1st Edition

Politics in Wired Nations Selected Writings of Ithiel De Sola Pool

By Ithiel de Sola Pool Copyright 1998
    395 Pages
    by Routledge

    395 Pages
    by Routledge

    Ithiel de Sola Pool was a pioneering social scientist, a distinguished scholar of the political process, and one of the most original thinkers in the development of the social sciences. Passionately engaged in politics, he continued his role of leadership throughout his life, building the MIT Political Science Department into an outstanding group. He organized international teams of social scientists and collaborated widely to develop the understanding of social change. He was a frequent adviser to governments as consultant and in-house critic, and a successful advocate of limits on government regulation. Politics in Wired Nations presents his writings on the social and political impact of different communication systems and new telecommunications technology.Included in this volume is the first study of trends in a global information society, and the first study of social networks and the "small world" phenomenon that creates new relationships and routes of informal influence and political power, both domestic and international. Pool's essays on the politics of foreign trade, the influence of American businessmen on Congress, and changeable "unnatural" institutions of the modern world (e.g., bureaucracies, mega-cities, and nation-states) are herein contained. Pool describes a nonviolent revolution in freedom and political control that is possible as the world changes from the era of one-way mass communications--targeted to national audiences--to a new era of abundant, high-capacity, low-cost, interactive, and user-controlled communications on a global scale. He discusses policy choices for freedom, the battlegrounds ahead, and the risks of government involvement in the regulation of new telecommunication technologies.

    Introduction I: Political Communication 1. Introduction to Political Communication 2. Changing Images: The Role of Communications in the Process of Modernization 3. Newsmen’s Fantasies, Audiences, and Newswriting 4. Deterrence as an Influence Process 5. Contacts and Influence 6. American Politics: Congress and Its Constituents 7. Trends in Content Analysis Today: A Summary Part II: Societal Impact 8. Foresight and Hindsight: The Case of the Telephone 9. Communications Technology and Land Use 10. The Mass Media and Politics in the Modernization Process 11. Four Unnatural Institutions and the Road Ahead Part III: Technology, Policy, and Freedom Editor’s Introduction 12. Tracking the Flow of Information 13. The Public and the Polity 14. Citizen Feedback in Political Philosophy 15. Communication and Integrated Planning 16. Technology and Confusion: The Satellite Broadcast Controversy in the U.N. 17. From Gutenberg to Electronics: Implications for the First Amendment 18. Policies for Freedom

    Biography

    Ithiel de Sola Pool