The World's Largest Machine

Häftad bok. A&W International. 1995. 292 sidor.

Mycket gott skick. The old telephone system was a large socio-technical system, stable but in a state of constant technical development. It was managed by national monopolies, which together
supplied the whole world with telecommunications. In another corner of the technical landscape a new technology began to develop with all greater speed — digital computer technology. During the last decade we have seen an increase in integration of the technically very different environments and traditions — resul¬ting in what can be called "The World's Largest Machine". This has lead to computers no longer being the central concept for modern technical development, but rather information technology (IT), information super-highways, and Internet are the words we see almost daily in the headlines and hear in discussions about the future.
What does this large technical system mean for the ordinary person? This question is illustrated from a series of perspectives in this anthology: What constitutes the large, the social, and the technical respectively? How has the system developed historically? What is the significance to industrial society? How does it influence politics, nationally and globally? What does it mean for the individual, socially, economically and philosophically? How does man's view of himself and the world change?
With this anthology the initiators from TEMA Technology and Social Change at Linköping University in Sweden have attempted to reflect the contrasts between the far-reaching and the near at hand — a machine that grows over all boundaries creating a new world, but is still populated by ordinary people, and is deeply affecting human conditions.
In order to achieve this goal the editors asked researchers and other people, who have tried to analyze the connection between information technology and man, to communicate their thoughts to a broad but qualified public. The intention was to give the book a popular and interdisciplinary profile as a basis to stimulate debate and opinion.