hallmark of internet civilization is the broad social use of ICT that provides innovative ways for people to collaborate, share, and get informed. By incorporating ICT into their lives, individuals have changed the ways they collaborate, innovate, and interact with each other. Knowledge in this era plays an even more important role than information (Wierzbicki, 2007). Unlike the technologies dominating prior eras of civilization, ICT differs in complexity by proposing an unlimited number of diversified technological possibilities, oriented toward both products and services (p. 413).
Another hallmark of the new era is unprecedented wide-ranging connectivity. In the internet civilization era, everyone and everything will be connected everywhere in real time. Media networks, social networks, and economic networks reach into the farthest corners of the world on a global scale (Dijk, 2012). In many respects, connectivity serves as the starting point for social developments, which creates freedom, empowerment, and opportunity to transform the world into a network society. While individuals and communities empowered by connectivity are driving fundamental social change, connectivity opens up new hope and opportunities for finding solutions to the toughest challenges in the world.
The era of internet civilization started in 2010, the year Apple Inc. launched its first iPad, representing another revolutionary media device following smartphones that bring people closer to information and to each other. The technology of the era makes it easy for people to create various networks in which they can easily exchange knowledge, capital, and cultural communication, in addition to creating and sharing information. The networks, or simply nets, enable new modes of informational flow. Those who control the information flow are in charge of the nets, and thus have enormous power to control anyone who relies on the flow of information.
As individuals are increasingly networked, rather than embedded into hierarchical groups, a networked individualism emerges, guiding how people connect, communicate, and exchange information, and, more importantly, providing opportunities, constraints, rules, and procedures. For the first time in history, technology offers seemingly unlimited possibilities of previously unavailable products and services than ever before (Wierzbicki, 2007).
The internet civilization era also requires people to develop new skills and strategies for collaborating, innovating, and problem-resolving. Meanwhile, a rising number of high-tech companies and businesses are fundamentally dependent on knowledge, with the capability of analyzing and making the best use of data. Other knowledge creators, in academia and in small firms, are also fundamentally dependent on knowledge. In the internet civilization era, we need social science that really understands how knowledge is created in the hard sciences and technology, and we, the representatives of the latter cultural spheres, cannot find such understanding in the arguments of social scientists today.
Foucault maintains that each era of civilization, or great “turn” in philosophy, was based on a distinctive cultural platform of new information, ideas, and concepts, which were formed before the beginning of the era, but affected the era after its formation for a period of time (Foucault, 1971). Internet civilization is no exception. Generally, internet civilization is based on the progress made in computing, network technology, and ICT, eventually bringing about a larger economic transformation since the 1970s.
Central to this transformation was the salience of digitally encoded information as the primary driver for economic, cultural, and social change. This occurred because within an increasingly competitive global system, knowledge began to replace labor as the most valuable component and, consequently, the production of services, as opposed to manufacturing, became centrally important. For Castells (1996), the nature of this change constituted a paradigm shift of information and communication technology, during which the cheap economic input of information is the most significant feature of change.
Castells (1996) identifies five primary features of the ICT paradigm: (1) information is the raw material of new forms of production and consumption; (2) digital information is all pervasive; (3) the logic of digital information affects society; (4) flexibility is a fundamental part of what information enables; and (5) networked information tends to converge into highly integrated systems. The network society is a product of these processes; networks provide the basis for organizing and expansion in the information age. The expansion of computing was due to the enabling effects of the networking process itself – the ability to link and spread and diffuse information flows on an unprecedented scale.
Hence, information is no longer taken as the vehicle of knowledge; it is now possible to think that knowledge might be something beyond information. A paradigmatic change of understanding is needed both in technology development and in assessing its social impacts. We will not be sufficiently prepared for the future if we adhere to old concepts and disciplinary paradigms, but must be ready to question them, preserving an open and critical mind in the era of internet civilization.
Theory Highlight: Technology Determinism
Any discussion on the role of technology in human civilization would not be complete without mentioning a key concept – technological determinism – since it offers a useful framework for understanding the interplay of technology and communication. Scholars who study technology, such as communication researchers, historians of technology, sociologists, economists, political scientists, anthropologists, and computer scientists, share a central concern about how far technology does or does not condition social change. The topic can be controversial as each commentator emphasizes different factors in the interaction between technology and social development. Technological determinism can be a hard sell since few can produce a widely accepted explanation of it with rigorous and verifiable evidence.
The term technological determinism was coined by the American sociologist and economist Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) in the early twentieth century (Veblen, 1933) and was later expanded on and developed by his student Clarence Ayres (Kte’pi, 2011). British scholars Castree et al. (2013) define technological determinism as:
A reductionist, theoretical position in which technology is understood to determine, in fairly linear simple cause-and-effect ways, the social, cultural, political, and economic aspects of people’s lives. Here, technology is seen as independent, active, and determining, and society is dependent, passive, and reactive. From this perspective, technical advancements are the key drivers of social and economic change. For example, technological determinists argue that new technical developments such as rail, telegraph, cars, telecommunications, elevators, and computers are key factors determining the shape and functioning of modern societies. Moreover, they would suggest that social, economic, and environmental issues can be solved purely through technological solutions.
(p. 505)
Today, few scholars would accept such an extreme position. Rather, most researchers hold that social and economic institutions strongly determine the shape taken by technology, instead of the other way around (Kte’pi, 2011). Like other social activities, technology and its uses are socially constructed, their effects vary across space and time, and social problems cannot simply be solved by technology alone, but also need social and political solutions (Castree et al., 2013).
In addition to technology determinism, British scholar Chandler (1995) observes that there are various kinds of “determinism” featured in social and natural sciences. For example, there is linguistic determinism, suggesting that people’s thinking is determined by language. Then there is biological (or genetic) determinism, proposing that human behavior is controlled solely by an individual’s genes. Such a belief goes against most scientists who agree that all physical traits and behaviors are the result of complex interactions between both biology and the environment (Dubos, 1998; Ridley, 2003). Both theories can be linked to certain forms of technological determinism (Chandler, 1995). All these deterministic theories, including technological determinism, seek to explain social and historical phenomena in terms of one principal or determining factor.
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