Managing the Infosphere: Governance, Technology, and Cultural Practice in Motion

by Stephen D. McDowell, Philip E. Steinberg, Tami K. Tomasello

Overview

Managing the Infosphere examines the global world of communications as a mobile space that overlaps uneasily with the world of sovereign, territorial nation-states.  Drawing on their expertise in geography, political science, international relations, and communication studies, the authors investigate specific policy problems encountered when international organizations, corporations, and individual users try to "manage" a space that simultaneously contradicts and supports existing institutions and systems of governance, identity, and technology.

The authors argue that the roles of these systems in cyberspace cannot be fully understood unless they are seen as mutually constituting each other in specific historical structures, institutions, and practices.  With vision and insight, the authors look beyond the Internet to examine the entire networked world, from cell phones and satellites to global tourism and business travel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439900987
Publisher:	Temple University Press
Publication date:	08/13/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	248
File size:	418 KB

About the Author

Stephen D. McDowell is John H. Phipps Professor of Communication and Chair of the Department of Communication at Florida State University. He is the author of Globalization, Liberalization, and Policy Change: A Political Economy of India's Communications Sector.

Philip E. Steinberg is an Associate Professor of Geography at Florida State University.  He is the author of The Social Construction of the Ocean and co-editor (with Rob Shields) of The Urban After Katrina: Place, Community, Connections, and Memory.

Tami K. Tomasello is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication, East Carolina University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments   

Chapter 1:     Managing the Infosphere   

Chapter 2:     Managing Technological Change

Chapter 3:     Scales of Governance, Governance of Scales

Chapter 4:    Communication Technology, Mobility, and Cultural Consumption

Chapter 5:     Internet Names, Semiotics, and Alternative Spaces of Governance

Chapter 6:    Fixity, Mobility, and the Governance of Internet Names

Chapter 7:     The Infosphere: A World of Places, an Ocean of Information or a Special Administrative Region?

References