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The title Technocities, at least to this reviewer, conjures up
clichéd images of futuristic urban landscapes -- of utopian cities of
light, steel and glass, or Bladerunneresque dystopias. However,
Technocities is not yet another naïvely affirmative cyber-book
proclaiming the liberatory power of the new communications technologies,
and dealing with the highly saleable topics of virtual reality and cyborg
bodies. Neither is it a technophobic bearer of bad tidings. Rather, the
contributors to this work are more interested in the socio-political
aspect of virtual spaces: how they have come about, and what impact they
may have on 'real', or non-virtual, society. More precisely,
Technocities explores the growth of information and communication
technologies (ICTs), their role in globalisation, and their potential for
good or harm.
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A collection of ten essays, the book evolved out of a 1996 conference
organised by the Communication, Culture and Media subject group at
Coventry University. As a result, it is fairly Eurocentric, with many
contributors focussing on the ICT implementation policy measures undertaken
by the European Union in the footsteps of (and in order to join the
technology race with) the USA. Thus, quite a few chapters deal with the
sorts of policy initiatives governments, both local and national, might
implement in order either to constrain (for the sceptic) or extend (for
the optimist) the power of ICTs. As such, Technocities provides an
interesting corrective to what the contributors see as the utopianism of
technological determinism, which, as exemplified by Alvin Toffler,
presents technology as an autonomous and unstoppable force -- an information
superhighway which, if only we can jump aboard, will take us into the next
millennium and beyond.
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The book is divided into four sections -- Debates, Textures, Territories
and Perspectives -- which in fact do very little to focus the essays (or the
theme of the collection as a whole), leaving their selection and placement
seeming quite arbitrary. This, of course, may be intentional, forcing the
reader to negotiate what Jim McGuigan calls in his introduction the
"tensions between optimistic and pessimistic scenarios for the
'technocity'" which run through the book. Similarly, the concept of the
'technocity' itself remains vague -- for some contributors it is the much-hyped
sense of 'virtual community', while for others the technocity seems
to be the looming 'global village' of 'technocapitalism' which threatens
the nation state, transferring power to multinational corporations and
metropolitan areas. Finally, still more contributors base their concept
of the technocity on the existence of Internet 'virtual cities', such as
Amsterdam's Digitale Stad and Bologna's civic network,
Iperbole.
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The Debates section begins with Stephen Graham criticising the "crude
technological determinism" which, he claims, often informs both popular
and academic cyberspace debates while the concept of "local agency" and
its potential to "shape technological innovation in diverse and contingent
ways" is largely ignored. For along technological determinist lines
technology shapes the local, not the other way around. He cites
Amsterdam's Digitale Stad,
mentioned earlier, as an example of
the socially beneficial possibilities of an interaction between local and
global. This digital city relies on that familiar sense of virtual
community. Its objectives are to encourage participation in (rather than
passive consumption of) technology, to develop and disseminate knowledge,
and to encourage local economic development. While Graham's argument
(also taken up by others in this book) that local agency has the potential
to be a subtle but potent foil to the globalising and monopolising
multinational corporations is a valid one, it does tend towards a
romanticism of virtual spaces as democratic communities. It also misses
some major points -- that virtual spaces remain the fairly exclusive domain
of privileged, white males, and that cities themselves actually house and
reflect the interests of the multinational corporations.
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This is also Kevin Robins's main objection to the concept of 'local
agency'. His pessimistic view of globalisation is summed up in the title
of his essay, "Foreclosing on the City? The Bad Idea of Virtual Urbanism",
in which he provides a neo-Marxist rejection of technological determinism,
revealing instead the driving force behind the information revolution:
globalised commodity capitalism. The essay which follows this, Frank
Webster's "Information and Communications Technologies: Luddism
Revisited", is so similar in subject-matter to that of Robins that it
begins to seem like a twice-told tale; not so surprising considering that
Robins and Webster have co-authored numerous books and articles in the
past. In these essays, Robins and Webster have updated their decade-old
argument against the ideology of globalisation to encompass the ICT
initiatives of the Clinton administration and their subsequent impact on
the policies of Tony Blair's New Labour. However, it must be noted that
in rejecting technological determinism, Robins and Webster fall back on an
economic determinism in which global capitalism becomes the autonomous
force which shapes society. Furthermore, Robins's claim that
technoculture is "de-realising urban reality" is problematic, for what
reality is not ultimately a construct?
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Simone Bergman and Liesbet van Zoonen begin the Textures section of
Technocities, providing a feminist reading of the continued absence
of women in virtual spaces. They too examine Amsterdam's Digitale
Stad, though by looking instead at the social demography of its female
presence. Their studies of three women conclude what might be expected:
that participation is the privilege of the already privileged. However,
more important to Bergman and van Zoonen is that the experience of these
women "shows that there is a lively 'feminine' culture on the Internet
that needs to be revealed in more detail in order to 'demasculinise' the
Internet". In terms of policy, they call for a "recognition and
publication of the presence of women on the Internet and the specific uses
they make of it".
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In the first essay of the Territories section John Downey restates the
issues raised in earlier essays regarding the European Union's
implementation of ICTs, and goes on to look specifically at the
influential work of one-time European Commission adviser, Manuel Castells.
According to Castells, resistance to globalisation "could be facilitated
... by local government", but, as Downey explains, Castells fails to
theorise local agency. In contrast to Downey's and Graham's emphasis upon
local agency, Leen d'Haenens sees in Canada a nation state which has
implemented policy proactively to combat both the cultural and economic
expansionism of ICTs. Canada's policies, d'Haenens explains, were set in
place to protect and strengthen Canadian culture against "US cultural
hegemony", not by excluding American content, but by encouraging Canadian
content. Moreover, the Canadian government is ensuring that the
'information superhighway' does not become "an outlet for monopolies".
Thus, d'Haenens concludes, national governments still have an important
role to play in the dispersal of power, but it is only with a "policy mix
of privatisation, regulation and subvention" that a freedom from
international monopolies can be assured.
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In the Perspectives section, John Pickering explores the socio-cultural
impact of human-machine interaction -- what he calls the creation of a
'habitus', "a system of sensitivities and values". Very soon, however,
Pickering voices the fear that as computers become more human, they "may
elicit from the human beings that interact with them a new type of skilled
practice that expresses cybernetic rather than human values". Moreover,
he detects in society the emergence of a Baudrillardian skepticism of
'digitality', in which the technocity is a simulation which conceals its
fundamentally constructed and repressive nature, ultimately becoming more
real than the real. He concludes, in thoroughly pessimistic fashion, that
while the virtual technocity continues to conceal the social disparities
it creates it seems most likely to end up as a monument to its own
potentially damaging nature.
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Douglas Kellner's concluding essay attempts to mediate between the poles
of pessimism (technophobia) and optimism (technophilia) by employing a
"both-and logic" instead of an "either-or logic". He employs the term
'technocapitalism' in order to balance technological and economic
determinism, though he does tip the scales in favour of economic forces.
He, furthermore, casts off any utopian or dystopian portraits of
technocities, claiming that, "for most of us, they are simply a space
where we communicate, do research, and perhaps forge a new and uncertain
form of social relations, but are not a habitat where we live and die ... .
[The technocity] is not really a community, let alone a city, but is a new
form of public space and democratic participation".
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Technocities is, then, a multi-vocal collection of essays which
emphasises, rather than conceals, its contentious and fragmented nature.
While the quality of the essays varies, the broad scope of the collection --
which ranges from communication and cultural studies, to information
technology, urban planning, feminism, sociology and the visual arts --
means that it will be beneficial in any interdisciplinary study of the new
network media.
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Details
John Downey and Jim McGuigan, eds. Technocities. London: Sage, 1999.
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Citation reference for this article
MLA style:
Peta Mitchell. "Many Voices in the City: 'Technocities'." M/C Reviews 29 Sep. 1999.
[your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/words/voices.html>.
Chicago style:
Peta Mitchell, "Many Voices in the City: 'Technocities'," M/C Reviews 29 Sep. 1999,
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/words/voices.html> ([your date of access]).
APA style:
Peta Mitchell. (1999) Many voices in the city: 'Technocities'. M/C Reviews 29 Sep. 1999.
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/words/voices.html> ([your date of access]).
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