Techno‐Human Mesh: The Growing Power of Information Technologies

Citation

Barnett, S.M. (2001), "Techno‐Human Mesh: The Growing Power of Information Technologies", Online Information Review, Vol. 25 No. 5, pp. 329-337. https://doi.org/10.1108/oir.2001.25.5.329.6

Ms West asks the question. How digital do we wish to become? Chapters in this volume include a short introduction to the major issues followed by a chapter: “The Digerati: economic, political and social framework”, then “The merging of people and digital devices: history and practices, increasing surveillance in law enforcement, at work, and in the marketplace, conclusion: recommendations for change”. There is an appendix: “Theoretical issues concerning the interface of people and machines” and an extensive glossary and also a very good bibliography which includes many Web addresses.

Australia and many other countries, including France and Belgium, have just had their own version of what appears to be the worst kind of reality television, the series “Big Brother”, which to a non‐watcher like myself makes thoughts of Orwell’s 1984 predictions come to pass. This series includes the ultimate in use of surveillance cameras and use of Web technology and extensive media campaigns and co‐marketing. The use of call centres to vote people out of the Big Brother house, the use of Web cams to view what goes on, all presage a horrible version of the future. Cynthia West refers in her book to Foucault’s discussion of the use of Jeremy Bentham’s nineteenth‐century architectural creation, the Panopticon and how Mark Poster discusses this in relation to information technologies. This series is surely this, come to pass!

As West admits, there is a bias in her book towards North America, because, as she says, many of the technologies were developed there. She discusses the digerati or digital elite and those who are economically deprived because they are the digital have‐nots.

She discusses the merging of people and digital devices, although she does not appear on a first reading of the work to have examined the work of performance artists such as Stelarc (http://stelarc.va.com.au/) who has already had Internet users “controlling” his body.

She moves on to discuss increasing surveillance in law enforcement, at work and in the marketplace. As one who can walk a few steps into the local high street and know that he is being watched by the ominous black security camera domes of the local police and municipal security services; whose workplace Internet access is monitored and in fact blocked for even accidental excursions to what my employer and its monitoring agency calls “toxic” sites, this chapter was quite an interesting read.

West’s final chapter calls for discussion about how we can use the technologies and how we can use them in a socially responsible setting. The glossary is extensive and the bibliography is very comprehensive.

The book is a very good commentary on our “high tech” society at the dawn of a new century. Highly