Social theories that announce the dawn of a new age are preoccupied with technology as major high-end technological systems rather than discrete tools or devices. The convergence of all kinds of electronic systems, broadcasting, telecommunications, and computer-mediated communications into a comprehensive ecology known as ICT is the classic case. But, even here, we need to consider specific applications in order to think about their efect on time.
Let us take the example of the Internet, perhaps the prime contender for a technology of acceleration. At its basic level, the Internet is indeed a set of technical standards and capabilities that enables a “network of networks” to interlink ICTs, including computers of all sizes and a variety of mobile consumer devices and electronic multimedia. The most visible aspects of the Internet are also technological: for instance, the tools that enable searches to be made through billions of pages of information on the World Wide Web (in a matter of minutes) or multiple e-mails to be sent to colleagues and friends.
Social research has shown, however, that the use of the Internet and its constituent and interlinking technologies form an intertwining, coevolving web of people, social structures, and technologies. The paths opened by the Internet are determined not by technological capabilities alone but through a multitude of intricate social processes in which a diverse array of actors with varied goals participate in a rapidly evolving “ecology of games.”39 For example, the choices that are embedded in the operating codes of search engine software, such as Google, predispose users to access well-linked and highly connected websites and exclude poorly linked and less-connected websites.
This indicates that the Internet is about more than just equipment, and that the control of the Internet and related technologies is bound up with broader issues of who has access to the skills, equipment, and knowhow essential to produce, use, consume, and govern the relevant technologies. Through this web of people and technology, the Internet can redistribute the relative “communicative power” of diferent actors in households, communities, workplaces, and society at large by reshaping access not only to information but also to people, services, and technologies.
Chapter One
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