On the Social Order of Cyberspace

Abstract

Representations of cyberspace as a new social and world order fostered by a new technology replay familiar understandings of industrial society and its issues of liberation and constraint. A more comprehensive approach to the social organization of advanced information technologies needs to include their origins in the social and communicative practices as well as in the technology of science and engineering and the practical Creolization of migrating discourses, techniques of knowledge, and communication. This forges a firm link between micro- and macrosociological levels of analysis. Internationalizing more parochial before-and-after comparisons of futurists highlights the significance of "new Creoles" in the emerging postindustrial world order comparable with those who were part of its creation.

Keywords

Creolization cyberspace professionals comparative study social organization of science communication

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