Contradictory Impacts of New Technologies

Review by Robert A. Rabe
Marshall University

The Information Revolution and World Politics, Elizabeth C. Hanson.  Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008.  ISBN 0-7425-3852-4 (hardcover); 0-7425-3853-2 (paper).  268 pp. 

The Information Revolution and World Politics, by Elizabeth C. Hanson of the University of Connecticut, is a valiant attempt at a nearly impossible task.  Namely, to somehow provide a short, readable overview of the dramatic and sweeping technological, political, and cultural changes wrought by what she calls the ICTs, or information and communication technologies.  And to do so in a way that conveys both the rich historical context and the nexus of far-reaching implications for the future.  Given the job at hand, it is natural that the book has a few shortcomings; however, taken as a whole the book is a very solid piece of work and a suitable text for introductory courses, for which it was no doubt intended.

As the title implies, Hanson sees the developments of the last several decades as nothing less than a revolution.  We all heard a lot about information revolutions, partly as a result of dot-com marketing campaigns and cheerleading from the business press, back in the 1990s.  So, is it real?  One might wish to quibble with this terminology.  For example, a revolution often has a beginning and an end; how do we untangle the many interrelated processes and point to their origins.  Does it date from the onset of the Internet Age?  Or the Television Age?  Or the Radio Age?  The development of electricity?  How are the political, economic and cultural shifts wrought by today’s communication technologies different from those dating back to the time of Bell, Edison, and Marconi?  Is this a new revolution or part of an old one that has been unfolding for over a century? 

Hanson sidesteps these questions, perhaps wisely, and adopts the term with a fairly straightforward explanation that points to the onset of digital communications, and the concomitant explosion of computer technology, as the starting point.  We all sense that our world has been transformed by ICTs and even a casual observer must admit that nearly every aspect of our lives is somehow different, due in large part to technology.  The pace of this change is widely seen as rapidly increasing and the cell phones/cameras/web browsers/music players people carry around today are nothing if not miraculous to somebody who grew up with the Sony Walkman.  So there must have been an information revolution.  But of course people always feel this way.  Carolyn Marvin’s wonderful When Old Technologies Were New shows us how the first electric generation responded to profound innovations in their own time.  In a different way, Leo Marx’s The Machine in the Garden reminds us of how all those loud, smelly machines and unsightly factories affected our arts and literature, if not our very character as a nation.  One gets the sense that every recent generation believed it was navigating the dangerous rapids of an information revolution, with all the attendant moments of panic and excitement.

Still, the value of The Information Revolution and World Politics is that is goes beyond the everyday examples to examine the large-scale change that affects the relationship between state and citizen and among the nation states themselves.  It is in this arena that the most profound, and potentially dangerous, changes are occurring.  Organized largely around the analysis of controversy and policymaking, the book deals with the effect of ICTs on all aspects of statecraft, economics, and national culture/identity.

Hanson employs what she calls an “interactivist approach” in her analysis, premised on the idea that new communication technologies have multiple and contradictory potential effects that emerge over time through the conscious and unintended actions of many different people.  She identifies four major areas of research, including (1) the intrinsic properties of the technologies; (2) political structures, institutions, and policies; (3) economic structures, institutions, and market forces; and (4) social use and adaptation. (p. 7).  The true scope of the information revolution, she argues, can only be understood through careful analysis of the choices made by various actors as the set policy or make use of new technologies.

The book begins with a short, even cursory, historical overview of the influence of earlier ICTs, especially radio, which presented policymakers with the first truly international mass medium.  As is often the case with historical overviews, the few pages highlight commonly understood ideas and break no new ground.  Media historians may quibble with the simplistic nature of her account, but she offers enough background to set up her larger points as they develop in subsequent chapters.

The heart of Hanson’s work is the three middle chapters.  The first of these looks at the influence of ICTs on diplomacy and statecraft, which have been dramatically altered by the availability of instantaneous communication that makes information available to everyone, both in government and the public via news media, in nearly real time.  As she demonstrates, the speed of decision making has accelerated and the window for deliberation has narrowed, which has led to a higher potential for misunderstanding and poorly planned actions as well as greater reliance on propaganda.  The usually contentious relationship between the state/military and the news media becomes even more contentious as the implications of information control policies are magnified.

In case there was any question, the recent global meltdown has reinforced Hanson’s argument about the impact of new media on the global economy.  She charts the increasingly international flow of money as states and private investors seek to use the technological edge to find profit wherever it is.  Financial advantage accrues to those who already have the advantage and the gap between haves and have-nots increases.  The book’s warning that the global economy is challenging to control has been playing out in the financial news over the last months as fallout from the American “housing bubble” destroys wealth all around the globe. 

The effects of globalization on national culture and identity have been hotly studied for decades now, and Hanson’s book offers a reasonable overview of some of the key issues.  Using China as an example, she points out that efforts by nation states to control the flow of information across borders have become nearly impossible.  The scholarly literature on these related topics is vast and complex and Hanson’s retelling comes off a little thin, especially in terms of non-Western cultures and transnational migration.  The handful of pages on the pervasive nature of American popular culture around the globe is also thin, considering the wide variety of scholarship in this area.  More interesting is the section on the use of ICTs by the international activist community and NGOs as they use new technology to create far-reaching communities and cooperative agendas.  Regardless of their effectiveness, these groups have created an entirely new and dynamic arena for political involvement that exists outside of the parameters of state control and channels the energy of like-minded people from any region.

Not surprisingly, Hanson is unable to provide a tidy answer to the complex questions that emerge from her analysis of these issues.  Instead she leaves the reader with a restatement of her broad argument that the effects of ICTs, as with any new technology, are never what their initial proponents envisioned and that subsequent analysis of their influence must be attentive to the multitude of choices, both among policy makers and the public, that ultimately determine the range and scope of the revolution.  Information inequalities will further reinforce wealth inequalities and nation states will remain the dominant centers of political authority.  But at the same time innovation will engender new means for generating wealth, and identity and culture will continue to be increasingly transnational.  Few scholars would be willing to make any bolder argument, especially in a book intended as a general overview.

The only other noteworthy drawback with this book is the dated nature of many of the examples.  My students are much more technologically adept than I am; they bring new gadgets and programs to class every day.  A group of young people who think Tivo is something their parents use is not likely to be impressed by the revolutionary impact of the video disc player or the cassette tape.  As a media historian, I struggle with this every day.  Hopefully they will be generous readers and accept the spirit of the argument and not quibble with the details.  A little more problematic is the lack of the most recent scholarship.  The book has a Y2K-era feel to it and reads like many books about the potential of the Internet from that era.  We’re far enough along in the revolution now to have some preliminary ideas about how ICTs are used over time and how they bring structural changes at the macro level.  In any case, The Information Revolution and World Politics succeeds as an introductory overview of a fascinating and complicated set of issues.  Undergraduate students in a “new media and society” or an international communications class would be well served by this short book.