Technology and In/equality: Questioning the Information Society

This collection of papers sets out to explore critically the assumptions underlying the vision of the information society and access to technology as the panacea to all society’s ills. It thus takes a challenging and questioning approach which is both refreshing and thought provoking. It has been assembled from a group of contributors who work together in the Department of Innovation Studies at the University of East London. This has meant that the book has structured itself around the interests of those thus assembled rather than starting from a holistic sense of what was required in “questioning the information society”, where potential contributors might have tackled all of those areas that were seen as essential components of the task. From an information science perspective there are some notable omissions, in the failure, for example, to deal discretely with information, use and needs, information policy and strategy and/or the role of information in overcoming exclusion. There are equally some surprising omissions from the bibliography. Almost none of the names that might have been expected from the LIS field were represented. Now this is an interesting phenomenon and arguably no bad thing. It is interesting in that is suggests that the “information” perspective is failing to get its voice heard across disciplinary divides: the book itself is also very useful for those in our field in that it provides a social perspective in which the reader can locate “information”.

The individual papers are a varied mix, as is so often the case, in terms of both topic and quality, but there is a very useful introductory chapter which focuses on critical perspectives and which, incidentally, provides an effective frame for the contributions which follow on aspects of the information society, such as democracy and the broadcast media, and technology in education and work. It is impossible to deal with all of these individually in this review, but there are a number that are particularly worthy of mention. Allan and Miller, for example, examine the opportunities enabled by Internet technologies for the enhancement of democracy, questioning the potential and the rhetoric of much of the debate to date. Interestingly, Pimlott has a revealing insight that access to information is not in itself sufficient: the user must also have the skills necessary to manipulate the information. However, harking back to the earlier point, there is no acknowledgement that this a long held tenet of information studies or that there may be several more complex levels of interaction that may have a significant impact on the quality of information search, retrieval, manipulation, evaluation, consumption and application.

There are particularly interesting and thought‐provoking chapters by Senker on the counter‐cyclical relationship between economic growth and technological innovation, by Hemwood, Plumeridge and Steputerage on gender and technology in education and by Miller, Kennedy and Leung on the realities of delivery of virtual education to mature black women in an economically disadvantaged urban area.

Overall this is a varied and stimulating set of thoughtful and critical opinion pieces which tackle some of the myths underlying a superficial acceptance of the benefits of the information society, which debunk yet provide new theoretical understanding. I would recommend it as essential reading for those interested in exploring beyond the surface of the concept.