Actually Existing Information Society

摘要

Cascades of publicity have been showered on the technologies that mark society's transition into the digital-new media including, first and foremost, the internet. New information-processing and communicative possibilities are materializing, it seems, day by day; habits and practices are being remade worldwide and throughout every institution and social group. No serious analyst can fail to be profoundly impressed by these systems and services. Yet they do not supersede existing social relations. Any careful analyst must situate them in the information society that we live in right now, not in some future or hypothetical space-time.