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Intro -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- One 24/7: Anytime, Anywhere -- Two A Cultural History of Cell Phones and the Internet -- Three The Haves, Have-Nots, and Don't Wants -- Four Time Bandits and Space Cadets: Intimacy and Illusions of Control -- Five Digital Democracy: Individuals and Society in Transition -- Six Social Spaces and Scary Places -- Seven Bites and Fragments: What Do We Know? What Do We Own? -- Eight Where Have All the Phone Booths Gone? -- Nine Living in the Global Village -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Index.

This volume explores how a number of developing countries -- including India, Malaysia, Columbia, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia -- are responding to the pressures of the information society. Infrastructural development, policies, and social systems are investigated, and models of information technologies and society are proposed in order to better reference the differences and similarities among the nations profiled. The authors identify the social technology perspective via the assimilation of technology in lifestyles and social systems. From this perspective, the diffusion of technologies is anal

Throughout the 1980s, the development of high-definition television (HDTV) was discussed as the possible savior of the communications manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy, the bargaining chip for global information distribution, and the one technological development that held the key to both the telecommunications and defense industries for the 21st century. With such promise, it is surprising that HDTV did not become a reality sooner. Instead, it has become a case for shifts in both U.S. industrial policy and economic theory. Winston (1989) remarked that "HDTV has become the newest symbol of America's supposed industrial decline, with the networks, the electronics manufacturers and Hollywood all accused of participating in the failure" (p. 124). A flurry of research activity late in 1990, however, prompted Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, Alfred C. Sikes, to comment, "The conventional wisdom is that we are a poor third [internationally] in HDTV.... It's my view that U.S. companies are on the leading edge" (Andrews, 1990, p. A1).2