Paperback
The Consequences of Information
Institutional Implications of Technological Change
9781847205001 Edward Elgar Publishing
This important book addresses the organizational and economic implications of the new technologies of information and communication.
Jannis Kallinikos analyses the recent spectacular growth of information and the self-propelling processes through which technological information is increasingly generated out of the reshuffling and recombination of available and interoperable information sources. He argues that information is no longer simply a resource but a pervading element of socio-economic life that is crucially involved in the redefinition of a variety of organizational practices and modes of economic action.
Jannis Kallinikos analyses the recent spectacular growth of information and the self-propelling processes through which technological information is increasingly generated out of the reshuffling and recombination of available and interoperable information sources. He argues that information is no longer simply a resource but a pervading element of socio-economic life that is crucially involved in the redefinition of a variety of organizational practices and modes of economic action.
More Information
Critical Acclaim
Contents
More Information
This important book addresses the organizational and economic implications of the new technologies of information and communication.
Jannis Kallinikos analyses the recent spectacular growth of information and the self-propelling processes through which technological information is increasingly generated out of the reshuffling and recombination of available and interoperable information sources. He argues that information is no longer simply a resource but a pervading element of socio-economic life that is crucially involved in the redefinition of a variety of organizational practices and modes of economic action.
Academics and students in a variety of disciplines, including information studies, information systems, management and organization studies, sociology, social psychology and social policy will find much to interest them in this book.
Jannis Kallinikos analyses the recent spectacular growth of information and the self-propelling processes through which technological information is increasingly generated out of the reshuffling and recombination of available and interoperable information sources. He argues that information is no longer simply a resource but a pervading element of socio-economic life that is crucially involved in the redefinition of a variety of organizational practices and modes of economic action.
Academics and students in a variety of disciplines, including information studies, information systems, management and organization studies, sociology, social psychology and social policy will find much to interest them in this book.
Critical Acclaim
‘Kallinikos’ forceful and elegantly written book draws on an impressively wide range of perspectives from information theory, social science and organization theory. It should be of interest to scholars seeking a comprehensive understanding of how technology is involved in the making of social and institutional forms. . . Kallinikos’ rare combination of approaches to his subject – not only switching between or digging beneath various academic fields, but even when necessary placing himself in an integrative position above specific fields – should make this an important contribution. . .’
– Christian Maravelias, Scandinavian Journal of Management
‘In The Consequences of Information Kallinikos provides a detailed analysis of the variety of ways in which information gets involved in social and economic life and the consequences such an involvement has for people and organizations, the development and use of ICT. . . The Consequences of Information makes an important contribution to the understanding of contemporary use of ICT and its relation to escalating patterns of information growth. . . the book is an excellent resource for IS scholars in formulating innovative and relevant research questions, taking into consideration the complexities related to new ICT while building on sound social theories.’
– Jonny Holmström, Information Technology and People
‘The Consequences of Information is a brilliant penetrating meditation on the evolution of modernity as we struggle to adapt to our new information “habitat”. Jannis Kallinikos describes with force and precision the way our once heterogeneous reality is subjected to the methods of information technology and reconstituted on the microscopic level of the particle: life is literally turned to dust. Yet this decomposition yields fresh possibilities of redistribution and recomposition. What will be our fate? Will our “progressive emancipation from material constraints” lead to a new disaggregation of resources, shifting power to individual consumers and citizens? Or will it produce a surprising “retraditionalization”: a return to feudal social relations in which the individual is wholly absorbed by the institutional order? Kallinikos’ fascinating and virtuoso treatise returns the study of information systems to where it belongs – at the heart of debate on the future of institutions and the destiny of the individual.’
– Shoshana Zuboff, formerly at Harvard Business School, Harvard University, US
‘Kallinikos develops brilliant and original analytics to capture one of the deeper meanings of the information era: the disaggregating of reality into the elements of software code and the reconstitution of these elements into novel social forms. Information thus conceived is shown to produce new conditions from the infrastructural bottom-up rather than top-down from the powerful global controllers and makers of information.’
– Saskia Sassen, author of Territory Authority Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages
‘In his comprehensive and systematic investigation into the saturation of the modern world by information and its technologies, Jannis Kallinikos offers us new ways of thinking about the social and institutional consequences of this development. Drawing on an impressively wide range of perspectives from information theory, social science and administrative studies to semiotics and philosophy, Kallinikos shows how the contemporary spread and pervasive use of information technology is challenging our conventional tendency to think about the world in terms of stable and enduring structures. The new informational world recreates reality as a transient and continuously dissolving panorama of events in space and time. A significant theme of the book is its emphasis on the new plastic and pliable ways of thinking required to grasp the social and institutional implications of these ongoing informational transformations.’
– Robert Cooper, Keele University, UK
– Christian Maravelias, Scandinavian Journal of Management
‘In The Consequences of Information Kallinikos provides a detailed analysis of the variety of ways in which information gets involved in social and economic life and the consequences such an involvement has for people and organizations, the development and use of ICT. . . The Consequences of Information makes an important contribution to the understanding of contemporary use of ICT and its relation to escalating patterns of information growth. . . the book is an excellent resource for IS scholars in formulating innovative and relevant research questions, taking into consideration the complexities related to new ICT while building on sound social theories.’
– Jonny Holmström, Information Technology and People
‘The Consequences of Information is a brilliant penetrating meditation on the evolution of modernity as we struggle to adapt to our new information “habitat”. Jannis Kallinikos describes with force and precision the way our once heterogeneous reality is subjected to the methods of information technology and reconstituted on the microscopic level of the particle: life is literally turned to dust. Yet this decomposition yields fresh possibilities of redistribution and recomposition. What will be our fate? Will our “progressive emancipation from material constraints” lead to a new disaggregation of resources, shifting power to individual consumers and citizens? Or will it produce a surprising “retraditionalization”: a return to feudal social relations in which the individual is wholly absorbed by the institutional order? Kallinikos’ fascinating and virtuoso treatise returns the study of information systems to where it belongs – at the heart of debate on the future of institutions and the destiny of the individual.’
– Shoshana Zuboff, formerly at Harvard Business School, Harvard University, US
‘Kallinikos develops brilliant and original analytics to capture one of the deeper meanings of the information era: the disaggregating of reality into the elements of software code and the reconstitution of these elements into novel social forms. Information thus conceived is shown to produce new conditions from the infrastructural bottom-up rather than top-down from the powerful global controllers and makers of information.’
– Saskia Sassen, author of Territory Authority Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages
‘In his comprehensive and systematic investigation into the saturation of the modern world by information and its technologies, Jannis Kallinikos offers us new ways of thinking about the social and institutional consequences of this development. Drawing on an impressively wide range of perspectives from information theory, social science and administrative studies to semiotics and philosophy, Kallinikos shows how the contemporary spread and pervasive use of information technology is challenging our conventional tendency to think about the world in terms of stable and enduring structures. The new informational world recreates reality as a transient and continuously dissolving panorama of events in space and time. A significant theme of the book is its emphasis on the new plastic and pliable ways of thinking required to grasp the social and institutional implications of these ongoing informational transformations.’
– Robert Cooper, Keele University, UK
Contents
Contents: 1. Organizations, Information, Networks 2. Technology Design and Social Systems 3. Information Growth as a Self-Referential Process 4. Excursus on Meaning, Purpose and Information 5. Networks Revisited 6. Addendum on Networks and Institutions 7. The Organizational Order of Modernity 8. Epilogue on Technology and Institutions References Index
