ABSTRACT
Max Weber and Karl Marx laid the ground work for investigations of the relationships between technology and social action, and between technological rationality and societal change. In order to explain societal changes of rationalisation, Weber, through his concept of the ideal-type, worked out a theory of rational social action. The technical distinction between analogue and digital transmission, or between satellite or earthbound transmission, for example, sheds little or no light on the sociological significance of distanciated communication. Information and communication relate to the meaningful, extended spatio-temporal characteristics of digitally mediated communication. Communication technologies usually involve three ‘actual’ processes which translate knowledge into information and communication in time and space. The three processes are objectivation of knowledge into information, distanciation in space, and conservation in time. Symbolic interactionism, following pragmatism, holds that agents constitute and adjust each other’ views on the world mutually, through social interaction. The world of references is brought in with greater power, transcending the locale and immediate.
