Bridging Temporal and Spatial "Gaps": The role of information and communication technologies in defining communities

The diffusion and use of digitally based information and communication technologies (ICTs) offers the opportunity to redefine and reconceptualize 'community' both in terms of delineating the boundaries of community, as well as the modes of communication used between members. The creation of an electronic infrastructure, the Internet, permits the possibility of widespread public communication that is inexpensive and relatively easy to access. A second consequence builds on the first; the emergence of (virtual) communities based on geographically distributed sources of information production and exchange rather than the geographic proximity of community members to one another. An assessment of three cases of ICT-linked communities suggests that one component of sustainability of these virtual communities of interest may be a geographic linkage. While interests not based on geography are, at least at present, more transitory and less important than those created by the use of the Internet and similar kinds of ICTs. While we may join a virtual community because of an interest we have, unless that interest affects us in our daily lives, in our lives as physically-instantiated and geographically-centred individuals and citizens, there is no good reason to believe that we will long continue an active membership in the virtual community. Indeed, this is precisely what the three case studies presented in this paper suggest.     

WHEN 'VIRTUAL' MEETS VALUES: INSIGHTS FROM THE VOLUNTARY SECTOR

Electronic networking can support strategic re-positioning within organizations seeking to respond effectively to deep shifts in the social, economic and political regimes in which they operate today. Evidence, though, from our large-scale survey of core UK voluntary organizations suggests that voluntary organizations do not always seek to exploit this capability. Instead, our survey indicates that voluntary organizations are exploiting information and communication technologies (ICTs) in conventional ways to enhance administrative and operational efficiency and effectiveness. There is little evidence of more strategic applications supporting reconfiguration of the organization internally, redefinition of relationships across organizational networks or the extension of business scope. Further research based upon in-depth case studies demonstrated that social conditions are active in shaping the uptake and application of information and communication technologies within voluntary organizations. Within volunteer-intensive settings in particular,founding philosophies and the deeply rooted values that accompany these can have a profound effect. Ultimately,the technologically supported transformations, which occur within the organizations that we examine here, emerge from the inter-play between historically institutionalized values, strategic objectives and technological capability.     

PARTY DEMOCRACY ON-LINE: UK PARTIES AND NEW ICTS

This paper examines the impact of new information and communications technologies (ICTs) on levels of intra-party democracy in the UK in light of recent claims of increasing centralization of power and marginalization of members within West European political parties. Specifically, it examines whether parties adoption of the internet, in the shape of an internal computer communication system (ICCS) and internal party groups' use of the World Wide Web (WWW), is promoting intra-party democracy in two areas: (1) the vertical distribution of power between members and elites; (2) the spatial concentration of power between intra-party groupings and central party elites. The findings show that while many parties have made use of the internet for internal communication there is no concerted effort being made by parties to harness its potential to promote members input into decision-making and elite accountability.     

SOCIAL MOVEMENT NETWORKS VIRTUAL AND REAL

This paper discusses the impact of 'computer mediated communication' (or CMC) on political activism and social movements. CMC may be expected to affect collective action by improving the effectiveness of communication and facilitating collective identity and solidarity. However, the heterogeneity of social movements undermines generic arguments and their relationship to CMC. Accordingly, the potential consequences of CMC on three different types of political organizations are discussed: organizations mobilizing mainly participatory resources, organizations focusing on professional resources, and transnational networks. The potential to build 'virtual [social movement] communities' seems highest among sympathizers of movement organizations who act professionally on behalf of causes with vast resonance among the public opinion and low radical potential. All in all, the most distinctive contribution of CMC to social movements still seems to be instrumental rather than symbolic. Existing bonds and solidarities are likely to generate more effective mobilization attempts than was the case before the diffusion of CMC; it is more disputable though as to whether CMC may create brand new social ties where there were none.     

THE ROLE OF TEMPORALITY IN MEDIATED COMMUNICATION AND TECHNOLOGY CONVERGENCE

This article examines two components of temporality that have implications for electronically mediated communication. One is the dichotomy of simultaneous/non-simultaneous communication and then the varying degrees of non-simultaneity that are possible. The other is the fundamental difference between timed and untimed communication. Timed communication is temporally based and sequential, while untimed communication, such as print and still image content, is spatially based. The article argues that there are two fundamental types of mediated communication: communication mediated across time and communication mediated across space. The implications of temporality for both forms of mediated communication are examined in detail. The implications of temporality and mediated communication for multimedia, technology convergence, and research are discussed.     

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT: UNIVERSITIES, NEW INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES AND THE US SUPREME COURT

The legal context in which universities operate is among the forces shaping the ways in which new information technologies are taken up and used. In the USA, constitutional law - that law which addresses how society is to be structured and what types of processes should be permitted within it - is particularly important in determining what institutions can do. The ultimate arbiter of constitutional law is the US Supreme Court, the decisions of which establish basic principles for the US legal system. This article reviews the entire body of US Supreme Court decisions that deal with higher education and mines them for their implications for the use of new information technologies by universities.     

THE INFORMATION SOCIETY AS MEGA-MACHINE

Too often the history of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is wrenched out of the history of technology and presented as something altogether separate and therefore different, rendering previous analyses irrelevant. However, there are sufficient analytical tools to hand without the continual invention of new paradigms to understand the current stage of technological advance. To support this contention, in this article, the continuing relevance of Lewis Mumford is explored. Mumford's discussion of the megalopolis and the emergence of the invisible city as its most developed state make a direct link with the networked information society, establishing a link between the information society and Mumford'sanalysis of the previous history of technology.At the centre of Mumford'sdiscussion of this history is the dialectic interaction of authoritarian and democratic technics. Mumford's notion of technics stresses that technologies can not be divided from the social relations in which they appear. In the information society,this dialectical pair map onto the twin dynamics of enclosure and disclosure. The former dynamic represents the control of information through commodification and marketization, the latter the recognition of the empowering and emancipatory qualities of ICTs. Up until now,discussions of the information society have regarded only one or other dynamic as normal, whereas utilizing Mumford'sinsight, the contradictory character of the information society can be theorized without rendering the second dynamic abnormal. Thus, the article concludes that recourse to Mumford's ideas, to re-embed ICTs in the history of technology, allows a more nuanced and fruitful treatment of current developments in information society.     

COMPETITION AND COLLABORATION IN ONLINE DISTANCE LEARNING

For-profit firms use the internet to offer classes, courses and degree programmes in direct competition with nonprofit and government-supported colleges and universities. At the same time, many firms seek to partner with academic institutions in offering online instruction or distance learning.This paper outlines and discusses alternative models of academic/for-profit collaboration that are being developed in the USA. Collaboration requires the partners to define responsibilities for technology, administrative services, content development, promotion and student selection, instruction, awarding of credits and overall quality control. Firms may want to 'unbundle' the traditional faculty role of both course designer and teacher,and use different professionals for the two functions. Although most collaborations today involve non-degree programmes, many schools of business are working with for-profit firms to offer MBA degrees online. The diversity of higher education in the USA means that many different models will be tried. Collaborations will expand the markets for online distance learning, but a number of difficult issues remain to be resolved.     

THE SOCIAL GEOGRAPHY OF GENDER-SWITCHING IN VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS ON THE INTERNET

The virtual social worlds of the internet give people unparalleled control over the construction and presentation of their identities. Gender-switching is perhaps the most dramatic example of how people exercise this control. It occurs when people present a gender that is different from their biological sex. While gender-switching figures prominently in academic commentaries and popular writings about on-line social life, there is little systematic research on the phenomenon. On-line surveys of two stratified random samples (N's=233 and 202) of MOO users were conducted. The majority of participants (60 per cent) in social MOOs (popular text-based internet social venues) had never engaged in gender-switching, while the majority in role-playing MOOs were either gender-switching currently (40 per cent) or had done so in the past (16.7 per cent). More than half of those who currently gender-switched did so for less than 10 per cent of their time on-line. In spite of the freedom to use indeterminate or even plural gender identities, most participants who switched genders (78.7 per cent) did so within traditional binary conventions (male to female, female to male). The primary reason for gender-switching was the desire to play roles of people different from one's self. The primary barrier to gender-switching was the belief that it is dishonest and manipulative. Attitudes toward gender-switching and on-line participation were better predictors of gender-switching than personal background demographics or personality measures. The images of gender-switching that emerge from this first systematic study of the phenomenon are considerably more benign than that usually portrayed in the literature. Gender-switching appears to be practised by a minority of MOO users for a small percentage of their time on-line. Gender-switching within MOOs of all kinds might best be understood as an experimental behaviour rather than as an enduring expression of sexuality, personality, or gender politics.     

The Glass Screen

This paper seeks to contribute to an ongoing discussion of those social relations that are mediated entirely through computer networks. It begins by pointing to the problems associated with the slippery binary of embodiment and disembodiment, and reminds the reader of the non-material relational and semiotic significance of the body. This non-material relational and semiotic mode of being is also available to us through electronic information and communications media, however, it is asserted that these electronic mediations are of a different kind to those which are face to face, and it is argued that they orient us to the lifeworld in particular ways. The metaphors 'glass', 'screen' and 'monitor' are used to explore the orientation offered by electronic mediation.     

THE INFORMATIZATION OF THE WORLDVIEW

The development of information and communication technology in the second half of the twentieth century in crucial respects resembles the development of mechanics in the sixteenth and seventeenth century as it has been described by Dijksterhuis in his study The Mechanization of the World Picture (first published in 1950). In both cases specific technological developments not only lead to important changes in the natural and human sciences, but also profoundly affect culture as a whole and eventually result in a fundamental change in worldview. In this article the author attempts to elucidate the present informatization of the worldview in a twofold way. First, against the background of Dijksterhuis' analysis of the concept of mechane, a clarification is given of the concept of information, which has become central to many sciences in the last decades. It is argued that much of the confusion and misuse that surrounds the application of this concept can be reduced by making a careful distinction between the pragmatic, semantic and syntactic dimensions of information. Second, on basis of this clarification, the author discusses the transformation from a mechanistic to an informationistic worldview. While the mechanistic worldview is characterized by the postulates of analysability, lawfulness and controllability, the informationistic worldview is characterized by the postulates of synthetizability, programmability and manipulability. It is argued that although the informationistic worldview in some respects (for instance in its mathematical orientation) is clearly a continuation of the mechanistic worldview, in other respects it fundamentally alters human experience and the evaluation of, and association with, reality.     

NEW COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES - A conduit for social inclusion

There has an outpouring of energy and creativity into ways of using information and communications technologies (ICT) and the information society (IS) to create inclusion, as an opportunity to tackle, reduce and even prevent social exclusion. This article is based on examining over 40 projects which constitute positive examples of applications of new technologies, by public authorities, private agencies and community groups, to reduce the disadvantage experienced by the more excluded groups in our society.     

THE VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY: JONES INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY™, LTD

Jones International University provides a leading example of a virtual university. This brief overview focuses on innovative features of this university, ranging from its geographically distributed staff and students to its cyber-graduation ceremony.     

FAIRY SALES: THE BUDAPEST INTERNATIONAL FAIRS AS VIRTUAL SHOPPING TOURS

Shopping tourism has been a widespread phenomenon since the emergence of the modern consumer culture. It has played a crucial role in the formation and transformation of the structures of wants by constructing and displaying tangible instantiations of cultural otherness. By centring our paper around the concept of ‘virtual shopping tours’ we would like to make sense of the historical and theoretical momentum of shopping tourism in the context of the socialist shortage economies. In post-war Central and Eastern Europe travelling to the West was few people's privilege; nevertheless, almost everybody was interested in, fantasized about, and imitated Western trends. Our attempt is to understand how people sought information and tried to keep up with the Western world in their lifestyles. By ‘virtual shopping’, we mean a sort of quasi-consumption where the choice of goods is shown but not or not immediately available. Visiting international commercial fairs – just as discussing the inaccessible goods seen in Western movies or in expired catalogues of Western department stores – was among the chief occasions for virtual shopping tours. The Budapest International Fairs have been the greatest and most significant fairs in Hungary since the 1890s. Focusing on the post-war period, our paper describes the changing selection of goods, explores the hidden political and cultural functions of the different forms of display, and analyses the attitudes of the various groups of visitors and the meanings they attached to certain products and practices.     

DEFINING MOMENTS: THE TENSION BETWEEN RICHNESS AND REACH

The defining moments of traditional spatially based higher education are made up of fixed and fluid experiences. These 'moments' are now creaking as funding per student falls and the romanticized ideal of an education detached from 'real' life falters under the weight of highly variable student experiences. Distance learning in all its guises has always been regarded as inferior by those embedded in the traditional system. However more and more students demand something different from costly campus-based education. It is time for a more open discussion about the tensions between richness and reach and the role that new facilities like the Internet could play in reaching more students without wallowing in the nostalgia that often accompanies such debates.     

Building Social Inclusion for Rural Older People Using Information and Communication Technologies: Perspectives of Rural Practitioners

Abstract

The literature identifies rural, older people as at risk of social exclusion, as a result of rural disadvantage. In this context, improved access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) has potential to build social inclusion, yet current evidence shows that rural, older people are the lowest current users of technology. This paper draws on the practice and local knowledge of rural practitioners from one Victorian region in order to explore: (a) the practice issues associated with ICT use among rural, older people; and (b) the characteristics of effective practice models in the rural, social work context. An analysis of findings highlights the need to respond to the diverse skills, needs, and learning styles of older people, to demonstrate the benefits of ICTs, involve users, and build confidence. Major barriers include poor ICT usage by many rural agencies and low practitioner capacity, as well as access and resources.     

'INFORMATION SOCIETY' AS THEORY OR IDEOLOGY: A CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE IN TECHNOLOGY, EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT IN THE INFORMATION AGE

This paper argues that the concept of Information Society fails as theory because it is internally incoherent and unsupported by evidence. Its current popularity within policy discourse can only be understood ideologically. In particular it is argued that one of the drivers of current policy towards higher education is based upon the supposed growth of knowledge work linked to a theory of human capital formation as crucial to international competitiveness and to an explanation of unemployment in terms of a skills gap. The paper goes on to argue that current labour market indicators and research into the skills gap do not support this policy thrust and that a better explanation of the current push towards the creation of virtual universities is the desire to cut educational labour costs rather than to upgrade the economic status of so-called knowledge workers.