Much of the discussion about new technologies and social equality has focused on the oversimplified notion of a "digital divide." Technology and Social Inclusion moves beyond the limited view of haves and have-nots to analyze the different forms of access to information and communication technologies. Drawing on theory from political science, economics, sociology, psychology, communications, education, and linguistics, the book examines the ways in which differing access to technology contributes to social and economic stratification or inclusion. The book takes a global perspective, presenting case studies from developed and developing countries, including Brazil, China, Egypt, India, and the United States. A central premise is that, in today's society, the ability to access, adapt, and create knowledge using information and communication technologies is critical to social inclusion. This focus on social inclusion shifts the discussion of the "digital divide" from gaps to be overcome by providing equipment to social development challenges to be addressed through the effective integration of technology into communities, institutions, and societies. What is most important is not so much the physical availability of computers and the Internet but rather people's ability to make use of those technologies to engage in meaningful social practices.
In this major new collection, leading experts explore the multidisciplinary connections between technology and economy, drawing on new convergences between economic sociology and science and technology studies. Through theoretical and empirical studies, the authors investigate: * economics and economic knowledges as technologies * the economies as socio-technical arrangements * the nature of innovation * the role of technological mediations in representing and performing economies. This revealing book, ideal for those with an interest in contemporary social theory, interrogates the evidence for the contemporary claims about the emergence of the ‘new economy’ and ‘knowledge-based economies’ and sheds new light on the relationship between economy and culture.
The emergence of new platform business models, notably the sharing economy, is impacting the economy in various ways, altering the structure of many industries, and raising a number of economic and political issues. This book investigates the widespread influence of the sharing economy on businesses and society, as well as examining its underpinning economic principles and development. This volume presents an exhaustive review of the existing knowledge on the sharing economy and addresses several major areas of concern for incumbent businesses. It also explains the business models for those who are interested in embarking on their own ventures and provides an excellent source for further research. It takes an in-depth look at controversial labour policies, such as using labour as self-employed contractors or using regulatory grey areas to expand in markets. It is highly multidisciplinary, establishing links between economics, finance, marketing and consumer behaviour. This contribution on the sharing economy will enable researchers and graduate and doctoral students to expand and improve their understanding of this topic and identify new research problems in all of these areas. The book will also appeal to policy makers, regional and local government decision makers, and those interested in labour markets transformation.
As insightful and wise today as it was when originally published in 1954, Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society has become a classic in its field, laying the groundwork for all other studies of technology and society that have followed. Ellul offers a penetrating analysis of our technological civilization, showing how technology—which began innocuously enough as a servant of humankind—threatens to overthrow humanity itself in its ongoing creation of an environment that meets its own ends. No conversation about the dangers of technology and its unavoidable effects on society can begin without a careful reading of this book. "A magnificent book . . . He goes through one human activity after another and shows how it has been technicized, rendered efficient, and diminished in the process.”—Harper's “One of the most important books of the second half of the twentieth-century. In it, Jacques Ellul convincingly demonstrates that technology, which we continue to conceptualize as the servant of man, will overthrow everything that prevents the internal logic of its development, including humanity itself—unless we take necessary steps to move human society out of the environment that 'technique' is creating to meet its own needs.”—The Nation “A description of the way in which technology has become completely autonomous and is in the process of taking over the traditional values of every society without exception, subverting and suppressing these values to produce at last a monolithic world culture in which all non-technological difference and variety are mere appearance.”—Los Angeles Free Press
This volume provides a state-of-the-art review of the relationship between technology and economic growth. Many of the 42 chapters discuss the political and corporate decisions for what one author calls a "Competitiveness Policy." As contributor John A. Young states, "Technology is our strongest advantage in world competition. Yet we do not capitalize on our preeminent position, and other countries are rapidly closing the gap." This lively volume provides many fresh insights including "two unusually balanced and illuminating discussions of Japan," Science noted.
Following the rapid development of connected technologies, which are now highly sophisticated and spread across the globe, Society 5.0 has emerged and brought with it a dramatic societal shift. In 1998, Kodak, the world leader in photographic film, had 170,000 employees. It thus seemed unthinkable that just 3 years later, the majority of people would stop taking photographs to paper film and that Kodak would have disappeared. These are the stakes of this new society that is taking shape. This book, which does not seek to critique current politics, management or marketing literature, aims to fight against the excesses of this often-misunderstood Society 5.0 and to present the ideas and associated technologies that comprise it, all working towards societal improvement. Among these technologies, artificial intelligence, robotics, digital platforms and 3D printing are undoubtedly the most important, and thus receive the greatest focus.
Nagy Hanna presents a systematic approach to integrate ICT into development policies and programs across sectors of economy and society. This book bridges the current disconnect between the ICT specialists and their development counterparts in various sectors so as to harness the ongoing ICT revolution to maximize development impact.
This new volume looks at a selection of important issues resulting from the digitization of society, which has fundamentally transformed organizations. These new technological innovations are creating new opportunities as well as new challenges. This volume considers the emerging paradigm of digitization in economy and society, which covers a wide spectrum of digitization processes and consequences, accelerated by the current COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown scenario, and the increase in digitization by individuals, businesses, and governments. The book explores digital social trends, digital marketing, and the service industry, as well as the societal consequences of technologies and solutions to those problems. The diverse topics include the societal impact of digitization on gender issues, virtual relationships, e-government, online privacy, the gig economy (using Uber as an example), work life changes, online education, online media health public service advertisements, loneliness of the elderly, and more. This book is essential reading for students and faculty of social sciences, economics, and management technology to understand the broad dimensions of digitization in our everyday life and the theoretical and practical utilization and outcome of digitization.
Anything that can be automated, will be. The "magic" that digital technology has brought us - self-driving cars, Bitcoin, high frequency trading, the internet of things, social networking, mass surveillance, the 2009 housing bubble - has not been considered from an ideological perspective. The Critique of Digital Capitalism identifies how digital technology has captured contemporary society in a reification of capitalist priorities, and also describes digital capitalism as an ideologically "invisible" framework that is realized in technology. Written as a series of articles between 2003 and 2015, the book provides a broad critical scope for understanding the inherent demands of capitalist protocols for expansion without constraint (regardless of social, legal or ethical limits) that are increasingly being realized as autonomous systems that are no longer dependent on human labor or oversight and implemented without social discussion of their impacts. The digital illusion of infinite resources, infinite production, and no costs appears as an "end to scarcity," whereby digital production supposedly eliminates costs and makes everything equally available to everyone. This fantasy of production without consumption hides the physical costs and real-world impacts of these technologies. The critique introduced in this book develops from basic questions about how digital technologies directly change the structure of society: why is "Digital Rights Management" not only the dominant "solution" for distributing digital information, but also the only option being considered? During the burst of the "Housing Bubble" burst 2009, why were the immaterial commodities being traded of primary concern, but the actual physical assets and the impacts on the people living in them generally ignored? How do surveillance (pervasive monitoring) and agnotology (culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data) coincide as mutually reinforcing technologies of control and restraint? If technology makes the assumptions of its society manifest as instrumentality - then what ideology is being realized in the form of the digital computer? This final question animates the critical framework this analysis proposes. Digital capitalism is a dramatically new configuration of the historical dynamics of production, labor and consumption that results in a new variant of historical capitalism. This contemporary, globalized network of production and distribution depends on digital capitalism's refusal of established social restraints: existing laws are an impediment to the transcendent aspects of digital technology. Its utopian claims mask its authoritarian result: the superficial "objectivity" of computer systems are supposed to replace established protections with machinic function - the uniform imposition of whatever ideology informs the design. However, machines are never impartial: they reify the ideologies they are built to enact. The critical analysis of capitalist ideologies as they become digital is essential to challenging this process. Contesting their domination depends on theoretical analysis. This critique challenges received ideas about the relationship between labor, commodity production and value, in the process demonstrating how the historical Marxist analysis depends on assumptions that are no longer valid. This book therefore provides a unique, critical toolset for the analysis of digital capitalist hegemonics.
