Shaping the Network Society : The New Role of Civil Society in Cyberspace

Information and computer technologies are used every day by real people with realneeds. The authors contributing to Shaping the Network Society describe how technology can be usedeffectively by communities, activists, and citizens to meet society's challenges. In their vision,computer professionals are concerned less with bits, bytes, and algorithms and more with productivepartnerships that engage both researchers and community activists. These collaborations areproducing important sociotechnical work that will affect the future of the networksociety.Traditionally, academic research on real-world users of technology has been neglected oreven discouraged. The authors contributing to this book are working to fill this gap; theirtheoretical and practical discussions illustrate a new orientation -- research that works withpeople in their natural social environments, uses common language rather than rarefied academicdiscourse, and takes a pragmatic perspective. The topics they consider are key to democratizationand social change. They include human rights in the "global billboard society"; public computing inToledo, Ohio; public digital culture in Amsterdam; "civil networking" in the former Yugoslavia;information technology and the international public sphere; "historical archaeologies" of communitynetworks; "technobiographical" reflections on the future; libraries as information commons; andglobalization and media democracy, as illustrated by Indymedia, a global collective of independentmedia organizations.