Deconstructing the information era

Futures

Volumn 30, Issue 2-3, 1998, Pages 235-247

  Inayatullah, Sohail ^a  

^a QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COMMUNICATION ROLE; CULTURAL ROLE; INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY; SOCIAL TRENDS; THEORY;

EID: 0031719920     PISSN: 00163287     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/S0016-3287(98)00031-7     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. The words of Pakistani socialist poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz.
2. Nearly every brochure on the benefits on the new communication technologies begins with that phrase. The future is seen solely in technological terms.
3. See, for example, Halal, W.E., The rise of the knowledge entrepreneur. The Futurist, 1996, 20(7), 13-16. Halal writes that in the US 'Blue-collar workers should dwindle from 20% of the US work force in 1995 to 10% or less within a decade or two ... non-professional white-collar workers [will be reduced] from 40% to 20%-30%. The remaining 60%-70% or so of the work force may then be composed of knowledge workers ... meanwhile, productivity, living standards and the quality of life will soar to unprecedented levels', p. 13. Also see, The Think Tank Directory in which it is reported that the number of think tanks have exploded from 62 in 1945 to 1200 in 1996. For more information on this email: grs@cjnetworks.com, or write to 214 S.W. 6th Avenue, Suite 301, Topeka, KS 66603, USA.
4. One of the six schools of classical Indian philosophy. Only Brahman, the supreme consciousness, is postulated as real. Everything else is but an illusion - maya.
5. Tehranian, M., Totems and Technologies. Intermedia, 1986, 14(3), 24.
6. I am indebted to Ashis Nandy for this term, although he calls it, 'A gaia of cultures'. See Masini, E. and Atal, Y. (eds.), The Futures of Asian Cultures. UNESCO, Bangkok, 1993, for more on this theme.
7. See, Gwynne, S.C. and Dickerson, J.F., Lost in the E-Mail. Time, 21 April 1997, pp. 64-66. They report on the dangers in businesses when bosses use email to berate employees, creating considerable ill-will and inefficiencies. Email exports the anger of the sender to the receiver. Diane Mores Houghten writes that 'E-mail leaves a lot of blank spaces in what we say, which the recipient tends to fill with the most negative interpretation' (p. 65). To avoid sending the wrong message, four rules are suggested: '(1) Never discuss bad news, never criticize and never discuss personal issues over email. And if there's a chance that what you say could be taken the wrong way, walk down the hall to discuss it in person or pick up the phone' (p. 66).
8. Lyn Simpson, former head of the School of Communications, Queensland University of Technology reports on a disastrous result of an email sent to school students. Asked if they were interested in greater liaison/representation of students in faculty committees, she was treated to a barrage of obscenities. When reminded that email was a privilege and not a right of registered students, the obscenities did not subside. Whether this was because of pent up frustration of students towards the university or a response to the formal tone of Professor Simpson's message is not clear. Certainly, none of them would have expressed vulgarities in face to face communication. Moreover, they were not bothered by the fact that their messages had their return email addresses on them, that is to say, they could be easily identified.
9. For more on the temporal hegemony, particularly in the construction of the 21st century as neutral universal timing instead of as particular to the West, see Inayatullah, S., Listening to non-Western perspectives. In 1998 Education Yearbook, ed. D. Hicks and R. Slaughter. Kogan Page, 1998.
10. Sardar, Z., alt.civilisations.fax Cyberspace as the darker side of the west. Futures, 1995, 27(7), 777-995.
11. On one public newsgroup the following message on 6 May 1996 was posted to the question: what would you do with an unconscious woman's body? According to Walter Sharpless, he would: Well if it were an 8 year old boy's body, i would ... the rest is too pornographic (even from extreme libertarian positions) to report especially since it concludes with ... Thank you for all your time, it has been very satisfying knowing you will read this. In response, was an equally stunning reply from Max Normal: 'Now here's a guy that needs therapy ... the twelve gauge kind! a 44 mag would be more in line ... with the brain that is'. What is not contested is the pornographic nature of the initial question ie 'what would you do with an ...'. Internet as necessarily a progressive form of knowledge? Perhaps not.
12. Marshall McLuhan quoted in New Internationalist special issue entitled, Seduced by technology: the human costs of computers. New Internationalist, 1996, 286, 26.
13. Sardar, Z., The future of democracy and human rights. Futures, 1996, 28(9), 847.
14. Inayatullah, S., Frames of reference, the breakdown of the self and the search for reintegration. In The Futures of Cultures, ed. E. Masini and Y. Atal. Unesco, Bangkok, 1993.
15. See Jarva, V., Feminist Research, Feminist Futures, Futures (forthcoming). Also see, Jarva, V., Towards female futures studies. In The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies: Directions and Outlooks, ed. R. Slaughter, Vol. 3. DDM Media Group, Melbourne, 1996, pp. 3-20. Women's inner circle of reproduction and the home will thus be transformed but without entry into the male sphere of production and the public - they will lose their traditional source of power and history, and as they are not participating in the creating of the new technologies, they will enter a new unfamiliar world with few sites to locate their selves. Indeed, the new technologies are attempts, argues Jarva, to dismantle the women's sphere dimensions of the welfare state.
16. See Jarva, V., Feminist Research, Feminist Futures, Futures (forthcoming). Also see, Jarva, V., Towards female futures studies. In The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies: Directions and Outlooks, ed. R. Slaughter, Vol. 3. DDM Media Group, Melbourne, 1996, pp. 3-20. Women's inner circle of reproduction and the home will thus be transformed but without entry into the male sphere of production and the public - they will lose their traditional source of power and history, and as they are not participating in the creating of the new technologies, they will enter a new unfamiliar world with few sites to locate their selves. Indeed, the new technologies are attempts, argues Jarva, to dismantle the women's sphere dimensions of the welfare state.
17. See Spender, D., Nattering on the Net: Women, Power and Cyberspace. Spinifex Press, North Melbourne, 1996; Cherny, L. and Reba Weise, E. (eds.), Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace. Seal Press, Seattle, 1996. For an excellent review, see Shute, C., Women with byte. Australian Women's Book Review, 1996, 8(3), 8-10.
18. See Spender, D., Nattering on the Net: Women, Power and Cyberspace. Spinifex Press, North Melbourne, 1996; Cherny, L. and Reba Weise, E. (eds.), Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace. Seal Press, Seattle, 1996. For an excellent review, see Shute, C., Women with byte. Australian Women's Book Review, 1996, 8(3), 8-10.
19. See Spender, D., Nattering on the Net: Women, Power and Cyberspace. Spinifex Press, North Melbourne, 1996; Cherny, L. and Reba Weise, E. (eds.), Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace. Seal Press, Seattle, 1996. For an excellent review, see Shute, C., Women with byte. Australian Women's Book Review, 1996, 8(3), 8-10.
20. Some, of course, are already doing this in sophisticated ways. Margarat Grace, June Lennie, Leonie Daws, Lyn Simpson and Roy Lundin argue in Enhancing rural women's access to interactive communication technologies (Interim report, The Communication Centre, Queensland University of Technology, April 1997) that email is a soft technology, it can be led in appropriate directions given the appropriate context. In their research, they have found that by guided moderation, by creating conditions in which community and connectedness can develop, email can be beneficial for all concerned. Thus, it is not just the technology but the cultural framework. In their case, they found that a community was created among rural women in Queensland, Australia. While contentious issues where not swept away, they were raised in gentle ways, wherein women would 'test the waters' to see if a certain behavior was ok with others. It was done in a way not to make others wrong but to learn from each other. This is in contrast to many user groups, private email communication, wherein since the emotional, face-to-face dimensions are not visible, small issues lead to troublesome relationships, undoing rather than enhancing communication. The conclusion by Grace and others is that email, given appropriate moderation and an appropriate cultural contest (in this case a womanist framework) can be a medium that helps create a more communicative society, a least among rural women.
21. Sherman, B. and Judkins, P., Glimpses of Heaven, Visions of Hell: Virtual Reality and its Implications. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1992; see Ch. 14, 'A new world for women'.
22. Sherman, B. and Judkins, P., Glimpses of Heaven, Visions of Hell: Virtual Reality and its Implications. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1992; see Ch. 14, 'A new world for women'.
23. Comments given after the presentation of my paper on: Communication, information and the Net. Paper presented at the 'Women and the Net', UNESCO/SID meeting held in Santiago de Compostelo, Spain, 20 May 1997. Wendy Harcourt is the principle organizer of this group. Lourdes Arzipe has provided the UNESCO leadership behind the women and the net project.
24. Dale Spender quoted in Shute, C., Women With Byte, p. 9.
25. Serageldin, I., Islam, science and values. International Journal of Science and Technology, 1996, 9(2), 100-114. An impressive array of statistics are compiled. 'Items in the Library of Congress are doubling every 14 years and, at the rate things are going, will soon be developing every 7 years ... In the US, there are 55,000 trade books published annually. ... The gap of scientists and engineers in North and South is vast with 3800 per million in the US and 200 per million in the South ... [Finally], currently a billion email messages pass between 35 million users, and the volume of traffic on the Internet is doubling every 10 months', pp. 100-101. Of course, why anyone would want to count email messages is the key issue - as ridiculous would be to count the number of words said daily through talking, or perhaps even count the silence inbetween words.
26. Negroponte, N., Being Digital. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1995, p. 230. For a critical view of such claims, see the brilliant essay by Robins, K., The new communications geography and the politics of optimism. In Cultural Ecology: The Changing Dynamics of Communications, ed. D. Cliche. International Institute of Communications, London, 1997, pp. 199-210.
27. Negroponte, N., Being Digital. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1995, p. 230. For a critical view of such claims, see the brilliant essay by Robins, K., The new communications geography and the politics of optimism. In Cultural Ecology: The Changing Dynamics of Communications, ed. D. Cliche. International Institute of Communications, London, 1997, pp. 199-210.
28. Gates, B., The Road Ahead. Viking, London, 1995, p. 273, quoted in Robins, K., op cit, ref. 22.
29. Pesche, M., Proximal and distal unity. Paper available at: http:www.hyperreal.com/∼ mpesce/pdu/html. Quoted in Elgin, D. and Drew, D., Global Consciousness Change: Indicators of an Emerging Paradigm. The Millennium Project, San Anselmo, CA, 1997. See, in particular, pp. 6-9 on the global consciousness and the communications revolution. They are hopeful that the emerging global brain - signified by the ever increasing web of communication conducted through the internet - will achieve a critical mass and turn on (p. 8). Writes Peter Russell, 'Billions of messages continually shuttle back and forth, in an ever-growing web of communication, linking billions of minds of humanity into a single system'. See Russell, P., The Global Brain Awakens. Global Brain, Palo Alto, CA, 1995, p. 8.
30. Pesche, M., Proximal and distal unity. Paper available at: http:www.hyperreal.com/∼ mpesce/pdu/html. Quoted in Elgin, D. and Drew, D., Global Consciousness Change: Indicators of an Emerging Paradigm. The Millennium Project, San Anselmo, CA, 1997. See, in particular, pp. 6-9 on the global consciousness and the communications revolution. They are hopeful that the emerging global brain - signified by the ever increasing web of communication conducted through the internet - will achieve a critical mass and turn on (p. 8). Writes Peter Russell, 'Billions of messages continually shuttle back and forth, in an ever-growing web of communication, linking billions of minds of humanity into a single system'. See Russell, P., The Global Brain Awakens. Global Brain, Palo Alto, CA, 1995, p. 8.
31. Pesche, M., Proximal and distal unity. Paper available at: http:www.hyperreal.com/∼ mpesce/pdu/html. Quoted in Elgin, D. and Drew, D., Global Consciousness Change: Indicators of an Emerging Paradigm. The Millennium Project, San Anselmo, CA, 1997. See, in particular, pp. 6-9 on the global consciousness and the communications revolution. They are hopeful that the emerging global brain - signified by the ever increasing web of communication conducted through the internet - will achieve a critical mass and turn on (p. 8). Writes Peter Russell, 'Billions of messages continually shuttle back and forth, in an ever-growing web of communication, linking billions of minds of humanity into a single system'. See Russell, P., The Global Brain Awakens. Global Brain, Palo Alto, CA, 1995, p. 8.
32. Stated on the television show 'Sixty Minutes', Channel 9, Brisbane, Australia, 16 March, 1997.
33. While these are optimistic forecasts, Roar Bjonnes reports that according to The Nation Magazine '368 of the world's richest people own as much wealth as 40% of the world's poor'. In other words, 368 billionaires own as much as 2.5 billion poor people. Moreover, the trend is towards greater inequity with the share of global income between the world's rich and the world's poor doubling from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 59 to 1, in 1989. The information revolution will have to be quite dramatic to reverse these figures. Email: Rbjonnes@igc.apc.org, 13 August 1995. Bjonnes is former editor of Commonfuture and Prout Journal.
34. While these are optimistic forecasts, Roar Bjonnes reports that according to The Nation Magazine '368 of the world's richest people own as much wealth as 40% of the world's poor'. In other words, 368 billionaires own as much as 2.5 billion poor people. Moreover, the trend is towards greater inequity with the share of global income between the world's rich and the world's poor doubling from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 59 to 1, in 1989. The information revolution will have to be quite dramatic to reverse these figures. Email: Rbjonnes@igc.apc.org, 13 August 1995. Bjonnes is former editor of Commonfuture and Prout Journal.
35. Staff, The future of warfare. The Economist, 8 March 1997, p. 21.
36. Ibid.
37. For more on this, Inayatullah, S., United we drink: inquiries into the future of the world economy and society. Papers De Prospectiva, April 1995, pp. 4-31.
38. 'Niue takes moral stand on sex lines. The Courier-Mail, 20 February 1997, p. 19.
39. Sarkar, P.R., The Human Society. AM Publications, Calcutta, 1984, p. 97.
40. Sarkar, P.R., Problem of the Day. AM Publications, Ananda Nagar, India, 1959, p. 3. The corporatist framework of the information superhighway removes them from state control and from people's democratic control. 'This technology legitimates the hegemony of corporate interests', writes Kosta Gouliamos. See Kosta Gouliamos, 'The information highway and the diminution of the nation-state', p. 182 in Cliche, D., Cultural Ecology, op cit.
41. Sarkar, P.R., Problem of the Day. AM Publications, Ananda Nagar, India, 1959, p. 3. The corporatist framework of the information superhighway removes them from state control and from people's democratic control. 'This technology legitimates the hegemony of corporate interests', writes Kosta Gouliamos. See Kosta Gouliamos, 'The information highway and the diminution of the nation-state', p. 182 in Cliche, D., Cultural Ecology, op cit.
42. Stephens, J., Running interference: an interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Australian Women's Books Review, 1995, 7(3/4), 27.
43. For more on the silence of animals, that is how discourse silences them, see New Renaissance, 1995, 5(2). The focus of that issue is on the silence of the lambs.
44. Of course, few Islanders have managed to maintain this level of purity. Rather, land has been sold to others for short term profits. However, by selling land (and not using it to develop through agro-industries and manufacturing), Pacific Islands remain locked at the bottom of the world capitalist system.
45. For more on the communicative role of silence, see The Unesco Courier, May 1996. The issue focuses on the ontology of silence.
46. Email transmission from Acarya Abhidevanada Avadhuta, March 1997. On Ananda-net.
47. Spaeth, A., @ the web of power. Time, 17 February 1997, p. 67.
48. Darden, C., Justice is in the colour of the beholder. Time, 17 February 1997, 30-31.
49. Turkle, S., Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1996.
50. Rushkoff, D., Children of Chaos. Harper Collins, New York, 1997.
51. What's happening in the global village. Asian Mass Communication Bulletin, 1996, 26(5), 17. Also important is to note that 'electricity is still not available for two billion people and many others have only intermittent access'. See, The Global Futures Bulletin, 1 July 1997, No. 38/39. Available on-line from the Institute of Global Futures Research, P.O. Box 683, NSW 2022, Australia, igfr@peg.apc.org .
52. What's happening in the global village. Asian Mass Communication Bulletin, 1996, 26(5), 17. Also important is to note that 'electricity is still not available for two billion people and many others have only intermittent access'. See, The Global Futures Bulletin, 1 July 1997, No. 38/39. Available on-line from the Institute of Global Futures Research, P.O. Box 683, NSW 2022, Australia, igfr@peg.apc.org .
53. Grassel, K., Mexico's Zapatistas: revolution on the Internet. New Renaissance, 1997, 7(2), 22-23. They are just one example, hundreds of non-governmental organisation use the internet as a way to pressure governments and corporations by making their policies more public. Email campaigns for world peace, to stop torture of prisoners throughout the world or to save vegetarian orphanages as, for example, in Romania (on Ananda-net) where, for example, vegetarians successfully campaigned against a preliminary decision by a Romanian agency (Protection of Minors Agency) to close an award winning Ananda Marga school since it did not feed students dead/cooked animals, ie meat. Inundated with faxes and letters from all around the world, including the entire gamut of vegetarian/health organisations, the Romanian agency relented. Whether this was because of the international nature of the pressure -because they did not want to be seen as parochial - or because of a change of heart towards dietary practices is not clear.
54. Sardar, Z., Paper, printing and compact disks: the making and unmaking of Islamic culture. Media, Culture and Society, 1993, 15, 56.
55. Although Kirkpatrick Sale's recent article makes this word now problematic. He argues that Ned Ludd's efforts were not simplistic attacks on technology but an understanding that the new technologies were increasing the power of the masters. 'The Luddite idea has ... flourished wherever technology has destroyed jobs, ruined lives and torn up communities'. Sale, K., Ned Ludd live! New Internationalist, 1996, 286, 29. The entire issue is a must read. Ashis Nandy has taken a similar position in his essays sympathetic to the Gandhian critique of technology.
56. For the problems and possibilities of this approach see, Hamelink, C.J., Learning cultural pluralism: can the 'Information Society' help? In Cultural Ecology, ed. D. Cliche. International Institute of Communications, London, 1997, pp. 24-43.