Teknologian historiaa mutta kapeasti

kuinka viestintäteknologiasta ja sen kehityksestä keskustellaan nykyisessä aikalaisdiagnostisessa yhteiskuntateoriassa?

Kirjoittajat

• Marko Ampuja

Abstrakti

How communications technology and its development are discussed in contemporary social theory

Throughout their history, electronic communication technologies have roused strong arguments according to which they will move us into a new era. Since the 1990s, many influential social theorists have been increasingly interested in changes in latest information and communication technologies as part of their efforts to define the essence of our time against earlier periods. Recently, much has been written about the capability of the Internet, in particular, to generate new kinds of transnational networks and its assumed capability to overcome, once and for all, the barriers of space and time. The recurrent problem with such assumptions is, however, that they are not related to the history of technology and especially to the history of ideas concerning technology. In this article, I will critically assess recent arguments in social theory about the so-called new information and communication technologies and show their intimate connections to similar type of arguments that have been presented since the nineteenth century, for example in relation to the telegraph and the railway.