Technocities
The Culture and Political Economy of the Digital Revolution
- John Downey - Loughborough University, UK
- Jim McGuigan - University of Loughborough, UK
Information and communication technologies are said to be transforming urban life dramatically and bringing about rapid economic and cultural globalization. This book explores the many fascinating and urgent issues involved by relating advanced theoretical debates to practical matters of communication with cultural policy. It maps out a range of `optimistic' and `pessimistic' scenarios with special regard to various forms of inequality, particularly class, gender and geo-political inequalities. The sheer pace of change is difficult to track yet the expert contributors to this volume all offer insights and essential guidance to what is going on. There are chapters on urban planning, virtual cities and actual cities, economic and political policy, and critical social analysis of current trends that are of momentous consequence.
The book concludes that neither technological determinism nor economic determinism satisfactorily account for information and communication technologies and urban development. Instead, it is necessary to bring together a number of differently informing approaches, cultural, economic, political and technological, to make sense of a field of dynamic and contradictory forces.
`I would be even more general than the book jacket and suggest that any reader interested in placing their own use of technology in a wider context will find something of interest in this multi-faceted book' - Outline 9
