Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper is a contribution to understanding the ways that information technologies have been theorised in relation to social change. Beginning with a discussion of the early ‘information society’ thesis, I outline a major critique of these positions, arguing that they fail to account for the transformation in the nature of information in modernity. The paper then goes on to outline approaches which position information as central to transformation and argue that the chief axis of tension in relation to information is not the development of consensus and control of public opinion but the control of resources.