Virtual society? technology, cyberbole, reality (Oxford University Press, 2002)
Includes bibliographical references (pages 314-340) and index
Five rules of virtuality / Steve Woolgar -- They came, they surfed, they went back to the beach : conceptualizing use and non-use of the Internet / Sally Wyatt, Graham Thomas, and Tiziana Terranova -- Visualization needs vision : the pre-paradigmatic character of virtual reality / G.M. Peter Swann and Tim P. Watts -- How social is Internet communication? A reappraisal of bandwidth and anonymity effects / Susan E. Watt, Martin Lea, and Russell Spears -- New public places for Internet access : networks for practice-based learning and social inclusion / Sonia Liff, Fred Steward, and Peter Watts -- Allegories of creative destruction : technology and organization in narratives of the e-economy / David Knights [and others] -- Confronting electronic surveillance : desiring and resisting new technologies / Brian A. McGrail -- Getting real about surveillance and privacy at work / David Mason [and others] -- Virtual society and the cultural practice of study / Charles Crook and Paul Light -- The reality of virtual social support / Sarah Nettleton [and others] -- Real and virtual connectivity : new media in London -- Andreas Wittel, Celia Lury, and Scott Lash -- Presence, absence, and accountability : e-mail and the mediation of organizational memory / Steven D. Brown and Geoffrey Lightfoot -- Inside the bubble : communion, cognition, and deep play at the intersection of Wall Street and cyberspace / Melvin Pollner -- The day-to-day work of standardization : a sceptical note on the reliance on IT in a retail bank / John A. Hughes, Mark Rouncefield, and Pete Tolmie -- Cotton to computers : from industrial to information revolutions / Jon Agar, Sarah Green, and Penny Harvey -- Mobile society? Technology, distance, and presence / Geoff Cooper [and others] --Abstraction and decontextualization : an anthropological comment / Marilyn Strathern
Almost all aspects of social, cultural, economic and political life stand to be affected by the new electronic technologies. Virtual Society? is one vision of the consequential impact of these technologies. But to what extent and in what ways are the Internet and other electronic technologies really changing our lives? To what extent are we moving to a 'virtual society'? This collection provides a comprehensive set of detailed empirical studies of the genesis and use of these new technologies, ranging widely across application areas: from cyber-caf--eacute--;s to new media; email and organizat