ABSTRACT
The intrinsically hyper-dynamic nature of contemporary technological developments provides one of the most concrete examples of Giddens’s ‘runaway world’ where ‘not only is the pace of social change much faster than in any prior system’ so is its ‘scope and… profoundness’ (Giddens 1991:16). As Rucker et al. (1993:16) in Mondo 2000 more colourfully put it:
Technology escalates on your very block: Knives turn to pistols, pistols become Uzis. Cocaine turns to crack, crack to nuke. Charles Atlas turns to Arnold Schwarzenegger, 48DD turns to 64GG, Mick Jagger sings ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ on the easy-listening station, and after an evening of techno hard-core sounds, the first Sex Pistols album sounds mellow and quaint.
