Recession and Restructuring

Abstract

In our first chapter we argued that technology is best understood not as an extra-social phenomenon which ‘impacts’ from without, but rather as an integral part of society. We developed this perpective in Chapter 2 by offering a sketch of the origins of the ‘information society’, outlining the major social, economic and political forces that have resulted in a heightened importance for information and for technologies capable of managing and incorporating its various forms.

‘If the social changes now upon us seem necessary, it is because they follow not from any disembodied technological logic but from a social logic — to which we all conform.’

(David Noble, 1984, p. 324)