The Myths of Technology: Innovation and Inequality

by Burnett, Judith; Senker, Peter; Walker, Kathy

• ISBN13: 9781433105203
• ISBN10: 1433105209
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-11-01
• Publisher: Peter Lang Pub Inc

Summary

This book questions whether technologies are the rational, tangible, scientific, forward-thinking, neutral objects they are so often perceived to be, exploring instead how powerful, mythic ideas about technologies drive our social understanding and our expectations of them. Against a rising tide of information, we encounter significant technological, scientific, and medical advances which promise to create an educated, humane, and equal world. This book explores that promise, deconstructing technologies to conclude that though they do afford us significant and empowering advances, they remain largely cloaked in mystery, and often promise more than they can deliver. Contributors from diverse intellectual backgrounds and political and epistemological stances-spanning sociology and psychosocial investigations, innovation studies, and scientists-combine philosophical inquiry and empirical case studies to create a book which is at once provocative, innovative, and exciting in the challenges it poses.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Foreword

Introduction

Myths about Technology and Inequality

Technological Determinism and Ideology: Questioning the 'Information Society' and the 'Digital Divide'

Inequalities in the Globalised Knowledge-Based Economy

Old Wine in New Bottles: How New Technology Recycles Old Myths

Myths of Information and Communication Technologies

Brains, Generations and One Last Push: Myths Used to Establish and Sustain the Computer Industry

ERP in Higher Education: The Reinforcement of Myths

Reality Check: Interactivity, Reality Television and Empowerment

Myths, Crimes and Videotape

Myths about Nature, Society and Biotechnology

Nature, Culture, Technology: Myths and Inequalities in the Posthuman Zoo

Myth and HIV Medical Technologies: Perspectives from the 'Transitions in HIV' Project

The Myth of the Biotech Revolution

The Myths of Agricultural Biotechnology

Epilogue

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

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