The Information Society in Europe: Work and Life in an Age of GlobalizationKen Ducatel, Juliet Webster, Werner Herrmann For four decades now, information and communication technologies have been seen as principal drivers of socio-economic change. Stimulated in recent years by the Internet, the National Information Infrastructure, and European Information Society strategies, the OInformation SocietyO has undergone a new wave of developments. In its new form, the Information Society directly affects the everyday lives of citizens, provoking concerns about the future of work, information overload, access to continuing education, surveillance, and privacy. This volume examines a wide range of issues at stake in the European Union, from employment and the labor market, to the domestication of technologies in households, to larger implications for political processes and democracy. Extending comparisons to other industrialized countries, it demonstrates that the Information Society is far too diverse and rich to be typified in simplistic dichotomies such as information OhavesO and Ohave notsO and that simple upbeat or pessimistic responses to the new technologies are surely false messengers for the future. The authors discern general social trends and patterns in the way that these very important technologies already affect our lives and work. But they find there is still considerable room to use the technologies as a positive force for social change or, equally, to fail to take up any positive opportunities. This book helps broaden and inform communication technology debates worldwide and will be of interest to academics, students, industrialists, policymakers, and anyone who wishes to better understand the impacts of the new Information Society in Europe and beyond. |
Contents
Information Infrastructures or Societies? | 1 |
Regional Development in the Information Society | 21 |
The Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Large Firms Impacts and Policy Issues | 45 |
Small Firms in Europes Developing Information Society | 73 |
New Organizational Forms in the Information Society | 99 |
Todays Second Sex and Tomorrows First? Women and Work in the European Information Society | 119 |
Toward the Learning Labor Market | 141 |
Health and the Information Society | 175 |
Information and Communication Technologies in Distance and Lifelong Learning | 201 |
Information and Communication Technologies and Everyday Life Individual and Social Dimensions | 233 |
ComputerAided Democracy The Effects of Information and Communication Technologies on Democracy | 259 |
| 279 | |
| 315 | |
About the Contributors | |
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activities ALMPs areas cation centers cognitive Communication Technologies companies competition computer networks costs countries culture Distance Education economic Edited effective electronic electronic data interchange employees employment enterprises Ergonomics Europe European Commission European Union example experience flexible functions gender global groups growth Haddon and Silverstone household ICTs impact implementation increasing increasingly individual industry information society infrastructure innovation institutions integrated interactive Internet investment issues labor market large firms learning less favored regions London ment Minitel mobile multimedia networks OECD on-line organization organizational outsourcing percent political potential problems production programs requirements retail role sector skills small firms SMEs social strategies structures suppliers telecommunications telematics telemedicine teleworking tion trends U.S. Congress United Kingdom University users women workers workforce workplace