Download Extract from “IT, Politics and Society” course handbook

Extract from “IT, Politics and Society” course handbook.
The following comprises two chapters from an ACOM course handbook written in 2003
and used for teaching until 2005. It was intended to serve as a “textbook” for on campus
students, a complement to in-class, small-group teaching, and not as a distance learning
resource. It is provided here as an example of how the narrative form of teaching can, in
part, be used to inform about ICT’s impact on the world.
All content here is © Drew Whitworth and the University of Leeds, except for images.
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The role of information technology
This option could have been called “Computers, Politics and Society” without really having to
change the content. However, strictly, computers comprise only one aspect of the mutuallydependent, interconnecting technologies with which we pass digital information around the globe.
IT also includes communications technologies 1 such as the telephone network, and
communications satellites. It includes the software, or programs, with which all this is run; in many
ways computer programs are “virtual machines” (see Gelernter 1998, p. 21). Finally it also covers
storage devices such as compact disks and peripheral technologies such as computer monitors
and printers, which can be collectively referred to as hardware.
But it’s not as simple as that. IT has come to mean computing technology, but remember that
information has been around since (and possibly before) humans started communicating with
each other. So, therefore, have information technologies. The pen is one, so are the printing
press and the radio. Each of these technologies has, in profound ways, changed the ways we
communicate with one another: and in the end, they’ve changed
the ways we live.
The printing press (pictured), for instance, had a huge impact on
society. Prior to its invention books were rare and precious things;
unsurprising, considering that illuminated manuscripts absorbed
years of painstaking work. But their value, and the church’s control
over the process (as the manuscripts were mainly produced in
monasteries), meant that the spread of knowledge was extremely
limited. Nor were the books at all critical of the established
(religious) order.
Once books could be printed, however, new ideas could spread
more easily. There was still limited literacy, but those who could
read and write could now reach wider audiences, if they’d access to
a press. Hill, in his book The World Turned Upside Down (1972, pp.
161-2), directly links the use of the printing press to the spread of Protestantism, as it provided a
channel for the dissemination of radical ideas. Ideas could “leak” past the efforts of the
established church to control them, particularly between the years 1641-1660 when there was a
breakdown of the strict censorship which characterised the time. (Bear this in mind for later, when
we think about “gatekeepers” who indirectly control access to information.)
The idea that the technologies we build shape the lives we lead is known as technological
determinism (Mackenzie and Wajcman, 1985). Given examples like this, it seems valid. But is it?
What about the other way around—does society not shape the technologies we build? The
boulevards of Paris are the way they are, for instance, specifically because their breadth and
straightness made it difficult to mount political demonstrations along them. The Long Island
Expressway in New York was deliberately built with low bridges to keep out buses and the low
You sometimes see the abbreviation ICT, for information and communication technologies—a useful expansion as it
reminds us how closely linked these two concepts are. I will stick with IT, however.
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income visitors who used them (see Winner, 1985 for all these). Satellite technology was
developed so that the US and USSR could try and militarise space during the Cold War: their
later use to transmit, say, the World Cup into British pubs is a side-effect. Is this not true then:
Technology  Society
…with it being hard to tell which has prominence? In a “chicken and egg” situation, the best way
out is always to realise they are both the same thing. Another example: “do newspapers shape
public opinion, or merely respond to it?”. The answer is both. Technology is both a product, and a
transformer, of social, political and economic relations and IT is no different.
Let us ask, then, the vital question: Why do computers—the most modern and now, it seems,
definitive information technology—exist in the forms and places that they do? Recall what was
said above about information’s increasing economic importance, and companies’ desire to
maintain an edge over rivals. The faster and better you process information, the more costeffective this is: you can cope with more customers, for instance, or you’ll have better -targeted
marketing. And of course it is not just companies that want competitive advantages, but
governments too. Espionage and war have driven the development of computers just as strongly
as business: in fact, more so in the first instance. The first real, successful application of
computer technology was the breaking of the German Enigma codes in WWII.
However, for much of their early history, computers were “solutions in search of problems”
(Joseph Weizenbaum, quoted in Roszak, 1986, p.51). They were also very expensive. Both
factors restricted their use; until the mid-1970s you were unlikely to actually use a computer
unless you were an academic (probably in the “hard” sciences) or worked for a big business
which could afford to invest in this new technology. You certainly wouldn’t find computers in
schools; Microsoft was just a gleam in Bill Gates’ eye; and there was no need for you to learn “IT
skills” to improve your prospects of getting a half-decent job.

You’ve enrolled on an ACOM module, so presumably felt the need to learn more IT skills (or learn
more about IT). How do you actually feel about computers, though? Have you felt pressured to
learn these skills, or do you find them interesting in their own right? Are computers everyday
objects or do they still retain some mystique?
Obviously this situation did not last. Computers spread out of these specialist niches and into
every corner of life. This was for several reasons:

improvements in the hardware and a parallel reduction of cost. In 1965, Gordon Moore, a
founder of Intel, prophesised that computing power would double every 18 months. “Moore’s
Law” has proved true, so far. The computing power on the Apollo lunar modules was, at a
conservative estimate, about 1/3000th—or 0.00033%—that of the average 2003 home PC.
This incredible increase in technological sophistication allowed the computer chip to move
out of specialised niches and turn up everywhere, from cars to Christmas cards (those cards
that play annoying little carols when you open them will have a chip).

improvements in interfaces. Computers wouldn’t be everywhere if we still had to “write”
programs by soldering a circuit board, or punching holes in cards. The development of
simpler interfaces like Windows enabled computers to become an everyday technology.

improvements in applications. In the “domestic” market, the big ones are the World Wide
Web and e-mail. These are now very familiar, but we should remember that until 1996 they
barely received a mention in the national press (despite the Internet’s having existed since
1969, e-mail since the early 1970s, and the World Wide Web in its current form since 1991) 2.
For the business side of this, see chapter 6.
All have contributed to the spread of IT and the emergence of an enormous IT industry over the
last 30 years. Computers appear in many homes and almost every office. Bookshops now have
special sections full of manuals and self-help guides. IT has achieved such penetration that being
unwilling or unable to engage with it, in many different spheres, is now seen as almost “abnormal”
(see Selwyn, 2003, p. 8 for instance). Familiarity with IT is now almost a necessity for individuals
and for workforces. But this didn’t happen by some historical accident. PCs were marketed to us
in the same way microwave ovens were in the 1980s, and TVs, cars, and so on were in earlier
times. The “dot com bubble” which peaked in 1999 arose because investors were desperate to
grab pieces of the Internet and its immediate future, as they saw it as a means by which
incredible market expansion could occur. There is money to be made from IT, in the supply of
hardware, software, self-help guides, consultancy, education… there is also money to be made
through the use of IT.
The global information economy
How, then, has the spread of IT reshaped the world economy?
To think that IT’s economic impact
is limited to “e-commerce” web
sites (such as Amazon, left) is
perhaps tempting. But Web
spending still forms only a small
proportion of consumer spending
and, in any case, an economy,
particularly on the global scale, is
far more than what we see as
shoppers. Nevertheless something like Amazon is a good place
to start thinking about how
products and services can change
through IT.
What have been most significantly negated here are limitations imposed by space and time. Say I
wanted to buy a book from a “normal” shop. This requires my being in the place where that
bookshop is located, at a time when it is open. Mail-order catalogues or book clubs obviously
offered an alternative, but until the rapid diffusion of the Web, most people accepted that they
couldn’t buy a book at 11:30 p.m. from home, no matter how strong the urge.
With e-commerce sites, of course, this is now possible. You can also buy train tickets, sports
merchandise, your weekly groceries and computers themselves; you name it, you can probably
buy it online. That’s made changes to the way we live our lives but is not in itself the subject of
this chapter. What does matter is how these are representative of the emergence of a global

Note that it is not the aim of this module to discuss in any detail the history and development of the Net, except
where directly relevant. For more information, you could look at the printed course booklet for the ACOM module,
ACOM1770: Web Design and Technology. Randall’s book (1997) is also useful, if rather technical.
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information network via which space and time almost disappear as limitations on action.
Before the 20th century, information’s spread from place to place occurred at the speed of the
fastest available transport. Pheidippides ran 26 miles from Marathon to Athens to deliver news of
a battle; those who were less fit rode horses. Horses can’t swim, though, and their endurance is
limited. In the era of sailing ships it could therefore take months for news to travel from, say,
Britain to India, or across America via the Pony Express. Although ships became faster, and
trains, cars and ultimately aeroplanes brought more and more of the planet within the reach of the
everyday person, having to travel to deliver information places an unavoidable delay on it.
Long-distance communications, however, remove that delay entirely3. And once further technical
limitations (e.g. the speed, cost and number of calls that could be handled) were ironed out, it
became not only possible, but commonplace, to hold a conversation with someone physically
elsewhere. It is extraordinary, when you think hard about it, that you can simply pick up a
telephone and talk not only to someone in North America, but a specific person over there.
Through the Internet, the global communications network can not only transmit voices but all
sorts of information, immediately. Gleick (1999, pp. 65-76) points out how the phrase real time,
which is a common figure of speech to us, only came into widespread use in the last fifteen to
twenty years. We use it to describe situations in which a representation or simulation of an event
takes place at the same rate or—more significantly—at the same instant as the event. Evening
World Cup matches in Japan can be experienced by lunchtime pubgoers in Britain. Politicians
can react (and indeed are expected to react) immediately to events in distant countries.
Stockbrokers constantly monitor computer screens as billions of pounds change hand every
minute; an hour’s, never mind a week’s, delay can cost millions. And when the Stock Exchange
or LIFFE (the London International Financial Futures Exchange—pictured below) have to close
for the night, Wall Street is open, and then Tokyo. No financial institution now keeps staff in only
one of these three venues. They are all global, 24-hour operations. It is now feasible to run a
business, or a production process, from London or New York and yet have stages of it located all
over the world.
19th century colonial empires were run at a
distance. Governors and administrators were
sent out from the “parent” country to India,
Africa, or wherever and then left mostly to their
own devices. But 21st century business
empires are run from central offices, often in
one of these three financial capitals (or in
close proximity to them), and using global IT
networks to administer the business and raise
capital to fund it. Decisions affecting workers
on the far side of the world can be made and
instantaneously transmitted: no need now to
depend on steamships to carry your instructions. As Webster (2002, p. 70) observes 4,
corporations may have their HQ in New York, R & D facilities in Virginia, component factories in
the Far East, assembly for the European market somewhere like Ireland, and sales campaigns
for the finished product somewhere like London. It’s not that global markets are new; after all, the
Dutch East India Company were selling Indonesian spices in Europe as far back as the 17th
century, and Cornish tin was being sold in the Holy Land two thousand years ago. But there is
now a genuinely global economy, which penetrates virtually the whole world simultaneously. On a
shallow level, this leads to things like food imports, exotic holidays, world music and so on
becoming commonplace. More significant changes have also occurred, however.
For example, capital assets are now less likely to be fixed, in other words, comprised of buildings,


Pedants will doubtless point out the half-second which remains when talking with someone in Australia, but that’s
the speed of light for you. In any constructive sense it’s instantaneous.
4 The whole of chapter 4 of the 2002 edition of this book is a good summary of these trends.
3
land, equipment or other such tangible things. More likely it will be finance capital. This is money
made from other money: currency speculation, mergers and acquisitions, junk bonds, venture
capital, and so on. Bauman (2000, p. 58) calls this new state of affairs “liquid modernity”,
contrasting it with the “heavy”, less mobile era of fixed capital:

“In its heavy stage, capital was as much fixed to the ground as were the labourers it
engaged. Nowadays, capital travels light—with cabin luggage only, which includes no
more than a briefcase, a cellular telephone and a portable computer. It can stop-over
almost anywhere, and nowhere needs to stay longer than the satisfaction lasts.”
The implication is that IT is both a cause of, and a conduit into, success in this fluid, liquid world.
Mobility is vital in the information economy. This means both physical mobility (being able to
move to where the work is—or where the labour’s cheaper) and the more abstract sort
represented by new “just-in-time” modes of production. Here, factories do not keep large stocks
of parts on site, nor supermarkets huge warehouses of food. Delivery patterns have been pared
to the bone, with parts or stocks being delivered literally just before they are needed. This saves
on warehouse space, and also means a company can react very quickly to changes in
consumption. Sudden spell of hot weather? Stock up on ice creams, beach wear, portable fans.
This impacts all the way down the line, with suppliers forced to become more dynamic and react
immediately to changes in demand. At the very end sit those venture capitalists who move
millions into, say, Haagen-Dazs shares when the heatwave strikes: and just as quickly move the
money out again when it starts to rain. In some industries (such as software) the whole company
can almost be said to exist in finance capital terms. The only real “assets” are their market profile
and the knowledge and expertise locked up inside the heads of their employees or freelance
consultants.
Each step in this process requires “real time”, accurate information. It requires sophisticated plans
and simulations so one can work out where and when parts, stocks, labour and money will be
needed on a day-to-day basis. It requires, in short, IT. That’s not the only thing it needs, of
course; but it’s a necessary enough element to suggest that without recent developments in IT,
none of this could have happened. Noted theorist, Manuel Castells (1996; also see Webster
2002, p. 107), calls the “space” created by IT and communications networks and used by all
these processes the informational space of flows. I think that term is both glorious in
composition and, on the surface, rather lacking in actual meaning. This isn’t to say that Castells
doesn’t explain it, but it takes him 1200 pages to do so! A rather more succinct investigation of
the reality and nature of this “space”—which you might (rightly) be thinking touches upon the idea
of “cyberspace”—will be found in part IV of this booklet.
It should also be borne in mind that the “information society” isn’t something that “just happened”
(or will “just happen”). As Roszak (1994, pp. 24-6) writes, this transition “has been the result of
deliberate choices on the part of our political and corporate leadership”. In the mid-1970s there
was a strongly-held fear that we were bumping up against “limits to growth”; this based upon an
influential report by a group called the Club of Rome (see Meadows et al, 1972). This used
computer modelling to suggest that our consumption of material resources was simply
unsustainable, and we were heading for environmental disaster. The rights and wrongs of that
position are not our concern here, but the response certainly included recommendations from
economists that the “information economy”, which (supposedly) was unfettered by such
environmental limits, was worth investing in.
When massive investments are made, some returns are desired, in the form of profits. But while
the use of resources in the pursuit of profit is the basis of capitalism, its benefits have never been
equally shared. You don’t have to be a raging Marxist to see that 150 years of Industrial
Revolution have not brought benefits to everyone, particularly on a global scale. There is still
massive poverty, inequality, pollution and so on—and the aim of part II of the booklet is to look at
how these are changed, but also perpetuated, within the “information society”.

In what ways do you think the world is changing as we move into the 21st century? Note down
three or four of what you consider to be the most important trends. These don’t have to be directly
related to what people call “the information society”; it may be that you think the most important
changes occurring are in different spheres.
This opening part of the booklet has laid out the bare facts about the “information society”: why
that term has come to be used and what it generally refers to. However, it’s not done very much
to explain the consequences of it all. Having now set up these basic ideas, though, we can get on
with that task. From this point on I take three basic approaches to talking about the “information
society”:
 as structures of power and domination in part II
 as a (potentially) democratic public sphere in part III
 as a burgeoning global consciousness in part IV.