The Information Gap How Computers and Other New Communication Technologies Affect the Social Distribution of Power

by Siefert, Marsha; Gerbner, George; Fisher, Janice

• ISBN13: 9780195064896
• ISBN10: 0195064895
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1990-02-22
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The computer and other new communication technologies have changed the way we live. However every technological innovation carries with it the potential to liberate or exclude various parts of our society, and the current information age seems to fragment and privatize access to the knowledge provided by the new technologies. Who is affected by the "information gap" and what is the role of communication technology in widening or closing it? These vital, complex questions are the subject of this special issue of the Journal of Communication --the noted computer-age forum for debate and scientific understanding. The Information Gap brings together articles, reports, and proposals from a broad variety of cross-disciplinary sources. The result is a comprehensive and enlightening overview that probes current trends in the social distribution of the new technologies, explores the obstacles to information equality, and shows how some social groups have embraced today's technological promise more than others. This special edition also provides commentary on entrenched institutional barriers that may contribute to the persistence of the information gap. This report will be of value to all readers interested in the impact of the computer age on today's society and the world of the future.

Table of Contents

The Social Distribution of the New Technologies

Geographical Inequalities: The SpatialBliss of the New Communications

Telecommuting: The Trade-Offs of Home Work

Who Uses Information Technologies in RuralAmerica?

The Surveillance Society: Information Technology andBureaucratic Social Control

Obstacles to Information Equity

Formal Versus Grass-Roots Training: Women,Work, and Computers

Children andComputers: Do Sex-Related Differences Persist?

The Videocassette Recorder and Information Inequity

Informational Bypass: Research Library Access to U.S.Telecommunications Periodicals

Technological Alternatives to Information Inequity

Computers and Community: The Organizational Impact

The Electronic Farmers' Marketplace: New Technologies andAgricultural Information

Telemedicine: Toward Better HealthCare for the Elderly

An Electronic Community for Older Adults: The SeniorNetNetwork

Computers for Political Change: PeaceNet and Public DataAccess

Social Construction of Information Poverty

Information and Socioeconomic Class in U.S. ConstitutionalLaw

Information Poverty and PoliticalInequality: Citizenship in the Age of Privatized Communications

Gender and the Information Society: A Socially StructuredSilence

How Research Categories Perpetuate Inequalities

Introduction and Overview

From the Beginnings to the Cell Theory

Do Nerve Cells Belong in the Cell Theory?

Nerve Cells or Nerve Nets?

Kolliker Gives In

Support Builds for Networks

The Nerve Cell Studies of Freud

The Revolutionary Method Of Golgi

A Neuron Theory Takes Form: His, Forel, Nansen

Ramon Y Cajal: The Shock of Recognition

The Early Discoveries of Cajal

The Laws of Cajal

Joining the Mainstream

The Neuron Doctrine

The Law of Dynamic Polarization

Controversy

The Synapse and the Growth Cone

Forging a Consensus

Confrontation in Stockholm

Modern Revisions of the Neuron Doctrines

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