Week+One+Lecture


 * CCT 205**
 * Professors G. Benick & M. Jones**
 * Digital Innovation and**
 * Cultural Transformation**

• Are the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) revolutionary and transformative? • What impacts or effects are they having on the social, economic and cultural spheres? • How do we think about the nature of such technological developments? Is technological change automatic, natural and logical or can we shape technology as it shapes us?
 * Key Questions**

• New media are information and communication technologies & their associated social contexts, incorporating – Devices that enable and extend our abilities to communicate with particular focus on new interactive, multimedia communication systems & convergence of advanced telecommunications, computer & broadcasting networks – Communication activities or practices we use to develop those devices – Social arrangements or organizations that form around the devices and practices
 * Focus on the New Media**

• Belief that technologies have an overwhelming and inevitable power to drive human interaction and social change • Focus on the the effects or impacts of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on users, organizations, society • Science is driver of technological innovation resulting in improvements in society & progress
 * Thinking about Technology: Technological Determinism #1**

• Belief that ICTs bring transformative shifts in society • Technology seen as independent causal factor • Technological imperative combines with idea that people react to and accommodate technological change, but do not try to reverse or redirect it
 * Technological Determinism &**
 * the Information Age #2**

• Ian Angell, New Barbarian Manifesto (2000) • “A ‘brave new world is being forced upon unsuspecting societies by advances in information technology.” • Technological advances happen automatically & have a life of their own • There is a logic to technological advances which is outside our control
 * Technological Determinism #3**

• Technologies are continuously remade by what users do with them • New media technologies both shape and are shaped by their social, economic and cultural contexts • The shaping is “recombinant”= products of continuous hybridization of both existing technologies and innovations in interconnected technical and institutional frameworks -- Social shaping technology perspective -- not technology pushing, it is US!
 * Social Shaping Perspective**
 * (Lievrouw, 2002)**

• ICTs are not determined by an independent, inevitable causality or evolutionary process unique to technology • Designers, users, regulators take advantage of the current state of technological knowledge and recombine technologies and new knowledge to achieve their particular goals -- "Recombinant"- products continuously hybridize (look at mixes, different structures and influence) -- She focuses on how we use technology The Information Society:** • Y. Masuda – Managing in the Information Society (1990) – Technology drives transformation from industrial to information society -- Technology determinist • C. Leadbeater – Living on Thin Air (1999) – Positive about role of knowledge/ human capital in Information Society; success=new ideas, constant innovation, enterprise -- Entreprises and innovation is the drive to technology • Toffler et al. The Information Society (1996) – New technology creates dynamic competition & challenges to old industries and technologies
 * Recombinant/hybrid metaphor**
 * Lievrouw, 2002**
 * Advocates**

• L. Winner – The Information Society (1996) – Technological changes not novel; false promises of technology • Frank Webster – Times of Technoculture (1999) – Darker side – information gathering, documentation, & surveillance = more administrative efficiency, control & maintenance of power -- Control and surveillance -- We get more control by computers?
 * The Information Society:**
 * Critics**

• Whether everyone has access to the technologies or not, the reach is ubiquitous • Most sectors are dependent on ICT systems for record keeping, monitoring and transmitting information – Banking, education, law enforcement, military defence, health care, politics -- Ubitiquous = Everywhere
 * The Reach of ICTs: Ubiquitous**

• More traditional mass media technologies based on large scale production & distribution of messages directed from a few media centres (major cities) out to ‘mass’ audiences • Smooth & rapid diffusion of information from top of the hierarchy out to the periphery • Little or no capacity for messages to go the other way = no feedback loop
 * Shift in Meaning of Network: Then**

• Network now means interconnection in which many points or nodes (persons, groups, machines, collections of information, organizations) may be created or abandoned on an as needed basis at any location in the system • Any node can be either a sender or receiver of messages or both
 * Point to Point Network: Now**

-- Additional notes taken from lecture

__**Key Concepts:**__ 1. ICT 2. Technological Determinism 3. Information Society