Abstract
How are social relations appearing in computers? How are social relations realised in a different kind of medium, in the hardware and software of computers? How are the organising principles of computer building related to those of the life-worlds in a social system? Following a partly social constructivist and partly hermeneutic line a more general answer will be presented. The basic conclusion of this approach is simple: computers are constructed under the influence of the ideas of modernity and represent its structure, interests and values, in contrast to computer networks, which embody the ideas of postmodernity.
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This paper is based on a lecture given at the Japanese STS conference entitledInternational Conference on Science, Technology and Society. Science and Society-Technological Turn, in Tokyo, March 1998. A preliminary collection of these ideas was presented at an Austrian-Hungarian Networking workshop in Otterthal in 1996. A part of that lecture will be published under the title ‘Society in Computers’ in the proceedings of the workshop in the near future.
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Ropolyi, L. Life-worlds and social relations in computers. AI & Soc 13, 69–87 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01205259
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01205259