Ict in Cultural and Social Context

Matti Tedre, Erkki Sutinen, Esko Kähkönen, and Piet Kommers he world is increasingly dividing along digital lines that follow regional borders; in fact, they can also be seen to divide cultural groups [4]. The divide manifests itself as inequality in the use of information and communication technology (ICT). There has been intensive research on the new economy, working culture, and leisure time that modern ICT brings [4]. These studies focus on how technology affects society and culture, and also how they interact. Still, there is a notable lack of research on how culture and society affect technological decisions in ICT. A popular view states that technology is central to social change, developing independently of society [9]. On the contrary, technological decisions on different levels are often not made because of characteristics of technol0gy, but also because of economic, political, ideological, or cultural motives (for example, [9]). For example, several motivations can be attributed to the development and use of GNU/Linux. Arguably, GNU/Linux is advanced (technical motivation), free of initial investment (economical motivation), its roots are in hacker ethics and the free software movement (ideological and social motivations), and sometimes it can emphasize a cultural or political message (for example, IMPI Linux in South Africa and RedFlag Linux in China. These two distributions have their roots in concerns of “digital colonialism” and government support for an independent operating system, respectively.) It is a common view that science and technology are different spheres [9]. Contrary to this common belief, technology has contributed as much to science as vice versa—think of the great dependence of science on the computer [9]. For example, computational mathematics, chemistry, and physics have led to new, important findings. Adding a societal component from this dialectic standpoint, we suggest an approach toward ICT production that: