Globalities, Spatialities
and it Strategies: New Web Politics and Social Development
Speaker: Pál Tamás
Since the putative end of the Cold War modernization is increasingly
reimagined as global civil society, an expanding zone of learning and communication, or as
emerging forms of global governance. That vision we call neo-modernisation [theory?] and
has emerged as important reflection on dreams about good society, development and growing
economic competitiveness of global periphery. Web technologies were [are] understood here
nor only as generic technologies reshaping the logic of production and distribution, but
as toools for creation of "smart" institutions and social order. 'Information
Society'[IS] visions and global Web development programs rather then comprising a
distinctive sphere of inquiry, emerges and remains embedded within a matrix of subfields,
research and policy approaches. Information Society perspectives, perharps most
prominently and intricately is interwovan with technology policy, macrosociology,
institutional economics and theories of global politics. Modernization theory here takes
for granted the spatial demarcation of geopolitics by which difference is contained and
domesticated and at the same time projects on one side as natural and universal a
developmental sequence an offeres on the other side instruments to by-pass the traditional
structures created by pre-modern situations and organizations. We present here taxonomies
of Web development policies and societal development strategies on national levels
confronted and/or connected with each other. The recessive theme of new social contract in
the 'Information Society' has the potential to reconnect Web policies to the historical
problem of redistributive conflicts between centre and periphery and the paper offers some
develoment trajectories to overcome that traditional controversy. The closing section
spells out how New Web Politics attempts to eradicate difference with two binaries- the
spatial demarcation of inside/outside, and the developmental sequence of
tradition/modernity
Pal Tamas is director of the Sociology Institute, Hungarian Academy of
Sciences, Budapest. Trained as a computer scientist, later received Doctorates in
Sociology and Economics. Visiting Professor and Researcher at MIT, Wesleyan University -
CT, USA, Vienna Technical University, Frei University Berlin, Concordia University -
Montreal, Carlton University - Ottawa, Academic Center, St. Petersburg - Russia, Moscow
State University, etc.
His ongoing research focused on technology policy and development, global
civil society, vulnerability of industrial societies, models of sustainability.
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