Synopses & Reviews
This book offers a fresh interpretation of the Internet and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and challenges the ways in which the Internet and ICT have been understood in academia and popular culture. The author, Marcus Leaning, explains that our views of technology are based in older, historic views of traditional media, as well as in contemporary issues in Western society and his book offers a groundbreaking new perspective on the Internets global effects.
Review
"This book is definitely worth a read…it is well structured, well written, and extremely informative."
-Online Information Review
Synopsis
An exciting challenge to how the internet and ICT have been understood in academia and popular culture and shows how important 'cultural' assumptions are in how we understand technology. The Internet, Power and Society argues that the way in which we view technology such as the internet owes much to older, historic views of the media and to 'issues' in contemporary society. Such perspectives are deeply rooted in a Western view of technology and the book concludes by offering a radically new perspective as to how the internet can change a society that is truly global in its application.
- An original approach to ICT and the Internet that challenges the orthodoxy
- Very topical subject matter - the book addresses many of the issues regarded of key import in high level political discussions (such as the World Summit on the Information Society); the current understanding of ICT and how to move beyond this interpretation
- An approach that moves the debate forward and offers a truly global way of understanding the Internet and ICT
About the Author
Marcus Leaning is Senior Lecturer in Digital Media at the University of Wales, UK.
Table of Contents
Introduction
PART 1 UNDERSTANDING THE INTERNET: Theories of technology and society; The idea of the internet; The internet, politics and the public sphere; Politics and the role of the internet
PART 2 THE INTERNET AND SOCIETY: Social form and media potency - the processes of modernisation; The internet and society: reconsidering the link; Conclusion