Virtual Society Get Real Technology, Cyberbole, Reality [Paperback]

This book investigates the precise effects on society of the new and much vaunted electronic technologies (ICTs). All aspects of our social, cultural, economic, and political life stand to be affected by their continued massive growth, but are fundamental shifts already taking place in the way in which we behave, organize, and interact as a direct result of the new technologies? The contributors to the volume argue that their transformative effects amount to our transition to a virtual society.

1. Introduction: Five Rules of Virtuality,Steve Woolgar
2. 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
3. Visualization Needs Vision: The Pre-paradigmatic Character of Virtual Reality,G. M. Peter Swann and Tim P. Watts
4. How Social is Internet Communication? A Reappraisal of Bandwidth and Anonymity Effects,Susan E. Watt, Martin Lea, and Russell Spears
5. New Public Places for Internet Access: Networks for Practice-Based Learning and Social Inclusion,Sonia Liff, Fred Steward, and Peter Watts
6. Allegories of Creative Destruction: Technology and Organization in Narratives of the e-Economy,David Knights, Faith Noble, Theo Vurdubakis, and Hugh Willmott
7. Confronting Electronic Surveillance: Desiring and Resisting New Technologies,Brian McGrail
8. Getting Real about Surveillance and Privacy at Work,David Mason, Graham Button, Gloria Lankshear, Sally Coates, and Wes Sharrock
9. Virtual Society and the Cultural Practice of Studey,Charles Crook and Paul Light
10. The Reality of Virtual Social Support,Sarah Nettleton, Nicholas Pleace, Roger Burrows, Steven Muncer, and Brian Loader
11. Real and Virtual Connectivity: New Media in London,Andreas Wittel, Celia Lury, and Scott Lash
12. Presence, Absence, and Accountability: Email and the Mediatiol$