Praise the Net and pass the modem: revolutionaries and captives in the information society

Abstract

Poses the question: in envisaging a digitally networked future, what kind of graffiti can we discern on the emerging cyberwall to help us predict its likely impact on large populations? All evaluation of infant technologies is a complex business. Technology gives and it takes away. Science transforms human behaviour but we want it to be subject to the scrutiny of independent moral principles, which themselves shift. Argues that the long‐term advantages or disadvantages that will spin off from the electronic flow and rush of information will grow out of the wider, messier social, political and economic imperatives of the future world within which networking will reside. Electronic communication along networks operates on many levels: it is heavily diffused throughout the rest of the technical pantheon. Its exacerbation of the already discernible drift towards social isolation and alienation and its role in facilitating the economic and social rejuvenation of large, as opposed to élite, populations seem more questionable.

Citation

Haywood, T. (1997), "Praise the Net and pass the modem: revolutionaries and captives in the information society", Library Review, Vol. 46 No. 7, pp. 472-489. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242539710177606