Description
Book SynopsisExplores how "digital formations" emerge from the ever-changing intersection of computer-centered technologies and the broad range of social contexts that underlie much of what happens in cyberspace. This book emphasizes the importance of recognizing the specific technical capacities of digital technologies.
Trade Review"A valuable contribution to scholarship, and one that I enjoyed reading, Digital Formations takes a unique approach to the subject of information technology. In seeking to build new conceptual frameworks and develop new perspectives, it provides a solid foundation for the elaboration of future empirical and theoretical work on IT and globalization." - Michel S. Laguerre, University of California, Berkeley, author of The Informal City and The Global Ethnopolis "Comprehensive and insightful, Digital Formations will be greeted warmly in the fields that over-lap its concerns. It addresses a most important set of questions concerning the relationship of information technologies to globalization. And this is an urgent topic for social science." - Mark Poster, University of California, Irvine, author of The Mode of Information and What's the Matter with the Internet?"
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction Digital Formations: Constructing an Object of Study by Robert Latham and Saskia Sassen 1 SPACES OF KNOWLEDGE 35 Recombinant Technology and New Geographies of Association by Jonathan Bach and David Stark 37 Electronic Markets and Activist Networks: The Weight of Social Logics in Digital Formations by Saskia Sassen 54 The New Mobility of Knowledge: Digital Information Systems and Global Flagship Networks by Dieter Ernst 89 NETWORKS OF COOPERATION 115 Cooperative Networks and the Rural-Urban Divide by D. Linda Garcia 117 Networks, Information, and the Rise of the Global Internet by Robert Latham 146 The Political Economy of Open Source Software and Why It Matters by Steven Weber 178 DESIGNS AND INSTITUTIONS 213 Designing Information Resources for Transboundary Conflict Early Warning Networks by Hayward R. Alker 215 Discourse Architecture and Very Large-scale Conversation by Warren Sack 242 Transnational Communication and the European Demos by Lars-Erik Cederman and Peter A. Kraus 283 Information Technology and State Capacity in China by Doug Guthrie 312 List of Contributors 339 Index 341
