Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T05:38:33.212Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Policies for a new world or the emperor's new clothes? The Information Society

from Part Three - Policy paradigms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2013

Paula Chakravartty
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Katharine Sarikakis
Affiliation:
University of Vienna
Get access

Summary

Third-generation mobile phones, broadband connections, wireless applications, cybercommunities, cyberwars, cybersex, e-commerce, e-democracy, e-learning: this is some of the language that has come to describe the era of accelerated tele/communications and transactions. These terms have not escaped from a science fiction movie, although some of them have their origins in science fiction novels, but from the consultative papers of ‘think tanks’ and government policy documents. They have become part of everyday advertising, policy, newspeak and even casual conversation, in global cities across the North-South divide. These are the terms of a particular form of capitalist economic organization of social relations that adheres to two overarching qualities of the new Information Age: speed and universality. CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates's Business @ the Speed of Thought (1999) not only embodies the ideas and policies that characterize the era of the Information Society and the Knowledge Economy, it also constitutes a manual for the direction of future technological development, policy, economic organization and even social relations. Speed, instant capital transaction across geographic nodes that would have taken hours and days to cross through physical means, almost ‘cancels’ the concept of time as an obstacle or expense for transnational companies. Spatial universality is also a new achievement for the global enterprises of the twenty-first century. Telecommunications have enabled those connected to premium translocal networks the liquidation of time/space. The beneficiaries of the transcendence of time/space are to be found among transnational corporations that can do business literally around the clock across the globe.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×