How does the Internet affect social capital? Do the communication possibilities of the Internet increase, decrease, or supplement interpersonal contact, participation, and community commitment? This evidence comes from a 1998 survey of 39,211 visitors to the National Geographic Society Web site, one of the first large-scale Web surveys. The authors find that people's interaction online supplements their face-to-face and telephone communication without increasing or decreasing it. However, heavy Internet use is associated with increased participation in voluntary organizations and politics. Further support for this effect is the positive association between offline and online participation in voluntary organizations and politics. However, the effects of the Internet are not only positive: The heaviest users of the Internet are the least committed to online community. Taken together, this evidence suggests that the Internet is becoming normalized as it is incorporated into the routine practices of everyday ...

/pdf/does-the-internet-increase-decrease-or-supplement-social-uzfji42xp6.pdf

Does the Internet Increase, Decrease, or Supplement Social Capital? : Social Networks, Participation, and Community Commitment

The Internet is a critically important research site for sociologists testing theories of technology diffusion and media effects, particularly because it is a medium uniquely capable of integrating modes of communication and forms of content. Current research tends to focus on the Internet's implications in five domains: 1) inequality (the “digital divide”); 2) community and social capital; 3) political participation; 4) organizations and other economic institutions; and 5) cultural participation and cultural diversity. A recurrent theme across domains is that the Internet tends to complement rather than displace existing media and patterns of behavior. Thus in each domain, utopian claims and dystopic warnings based on extrapolations from technical possibilities have given way to more nuanced and circumscribed understandings of how Internet use adapts to existing patterns, permits certain innovations, and reinforces particular kinds of change. Moreover, in each domain the ultimate social implications of t...

/pdf/social-implications-of-the-internet-2gygqgm2m0.pdf

Social Implications of the Internet

This is a study in industrial sociology; it a partial report, to be followed by another, of an investigation of singel factory seen in the light of Max Weber's theory of bureacracy.

Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy.

The emergence of ubiquitous computing as a new design paradigm poses significant challenges for human-computer interaction (HCI) and interaction design. Traditionally, HCI has taken place within a constrained and well-understood domain of experience—single users sitting at desks and interacting with conventionally-designed computers employing screens, keyboards and mice for interaction. New opportunities have engendered considerable interest in “context-aware computing”—computational systems that can sense and respond to aspects of the settings in which they are used. However, considerable confusion surrounds the notion of “context”—what it means, what it includes and what role it plays in interactive systems. This paper suggests that the representational stance implied by conventional interpretations of “context” misinterprets the role of context in everyday human activity, and proposes an alternative model that suggests different directions for design.

/pdf/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-context-28v7hls8bp.pdf

What we talk about when we talk about context

Computer networks are social networks. Social affordances of computer-supported social networks – broader bandwidth, wireless portability, globalized connectivity, personalization – are fostering the movement from door-to-door and place-to-place communities to person-to-person and role-to-role communities. People connect in social networks rather than in communal groups. In-person and computer-mediated communication are integrated in communities characterized by personalized networking.

Les reseaux informatiques sont des reseaux sociaux. Les possibilites sociales qu’offrent les reseaux sociaux informatises – bande passante plus large, portabilite sans fil, connectivite mondiale, personnalisation – sont en train de favoriser le passage de communautes de porte-a-porte et de lieu-a-lieu vers des communautes d’individu-a-individu et de role-a-role. Ainsi, les gens se lient davantage dans des reseaux sociaux que dans des collectivites. Les communications directes et via l’informatique sont integrees dans des communautes caracterisees par un maillage personnalise.

/pdf/physical-place-and-cyberplace-the-rise-of-personalized-15nql4wk6y.pdf

Physical Place and Cyberplace: The Rise of Personalized Networking

From the Publisher: \nThe telephone looms large in our lives, as ever present in modern societies as cars and television. Claude Fischer presents the first social history of this vital but little-studied technologyhow we encountered, tested, and ultimately embraced it with enthusiasm. Using telephone ads, oral histories, telephone industry correspondence, and statistical data, Fischer's work is a colorful exploration of how, when, and why Americans started communicating in this radically new manner. Studying three California communities, Fischer uncovers how the telephone became integrated into the private worlds and community activities of average Americans in the first decades of this century. Women were especially avid in their use, a phenomenon which the industry first vigorously discouraged and then later wholeheartedly promoted. Again and again Fischer finds that the telephone supported a wide-ranging network of social relations and played a crucial role in community life, especially for women, from organizing children's relationships and church activities to alleviating the loneliness and boredom of rural life. Deftly written and meticulously researched, America Calling adds an important new chapter to the social history of our nation and illuminates a fundamental aspect of cultural modernism that is integral to contemporary life. \nAuthor Biography: Claude S. Fischer is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of To Dwell among Fris: Personal Networks in Town and City (1982) and The Urban Experience (1984).

America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940

Technology is a basic feature of all human societies and as such, a great deal can be learned about a society through the study of its technological status achiev ments. Society and Technological Change explores the international, social, political, economic, and cultural dimensions of technology. It illustrates the ramifications of technological change, as well as the forces that produced it.

Society and technological change

Introduction Acknowledgments About the Author 1 Work before Industrialization 2 The Organization of Work in Preindustrial Times 3 Industrialization and Its Consequences 4 Bureaucratic Organization 5 Technology and Work 6 Globalization 7 Getting a Job 8 Workplace Culture and Socialization 9 Professions and Professionalization 10 Who Gets What? 11 Work and Its Rewards 12 The Perils and Pressures of Work 13 Diversity in the Workplace 14 Work Roles and Life Roles 15 Conclusion Glossary Index

An Introduction to the Sociology of Work and Occupations

Introduction The Dawn of the Motor Age, 1886-1905 The Automobile's Adolescence, 1905-1914 From Battlefield to Boulevard, 1914-1929 Hard Years and Heroic Days, 1930-1945 In High Gear, 1945-1965 Second Thoughts, 1965-1990 At the Turn of a New Century, 1990- Glossary Chronology Selected Bibliography

Rudi Volti

Papers

America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940

Society and technological change

An Introduction to the Sociology of Work and Occupations

Cars and Culture: The Life Story of a Technology

A Century of Automobility