ABSTRACT
Every year spending worth billions of pounds is based on our assumptions about new information and communications technologies. Outlay on software and hardware to increase business efficiency is just part of this. New information and communications technologies (ICTs) play a role in social change and so our assumptions about their effects are a main plank of forming long-term corporate strategies. How many times have you heard things like: ‘find new ways of reaching our stakeholders’; ‘brands are under threat as never before’; ‘corporations are at the mercy
‘The internet changes everything’ was a common cry during the dot.com boom, usually as an opener to claims that this new technology would turn the business world upside down. Three years after the bursting of the internet bubble, most of the fêted dot.com ‘pure plays’ have collapsed and the biggest sites on the net are owned by familiar names like BBC and AOL Time Warner.
