Paper Antti Kasvio

UK-Nordic Meeting 15-16 April 1999

What has been the social scientific research on information and communication technologies so far? There have been 1) overall descriptions of the digital revolution and of the development of new information and communication technologies as well as speculations about their future impact on society à la Masuda, Naisbitt, Toffler, Negroponte et al; 2) analyses about major technological innovations and the emergence of a new technological paradigm à la Freeman, Soete et al.; 3) analyses about the implementation and social consequences of new information and communication technologies in organizations and at the workplaces; 4) analyses about the user-friendliness and sociotechnical design of new information systems; 5) analyses about the emergence of new kinds of business cultures and innovatory environments in those loci where NICTs are being developed and produced; 6) analyses about the impact of new information and communication technologies on the everyday lives of citizens à la McLuhan or Poster; 7) analyses about the emergence of new kinds of virtual communities and new role identities within the net à la Rheingold or Turkle; 8) theoretical analyses about ‘informationalism’ or 'post-capitalism' as a qualitatively new stage in the development of modern societies à la Castells or Drucker; and finally 9) critical analyses about the rhetorics of information technology revolution.

The object of analysis has been information and communication technology in its different stages of development. The focus has been moving from microelectronics, personal computers, new software and mobile communications to the explosive spread of the internet. In the near future we are espected to enter a qualitatively new stage of the information technology revolution. New applications are intensively developed for business organizations. Bill Gates is writing in his new book about the emergence of so-called ‘digital nervous systems’ of organizations. At the same time new consumer applications will be transforming our everyday lives. Significant changes are brought about by Digital TV, mobile multimedia, different kinds of PDA’s and the integration of ICT into various kinds of electronic devices. Gates is writing here about the spread of a specific 'Web lifestyle'.

Within a few year’s time significant changes will probably indeed take place in the ways in which companies are functioning, and the consumer markets will be reorganized. But we do not know yet which of all new artefacts created by engineers turn out to be real killer applications. Neither do we know which companies will be among the winners and which are doomed to lose.

The United States and the U.S. companies have had a clear leading position in the utilisation of new ICTs, whereas Europe has been lagging far behind. This situation may, however, be changing somewhat. Europe has perhaps succeeded better than the United States in developing common standards for digital mobile telephony. This competitive asset may turn out to be essential when the emphasis is moving towards mobile multimedia. One has to take into account also the fact that the United States is not any longer a Fordist society with large and relatively homogenous middle-class population. Such a social structure is, however, needed if one wants to achieve a really broad penetration of the new IT applications. European welfare states have at least so far maintained a somewhat more cohesive social structure. Therefore the next stage of information technology revolution may offer Europe a golden opportunity to catch up at least part of the advantage that has during the previous years been gained by the United States and some of the Asian forerunners.

The next stage of information technology revolution will probably have also a big societal impact. We will in future be living in a society which is increasingly individualised, flexible, fragmented and also vulnerable. Any damage that is caused to the functioning of the society’s digital neural networks may develop into major risks for companies, citizens and for the whole society.

The role of new information and communication technologies is crucial in the development of an advanced information society. Paradoxically enough, the very ubiquity of ICT will probably mean that we do not pay any longer so much attention to it. We will increasingly take the connectivity for granted. The big changes that take place will not any longer be driven by technology, but by our imagination. Technology’s task will be to adapt into anything we invent to do with it.

This shouldn’t be taken only as a general statement of principle. Also the ICT companies have to reinvent their innovation processes. These processes must become much more user-driven than they have been so far. And the companies must become as interested about the logics of social and cultural innovations happening around them as they are nowadays interested about technical innovations. The companies have to adapt to the fact that tomorrow's most important innovators are found among their customers.

What will be the contribution of European social science in this process? According to the EU 5th Framework Programme for Research and Development the social scientists' role is expected to remain fairly marginal. This is the case even if a significant share of the programme's total resources is devoted to the theme area ‘Creation of a User-Oriented Information Society’ and even if the Fifth Framework Programme ought to be at least in principle more user-driven and multidisciplinary in character than the previous technologically oriented four framework programmes have been. In practice, however, the Information Society Technologies Programme offers social scientists mainly a possibility to join as individual partners in application-oriented teams whose main aim is to produce new technological innovations. The thematic programme does not fund projects that are oriented towards broad theoretical reflections about the character of the ongoing information technology revolution or about the dynamics of information society development in Europe.

The 5th Framework Programme includes also a horizontal key action called 'Improving the Socio-Economic Knowledge Base'. The key action is meant to provide support for high-level European social scientific research. But the key action's 1999 Work Programme does not include analysis of information society among the twelve tasks to which funds will be given. The word 'information society' does not even appear in the description of these research tasks. Should we perhaps try to do something with that? So that at least within the next year's work programme social scientific study of information society would be acknowledged better as an important research theme. After all we do not have at present for instance any social scientifically grounded indicators at our disposal if we would like to analyse where do the different European societies actually stand in terms of information society development.

Return to top of page
Switch to text only version

Page developed by Christine Hine
Page maintained by Marike van Harskamp
Contents current at 20th April 1999