Magazine

Where's the Access?

Books Reviewed: Class Warfare in the Information Age By Michael Perelman St. Martin's Press, 1998 154 pages ISBN 0-312-17758-5 Cyberghetto or Cybertopia?: Race, Class, and Gender on the Internet Edited by Bosah Ebo Praeger Press, 1998 ISBN 0-275-95993-7 240 pages Cyberspace Divide: Equality, Agency and Policy in the Information Society Edited by Brian D. Loader Routledge, 1998 266 pages ISBN 0-415-16969-0 High Technology and Low-Income Communities: Prospects for the Positive Use of Advanced Information Technology Edited by Donald A. Schon, Bish Sanyal, and William J. Mitchell MIT Press, 1999 411 pages ISBN 0-262-69199-X

As 1998 is drawing to a close, and we welcome in the last year of the 20th century, (with the resultant millenium angst and fascination, fueled by futurists, Y2K entrepreneurs, the media, and marketers), policymakers, academics, and miscelleous cyber-pundits are busy speculating on the next century's technological future. Will we see a society where all citizens have equal access to new information and communication technologies (ICTs), or will we see a society where the gap between the information rich and the information poor is widened, thereby threatening notions of social cohesion? Will the claims of governments that they will "wire" up all schools by the year 2000 become a reality, or is this merely a hollow prediction based on notions of technological transcendence and progress? Will electronic commerce become the de facto standard of doing business, or will it lead to a more fragmented society of elites and a new category of the dispossessed? Several books have recently been published which lend a sobering look at the many social justice issues surrounding access to ICTs. Taken together, they offer cogent criticisms of claims about the "information society" and offer pragmatic advice in the guise of case studies as to how ICTs can empower communities and collective groups. Individual Reviews: Class Warfare in the Information Age Cyberghetto or Cybertopia? Cyberspace Divide High Technology and Low Income Communities Full Review

Leslie Regan Shade (shade@aix1.uottawa.ca) is an Assistant Profesor at the University of Ottawa's Department of Communication and also a Research Associate with the Information Policy Research Project and their various Universal Access projects.

Copyright (c) 1998 by Leslie Regan Shade. All Rights Reserved.

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Click on the title to instantly order these books online: Class Warfare in the Information Age, By Michael Perelman Cyberghetto or Cybertopia?: Race, Class, and Gender on the Internet, Edited by Bosah Ebo Cyberspace Divide: Equality, Agency and Policy in the Information Society, Edited by Brian D. Loader High Technology and Low-Income Communities: Prospects for the Positive Use of Advanced Information Technology, Edited by Donald A. Schon, Bish Sanyal, and William J. Mitchell