Technology Lecture

GLOBALISATION
- Compression of the world through global connections and exchange of information
- Global cultural flows - world financial transactions happen 24 hours a day due to new technologies
- An information economy made possible by digital technologies such as the internet

THE INTERNET
- A decentralised networks of networks
- A digital universe
- An ocean of data
- Where information is networked and identities are constructed
- A social space where information is circulated - open and democratic as well as regulated (CCTV)
- An information economy is part of a new culture of exchanges

A new technological paradigm 1960s - 1980s
- Processing of raw material. The move from material production to information processing
- New information is generated based on combined and stored information
- New information gets embodied into services, goods and procedures
- Process is more important than the product - how the information is processed and applied

Manuel Castells, The information Age : Economy, Society and Culture
- Our societies are incredibly structured around the bipolar opposition of the net and the self (Castells, The rise of the Network society, 1996)
- The net. The network replaces the hierarchies as dominant form of social organisation
- The self. The practices of a person reaffirming their social identity and meaning in a shifting landscape - the networked universe

The digital Universe
- The world overflowing with information
- Expansion of human knowledge - a kind of cyber space of play and experimentation
- Cyberspace. A cognitive map. No fixed boundaries in space and time
- The cyber walker in the digital universe, creating mapping prints