By avoiding the more Utopian accounts of the information society thesis, the contributors to this collection have attempted to adopt a critical and perhaps more cautious (although not intransigent) approach to the technologically driven changes currently underway. In particular technological development is seen as being shaped by social, economic and political relations which in turn often produce indeterminate outcomes. From this perspective the explanation for the uneven spread of Information and Communication Technology (ICTs) within and between societies is to be sought from a clearer understanding of the relationship between technological development and differential opportunities for exercising power.
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What is important about such an approach is that it foregrounds the role of agency in any debates about technological innovation. Social action and inaction on the part of different groups plays a vital part in the social shaping of technological applications. The existence of the ‘information-poor’ for example may be due to the express desire on the part of some information-advantaged groups to deliberately and systematically exclude them from participation in the wider community. Material benefits to be acquired through electronic communication may therefore be clearly tied to the material conditions of those participating in the network. Without the resources for access, understanding and knowledge to compete in the information marketplace there is little opportunity or incentive for the underclass in advanced societies to have a stake.
This is not to say that those presently excluded can be regarded as passive recipients of technological change, unable to influence its course or direction. The ‘information-poor’ are no more an homogeneous social phenomenon than their wealthier counterparts. Fragmented and divided by gender, race, disability, class, location or religion, their experience of ICTs will vary enormously as will their opportunities to utilise it. Historically however, opposition and social
struggle can often significantly modify, delay and sometimes prevent the introduction of technological ‘solutions’. Again, it is important that we recognise the role played by such agency in the analysis of the restructuring we are experiencing.
Resistance can include, for example, the adoption of ICTs for purposes of empowerment. The hosts of disadvantaged around the world have not tended to participate in the social shaping of technology and have often experienced low-skilled jobs, sickness and oppression as a consequence. Increasingly however, some are arguing that cyberspace offers the liberating possibilities of ‘ordinary’ people constructing new identities which free them from the imposed classifications of class, race, gender or disability associated with material space and place (Haraway 1991; Barlow 1996; Squires 1996). The anonymity experienced through computer-mediated communication ‘is often valued because it creates opportunities to invent alternative versions of one’s self and to engage in untried forms of interaction’ (Baym 1995).
Thus technology may provide the locus for struggle between the social and economic forces for domination and the opposing attempts by others to shape their own identities (Foucault 1980). In this context, agency is expressed through the potential to ‘break out’ of the constraining social relations of family, work and community and forge new, remote relationships in virtual spaces. Communications networks offer the prospect of greater opportunities for finding employment,
seeking advice, challenging orthodoxy, meeting like minds and constructing one’s own sense of self. Entirely new notions of social action, based not upon proximity and shared physical experience but rather on remote networks of common perceptions, may begin to emerge and challenge existing social structures.
For the vast majority of the world’s population, the possibility of constructing virtual identities is entirely dependent upon their material situation. Clearly most people are not free to choose but instead are subject to a variety of social and economic conditions which act to structure and articulate their opportunities for action. Their experiences of the information society are less likely to be those enjoyed by the information elite, which emphasise creativity and remote ‘spanning networks’ (Mulgan et al. 1997) and more likely to be the routine, low-skill and dull jobs of information call-centre workers and isolated teleworkers.
From : Loader, Brian D. (ed.). Cyberspace Divide: Equality, Agency and Policy in The Information Society. Routledge. (page : 8-10)
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