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[RRE]Society on the Line
``` [I have edited and formatted this message from several files that Bill sent me. So even though he wrote all the text, I'm responsible for any bad editing choices.]
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Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 13:04:40 -0800 (PST)
From: William H Dutton
Society on the Line: Information Politics in the Digital Age
Written and Edited by William H. Dutton
With the assistance of Malcolm Peltu and with essays by Margaret Bruce, Martin Cave, James Cornford, Rod Coombs, Nicholas Garnham, Andrew Gillespie, Leslie Haddon, David Knights, Dale Littler, Donald MacKenzie, Robin Mansell, Ian Miles, Vincent Porter, Charles Raab, Ranald Richardson, Roger Silverstone, David Stout, John Taylor, Juliet Webster, Robin Williams, Hugh Willmott, and Steve Woolgar
Oxford University Press 1998
Society on the Line presents a new way of thinking about the social and technical choices of the digital age, and explains how they leverage access to information, people, services, and technologies themselves -- the "shaping of tele-access". Clear. Informed. Balanced. The author's analysis of the information society ranges from the household, through the workplace and business organization, to the media and new information providers, to government policies on information, communication, and economic strategy. The author shows how issues of misinformation, privacy, censorship, and information inequality; the Internet and Web; information and organizational design; and community, business and public policy are rooted in questions of managing, regulating, and otherwise shaping tele-access.
The main text is fully supported by case studies, boxed information, and essays written by leading international experts. This accessible synthesis of over a decade of research offers an invaluable guide to the information politics of the digital age.
Early Reactions to Bill Dutton's Society on the Line
"society on the Line is a very useful book that organizes and analyses clearly and cogently a substantial body of relevant documentation. It will become required reading in universities around the world."
--Manuel Castells, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley; author of The Rise of the Network Society "...a fascinating perspective...which provokes fresh consideration of the issues. By showing us how to identify the games being played in the on-line environment, Dutton helps us focus on the pressure points for achieving respect for our information. Privacy need not be at risk as ICTs are exploited. The more we understand the drivers for change, the more we can influence the information handling culture which is emerging."
--Elizabeth France, UK Data Protection Registrar
`... a profound and fascinating exploration of the dominant question of our time: does information technology determine history, or does society or at least political economy hold the reins of time? ... All who have a humanistic interest in technology, the future, or both should read this book."
--Reed Hunt, Senior Advisor on Information Industries at McKinsey & Company; former Chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission
`... cuts through the hype and jargon to spell out clearly how information and communications technologies affect our lives .... This is an essential book for communications profesinals and students, as well as for all those who want a better understanding of the technical, political, and social dimensions of the information revolution."
--Walter S. Baer, The Rand Corporation
`As we enter "the information age", we urgently need to be armed with considered values for assesssing its impact and to frame people- serving policies. In this remarkably integrative book, William Dutton advances the notion of "access" to fill this bill. In his hands, "access" becomes both a multi-dimensional and a highly versatile idea ... Dutton's analysis deserves to be widely read and debated."
--Jay G. Blumler, Emeritus Professor, University of Leeds and University of Maryland; former President of the International Communication Association
A Synthesis of Research Based on Britain's Economic and Social Research Council Programme on Information and Communication Technologies (PICT).
Preface
This book presents a new way of thinking about the social and economic implications of the revolution in information and communication technologies (ICTs). It offers a critical perspective on information politics in the digital age -- the way social and technical choices about ICTs influence access to information, people, services, and technologies themselves. I have called this process "the shaping of tele-access" and this book shows how this concept challenges prevailing theoretical perspectives on the information and communication revolution. It also proposes a framework for policy and practice, for the shaping of tele-access is directly connected to choices in everyday life, to strategies in the workplace, to the application of ICTs in government, education, and the household, and to issues of public policy.
My focus on the social shaping of tele-access evolved from an effort to synthesize a decade of research undertaken by the UK's Programme on Information and Communication Technologies (PICT). Supported by grants from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of Britain, PICT was one of the most ambitious social research initiatives in Europe to be focused on the role of ICTs in social and economic development (see Appendix).
PICT involved numerous social scientists from different disciplines -- geographers, management scientists, political-economists, and sociologists -- at six university research centres across the UK. They published dozens of books and hundreds of articles based on their PICT research, contributing many new concepts and themes to the literature, and influencing contemporary understanding of the social shaping, and impacts of ICTs.
The wide range and significance of PICT research led to a programme- wide synthesis during the final years of the programme. I joined PICT as its national director at the launch of this final synthesis phase. One of my major responsibilities was to determine if the programme as a whole added up to more than the sum of its parts. This goal led me on a search for an integrative concept or theme that could encapsulate the central contributions across the full range of PICT research.
I needed an all-embracing concept that would achieve three related objectives. First, it was important to synthesize and extend all the most important themes of PICT research, and not focus on one particular stream of work. Secondly, I wanted a concept that applied well to the full range of ICTs, from business networks to the mass media, as well as the many different arenas of ICT adoption and use. These arenas, most of which were covered by the PICT programme, include such different social contexts as the business and management use of ICTs, and the ways ICTs are used in government, education, and the household. Finally, it was critical that this concept should signify the opportunities as well as the dangers -- the benefits as well as the risks -- of the development and diffusion of ICTs.
I found this all-embracing theme in the shaping of tele-access. Having worked with this idea, I believe it can help integrate the findings of research on ICTs across the social sciences generally. Many social and economic issues -- ranging from issues of information inequality, privacy, and censorship, to the role of the Internet, and information superhighways in economic development -- can be better understood if viewed as products of a process that is quite literally reshaping social and economic access in this digital age of new ICTs.
The main narrative of this book is my personal synthesis of research and focuses one the process of shaping tele-access. The meaning of "tele-access" is explained in Chapter 1. The remaining chapters elaborate this perspective on the politics of information, distinguish it from other concepts guiding research on ICTs, and discuss the factors shaping tele-access and its significance in a variety of arenas, including the production of ICTs, their use in business and industry, in households and communities, and in public policy.
You will find within this main narrative a set of original essays contributed by other PICT researchers. Their analytical approach to challenging commonly accepted assumptions about the information society generated many creative ideas, and I have included these essays to expand on the contributions of my colleagues, and also to show how my understanding of the technical and social processes shaping tele-access is built on their work.
This book is one of two companion volumes. The first, entitled Information and Communication Technologies -- Visions and Realities (Dutton 1996a) pools the key themes of major research projects, lectures, and forums of the PICT programme. This book also draws extensively on PICT as well as my own research, but goes beyond the first volume to offer a new perspective on social and policy choices of the coming digital age.
Contents
Part I. A New Perspective on the Information Revolution
Introduction: Tele-Access -- The Outcome of an Ecology of Games
2 Information Politics, Technology, and Society
Part II. Social Dimensions of the Technical: Social, Cultural, and Political Processes Shaping Tele-Access
3 Technologies Shaping Tele-Access: A Force for Social Change
4 The Social Shaping of Tele-Access: Inventing our Futures
Part III. Tele-Access in Business, Management, and Work
5 The Reach and Boundaries of Business and Management:
Virtual Organizations
6 Redesigning the Workplace: Challenging Geographical and Cultural Constraints on Access
Part IV. Public Access in Politics, Governance, and Education
7 Digital Democracy: Electronic Access to Politics and Services
8 Knowledge Access: Reconfiguring Users and Producers in Teaching and Research
Part V. The Virtual City: Shaping Access in Everyday Life
9 The Intelligent Household: For Richer or Poorer
10 Wiring the Global Village: Shaping Access to Audiences
Part VI. Industrial Strategies and Public Policies
11 Regulating Access: Broadening the Policy Debate
12 The Politics of Tele-Access: Social Relations in a Network Society
Appendix The Programme on Information and Communication Technologies (PICT)
List of Essays
2.1. Technological Determinism DONALD MACKENZIE 2.2. The Social Shaping of Technology ROBIN WILLIAMS 2.3. The Certainty Trough DONALD MACKENZIE 3.1. Barriers to Convergence NICHOLAS GARNHAM 3.2. ICT Innovations in Services IAN MILES 3.3. Information Politics: The Study of Communicative Power NICHOLAS GARNHAM 4.1. Interpreting Conceptions of the "Networked Organization" DAVID KNIGHTS AND HUGH WILLMOTT 4.2. Home Informatics: New Consumer Technologies IAN MILES 5.1. Information Systems and Management Control ROD COOMBS 5.2. Collaborative Product Development MARGARET BRUCE AND DALE LITTLER 6.1. Home-Based Telework LESLIE HADDON AND ROGER SILVERSTONE 6.2. The Impact of Remote Work on Employment Location and Work Processes RANALD RICHARDSON AND ANDREW GILLESPIE 6.3. Women's Access to ICT-related Work JULIET WEBSTER 7.1. The Information Polity JOHN TAYLOR 7.2. Protecting Privacy CHARLES RAAB 9.1. Domesticating ICTs ROGER SILVERSTONE 9.2. Gender and Domestication of the Home Computer LESLIE HADDON 9.3. The Geography of Network Access JAMES CORNFORD AND ANDREW GILLESPIE 10.1. The Bias of Information Infrastructures ROBIN MANSELL 11.1. The Interlocking Pieces of the Information Economy ROBIN MANSELL 11.2. Competition in Telecommunications MARTIN CAVE 11.3. Intellectual Property Rights VINCENT PORTER 12.1. ICTs and Technology Foresight DAVID STOUT 12.2. Analytic Scepticism STEVE WOOLGAR
Contributors
Margaret Bruce is a Professor of Marketing and Design Management in the Manchester School of Management. Her PICT research focused on the strategic marketing of new technology.
Martin Cave is Professor of Economics and Vice-Principal at Brunel University and a consultant to the UK's Office of Telecommunications. Professor Cave directed several PICT projects.
Rod Coombs is a Professor in the Manchester School of Management at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and Director of the Centre for Research on Organisations, Management and Technical Change (CROMTEC), which was one of the PICT Centres.
James Cornford is a Senior Research Associate at Newcastle University's Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS).
William Dutton is a Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California. He was the Director of PICT and a visiting professor at Brunel University during PICT's last phase.
Nicholas Garnham is Professor of Media Studies and Director of the Centre for Communication and Information Studies (CCIS) at the University of Westminster, from where he coordinated Westminster's PICT research.
Andrew Gillespie is Professor of Communications Geography and Executive Director of the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Leslie G. Haddon is Senior Research Fellow in the Graduate Research Centre in Culture and Communication at the University of Sussex.
David Knights is Professor of Organizational Analysis at the Manchester School of Management at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology and Deputy Director of UMIST-PICT research.
Dale Littler is Professor of Marketing at the Manchester School of Management at UMIST and a principal investigator on UMIST-PICT projects.
Donald MacKenzie is a Professor in the Sociology Department at Edinburgh University and was a principal investigator on projects at the Edinburgh PICT centre.
Robin Mansell is Director of the Centre for Information and Communication Technologies (CICT) within Sussex University's Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), where she is Professor of Information and Communication Technology Policy.
Ian Miles is Director of the Programme of Policy Research in Engineering, Science and Technology (PREST) at the University of Manchester. He was formerly a Senior Fellow at the Sussex University PICT Centre.
Malcolm Peltu is an editorial consultant and IT journalist who has edited many research-based publications aimed at a non-academic audience.
Vincent Porter is Professor of Mass Communications and Director of the Doctoral Programme in the Centre for Communication and Information Studies at the University of Westminster.
Charles Raab is Reader in Politics at the University of Edinburgh, where he has conducted research on privacy and data protection.
Ranald Richardson is a Research Associate at Newcastle University's Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS).
Roger Silverstone is Professor of Media Studies at the University of Sussex and Director of the Graduate Research Centre in Culture and Communication. He was the first Director of the Centre for Research into Innovation, Culture and Technology (CRICT) at Brunel University, which was one of the PICT Centres.
David Stout directed the Centre for Business Strategy at the London Business School and chaired the PICT Committee.
John Taylor is a Professor and Director of Research in the Business Faculty, Department of Management, Glasgow Caledonian University. He was a Research Fellow at the Newcastle PICT Centre.
Juliet Webster is Researcher at The Tavistock Institute. She was a Senior Research Fellow at the Edinburgh PICT Centre.
Robin Williams is a Reader in the Research Centre for Social Sciences (RCSS) and coordinator of PICT and the Science and Technology Studies research network at Edinburgh University.
Hugh Willmott is Professor of Organizational Analysis in the Manchester School of Management at UMIST and was a joint principle investigator for PICT.
Steve Woolgar is Professor of Sociology and Head of the Department of Human Sciences at Brunel University, where he directs the Centre for Research into Innovation, Culture, and Technology (CRICT).
Chapter 1. Introduction: Tele-Access -- The Outcome of an Ecology of Games
Advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) are among the defining technological transformations of the late twentieth century (Castells 1996; Dyson 1997). The widespread fascination with personal computers (PCs), video games, interactive TV, cell phones, the Internet, electronic payment systems, and a multitude of other ICTs often focuses on the technical ingenuity of their designs and their potential capabilities. These innovatory dimensions can be fascinating. But a narrow focus on technical advances overlooks the ways in which ICTs are also redefining your social world.
Popular conceptions of the "information society" -- like the virtual society, or the cyberculture -- capture the social significance of the ICT revolution. While these concepts emphasize the increasing centrality of ICTs to society, they fail to provide insights about the role of ICTs in social change. Moreover, if taken literally, many prevailing conceptions of the information society are misleading. They suggest that information is a new economic and social resource, when there is nothing new about the importance of information (Robins 1992; Castells 1996). What is new is how you get access to information, and to much more.
Tele-Access
ICTs are social in that they define how people do things, such as how they get information, work, communicate, and are educated. A child may now find information via the World Wide Web rather than through a book. A family can keep in touch with one another by e-mail as well as by telephone and travel. A secretary's technology is no longer limited to a typewriter, telephone, and copier, but includes office equipment and document management systems which might be globally networked. A manager could send e-mail instead of distributing a memo and get news over the Internet rather than from the newspaper or TV. Students of all ages, in all parts of the world, could ask questions of major world figures in any field -- whether educators, celebrities, or experts -- via multimedia information superhighways.
Dimensions of Tele-Access
ICTs not only shape how people do things; they also shape and reshape what, when, and where things are done and what you know, who you know, and what you consume. Most importantly, ICTs shape access to:
1. Information: ICTs not only change the way you and others get information, but also alter the whole corpus of what you know and the information available to you and others at any given time and place. ICTs play a role in making some people information rich and others comparatively information poor.
2. People: ICTs not only provide new ways to communicate with others, but also influence whom you meet, talk to, stay in touch with, work with, and get to know. ICTs can connect or isolate people.
3. Services: ICTs do more than simply change the way we consume products and services. They also influence what products and services we consume and whom we purchase them from. ICTs can render obsolete a local business or an entire industry, but also create a new business or industry.
4. Technologies: Access to particular technologies -- equipment, knowhow, and techniques -- shapes access to other technologies as ICTs interconnect and depend on one another in many ways. For instance, the Internet can provide access to vast numbers of computers around the world, yet you need a computer and other ICTs (such as a telephone line or cable connection) to access the Internet.
The activities involved in these four dimensions (see Table 1.1) are all concerned with what I call "tele-access", a concept which highlights how ICTs involve much more than just the information processing or telecommunications transmission with which they are more usually associated. Tele-access covers the multi-faceted interactions available through ICTs and how they shape access to information, people, services, and technology.
Just consider what routinely happens when a person looks for information about a topic on the Web. Abstracts are more likely to be found than full articles, and recent material rather than historical sources. Results of searches for a topic will be presented in a priority order, but the work of leading world authorities might be found side by side with the unsubstantiated views of a crank. As the number of search "hits" could run into hundreds or thousands, the user is most likely to have access choices identified by the search tool used on the Web, or limited by a filter employed by an Internet service provider.
Similar processes will affect the information you locate, the people you meet, the services you choose, and the other ICTs you use. All are features of tele-access, and serve to shape our access -- both electronically mediated and unmediated -- to social and economic resouces.
There are many other ways in which ICTs can reduce, screen, and change the content and flow of information -- by accident or design (Danziger et al. 1982; Garnham 1994a). ICTs do not just provide access to more people, many of whom who you wouldn't be in touch with otherwise: they change patterns of interaction between people, communities, and organizations. As a substitute for face to face communication, for example, ICTs can provide benefits such as reducing travel, saving time, and extending the geography of human community. They may replace valuable human contact with a much less rewarding form of communication, or permit communication among people who might never have an opportunity to meet face to face. Tele-access encompasses all these substitutions, enhancements, and much more, by highlighting how technological, economic, social, and political factors are reshuffling society, influencing who's in and who's left out.
Social Choices Shaping Tele-Access
Technological change is just one factor that enables or constrains tele-access. Global electronic networks may make it easier to communicate around the world, but new technologies in themselves spell neither greater freedom nor stricter control. Instead, tele-access is shaped most directly by a history of separate but interdependent social choices made by a multitude of actors.
ICTs will be of most significance in social and economic developments in their role of opening, closing, regulating, distorting, and otherwise filtering tele-access. The consequences of such changes will be as profound and far-reaching as the way in which the development of the printing press in Europe in the fifteenth century allowed control of the written word to move away from scribes and priests to a much wider group of people involved in printing, translating, and distributing texts (Eisenstadt 1980). Understanding tele-access processes and their policy implications is therefore vital to each person, community, and private and public organization. Everyone in society has a vested interest in helping to shape tele-access.
Social, Economic, and Policy Implications
The "ICT revolution" has been perceived and described in a variety of ways since it was first identified in the 1960s. For instance, in the early 1970s journalist Ralph Lee Smith (1972) saw innovations in areas such as interactive cable television as a way of providing an "electronic communications highway" for a "wired nation" in which all kinds of services might be supplied to businesses and households. Others have seen interactive TV as an "electronic nightmare" in which there will be increased surveillance and invasions of personal privacy (Weicklin 1979). Many more have dismissed the social and economic significance of ICTs (for example, Traber 1986; Winston 1989).
By the 1990s, many influential protagonists argued that new information superhighways would help realize Marshall McLuhan's vision of a "global village" (Gore 1991), as well as providing the tools for managers to reinvent government and re-engineer business for the twenty-first century (Hammer and Champy 1993). Others saw the new networks and services on the Internet and the Web as creating a virtual society that would undermine the cohesion of real communities, destroy jobs, and fail to achieve the promises of the most zealous promoters of ICTs (Slouka 1995; Stoll 1995).
Such views of technology either as an "unalloyed blessing", or an "unmitigated curse", or "not worthy of special notice" oversimplify its role and fail to provide an understanding of the "actual mechanism by which technology leads to social change" (Mesthene 1969). The continuing debate between utopian and dystopian perspectives illuminates the social and economic issues at stake, but it does not inform policy and practice. Understanding the forces shaping tele-access addresses broad social, economic, and political issues, and also assists in the effective application of ICTs in a variety of contexts.
Factors Affecting Social and Technical Choices
The outcomes of ICT innovations are not random or unstructured. For example, patterns of tele-access, such as the distribution of information haves and have-nots, are enabled and constrained by the social and economic contexts within which relevant actors at all levels make choices (Robins 1992; Dutton 1996a). PICT research highlighted five major sets of factors that shape the design and use of ICTs and tele-access (Box 1.1):
1. Economic Resources and Constraints: The size, wealth, and vitality of nations, companies, and other actors place major constraints on the development and use of ICTs in all arenas of activity (Dutton, Blumler, et al. 1987). For example, the options open to a "high achiever, high-tech teleworker" differ from those of the "low-income, low-tech lone parent" (Silverstone 1996: 225-8). Likewise, the strategies of the dominant telephone companies will differ from those of new entrants to the communication industry (Mansell 1993). Tele-access can improve or undermine the economic vitality of a nation or household, as well as enhancing or exacerbating socioeconomic disparities.
2. ICT Paradigms and Practices: Ideas have great power (Derthick and Quirk 1985; Robins 1992; Dutton 1996a). They can become the foundation of powerful belief systems or "paradigms" which create a way of interpreting reality that is very different to that perceived by people whose thinking is embedded in another paradigm. The very idea that we work in a virtual organization or live in an information society can influence public policy and the behaviour of individuals, such as the career a student chooses to pursue. At the same time, experience and knowledge about ICTs can influence or even create a paradigm shift (Freeman 1996a, b). Concepts such as the "value of competition", the emergence of a "virtual society", and the building of "information superhighways", for instance, have been important factors in shaping social and political choices in the design and implementation of ICTs, irrespective of their descriptive validity (Bloomfield et al. 1997). ICT designs can bias social choices by making some avenues more economically, culturally, or socially rational than others (Woolgar 1996). Technologies make a difference, even if they do not determine social outcomes.
3. Conceptions and Responses of Users: ICTs are designed with a more or less well founded conception of the user in mind. Users -- whether workers, consumers, managers, citizens, or audiences -- can also play an active role in shaping the implications of ICTs in ways that would not be expected by simply extrapolating from the perceived potential of the technology. Silverstone (see Silverstone Essay #9.1, Chapter 9) illustrates this in terms of the "domestication" of ICTs -- showing how households shape ICTs to fit their own needs and interests. Many innovative technological and market failures can also be understood as a consequence of having a weak conception of the user (Woolgar 1996).
4. Geography of Space and Place: One of the most prominent attributes of ICTs is the relative ease with which the new electronic media can overcome constraints of time and distance. Yet rather than undermining the importance of space and place as had been previously claimed, ICTs might make geography matter more (Goddard and Richardson 1996). As ICTs make location decisions more flexible, other criteria, such as facilitating access to skilled or low cost labour, can take an even higher priority in how a firm chooses to locate particular jobs and functions (see Chapter 6).
5. Institutional Arrangements and Public Policy: Technical, social, and organizational innovation are interdependent (Molina 1989; Fincham et al. 1994; Freeman 1996a; Bloomfield et al. 1997). The design of an organization influences the use of ICTs, since managers often implement systems that promise to strengthen existing structures and processes. However, ICTs also create a variety of new options for radically redesigning organizations and interactions between organizations, such as the "virtual organization" composed of separate private firms or public agencies that employ ICTs to enable them to act as if they were part of the same real unit. At a broader societal level, patterns of tele-access, such as the gaps between the information rich and poor, are strongly affected by institutional arrangements and policies in areas like telecommunications regulation, standards, copyright, public-service broadcasting, and education. Nevertheless, public policy at local, national, and international levels can be responsive to technological change, as evidenced in a variety of policy initiatives aimed at supporting advanced information infrastructures -- notably the information superhighway. By showing how these and other social factors shape and are shaped by tele-access, this book seeks to inform the social, personal, business, technical, and other choices that can have both immediate and cumulative long-range consequences on most areas of modern life.
The Roots of Tele-Access
Most popular descriptions of the ICT revolution have celebrated the abundance of information or new communication channels it brings. They have generally ignored how ICTs affect control over access to a much broader array of activities and resources. However, the value of focusing on tele-access was recognized decades ago by Marshall McLuhan (1964) in his seminal book Understanding Media, where he coined the phrase "the medium is the message" to encapsulate the argument that a communication medium, like television, shapes the way in which you come into contact with information.
The importance of ICTs in shaping tele-access to information, people, services, and technology is analogous to the impact on physical access created by transportation innovations such as railroads, freeways, and air flight. In the US, for example, it is often easier and cheaper to fly from one coast to another than to much closer locations. In a city, mass transit makes it easier to travel to some areas than to others. Likewise, access is affected by physical structures, such as a building with many stairways that makes it inaccessible by wheelchair.
Physical shapers of access will remain important. But they are changing at a much slower rate than the electronic technologies affecting tele-access, such as mobile cellular phones, multimedia computers, satellite and cable TV, and the continuously expanding Web. Furthermore, ICTs are providing more opportunities -- for better or worse -- to substitute electronic for physical access by moving "bits rather than atoms" (Negroponte 1995: 11-20). As a UK government panel on the future of transportation has argued, ICTs offer increasingly attractive alternatives to physical mobility as a means of undertaking "work, shopping, leisure, or commerce" (OST 1995: 9).
Moving Beyond Computers
When computers first began to emerge as a significant technology in the 1960s, they were treated primarily as calculators. Only a few individuals understood them to be far more general-purpose information processing systems. For example, the convergence of computing and telecommunications was defined as Information Technology (IT) as early as the 1950s (Leavitt and Whisler 1958), even though the significance of this concept was not generally understood until the 1980s. As McLuhan (1964: 9) noted:
When IBM discovered that it was not in the business of making office equipment or business machines, but that it was in the business of processing information, then it began to navigate with a clear vision.
As the changing business fortunes of IBM have shown, computers and other ICTs are concerned with much more than just information. More recently, the focus has switched to communications, with many "IT" suppliers beginning to claim that they are really "in the communication business" (Gates 1995). A character in the novel Disclosure by Michael Crichton (1994: 224-5) gets close to the truth when he says of a modem company that grew into a multimedia firm: "Your business is not hardware. Your business is communications. Your business is access to information." The founders of PICT showed much foresight in the early 1980s by talking about "ICT" rather than "IT". But even adding the C for Communication is not enough.
In fact, neither information nor communication tells the whole tele-access story. They are but two dimensions to a much larger and more profound picture. Lost in Information
Information has always been a key factor in social and industrial processes. What is new is the way in which we come into the presence of information. This helps to explain why the so-called "information revolution' that began in the 1960s has not actually led to a more "informed" society. British social scientist John Bessant (1984: 176) has captured this irony well in his observation: It is interesting to speculate as to how much information can actually be gleaned from the mass of data collected in research; it seems to be a characteristic of the "information society" that we actually know relatively little about it.
We can become "lost in information", as the poet T. S. Eliot (1934) once said. Growing concerns over the lack of real information, the prevalence of misinformation, and increasing problems with information overload should therefore not be viewed as aberrations within an information society. These failures are actually caused by inadequate regulation of access to information -- the incorrect treatment of all information as being equal and benign. Decades ago, this was recognized in organizations, where computer-based information systems were first applied (Box 1.2). The Internet and World Wide Web has made the need to manage information more apparent to the public at large.
Information is not like air. You might view access to it as a public good or an inalienable right. But the power of ICTs lies not just in creating greater access to information, but in creating the opportunity for you to have more control over access, and over the terms of access. You might wish to block an obscene phone call, choose your own TV programmes, and not be forced to use particular service providers. But tele-access is also a political process of conflict and negotiation over who gets access to whom, how, and when.
Policy and practice that promotes the notion of an "accessible society" in which anyone could get access to you any place, any time, at any instant holds out the prospect of many exciting new ways of working, playing, and living. But it could also lead to George Orwell's (1949) nightmare scenario described in Nineteen Eighty-Four -- a surveillance society in which Big Brother would always be watching you. Tele-access is a double-edged sword.
Tele-Access: The Big Picture
The concept of tele-access helps to illuminate the role of ICTs in a wide range of contexts across many disciplines, such as social relations between:
insiders and outsiders; senders and receivers, for example the mass media and their audiences; the geographical centre and periphery; elites and masses; or the government and the public; producers and consumers; and employees and supervisors.
It also helps to define the meaning of a minimum level of "universal service" for those in telecommunications. Universal service is of particular relevance to ICT infrastructures. It has long been recognized as a vital principle (Anderson et al. 1995; Thomas 1995) which was relatively easy to define when telecommunications involved just the Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS). But the vast variety of new ICT capabilities has led to much contemporary debate about defining what universal should mean in an age of multimedia, multi- service ICT capabilities. However, focusing too narrowly on the question of universal access to ICT network infrastructures promotes the false assumption that access to technologies per se is good, thus marginalizing other complex issues of tele-access, such as the need to filter information.
Universal access, however, is just one aspect of tele-access. As can be seen from Table 1.2, the issues of tele-access encompass subjects that range well beyond the inequalities of the information have/have-not divide to encompass such issues as individuals coping with infoglut, new forms of democratic participation, radical innovation in work processes and organizational structures, and far-reaching challenges to national and international economic policy making.
The Outcome of an Ecology of Games
Analyses of tele-access, and the forces shaping it, provide a uniquely coherent framework to connect the many apparently disparate issues that have been associated with the ICT revolution (Table 1.2). The decisions of individuals and organizations about these issues are interrelated facets of a single, broad "ecology of choices" that ultimately shapes tele-access.
This concept represents an important step towards enhancing our understanding of why ICTs are not on a predetermined technical path that will redefine tele-access in predictable ways. ICTs could be deployed to make society as a whole, and the individuals and groups within it, more accessible or more isolated. They will enable people to get access or to close it off. For example, the answering machine can be used to keep in better touch with one's friends, or to screen unwanted calls and avoid contact with some people. How these outcomes unfold will be products of countless numbers of both strategic and everyday decisions made by a multitude of actors in many separate arenas: small businesses, shops, households, large organizations, complete industries, schools and universities, hospitals and libraries, international trade conferences -- in fact, in almost every area of social and economic activity. Each of these arenas could be seen as involving a set of players following an established set of traditions, rules and disciplines -- defined by the individuals and their unique contexts -- that comprise a "game". It is the outcome of this "ecology of games" (Dutton 1992a, 1995) which ultimately shapes tele-access (Box 1.3).
The metaphor of a game is a useful way of viewing actors as purposive players in a variety of games defined by their own rules and assumptions in trying to achieve particular goals (Dutton 1992a). Every actor is involved in one or more "games" within the broader "ecology" that shapes the design and development of ICTs and public policy. The metaphor does not imply that all actors are simply self-interested. The goals of many actors could be to further their conception of the public interest or a corporation's profits. But in order to understand the development of a large system, such as an organization's ICT arrangements, the broad ecology of games governing the actions of key players must be understood.
In some arenas, the choices made by powerful individuals, groups, or companies can determine the tele-access opportunities available to other players. For example, a growing number of companies use electronic data interchange (EDI) networks to link themselves directly with suppliers and retailers for automatic ordering and just-in-time (JIT) delivery. If suppliers are not "on line", even if they are across the street, they are virtually invisible. More generally, the costs of keeping pace with state-of-the-practice in business communications can be a barrier for the many small businesses who cannot afford advanced services or equipment and do not have the expertise to support the development and maintenance of sophisticated ICT-based applications.
The perspective of an ecology of games admits that a variety of motives -- other than improving tele-access -- will drive choices about ICTs. For instance, you might buy a computer to make it cheaper and easier to work at home. But this decision could also affect your access to new entertainment opportunities and electronic discussion groups. If tele-access becomes a more explicit objective in ICT developments, then this ecology might evolve in more desirable ways. In challenging many previous assumptions about the coming information society and offering alternative perspectives, the tele-access concept also helps us to move towards a more coherent view of the social, political, cultural, geographical, and technical factors that decisively shape the outcomes of the revolution in ICTs.
About This Book
The remainder of this book explores the ways in which tele-access unfolds as a consequence of the specific decisions by individuals and groups acting in a variety of arenas through an ecology games. This provides a new way of getting to grips with the theoretical and practical specifics of the social choices shaping tele-access, in addition to the way they are pieced together to build a bigger picture of the social and economic implications of ICTs. The book synthesizes the most valuable findings of PICT, as well as my own and other research on the myriad of topics it encompasses, using examples from every sector of the economy.
This chapter has defined the nature and significance of tele-access. Chapter 2 explains how this concept differs from alternative perspectives on ICTs that have underpinned public debate and social science research. It provides an overview and background to the different ways in which social scientists think about advances in ICTs and shows how the ecology of games provides a framework that is more suited to the task of understanding the interdependent processes shaping tele-access.
Part II (Chapters 3 and 4) introduces the interactions of technical and social processes that shape tele-access. Chapter 3 looks at how ICTs are designed and produced in ways that can structure tele-access, while Chapter 4 focuses on the many ways in which social, cultural, and economic factors shape not only the design of technologies, but also the ways individuals and organizations decide to reject them or embed them in their everyday lives.
Part III (Chapters 5 and 6) looks at ways ICTs have been adopted and used in management and business and also in the workplace. These chapters show how tele-access is being used to redesign organizations and the workplace, but they also demonstrate how tele-access is becoming more critical to the competitiveness of the firm and the employment prospects of an individual. Chapter 5 focuses on business and industry, particularly the manner in which the private sector has used ICTs in strategic ways to restructure access to skilled personnel, labour, and markets. Chapter 6 shifts to a discussion of how these tele-access strategies are reshaping the workplace, including the geography of the firm.
Part IV turns to issues of public access, focusing on government and education. Chapter 7 looks at technological change in governments that could have major implications on relations between governments and the public at large, which are particularly acute with respect to political participation, personal privacy, and freedom of expression. Chapter 8 deals with what I call knowledge access because it looks specifically at ICTs in education, research, and scientific communication, where traditional distinctions between the producers and users of knowledge are being challenged.
Part V moves to the local community and the household, the topic of Chapter 9. This chapter moves to the more widespread use and consumption of ICT products and services by the public at large, focusing on the important role that consumers play in "domesticating" ICTs -- fitting them into their everyday routines and family values. Chapter 10 extends this analysis by looking at how various information and communication industries seek to wire the household and business. The outcomes of growing competition to wire communities has major consequences for industry, but also for the public at large. Debates over the technical advantages of cable versus satellite versus telephone systems can mask the social implications of ICTs.
Part VI (Chapters 11 and 12) extends the analysis by addressing the major policy issues and processes shaping tele-access. Chapter 11 moves to industrial and economic development policies that have dramatically changed the broad ecology of information and communication policy. This chapter shows how many key information and communication policy issues, such as privacy, freedom of expression, and standards, can all be understood as tele-access policies. Viewed in this way, ICT policies could be less fragmented, contradictory, and hamstrung by conflicting values and interests.
Finally, Chapter 12 concludes with a discussion of the politics of tele-access. Personal and societal outcomes of the continued advance and diffusion of ICTs can be qualitatively improved by people who recognize the processes shaping tele-access and the central importance that access will play in building a more open and inclusive society. How people choose to shape tele-access through the design and use of ICTs will have far-reaching implications on who is brought into the centre, and who is left out at the margins of society.
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