Society on the Line: Information Politics in the Digital Age

by William H. Dutton

with the assistance of Malcolm Peltu and essays by Margaret Bruce, Martin Cave, James Cornford, Rod Coombs, Nicholas Garnham, Andrew Gillespie, John Goddard, Leslie Haddon, David Knights, Dale Littler, Donald MacKenzie, Robin Mansell, lan Miles, Vincent Porter, Charles Raab, Ranald Richardson, Roger Silverstone, David Stout, John Taylor, Juliet Webster, Steve Woolgar, Robin Williams, and Hugh Wilmott.

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Overview

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.

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 1996), 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