Category: Articles
ICT in Cibersociety
Written by Alfonso Elizondo
Created on Monday, August 8, 2016, 15:27
Views: 775
New Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) play a decisive role in production and current social development. In developed and developing countries, the problems have been seen as a contribution to the achievement of broad national goals and as support for national policies and development programs. ICT has been a key factor in addressing the problems that arise from the complexity of today’s world.
These technologies are now emerging as cross-cutting tools in society, which have been integrated into all activities and they are indispensable because they control real time, the way people work, learn, communicate and govern. It is obvious that these technologies cannot solve all the problems of development in human society, such as poverty. Consequently, policies aimed in that direction should be accompanied by strategies to reduce the large gap between the rich and the poor who also do not have the knowledge or information.
We must find a way for a given country or territory to be able to compete in a world that is increasingly interconnected by the economy. So globalization is both a threat and an opportunity. According to the latest UN report, market liberalization and integration is a growth instrument for developing countries, although right now there are few nations that have been able to use its advantages, while most of them have been hurt by the social phenomenon of globalization.
It follows therefore that the challenge of ICT is to broaden the bases of democracy through more creative and participatory systems. Accordingly, private and government organizations should increase investments in the creation of multimillion-dollar infrastructure for services and information based on the latest technology in the field of telematics to provide access to databases for bibliographies, texts, facts and all sources of information.
A society on the Web is a society whose social structure is built around microelectronic information networks on the Internet. In that sense the Internet is not just a technology, but also the communication medium that shapes the organization of new societies. It is the equivalent of the factory or the company in the industrial era. It is the heart of a new socio-technical paradigm that constitutes the material basis of the life of modern man, his working relationships and communication. So the Internet processes virtuality and turns it into reality, creating the ‘network society’ which is the society in which we now live.
The Internet is the present life and it is a medium for everything related to the concept of society. It is a web of computer networks that are able to communicate with each other. However, this technology is more than that, since it has become a means of communication, interaction and social organization. The Internet is an expression of social processes, interests, values and institutions. It is the material and technological foundation of the ‘network society’ and the organizational medium that allows for the development of new forms of social relations reflecting a series of historical changes that could not have happened without the Internet. So the use of ICT and intensive Web activity are levers to develop a larger-scale practice of ‘active citizenship’ and a force for political and social development in a specific local area.
Because of this virulent revolution surrounding Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) they have become currently the main sources of cultural globalization. In this new area lies the best political bet for the future of Western democracies. If everyone were to begin building a new society on the Web, turning every citizen into an actor in local life, there would still be a need for partisan representation in the conquest of power, and the exercise of power would be based on acceptance of the principle of majority rule where whoever wins the majority can impose their political will on others.
The fact is that the networked society in a specific territory can only be a pluriminority one and must be built in a culture of tolerance, in the same way that the production network of a project can only develop a single culture of trust. So computers essentially reflect the workings of a cultural system where each part is a node in a dynamic network of interpersonal relationships in a state of constant adjustment and renewal.
Addendum: Because this ICT phenomenon is happening right now it is very difficult to perceive, much less to assess its effect on the political and social model that now prevails in the world. It is also very difficult to imagine a new world economy sustained by technological developments and new forms of employment that ICT will produce.
But it is an undeniable fact that the world will have to continue to exist for many more years and there is no doubt that soon jobs will be invented for the old and young that we had never imagined. And best of all is that it will all happen in a world with less violence than today.