The web of technology and people: Challenges for economic and social research

Prometheus: Critical Studies in Innovation

Volumn 17, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 5-20

  Dutton, William H ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Innovation; Internet; Policy; Research; Social impact; Technology society; Trends

Indexed keywords

ACADEMIC RESEARCH; INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY; INTERNET; WORLD WIDE WEB;

EID: 0032996642     PISSN: 08109028     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/08109029908629393     Document Type: Article

References (86)

1. This article originated as a report for the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the ESRC. My thanks to staff of the ESRC, Nicole Ellison, Martin Harris and Malcolm Peltu for their comments on earlier versions, and to the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for supporting this work.
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23. Earlier work that influenced Bell's notion of a post-industrial, information society included Machlup's analysis of statistics on the production and distribution of information. See F. Machlup, The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1962 (reprinted 1972).
24. For example, Kubicek and others trace the ways in which policies toward information infrastructures in the EU and USA have been shaped by notions of the information society. See H. Kubicek, W. Dutton and R. Williams (eds), The Social Shaping of the Information Superhighway: European and American Roads to the Information Society, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt and St. Martin's Press, New York, 1997.
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28. Back cover of M. Dertouzos, What Will Be: How the New World of Information will Change Our Lives, HarperEdge, San Francisco, 1998.
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30. J. J. Corn (ed.), Imagining Tomorrow: History, Technology, and the American Future, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1986, pp. 219-29; I. Miles, 'The information society: competing perspectives on the social and economic implications of information and communication technologies', in W. H. Dutton, op. cit., 1996, pp. 37-52.
31. This is true even in the case of those who eschew forecasting in favor of empirical research on past or emerging developments. To the degree that they assume their findings will have any relevance to policy or practice, they must make some forecasts in the form of working assumptions about the future.
32. Fifteen sectors identified by the technology foresight programme were agriculture, natural resources and the environment; chemicals; communications; construction; defence and aerospace; energy; financial services; food and drink; health and life sciences; IT/electronics; leisure and learning; manufacturing, production, and business processes; materials; retail and distribution; and transport.
33. 5.
34. 5.
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49. President Bill Clinton, Letter in response to PITAC Interim Report, 10 August 1998.
50. One of the first major collections of social research on the telephone, for example, was occasioned by a celebration of the centennial of the telephone. See I. de Sola Pool (ed.), The Social Impact of the Telephone, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA and London, 1977.
51. H. Wurtzel and C. Turner, 'Latent functions of the telephone: what missing the extension means', in I. de Sola Pool, Ibid., pp. 246-61.
52. While nearly a cliché, this metaphor was applied to the media by Marshall McLuhan, op. cit.
53. For example, the Social Science Computer Review has tended to follow this trend, largely because that is the interest of its readers and the thrust of papers submitted to the journal.
54. J. R. Young, 'Using computer models to study the complexities of human society', The Chronicle of Higher Education, 24 July 1998, pp. A17, A19.
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56. A. Penzias, Harmony: Business, Technology, and Life After Paperwork, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1995.
57. M. Dertouzos, op. cit.
58. Rep. G. E. Brown, Jr, 'Defining values for research and technology', The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10 July 1998, pp. B4-5.
59. These issues have supported the development of the Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) Research Program of the National Human Genome Research Institute.
60. This categorization was developed originally for a synthesis of research on ICTs in W. H. Dutton, op. cit., 1996, p. 3. However, it can be easily applied to research on technology more generally.
61. Adapted from W. H. Dutton, op. cit., 1996, p. 3.
62. C. Freeman, 'The factory of the future and the productivity paradox', in W. H. Dutton, op. cit., 1996, pp. 123-41.
63. See J. Goddard and R. Richardson, 'Why geography will still matter: what jobs go where?', in W. H. Dutton, op. cit., 1996, pp. 197-214. Heightened interest in the interactions of technology and geography has led to the creation of a new focus within geography and urban planning departments on ICTs, and led to the development of journals, such as Space & Polity, published by Carfax in Oxford.
64. R. Silverstone and E. Hirsch (eds), Consuming Technologies: Media and Information in Domestic Spaces, Routledge, London and New York, 1992; R. Mansell and R. Silverstone, op. cit.
65. R. Silverstone and E. Hirsch (eds), Consuming Technologies: Media and Information in Domestic Spaces, Routledge, London and New York, 1992; R. Mansell and R. Silverstone, op. cit.
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67. H. I. Schiller, Information Inequality: The Deepening Social Crisis in America, Routledge, London, 1996; B. D. Loader (ed.), Cyberspace Divide: Equality, Agency and Policy in the Information Society, London, Routledge, 1998.
68. W. H. Dutton, op. cit., 1999.
69. For example, the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the US National Research Council launched a cooperative study in 1997 with the Max Planck Institute to investigate the implications of global networks on local and national sovereignty.
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85. J. Arquilla and D. Ronfeldt, op. cit.
86. M. Castells, op. cit.