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No revolutionary improvements Interview with sociologist Leslie Haddon on the impact of ICT on our life
New information and communication technologies (ICT) have radically changed our life. At least this is what everybody thinks. Eurescom mess@ge wanted to know more precisely and talked to Dr. Leslie Haddon, an acknowledged expert in the field of sociological research on ICT. Dr. Haddon is a visiting fellow at Essex University and has for 20 years specialised in researching ICTs in everyday life. His book on the subject will be published in August. Which information technologies have the largest impact on our society? Thinking only of ICTs and everyday life, it is in the field of communications that practices have changed most. Of the two most significant ICTs in recent years, the mobile phone and the Internet, the mobile phone has reached more sections of society and has probably had more effects on what people do on a daily basis. Meanwhile communication, especially via email, remains the most ‘important’ use of the Internet. All in all, do you assess the impact of modern information technologies on our society as predominantly positive or negative? Overall, positive. And that appears to be the view of the people I interview for my research. But there are issues. The highest profile one for the mobile is the disruptive nature of calls in public spaces, which may alter over time but does not simply go away. One current worry about the Internet is that the expansion of spam may degrade the use of email – although my current research is finding mixed results on this issue. For many, communications bills have expanded, and sometimes this is a problem, leading, for example to communication being rationed, especially children’s communication. Some have started to feel ambivalent about the amount of communications they now receive, and make efforts to control this. How important is the widespread availability of broadband for the take-up of modern information technologies? My criterion for judging importance is how much it leads people to do things they would not have done before. The picture is mixed. For example, one Dutch study suggested people with broadband did mostly the same things on-line as before, but appreciated the greater speed. Some French trials suggested people widened the range of things they did and were willing to experiment partly due to faster feedback. How does the adoption of modern communications technologies differ according to gender, geographical region, and income? At any one time there are digital divides relating to some ICT or other. But there is a pattern for some technologies and for some socio-demographics whereby divides are more temporary, or at least their importance grows less. For example, in the case of the mobile and Internet, younger users and males were more predominant in early waves of adopters, but females and older users have started to be numerous among later adopters. However, this need not apply to all people and all ICTs. For example, the current generation of “older elderly”, 75+, are still low adopters, and I anticipate some income/class divides in relation to PCs and the Internet may persist. Looking into the future, how will our communication behaviour and our quality of life be different in the year 2010 given the rapid advances in communications technologies? At one level there are on-going changes in our daily life, some influenced by technology, some not. At other levels, we do not so easily change our overall way of life or else we do things we did before but in new ways. One Belgian study showed that over 30 years the percentage of time spent outside the home was constant, but what we actually did outside the home changed. Some of the changes that do take place may be felt to be beneficial, although my examples above show how they can raise new issues. However, the implication of thinking in terms of these levels is that while ICTs may lead to some improvements in people’s quality of life they do not make a revolutionary difference. The interview was conducted by Peter Stollenmayer. Please send us your comments on this article. |
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