ABSTRACT
In his challenging empirical analysis of new communication technologies, Paschal Preston convincingly argues that ‘the new social order and communication order of informational capitalism’ is fundamentally unequal and polarized, and that the neoliberal project of an ‘information society’ has failed to deliver its promised socio-technical paradigm (Preston 2001: 272). Rather than Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) holding out the possibility of a radical change in the existing social order, instead they reproduce existing social inequalities. Preston’s argument is that new technologies will be overlaid on existing systems, not to replace them but to exist alongside them. This ‘long-wave’ approach, highlighting economic and social continuities of inequality and exclusion, contradicts the over-optimistic and unrealistic claims of techno-gurus such as Alvin Tofler. Preston emphasizes not technological changes but economic, political and social continuities: of persistent imbalances between the information rich and the information poor, as well as deep-rooted inequalities of education, employment opportunities, access to health care, ability to participate in democratic government and access to markets. He finds hope not in technological advances, nor in knowledge or information tout court, but in ‘political will and social mobilisation’ (ibid.).
