Information Technology and Social Transformation Prometheus Wired: The Hope for Democracy in the Age of Network Technology

by Darin Barney; Mapping Cyberspace by Martin Dodge; Rob Kitchin; The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach by Daniel Miller; Don Slater; The Emergence of Noopolitik: Toward an American Information Strategy by John Arquilla; David Ronfeldt Review by: Robert Latham International Studies Review, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Spring, 2002), pp. 101-115 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The International Studies Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3186276 . Accessed: 26/02/2012 13:24
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Information Social

Technologyand
Transformation

RobertLatham

Prometheus Wired: The Hope for Democracy in the Age of Network Technology, Darin Barney (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). 340 pp., cloth (ISBN: 0-226-03745-2), $29.00. Mapping Cyberspace, Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin (London: Routledge, 2001). 260 pp., paper (ISBN: 0-415-19884-4), $32.99; cloth (ISBN: 0-41519883-6), $100.00. The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach, Daniel Miller and Don Slater (Oxford: Berg, 2000). 224 pp., paper (ISBN: 1-85973-389-1), $19.50; cloth (ISBN: 1-85973-384-0), $65.00. The Emergence of Noopolitik: Towardan American Information Strategy, JohnArquillaandDavid Ronfeldt(SantaMonica, Calif.: RAND, 1999). 102 pp., paper (ISBN: 0-8330-2698-4), $15.00.

uch of humankind's futureis now hitchedto the trainof information

technology (IT) and the "new economy."Across the last decade, policymakers, activists, internationalbureaucrats,business leaders, and intellectuals have championednew IT-especially the Internet -as a catalyst for generatingeconomic growth and development, peace and global cosmopol-

with of heremainly 1Consistent the substance thebooksreviewed,ITis associated withthe Internet, it is important to overlookthe manyotheraspectsof IT such but not and as robotics,simulation, dataprocessing.
@ 2002 InternationalStudies Association Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 IJF, UK.

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itanism, personal freedom and individual improvement.2The more exclusive side of this optimistic technovision anticipatesthe constructionof virtual citaand dels, whose safe and secure electronic walls protectagainst cyberterrorism
cybercrime.3

Spells of skepticism often follow bouts of optimism. A second wave of commentaryhas begun to emerge that is eager to point out that the effects and developments associated with IT are not necessarily positive or robust. In the world of policymakers and practitioners,the conceptual lightning rod for this second wave's diminished expectations is the "digital divide" (conceived as a chasmbetweenthe resource-rich connectedandthe impoverished unconnected).4 In the world of research and analysis, especially in the academy, a second wave has cast itself across a far wider and deeper front and challenges the received wisdom on issues from democracy and identity to power and social space. The four books discussed here are situated at the front lines of this analytical second wave. This frontis hardlyunified or even in dialogue with itself. Should we expect more?After all, each work ambitiously seeks to rethink,or even contest from a distinct disciplinaryperspective, a section of the first wave of claims about IT thatfor many ring as hollow exuberance.But the world of IT scholarshipis still small and made smaller by the fact that each of these works focuses on the Internet. In addition, all but the RAND study share forms of skepticism and concerns with issues such as community and equity. Yet they provide little sense that we are at the birth of a new field of interdisciplinarysocial science research. In the movie Annie Hall, the characterplayed by WoodyAllen explains that he finds photographyinterestingbecause it (unlike painting) lacks a deep history of intricate standardsof criticism and aesthetic judgment. My discussion of these works suggests that that sort of openness applies to the study of IT, which will draw increasing numbersof scholars and experts who are attracted by such fluidity and by the sense that dealing with IT producesinstant,cuttingedge status.Openness is good, but we need to figure out how to go on from this point so that a broad range of scholars and disciplines can begin generating
2All of these hopes come to together in The Global InformationInfrastructure:
3Dorothy Denning describes this well in InformationWarfareand Security (Bos-

of D.C.:Department Commerce, 1995);avail(Washington, Agenda Cooperation for accessed ableat(http://iitf.doc.gov/documents/docs/gii/giiagend.html); January 2001. 12,

ton:Addison-Wesley, 1999). treat a chanceto turndespairinto opportunity, practitioners this 4Never missing in the global divide as somethingto be bridgedsimply by expanding connectivity of South.See the literature the G-8's DOTForce,especiallyGlobalBridges,Digital Draft Report of the DOT Force, April 2001; (www.dotforce.org/ Opportunities, accessedApril28, 2001. reports/DOT_Force_2.0c.doc);

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knowledge, dialogically, in this area. Too much is at stake to forgo this. It is therefore worthwhile trying to draw out what I view as the common elements addressedby the books. Before doing that, I will review how far these authors go in challenging the first wave. Darin Barney in Prometheus Wiredoffers the most deeply skeptical view. He rejects the assertions that the Internetis inherently a democratic means of communicationwhile tending towardopening new forms of equality as expression, interaction, and access to information.For Barney, a Canadianpolitical scientist, the use of new informationtechnologies does not in itself mean that citizens are actually deciding about the shape and course of their social existence (a crucial test, he believes, for any claim to democracy).His skepticism is not limited to the realm of politics. According to Barney, the notion that an "informationrevolution" is under way must be dismissed. From his observational perch, he sees no real change in the basic structuresof class and property ownershipthat would give meaning to the word revolution. His thirdchallenge to the notion is that something like real, rooted community exists via the Internet. No meaningful sense of place and belonging is generatedby the bulletin boards, chat rooms, MUDS, and other spaces that constitute digital social life. Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin, two geographersworking in the U.K., are also skeptical in Mapping Cyberspaceabout early commentaryon online communities, especially as they bear on the question of social space. The Internet, according to Dodge and Kitchin, is not spaceless, despite assertions that it compresses time and leads to the "deathof distance."5 They question whether such existing online communities constitute new public spaces on the Internet, as earlier advocates claimed.6 At the same time, there appearto be so many powerful private, corporateforces constructing, maintaining, and monitoring such spaces-to say nothing of the zoned-off proprietaryspaces corporations maintainfor themselvesin variousIntranets VirtualPrivateNetworks.Dodge and and Kitchin share the skepticism with Barney that concepts of belonging and place can be applied to virtual communities, and they doubt that "place" (in physical, geographicalterms)is becoming less relevantin a wired world. Indeed, against claims that the Internet has spawned a global civil society spinning webs of decentralizedconnectivity thatweaken the grid of nation-states,Dodge and Kitchin argue that states are using and learning to use IT, especially the local governments, to conduct business and enhance their legitimacy among citizens.

Rheingold, The Virtual Community:Homesteading on the Virtual Frontier (Boston:

WillChangeOurLives(Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard BusinessSchoolPress,1997). 6Thelocus classicusextollingthe attractions virtualcommunities in Howard of is

5 Frances Cairncross,The Death

Revolution of Distance: How the Communications

1993). Addison-Wesley,

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A focus on an individual state and society distinguishes Daniel Miller and Don Slater's The Internet:An EthnographicApproach.They are keenly interested in demonstratingthat the Internet-from websites to e-mail-is not a virtual realm apartfrom the everyday lives of ordinarypeople-as early advocates often understoodit to be-but deeply imbricatedin them. The lives that interestthe authorsare on the island nationof Trinidad,which Miller and Slater, who live in the U.K. and work respectively as anthropologistsand sociologists, have studied extensively. They see the Internetnot as some fixed sociotechnological entity awaiting applicationby users as earlierenthusiastsoften implied. It comes to life only in the specific uses of particulargroups and communities, be they religious, ethnic, or familial.7 Ratherthan underminingsuch real-time forms of association, as was prognosticatedby some champions of life online, connectivity, the authors contend, is strengtheningand extending more traditional social forms like families. In supportof that observationand contraryto recentrhetoricaboutthe divide between the connected and unconnected,Miller and Slaterfind thatthereis far more Internetuse by ordinaryfolks-and comfort in that use-than even they suspected before beginning their fieldwork.8 What policymakers would do with such varying views-if they became aware of them-is far from clear. Two U.S. policy analysts from RAND, John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, seek to clarify the new media in their study, The Emergenceof Noopolitik, sponsoredby the Departmentof Defense. Centralto their effort is overcoming the first wave of national security fear of a "digital attacks(sponsoredperhapsby rogue states, where cyberterrorist Pearl Harbor," terroristnetworks,or anarchistichackers)renderhelpless U.S. state and private sector informationsystems and infrastructures. Arquilla and Ronfeldt want to shift the policy-making frameworkfrom a realist-inspired,zero-sum focus on defending against threatsto a concern with reaping the rewardsof cooperation in a new world of burgeoninginformationand proliferatingactors (all the while keeping one eye open for trouble). Cooperation, in their view, will not only bring the usual benefits of coordinationof policies and internationalcollective action. It also can enable a global shaping of the concepts, agendas, and worldviews of the many actorsfrom states to nongovernmental organizations(NGOs) the global realm in a mannerthat is in the U.S. national interest. that populate a determinism, view Dodge and Kitchincautionreadersto rejecttechnological that forceor variable affectssociallife. They as thattreatstechnology an independent to ask us to focus on "howwe can use, alterand reshapecyberspace our benefit" of how to define"we"and"our." the (p. 25). They fail to address politicalquestion since is determinism antinormative it does notallowfor ethicalchoices Technological of technology(see Barney,ch. 7), but so is the naive over the shapeand purpose positingof choice. is 8The authorsacknowledge only in passingthat they are awarethat Trinidad world. of the developing hardlyrepresentative
7

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THE AGE OF THE NEW

While the second wave has challenged inherited views of techno-exuberance, this has not stopped it from trying to identify for us what is or is not new about the new IT. Change and newness as a theme have been at the heart of analysis and commentary on the social dimensions of IT since the beginning of our currentinformationand communicationage.9 These authorsare no exception. They of course differ on questions of what is new, how it is new, and to what effect. The authorsof these books discuss the new in four broaddimensions: conceptual frameworks,spaces, practices, and architecturesof power. "New" can mean the emergence of some phenomenonthatdid not exist before (e.g., digital in libraries);a transformation some condition or force that alters sociohistorical contexts (e.g., widening inequality);or an overturningof perceptionsand ways of doing things that produces significant trajectories of social change (e.g., network-organizedfirms). The first dimension-conceptual frameworks-already has been touched on in the contrastbetween the first and second waves. Indeed, the notion that technological innovation has or must produce new understandingsabout how the world works is an essential assumption of techno-exuberance.Dodge and Kitchin-who ask us to consider how cyberspace is being represented as a space or set of spaces-argue that this is an importantquestion because such representationsreveal our vision of the world. Thus, ratherthan see the first wave of observations about IT as something simply to be dismissed, we might ask in what ways they are becoming the operatingprinciples of the information age. Dodge and Kitchin never explicitly develop this implication, which is a great loss because we sorely need to study the ideology of IT and help generate a sociology of knowledge.10Barney moves us much furtheralong these lines in 9Themostprominent of in earlystatement transformation the contemporary period

in 1973).For a studyof thinking an earlierera dominated the leadingedge of the by see Carolyn When Technologies New(New York: Old Were Oxford Marvin, telephone, Press,1990). University 10Twoworksthattouchon this arePaulN. Edwards, ClosedWorld: The Computers
and the Politics of Discourse in Cold WarAmerica (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,

is in Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books,

BenderandTimothy on eds., Culture theBrink:Ideol1996),andGretchen Drukrey, FreePress, 1998).DodgeandKitchinhintat this in (New York: ogies of Technology ch. 10, whichreviewsthe (social) science fictionof cyberspace. theirconcluding In for An they chapter, also list relevant questions further study. exampleof thisfromthe in to is past,whichaddresses technology generalin relation politicaltheory, in Langdon Winner,AutonomousTechnology:TechnicsOut of Controlas a Themein Political

Mass.:MITPress, 1977). Thought (Cambridge,

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his arguments about the growing power of a technologism that assumes all social problems are reducible to technological fixes and that occludes the possibility for political dispute over the directionof public policy.1"Yet this familiar notion may not be the best startingplace for generatingsubstantialresearch programson the ideology of IT. These programswould addressquestions such as whether models of the informationstate are emerging to shape concepts of authorityand power-and our political imaginations more generally-within and across boundaries.Perhapsstates are only beginning to figure out how they will organize power within and across societies via IT. Rather than wait for full-fledged models to appear,we need to critically assess the process of building the informationstate.12 It is more interestingto better understandthe sociology of knowledge surrounding what is arguablythe leading new conceptual frameworklying at the heart of social commentaryon IT: the network.The Internetis often defined in a thumbnail as a network of networks. Manuel Castells, in his much noted recent trilogy, has gone so far as to declare the birth of Network Society.13 Networks-as a structureof human interaction and organization-have capturedboth the popularand scholarly imagination.Three types of networks are particularlyrelevant to IT and figure in different ways in these books. One is the social network,constitutedby the personallinks between individuals.Miller and Slater's focus on family, business, and identity group relationshipsunfolding across the Internetlies squarely in the social network realm.14 A second type is the computeror electronic network.Dodge and Kitchin trace for us the visual depictions of the millions of electronic webs that form across the globe. Barney devotes an entire chapterto reviewing for the less IT-initiatedthe various logics and histories of the network of networks, which is the Internet.He points nicely to an importanttension: while these networkscan seem open and expansive, they also are structuresof control that can channel our lives into delimited choices and menus.

OneDimensional me reminds of the 1960sclassicby Herbert Marcuse, "Barney he engagesKarl Marx Martin and Beacon Man(Boston: Press,1964).Although HeidegSchool,whichwas verymuchinformed ger,Barneyessentiallyignoresthe Frankfurt of If by boththinkers. he hadtakenthemup, he mighthavenot endedwitha critique there. but started technologism 12One initialforayintothistopic,focusing organization, mostlyon theinstitutional
is in Jane E. Fountain,Building the VirtualState: InformationTechnologyand Insti-

D.C.:Brookings tutionalChange(Washington, Institution, 2001). " ManuelCastells,TheRise of Network U.K.:Blackwell,1996). Society(Oxford, 14Interestingly, do MillerandSlater notexplicitlyengagesocialnetwork theoryand fromCastells's themselves theirattempt distinguish to research. strong emphaPerhaps themfromdoingso. sis on networks prevented

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This observationties in to the thirdtype of network,which is closely related to the first two: the organizationalnetwork, driven by logics of dispersal and concentration.The new, flexible corporationis the chief conceptual locus for this type of network:short-term,nonhierarchical alliances emerge across firms, productionunits, and geographicalspaces in a web of nodes and links that take on a virtual character(facilitatedby social and electronic connections). Barney also reviews this network form, and the chief virtue of his discussion-which otherwise covers familiar territory-is to remind us that the emergence of a new economy does not mean that capitalism is moving away from the highly uneven concentrationsof wealth and power that compose its history. Interestingly,Arquilla and Ronfeldt are in fact quite enamored of network organization.They advocate that the U.S. state adopt similar strategies of alliance formationwith every mannerof actor in the global realm. They think that adopting such strategiesmight go a long way towardovercoming the zero-sum mentality that is still prevalent and build on the strengths of actors such as U.S.-friendly NGOs. It would avoid unnecessarymistrustwith other states that would otherwise be identified only as "the competition." I am among those troubled by the question of who decides what alliances and flexible relationships should be formed or broken and exactly for what purpose.U.S. history as a state and network maker often has not been pretty because it has been dominated by the deadly effective formation and maintenanceof intelligence and counterinsurgencynetworks well after the end of the Cold War.15 At stake in conceptual frameworks are not only practical understandings about how the world works, but also academic approachesand theories-as is clearly the case with networks. Are new social science methods, models, and theories necessary, and what would be their relation to existing ones? How do we demarcatehistorical periods (the "networkage," the "knowledge society," the "informationage") or evaluate claims about historical continuity and discontinuity? In what way do we integrate insights involving old technologies such as the telegraph or previous periods of global expansion such as the late nineteenthcentury? 16 None of these books addressesthese questions in depth. Perhapsthe field is not far enough along yet and must wait for furthergenerations of scholars who are more apt to do so. Yet Dodge and Kitchin suggest how the discipline of geography should engage on new terms the Internetand the cyberspace it makes possible. Geographerswould need to give up their tendencies to assume that space is continuous and well ordered,and thatmaps, as I will soon discuss, are representations

Networks: The Military-ParamilitaryPartnership and the United States (New York:

in Killer RightsWatch,Colombia's 5 One set of examplesis documented Human

Human RightsWatch,1996). 16See, for example,TomStandage, Victorian Internet Walker, (New York: 1998).

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of territory.They will need to work in more metaphoricalterms, since in the virtual world, the visualization of a space becomes the geographicalobject and is no longer simply the visual and conceptual depiction of terrafirma.17 Miller and Slater, it should be noted, are explicit about their use of ethnographicmethods. They essentially adopt the recently explored multisite ethnographic, which requires researchersto work in different types of sites-from the home to the corporateboardroom-rather than one site such as a village.18 for This approachis particularlyappropriate Internetstudies that take life offline as seriously as life online.19 Although they do not directly address the status of academic frameworks, Arquilla and Ronfeldt imply that some of the recent changes in focus in international relations (IR) are necessary for developing an effective U.S. "information strategy"(p. 1). These include the study of nonstate actors and activist networks, norms, and expanding conceptions of security. The field of IR will have to think carefully aboutthe implicationsof how fast its new approachesonce part of a critical stance-have become caught up in policy researchagendas. Moreover,when it comes to technology, a quick perusalof military-related websites-like that of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-will show thatthereare serious reasons to at least suspect thatIR is behind the curve on innovative forms of thinking about security.20On what terms do researchersengage policymaking when policymakers are no longer mostly consumers of scholarly knowledge productionand become the primary sources of conceptual innovation in an area like IT and security? However new IT might be, thinking about it can become an occasion for applying or expanding long-standing ideas and perspectives from Marxism to liberalism. Barney self-consciously avoids any poststructuralist methodology in his analysis (which would emphasize, among other things, fragmentation and fluidity). Instead, he relies on classic philosophy (Aristotle), phenomenology (Heidegger), Marxism, and (Leo) Straussian-inspiredcultural criticism (George Grant).Discussions of new technologies and social practices relating to them are superb opportunities to make claims about the applicability and

can 17Dodge andKitchin construction be Euclidean recognizethata cyber-spatial to "if explicitlyprogrammed do so" (p. 30). 18George The of in/of Marcus, "Ethnography theWorld System: Emergence Multi24 Review Annual SitedEthnography," ofAnthropology (1995),pp.95-117, is a major of articulation this approach. is and of 19A developedexploration ethnography the Internet in David Hakken,
Looks to the Future (New York:Routledge, Cyborgs @ Cyberspace:An Ethnographer 37-68. 1999), pp. Alker,Ronkeepingtrackof thisarefew. Hayward 20(www.darpa.mil).IR scholars

ald Deibert,andJamesDer Derianstandout as notableexceptions.

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enduring nature of ethical concerns such as equality, virtue, and justice. We sorely need theoreticalvantage points from which to assess and mediate ethical continuities and discontinuities, as well as bodies of research that take a long historical view of social transformation associated with technology and communication. The second dimension of the new that is at play in these works is space. This dimension is central to Dodge and Kitchin, who do an excellent job of bringing together the many ways that Internetconnectivity, interactions, and data have been visualized in spatial terms and discussed in relevant literatures.21 They claim to be more ambitious, seeking "to theorize the role of space and the natureof online spatiality"(p. 1). While they outline importantquestions for further research and theory in their concluding chapter, they never theorize much directly themselves. They had the greatestopportunityto theorize aroundthe question of what is at stake politically, economically, and socially, and in the fact that the Internet takes form mostly as a series of spaces. Spaces mean walls, proprietaryzones, and self-contained governance rules. While we know zonality has important implications for public and private distinctions, we still do not understandit well or how it might reverberateinto practices associated with citizenship, for example. Another area ripe for theory is the mapping of cyberspace.We do not have to view firsthandthe medieval maps of the world, painted on the walls of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, to understandhow crucial geographical frameworks are to social and political orders. The relationship between geography and internationalrelations (the practices, not necessarily the disciplines) has been very close. As maps of cyberspacebecome increasingprevalentand salient to claims both local and global about wealth, power, and identity,we had better gain an analytical way to understandthe trends and developments.22It will be impossible to do so without addressing how transboundarycyberspaces cut across and intersect with physical geographies.At this point, all that seems to be available are depictions of nodes of connectivity, which map smoothly onto the physical place of urbancenters like New Yorkand Amsterdam. It is interestingthat the virtual geographies profiled by Dodge and Kitchin more or less hold physical geography constant, as though it too were a smooth space as depicted in the latest map of nations and their capital cities. Our con21The spatialmodelingof dataandinformation flows (see especiallypp. 124-126) is the mostinteresting least knownof the mapping and exercisessurveyed Dodge by and Kitchin.One examplethey pointto is the "3DTrading Floor"of the New York StockExchange. 22For one earlyandsuggestiveview, see Mathew or Zook,"OldHierarchies New Networks Centrality? GlobalGeography theInternet of The of Content AmerMarket,"
ican Behavioral Scientist 44, No. 10 (2001).

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ceptions of physical space should change to reflect the developing political trenches, economic concentrations,and resource scarcities, and this should be integrated with conceptions of virtual space. In turn, it will be importantto draw out the historical dimensions of each form of space and of the intersections between them.23 Histories of connectivity, interaction,and data will help us see the lumpy and zonal characterof cyberspace and make plainer the real estate of the Internet.24 ArquillaandRonfeldtseek smoothnessof space,which they call, "noosphere" (pp. 12-20) and which is at the core of their argumentsto adopt an information strategy.The noosphere is the global cloud of an intellectual environmentthat contains all the ideas generated and circulated among nations, organizations, groups, and individuals. It also includes the social and technical infrastructure that makes such generation and circulation possible (the media, new and old, networks, and education systems). transboundary Viewed from afar, the noosphere (from noos, meaning "mind")takes form as an ideational metaweb of webs, within which all the disparateintellectual endeavor of humankindcoheres into a collective intelligence for the planethowever decentralizedand distributedits parts are. As with any metaphysical reification and at any point in history, we can view the planetaryspectrumof ideas and declare the existence of such a space (although it would be more modest without the new media of today). Arquilla and Ronfeldt are ambiguous about whether this noosphere already exists (implied in their descriptionof it) or must be constructed(implied in their U.S. policy proscriptions)by the U.S. state and its partners(state and nonstate). They seem to lean toward the latter since the presence of an up-and-running noosphere would leave far less room for the U.S. state not only to shape but also to make such a sphere, with all the attendantadvantages such centralitybrings.25 Viewed up close, the noosphere is a "battlegroundof ideas" (p. 1) into which the United States ought to get fully involved to ensure that its vision prevails (a vision thatmore or less reduces to liberalcapitalismplus global civil society). This recognitionof ideationalconflict gives us no hint of the existence of any real geographyof ideas-political divisions and boundariesthatmay not be subject to polite recognition of differences or to deliberateactions to reduce

sense.But historyhas yet to unfoldin a meaningful and of thereis a decades-long historyof the development the Internet a muchlonger virtualspacesto drawon since at leastthe MiddleAges. historyof conceptualizing 24Barney involved thereis considerable a reinforces pointoftenforgotten: ownership satellitesto domainnames. and in the Internet, fromlandlines 25 take to for Theauthors argue policymakers self-consciously a Gramscian approach actorswantthe ordertheyhave,or at least on withits emphasis making of hegemony, as takeit for granted the way thingsare.

23Some mightarguethatthis

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tensions through alliances or media campaigns. We need not accept the arguments of Samuel Huntington in Clash of Civilizations to acknowledge that there may exist many transnationalideational spaces (based perhapson region or ideational affinity), which are not reduced productively to a single space or (noo)sphere. After all, the authors are willing to recognize the existence of a separate"militarynoosphere"(p. 51) that involves concepts of and approaches to joint military activities and common security. As policy analysts,Arquilla and Ronfeldt aim to change how policymakers pursuesecurity-less througharmsbuildups,more throughfacilitatingthe flow of information(of the right kind, of course). New practices are required,such as sharing information,goals, and activities with NGOs and launching global public information campaigns that eschew the "psych ops" mentality associated with the cold war.26 The strategies of action and specific operationsand routines of individuals and organizationsbring us to the thirddimension of the new: practices.A focus on practices is a fruitful avenue of researchand analysis because it forces us to consider how the logics of macrosocial systems intersectwith the microchoices and actions of groups and individuals. Claims that new practices are emerging or existing ones are being reconfigured can be found throughoutthe books discussed here. Least satisfying on this score are those by Barney and Dodge and Kitchin. Barney points to how IT is deepening the practices associated with a burgeoning consumerism. It also facilitates the dwindling of workers' skills in today's networkcorporationsand opens up new avenues of surveillance (of work and lifestyle). His survey of trends is admirable,but he generalizes to such an extent that we are left guessing as to how much these patternsdominate people's lives and whether individuals are devising strategies to counter them (one example is the simple avoidance of corporateIntranetchat rooms). Dodge and Kitchin also generalize enough to underminethe force of their commentary. They point to how a spatialtendency(to approachelectronic social interactionin spatialterms) shapes how individualsand organizationsconstruct and act in their cyberspaces. We are left clueless as to whether there are alternative modes of organizing social life online (perhapsvia code and databases). Withoutthose alternativesfor comparison,it is impossible to know how much of-and exactly how-electronic social interactionis being influenced by spatiality (and what more general impact this has on social interaction).If space is 26Theauthors of repeatedly qualifysuchcelebrations opennesswiththe cautionto to Whilethismaybe a strategic moveon theirpartto placate policymakers be guarded. the natural of the fail that suspicions policymakers, authors to acknowledge theirkey in phrase, "guarded openness" 52), is anoxymoron. (p. Theyhaveno interest a noosphere that is open in any meaningfulsense of the term.The contradictions betweenthe are for relativelyclosed stateandthe relativelyopenInternet fertileground study.

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a category fundamentalto human sociality the way language is, we need theories of its social constructionthat specify its logics and mechanisms.Dodge and Kitchin focus instead on the details of online spatial visualization. As already mentioned, Miller and Slater are far more specific in their approach.Much of their book discusses practices, althoughthey do not explicitly develop the theme. This prominence flows from their effort to focus on how (local) Trinidadians enter the (global) Internet,ratherthan the reverse (the stressed by Barney). Since Miller and Slater view the Internetnot perspective as an abstractglobal form, but composed of the activities of particulargroupse.g., families staying in contact from afar, businesses reaching out for trade, and churches connecting to Trinidiandiasporas-they can concentrateon the associatedwith practices.They find some intrigumacro-andmicrointersections ing trends such as how nationalist and cosmopolitan identities complement each other, or the way an increase in our knowledge of other identities can increase the sense of security about our own identity. New architecturesof power are the fourth and final dimension from which to view these works.27This dimension entails creating patternsof governance structures and concentrations of resources (economic, political, and social). Arquilla and Ronfeldt place much emphasis on power and are of two minds about it. They pick up the recent IR themes about the diffusion and fragmentation of power away from the state--especially the core states-to NGOs and social movements. But they still cling to the notion that U.S. hegemony ought to be supportedand is necessary as a central force in the global realm. Their analysis hardlyhelps us answer questions such as whethernew structures of governance are emerging that involve states, transnationalcorporations, multilateralorganizations,and NGOs, and what implicationsthese might have for existing structures.How different do things look from and across local, national, and global perspectives?Barney is correctin being skeptical of claims thatpower is moving to civil society because of IT, even in the resourcerich North and away from states and transnational corporationsbecause of the and communicationoptions availabletoday and into the nearfuture. networking Instead, IT is being used to consolidate and expand power, above all that of capitalism. Dodge and Kitchin agree because IT can aid organizational and spatial hierarchy.Places and firms use IT to draw resources to themselves and better manage their global activities, which further displaces the peripheral zones and actors. The question-left unansweredby both books-is to what sort of architectureof power this new vitality in the existing hierarchies is leading. Are we watching the emergence of new modes of governance operating across the global and local divide that place corporations-cooperating
27I firstheard this phraseappliedto globalsocial andpoliticalpowerin conversation with SaskiaSassen.

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together-in far more expansive roles than previously known in history?28 Where does that leave bilateral and multilateralintergovernmentalrelations? Are new forms of resource concentrationemerging that go unnoticed because we lack the analytical tools? More broadly, are the very logics of capitalism changing-around such basic processes as the productionof value?

To

EMBED OR NOT TO EMBED?

Recall that one of the chief complaints of Miller and Slater against earlier commentaryon IT is the implication that informationsystems can be treatedas though they operate in a realm apartfrom broadersocial and political fabrics. For Miller and Slater that fabric is Trinidad,a place and distinct society, however transnationaland porous its boundaries (via connections to its diasporas and the rest of the world). The authors effectively claim that the electronic interactions of Trinidadiansare embedded in the social structures,relations, and communities that constitute Trinidad'ssocial life. The question of embeddedness of informationsystems and practices is not unlike questionsthathave emergedin economic sociology andeconomic anthropology about the wisdom of viewing market systems as self-contained social fields that ignore the force of "networksof interpersonalrelations."29 In both the economic and technologic realms, it is not only possible to view a system as disembeddedfrom a social context (its norms, identities, and modes of operating). Such a system can turnaroundand swallow up-or "colonize," as Jiirgen Habermasput it-the contexts that might otherwise surroundit.30 Ultimately, the system becomes the metacontextfor sociopolitical life, which is what Barney argues we have to fear: electronic-based networks become the environs within which we live out our lives as we work, view art, learn, and reach out to the world beyond (p. 103). A great deal is analytically at stake in the choices made about embeddedness: which fields of force are embedded in which; whether disembeddedness is a meaningful status to attach to something; or whether the issue is ignored

of over W. critique thepowerof mediaconglomerates politicsandsocietyis by Robert

28We are only at the beginning thinking of these questions.One charged through

New Press,2000). (New York: 29 Mark "Economic ActionandSocialStructure: Problem Embedof The Granovetter, American Journalof Sociology91, No. 3 (1985), pp. 481-510; quotefrom dedness,"

Politics in Dubious Times McChesney,Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication

p. 504. 30The"colonization thelife world" discussed Jiirgen of is in The Habermas, Theory Action, vol. 2, Lifeworldand System(Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), of Communicative

pp. 329-330.

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Robert Latham

altogether.Attempts to explain outcomes, identify structures,or tease out ethical issues hinge on these choices about embeddedness. There is a tendency in the budding study of IT to push to one extreme or another.Authors either argue (as do Miller and Slater) that we can best understandtechnology againstthe backdropof a wider social field, or they arguethat technosystems are separatingfrom such contexts (a prospect some find liberaand tory or celebratingcyberanarchy, others find oppressive or fearingtechnolI find myself attractedto the notion that there are various mixes of ogism). embedding and disembedding, sometimes across domains (e.g., economy and polity) and sometimes within the same one. Barney's points about the technocolonization of the life world are strengthenedby his argument that digital networks are embedded in capitalist productionmodes and relations. He suggests that we should move quickly to revitalize the power and democraticcharacter of the social fabric tied to geographic place and historic community to effect a reembedding.Dodge and Kitchin are keen to underscorethat at least in the privileged realms of the North Atlantic "cyberspaceand geographic space are not separate realms, they are interwoven" (p. 24), especially since "real
geographies are gradually being ... composed, controlled, and surveyed by

ICTs"(p. 22). The blendingandinterweavingtheme can be overplayedsince whatis important and interesting is the tension between forces and logics that embed and disembed. Note that KarlPolanyi, whose writing is so centrallyassociated with this issue, did not simply argue in The Great Transformationthat markets, which have become disembeddedfrom the needs of society, ought to be reembedded. Rather he showed that markets only appear to be disembedded. In reality, they are embedded in the macropolitical structuresand practices of liberal states, which make their apparentdisembeddednesspossible. I wonder whether the same complex interplaylies beneath the appearanceof states that abdicatedtheir authorityover Internetgovernance to the market. CONCLUSION Whateverthe balance of strengthsand weaknesses in these four books, they together offer-relative to earlier works-a varied and rich portraitof developof ments bearingon IT.Barney'sbook is best for gaining a deeperunderstanding the political issues at stake. Dodge and Kitchin'sbook serves to convey in detail how cyberspaceis conceived as space and how some geographerswill begin to this approach subject.Miller andSlater'sbook-although less sophisticatedthan the othertwo works-makes palpablethe humandimensionsof changeandhelps preventreadersin the global Northfrommyopicallythinkingthatthis is only their transformation. Finally,ArquillaandRonfeldt'sbook-while least satisfyingfrom a scholarly viewpoint-prompts us to reflect on the many ways that developments might reshapewhat states do in an informationworld.

Review Essay

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Viewed from afar,all fourbooks suggest thatstudentsof IT will be caughtincreasingly between two distinct forces. On one side are the social science disciareaof researchor as a category plines, which have yet to absorbIT as a substantial of analysis like class or identity.On what termsthe disciplines will do so is not at all clear. Dodge and Kitchin show there is at least a road for geography.Miller and Slaterstake a claim for anthropology,which is linked to more long-standing ethnographicconcerns with peoples andplaces ratherthanvirtualcommunities. that Barneydemonstrates it is imperativefor politicaltheoryto takeon this realm. Despite the best efforts of some, especially in political science, to avoid replaying methodological squabbles,it might be an inevitable "riteof passage"for IT. We will hear loud debates at some point about whether IT is an independentor interveningvariable or betterrelegated to the status of dependentvariable (debates played out in the past over technological innovations such as the railroad). However rough and awkwardlinking IT to social science might be, the intersection can only benefit both, as the study of IT gains from the long-standingtheoreticalandanalyticalconcernsof social science andthe possibility for substantive researchand historical perspective. Social science, in turn,can be refreshedby the logics of communication,information,and innovation associated with IT. On the other side are the practitionersin civil societies, militaries, and corporations who in many ways are far ahead of more sober analysts in their conceptualizations of what they are doing in this area and how.31 New practices, tactics, methods, and techniques are emerging so fast that it is impossible for scholars and experts to keep up. At some point, practitionerswill realize they have left the general populationbehind (notjust scholars), and at thatpoint they may turn in earnest to social science to understandbetter the relationship between technology and society. The question is will social science be ready and, more important,will it have the masteryto set andpursueits own researchagendasinformedby thoughtful ethics and compelling theory? I have suggested in this essay some starting points for such agendas. These include concerns with how physical and digital social spaces together are bounded, intersected,historicized, ethically and ideationally mapped, socially constituted, and rendereduneven in their development; how macrosocial systems intersectwith microchoices; how IT mattersin the overall balance of the lives of individuals and societies; how new architectures of power and governance, as well as models of political agency such as the informationstate, may be in formationthatare local and global in scale; and how we might be witnessing changes in the very logics of capitalism.

31The new Social ScienceResearch Councilprogram IT,International on CooperationandGlobalSecurity, organized has itself alongthefaultlinesof thesetwo forces of scholarship policymaking. program and The seeks to fosterhigh-quality research thatcan helpbuilda field andengagewithpolicy-making processes.