Times of the Technoculture: From the Information Society to the Virtual Life / Edition 1

by Kevin Robins, Frank Webster

Overview

Times of the Technoculture explores the social and cultural impact of new technologies, tracing the origins of the information society from the coming of the machine with the industrial revolution to the development of mass production techniques in the early twentieth century.
The authors look at how the military has controlled the development of the information society, and consider the centrality of education in government attempts to create a knowledge society. Engaging in contemporary debates surrounding the internet, Robins and Webster question whether it can really offer us a new world of virtual communities, and suggest more radical alternatives to the corporate agenda of contemporary technologies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415161152
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/13/1999
Series:	Comedia
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Kevin Robins is Professor of Cultural Geography at the Centre for Urban Studies, University of Newcastle. Frank Webster is Professor of Sociology at the University of Birmingham.

Table of Contents

Introduction: the changing technoscape PART I Techno-visions 1 A cultural history of Pandaemonium 2 Engaging with Luddism 3 The hollowing of progress PART II Genealogies of information 4 The long history of the information revolution 5 The cybernetic imagination of capitalism 6 Propaganda: the hidden face of information PART III The politics of cyberspace 7 Cyberwars: the military information revolution 8 Education as knowledge and discipline 9 Deconstructing the academy: the new production of human capital PART IV Living in virtual space 10 Prospects of a virtual culture 11 The virtual pacification of space