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Research Assitant
Email: d.p.hill@mmu.ac.uk
Shouts From The Street conference, September 1995.
The Governance of Cyberspace, University of Teesside, April 1995. Conference report
1. Academic aims
1. To provide an analysis of the relationship between policy and
practice in the field of public access to information and
communication technologies (ICTs).
2. To construct a conceptual framework for understanding the
processes of public policy definition and implementation in this
field, with special reference to issues of 'cultural regeneration',
'minority access' and 'democratisation of information'.
3. To evaluate the relevance of contemporary theories of cultural
production and change for the analysis of these issues.
2. Background
I intend to examine cultural policy issues pertaining to the
attempted cultural, economic and spatial regeneration of
post-industrial cities using information and communications
technologies (ICTs) to democratise and stimulate the cultural
industries. The work will initially attempt a definition of the key
concept of universal public access to ICTs, which may involve
oft-quoted supply-side measures such as:
* employing concepts of 'universal service' (Hadden & Lenert 1995) - the construction of accessible ICT infrastructure including public access spaces focussed on socially, economically or technologically marginalised groups.A fuller definition of the concept may also consist of less obvious demand-side issues such as:
* financial, technical and educational resources for organisations comprising the developing "information economy".
* the need to stimulate a cultural shift in the use of personal computers in public spaces.The work will then proceed to evaluate the implications of public access to ICTs. The perceived potential for ICTs to capitalise on the forthcoming "information society" (European Commission 1994; G7 Ministerial Conference on the Information Society 1995) or "economy of signs and space" (Lash & Urry 1994) is being grasped by cities worldwide (Carter 1995). The attempts at regeneration of city spaces and economies via city-based cultural industries using ICTs will be a particular focus of the work, relating case-studies of city-based ICT projects to theories of modern urban planning (Landry & Bianchini 1995; Rogers 1995), postmodern architecture and planning (Hebdige 1989) and digital public spaces (Mitchell 1995; Benedikt, 1992), urban space (Davis 1994; Castells 1994), cyberpunk literature as social theory for postmodern cities (Kellner 1995; Burrows 1995), and concepts of communities formed using ICTs (Jones 1995).
* the creation of participative, truly interactive public environments, paying particular attention to the design of the interface (both digital and physical) between public space and 'cyberspace'.
The research will relate ICTs to contemporary cultural change theory on cultural production and consumption in post-industrial cities (Wynne & O'Connor 1992; 1994) and employ readings of ICTs as embodying postmodern culture (Crook, Pakulski & Waters 1990; Taylor & Saarinen 1994). Theories of hegemony (Storey 1994; McRobbie 1994) will also be examined in order to evaluate the counter-hegemonic or democratising potential for ICTs in the cultural industries. Potentially negative implications of public access to ICTs will be examined drawing on work on the privatisation of public space (Davis 1994) extending into cyberspace, unprecedented levels of surveillance (Mulgan 1994), and a publicisation of private space as public access media extends its sphere of influence (Baudrillard 1987).
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