ICTS AND SOCIETY: THE SALZBURG APPROACH - ICT&S

ICTs and Society: The Salzburg Approach
our bodies in space” in the ages of mechanical technology, by means of “electric
technology”, better: by means of the scientific-technological revolution in digitisation,
we are on the point of extending “our central nervous system itself in a global
embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned” (1997,
3), enhancing the control of material production as well as supporting every
information process in social systems, thereby ushering in the techno-social
formation of informational society. Each new formation subjugated that from which
it departed: the agricultural society increased the control of natural resources like
plants and animals, the industrial society has been industrialising agriculture, and
the informational society is informatising industry (see Fig. 13).
Figure 13: The dynamic of techno-social self-organisation over time
4.3.3 The Net as Complex System
What follows from the assumptions outlined above for the Internet and the Web
(see Table 1) is that tools have to be used that regard the Net as
• a techno-social
• subsystem of society
• in evolution.
Firstly, the Net should be conceived as a techno-social system where human interaction
and human activity results in the storage of knowledge. In this perspective,
the Internet is not a system that links computers, but a techno-social system where
a network of computer networks is used for linking and supporting the interactions
of human beings.
Thus, the notion of the Internet as techno-social system refers to the fact that it
cannot be defined without connection to the human social realm. On the one hand
the Net is part of technological infrastructure of society, which is itself a
Hofkirchner | Fuchs | Raffl | Schafranek | Sandoval | Bichler 44