist 15 or 20 years ago. That's only possible when technology makes workers more productive.

As a new age of technological change dawns, new capabilities will replace current paradigms. Industrie 4.0, the Internet of Things, and cyberphysical systems have already given us a brief taste of what is to come. More jobs will be destroyed and new ones will emerge. The cycle will continue and innovation will magically shift the social fabric to new heights. As the late Steve Jobs pointed out, “innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

Bibliography Brynjolfsson, E., and A. McAfee. 2011. Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution Is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy. Lexington, MA: Digital Frontier Press Christensen, C. 1997. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press Edwards, J. 2015. “This Idea that Technology Destroys Jobs is Garbage.” Business Insider. http://uk.businessinsider.com/new-technology-doesnot-destroy-jobs-or-create-unemplyoment-2015-6. Gassmann, O. 2006. “Opening up the Innovation Process: Towards an Agenda.” Research and Development Management 36 (3): 223–366. Hart, S. and M. Milstein. 1999. “Global Sustainability and the Creative Destruction of Industries.” Sloan Management Review 41 (1): 23–33. Hartshorn, J., M. Maher, J. Crooks, R. Stahl, and Z. Bond. 2005. “Creative Destruction: Building Toward Sustainability.” Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering 32 (1): 170–80. Jerome, H. 1934. “Mechanization in Industry.” National Bureau of Economic Research. http://econpapers.repec.org/bookchap/nbrnberbk/jero34-1.htm. Marx, K. [1867] 2007. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. I, Part I: The Process of Capitalist Production. New York: Cosimo Classics. Merchant, B. 2014. “You’ve got Luddites all Wrong.” Vice –The Motherboard. http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/luddites-definitionwrong-labor-technophobe.

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Page, M. 1999. The Creative Destruction of Manhattan, 1900–1940. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press Roberts, R. 2011. “Obama vs. ATMs: Why Technology Doesn’t Destroy Jobs.” The Wall Street Journal. http://www.wsj.com/articles /SB10001424052702304070104576399704275939640 Schumpeter, J. [1942] 1994. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. New York: Routledge Sheehan, S. 2005. “The Nature of Technology: Changing Concepts of Technology in the Early Twentieth Century.” Icon 11: 1–15. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23787019. Wakeman, R. 2007. “Fascinating Les Halles.” French Politics, Culture & Society 25 (2): 46–72. Wallach, W. 2015. A Dangerous Master: How to Keep Technology from Slipping Beyond our Control. New York: Basic Books Wending, A. 2009. Karl Marx on Technology and Alienation. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave-Macmillan Wordsworth, W. 1807. Poems, in two volumes. London: Longman Zeleny, M. 2009. “Technology and High Technology: Support Net and Barriers to Innovation.” Advanced Management Systems 1 (1): 8–21. Zeleny, M. and M. Blahova. 2013. “Effective Strategic Action: Exploring Synergy Sources of European and Asian Management Systems.” Human Systems Management. 32 (3): 150–70.