ICTs and the Internet

Paper Summary:

This paper investigates the hypothesis that information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the Internet are controlled by corporations and corporate interests, control and surveillance. It discusses how the Internet and new information technologies have increased surveillance methods and have even evolved into "dataveillance." The paper also discusses governmental monitoring for national security, panoptic data and globalization.

From the Paper:

"Manuel Castells describes a network society; that is, a society where key social structures and activities are organized around electronically processed information networks. These social networks process and manage information, using micro-electronic based technological changes. An infrastructure of telecommunications, information systems, and fast transportation systems exists and provides the technological capacity for the system to work as a unit globally. Technology has met with bureaucratic organizations that must change if they're going to adapt to the problems that they confront. There is a contradiction between the ability of networks to be more productive and more competitive, and the fact that most societies are still rooted in vertical organizations in a bureaucratic logic: However, Castells points out, although the Internet is a tool by which to create and communicate, it can also be used to exclude, in terms of the access to the network (the "digital divide"), and in terms of the culture and education and ability to process all this information that has happened on the Internet. Suddenly, all these movements that were supposed to be traditional and unable to understand modern processes are organizing themselves on the Internet, using information technology and information systems to introduce counter-trends to a one-dimensional logic of pure money and instrumentality."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Castells, Manuel. The Power of Identity. 2004: Blackwell Publishing..
• Whitaker, Reg. The End of Privacy: How Total Surveillance is Becoming a Reality. 1999: New Press.

More papers on ICTs and the Internet:

• Dissertation or Thesis # 105723 : "Communication on the Internet in Korea"
• Case Study # 63413 : "Government Communication via the Internet"
• Argumentative Essay # 111870 : "Information and Communication Technologies"

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