Virtual Society? Get Real!

Technology, Cyberbole, Reality

Steve Woolgar

Virtual Society? Get Real!

Technology, Cyberbole, Reality

Steve Woolgar

Description

This book investigates the precise effects on society of the new and much vaunted electronic technologies (ICTs). All aspects of our social, cultural, economic, and political life stand to be affected by their continued massive growth, but are fundamental shifts already taking place in the way in which we behave, organize, and interact as a direct result of the new technologies? The contributors to the volume argue that their transformative effects amount to our transition to a virtual society.

Virtual Society? Get Real!

Technology, Cyberbole, Reality

Steve Woolgar

1. Introduction: Five Rules of Virtuality, Steve Woolgar
2. They Came, They Surfed, They Went Back to the Beach: Conceptualizing Use and Non-use of the Internet, Sally Wyatt, Graham Thomas, and Tiziana Terranova
3. Visualization Needs Vision: The Pre-paradigmatic Character of Virtual Reality, G. M. Peter Swann and Tim P. Watts
4. How Social is Internet Communication? A Reappraisal of Bandwidth and Anonymity Effects, Susan E. Watt, Martin Lea, and Russell Spears
5. New Public Places for Internet Access: Networks for Practice-Based Learning and Social Inclusion, Sonia Liff, Fred Steward, and Peter Watts
6. Allegories of Creative Destruction: Technology and Organization in Narratives of the e-Economy, David Knights, Faith Noble, Theo Vurdubakis, and Hugh Willmott
7. Confronting Electronic Surveillance: Desiring and Resisting New Technologies, Brian McGrail
8. Getting Real about Surveillance and Privacy at Work, David Mason, Graham Button, Gloria Lankshear, Sally Coates, and Wes Sharrock
9. Virtual Society and the Cultural Practice of Studey, Charles Crook and Paul Light
10. The Reality of Virtual Social Support, Sarah Nettleton, Nicholas Pleace, Roger Burrows, Steven Muncer, and Brian Loader
11. Real and Virtual Connectivity: New Media in London, Andreas Wittel, Celia Lury, and Scott Lash
12. Presence, Absence, and Accountability: Email and the Mediation of Organizational Memory, Steven D. Brown and Geoffrey Lightfoot
13. Inside the Bubble: Communion, Cognition, and Deep Play at the Intersection of Wall Street and Cyberspace, Melvin Pollner
14. The Day-to-Day Work of Standardization: A Sceptical Note on the Reliance on IT in a Retail Bank, John Hughes, Mark Rouncefield, and Pete Tolmie
15. Cotton to Computers: From Industrial to Information Revolutions, Jon Agar, Sarah Green, and Penny Harvey
16. Mobile Society? Technology, Distance, and Presence, Geoff Cooper, Nicola Green, Richard Harper, and Gerald Murtagh
17. Abstraction and Decontextualization: An Anthropological Comment, Marilyn Strathern

Virtual Society? Get Real!

Technology, Cyberbole, Reality

Steve Woolgar

Author Information

Steve Woolgar was Professor of Sociology, Head of the Department of Human Sciences, and Director of CRICT (Centre for Research into Innovation, Culture and Technology) until 2000. He has held visiting appointments at McGill University, MIT, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines, Paris, and University of California, San Diego. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship and a Fulbright Senior Scholarship, and the winner of an ESRC Senior Research Fellowship. He moved to the University of Oxford in autumn 2000 to take up the Chair of Marketing at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. He is currently Director of the ESRC' Virtual Society?' programme.

Contributors:

Jon Agar (University of Manchester)
Steven D. Brown (Loughborough University)
Roger Burrows (University of York)
Graham Button (Xerox Research Centre Europe)
Sally Coates (University of Plymouth)
Geoff Cooper (University of Surrey)
Charles Crook (Loughborough University)
Nicola Green (University of Surrey)
Sarah Green (University of Manchester)
Richard Harper (University of Surrey)
Penny Harvey (University of Manchester)
John Hughes (University of Lancaster)
David Knights (University of Keele)
Gloria Lankshear (University of Plymouth)
Scott Lash (University of London)
Martin Lea (University of Manchester)
Sonia Liff (Warwick Business School)
Paul Light (Loughborough University)
Geoffrey Lightfoot (Keele University)
Brian Loader (University of York)
Celia Lury (University of London)
Brian McGrail (Open University)
David Mason (University of Plymouth)
Steven Muncer (University of York)
Gerald Murtagh (University of Surrey)
Sarah Nettleton (University of York)
Faith Noble (University of Keele)
Nicholas Pleace (University of York)
Melvin Pollner (UCLA)
Mark Rouncefield (University of Lancaster)
Wes Sharrock (University of Manchester)
Russell Spears (University of Amsterdam)
Fred Steward (Aston Business School)
Marilyn Strathern (University of Cambridge)
G. M. Peter Swann (Manchester Business School)
Tiziana Terranova (University of East London)
Graham Thomas (University of East London)
Pete Tolmie (University of Lancaster)
Theo Vurdubakis (Manchester School of Management)
Susan E. Watt (University of Manchester)
Tim P. Watts (Manchester Business School)
Peter Watts (Warwick Business School)
Hugh Willmott (Manchester School of Management)
Andreas Wittel (University of London)
Steve Woolgar (Saïd Business School)
Sally Wyatt (Universitet van Amsterdam)