Patrice Flichy offers a profound analysis of the social shaping and impact of the major communication technologies of the last 200 years. From the semaphore and telegraph to contemporary information technologies, Dynamics of Modern Communication focuses on the relationship between technological and social change. Particular emphasis is put on four processes: the birth of the modern state at the end of the eighteenth century; the development of stock markets; the transformation of private life in the modern nuclear family; and the individualism of the late twentieth century. Exploring the interaction of technology and social context - for example, in the move from public methods of communication to more private and individualized forms - Flichy exposes the gap between the original conception of a technology and its end use after the interplay of political, economic and consumer forces.

How do the social sciences address the question of innovation and the relationship between technology and use? This is the core point of this book which examines critically diverse works, in sociology, history, economics and anthropology, in order to formulate a new approach. This reflection is essentially of a general nature, though the cases used to illustrate the analysis are drawn primarily from the field of ICT. Patrice Flichy studies how the socio-technological actions of the different actors, particularly designers and users, are organized within the same frames of reference. He also introduces a new element into the model by demonstrating how time is involved in technological choices. Understanding Technological Innovation will be essential reading for advanced teaching and research training in the fields of science and technology studies, and media and communication studies.

The collective vision that shaped the emergence of the Internet: what led software designers, managers, employees, politicians, and individuals to develop and adopt one particular technology. In The Internet Imaginaire, sociologist Patrice Flichy examines the collective vision that shaped the emergence of the Internet-the social imagination that envisioned a technological utopia in the birth of a new technology. By examining in detail the discourses surrounding the development of the Internet in the United States in the 1990s (and considering them an integral part of that development), Flichy shows how an entire society began a new technological era. The metaphorical "information superhighway" became a technical utopia that informed a technological program. The Internet imaginaire, Flichy argues, led software designers, businesses, politicians, and individuals to adopt this one technology instead of another. Flichy draws on writings by experts-paying particular attention to the gurus of Wired magazine, but also citing articles in Time, Newsweek, and Business Week-from 1991 to 1995. He describes two main domains of the technical imaginaire: the utopias (and ideologies) associated with the development of technical devices; and the depictions of an imaginary digital society. He analyzes the founding myths of cyberculture-the representations of technical systems expressing the dreams and experiments of designers and promoters that developed around information highways, the Internet, Bulletin Board systems, and virtual reality. And he offers a treatise on "the virtual society imaginaire," discussing visionaries from Teilhard de Chardin to William Gibson, the body and the virtual, cyberdemocracy and the end of politics, and the new economy of the immaterial.

Translated by LIZ LIBBRECHT Combining political economy with the sociology of innovation, Dynamics of Modern Communication is a comprehensive social history of communication technology from 1790 to the present. Author Patrice Flichy presents a careful critique and historical analysis of the social shaping and impact of the major communication technologies of the past 200 years. From the semaphore and telegraph to contemporary information technologies like the phonograph, photograph, telephone, radio, cinema, and television, this book focuses on the relationship between technological change and the social changes in which they were situated. Particular emphasis is put on four social processes: the birth of the modern state at the end of the 18th century, the development of stock markets, the transformation of private life in the modern nuclear family, and the individualism of the late 20th century. Dynamics of Modern Communication provides a provocative exploration of the interaction of technology and social context in processes such as the move from public forms of communication to more private and individualized forms. Patrice Flichy excellently demonstrates the gap between the original conception of a technology and its end use after molding by political and economic forces. Students and academics in communications, media and technology studies, sociology and social history will appreciate the author's accessible style and the insights this text has to offer.