New Technologies at Work

Information and communication technologies have completely revolutionized our working practices. Career patterns, professional identities, speed of communication, time management, and mobility have been irrevocably changed in an amazingly short period. Drawing on worldwide case studies, this fascinating book explores these transformations and looks to what developments are in store for us in the future. Flexible hours, email, virtual meetings rooms, and working from home are all relatively new additions to our professional lives. The effects of these technological advances have been dramatic and far-reaching. Not only have they helped to connect organizations and institutions in developing countries to the rest of the world, but they also allow people to maintain extensive geographical networks with friends, families, and colleagues. The use of virtual reality and multimedia has had a huge impact on careers ranging from investment banking to molecular biology, and has brought fundamental changes to education and training, the generation of new ideas, and problem solving. This book investigates both the impact of information technology on working practices and, more complexly, how I.T. is bound up in social, political, and economic issues. How are power relations established and maintained through transnational networking? Can the Internet be used as a political tool to manipulate the masses? In what ways has digital technology changed the aesthetics and practices of the Euro-American dance world? What initiatives have been undertaken to ensure people arent excluded from the digital world and have they succeeded? Through answering these and many more questions, this groundbreaking book is an essential guide to the modern day world.

Christina Garsten is Senior Lecturer at Stockholm University. Helena Wulff is Senior Lecturer at Stockholm University.

Acknowledgements, Notes on Contributors, Introduction: From People of the Book to People of the Screen, 1. Living with New (Ideals of) Technology, 2. The Computer as a Focus of Inattention: Five Scenarios concerning Hospital Porters, 3. Digital Ditches: Working in the Virtual Grass Roots, 4. Real-time, Real-place Market: Transnational Connections and Disconnections in Financial Markets, 5. Mobile Workplacing: Office Design, Space and Technology, 6. Claiming the Future: Speed, Business Rhetoric and Computer Practice, 7. Networking as a Form of Life: The Transnational Movement of Internet Pioneers, 8. Mainstream Rebels: Informalization and Regulation in a Virtual World, 9. Steps on Screen: Technoscapes, Visualization and Globalization in Dance, 10. Screening the Classroom: Students, Teachers and Computers in an Urban American School, 11. Open-Source Software Development as Gift Culture: Work and Identity Formation in an Internet Community, Index