Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)May supplies a logical and sceptical analysis of advances in information technology (IT), where these often have been accompanied by breathless claims of generating big societal changes. He correctly distinguishes between new technology that causes existing social interactions to be more efficient or faster, and those that make truly new social mores. For the latter, he suggests that biotechnology may ultimately fall in this category. Its potential for life saving or life extending advances may cause far reaching social upheaval.
His views are a good counterpoint to much hype about technology. Naturally, he cannot resist remarking on the Y2K imbroglio. How this was largely puffed up in an echo of the dot com and telco zeitgeist. A fairy tale of its times.
The book is useful in giving you a more nuanced perspective on technological change. It even dares suggest that earlier times experienced more fundamental changes!
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In this timely new book, Christopher May surveys some of the most influential and important writings that declare we are entering a new information age. It is frequently asserted that this will bring about a social transformation and that the character of work is being transformed by the widespread deployment of information and communication technologies. In a similar manner we are told the world of politics is changing, with new communities emerging which will alter the practices of politics in profound and novel ways, and which will significantly reduce the role of the state and government. Each of these claims is subjected to a detailed critique. Christopher May suggests that while there have clearly been some major and important changes prompted by the information technology revolution, these are often changes only in the forms of activity and not their substance. The information age represents some marked and important continuities with previous social practices, rather than the overthrow of all that has gone before. This sceptical view balances and moderates the often hysterical celebration of the new information society - a celebration which, the author argues, often lapses into an apologia for modern capitalism. The Information Society will be of particular interest to students in sociology, politics, political economy, media and cultural studies and information studies.
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