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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Richard Hull
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This thesis addresses the relationships between Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), ‘knowledge production’ (or what we call ‘expert labour’), and the current character of advanced industrial nations. It is a common argument that ICTs have enabled immense changes in the production and use of information and knowledge, which in turn characterise a new epoch in which information and knowledge play a central role, economically, socially and politically. This thesis presents a strong case against such arguments at a number of levels – philosophical, political, historical and ethnographic. It is argued that only certain types of ICT may have such ‘effects’ on the production and use of information and knowledge. However, it is also only certain types of social science analysis which can identify such effects – in terms of information and knowledge – and these types of social science analysis had already been deployed within the development and implementation of those types of ICT. In other words there is a virtuous circle in which particular types of social science first steer some ICTs towards the capacity to affect the production and use of information and knowledge, and then following their subsequent investigations into the impacts of those types of ICT, they declare that the effects they observe are characteristic of ICTs in general. This thesis develops a different perspective on those types of social science, which suggests that through their ‘post-positivist’ approaches, especially the idea that ‘knowledge’ is a unit of analysis, they also serve to reinforce particular understandings of relations between technological change and the proper ways of describing and governing society and the economy. Moreover, it is suggested that those types of social science generally retain an essentially neo-liberal approach to the role of government, despite most of the authors’ intentions – that is, an approach where government interventions are essentially focused on reinforcing and extending the ‘proper’ operation of a market economy. The thesis also develops a different perspective on the characteristics of ICTs, revising the theory of an ‘ICT Techno-Economic Paradigm’. The revision re-asserts its original focus on microelectronics, and discards its descriptions of the ‘information intensity’ generated by ICTs, whilst retaining its utility to describe their pervasive and generic diffusion. However, we suggest that there are three distinct ‘frameworks of computing’, ways of understanding and developing computational devices and their applications, which have all been strongly influenced by different social science analyses of the proper relations between people, machines and organisation. It is the two later frameworks which most correspond to the types of ‘information and knowledge effects’ generally ascribed to all ICTs, although the earliest framework still pervades much computing. Moreover, the two later frameworks were developed with substantially the same ‘post-positivist’ social science perspectives on ‘knowledge’ as a unit of analysis. It is suggested however, that the most significant ‘effects’ of the ICT TEP arise from tensions and contradictions between the three frameworks, and that the earliest framework may indeed re-assert its dominance. In other words, the ‘information and knowledge effects’ of ICTs may only be a temporary phenomenon.
Author(s): Hull R
Publication type: Report
Publication status: Published
Series Title:
Type: Unpublished PhD
Year: 2001
Institution: Manchester School of Management, UMIST
Place Published: Manchester
Notes: Includes material previously published:- Hull (1992, 1993, 1997, 1998a, 1998b, 1999, 2000). Supervisors: Brian Bloomfield, then Vivian Walsh Internal Examiner: Hugh Willmott External examiner: Andrew Barry (Goldsmiths, Sociology of Science). Immediate Pass subject to a few very minor bibliographic corrections.
