Imagining the Internet: Communication, Innovation, and Governance

by Robin E. Mansell

This book is an impressive survey of our collective and cumulative understanding of the evolution of digital communication systems and the Internet. While the information societies of the twenty-first century will develop ever more sophisticated technologies, the Internet is now a familiar and pervasive part of the world in which we live, work, and communicate. As such it is important to take stock of some fundamental questions--whether, for example, it contributes to progress, social cohesion, democracy, and growth--and at the same time to review the rich and varied theories and perspectives developed by thinkers in a range of disciplines over the last fifty years or more.

In this remarkably comprehensive but concise and useful book, Robin Mansell summarizes key debates, and reviews the contributions of major thinkers in communication systems, economics, politics, sociology, psychology, and systems theory--from Norbert Wiener to Brian Arthur and Manuel Castells, and from Gregory Bateson to William Davidow and Sherry Turkle. This is an interdisciplinary and critical analysis of the way we experience the Internet in front of the screen, and of the developments behind the screen, all of which have implications for privacy ,security, intellectual property rights, and the overall governance of the Internet.

The author presents fairly the ideas of the celebrants and the sceptics, and reminds us of the continuing need for careful, critical, and informed analysis of the paradoxes and challenges of the Internet, offering her own views on how we might move to greater empowerment, and suggesting policy measures and governance approaches that go beyond those commonly debated.

This concise book will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the challenges the Internet presents in the twenty-first century, and the debates and research that can inform that understanding.

310 pages, Hardcover

First published July 12, 2012

About the author

Robin Elizabeth Mansell is Professor of New Media and the Internet in the Department of Media and Communications at London School of Economics and Political Science. In 2018–19 she directs the double degree MSc/MA Global Media and Communications (LSE and UCT). She has training in several social science disciplines including psychology, social psychology, politics and economics and is a strong advocate of interdisciplinary research when it builds on the strengths of disciplinary inquiry.

Her research and teaching focus on media and communications regulation and policy, internet governance, privacy and surveillance, digital platforms, the socio-technical features of data and information systems, and the social, political and economic impacts of innovation in digital networks and applications. Her current research focuses on the political economy of ‘platformisation’ and ‘datafication’ and its social consequences for society and on the challenges of designing and implementing regulatory norms, rules and processes through institutions in diverse contexts around the world.

She has been involved in many aspects of LSE life and served as Head of the Media and Communications Department in 2006-09 and in 2017-18 as well as LSE interim Deputy Director and Provost 2015-16 and academic Governor 2005-10. She is a Standing Selection Committee member of Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) Canada, board member of TPRC (Research Conference on Communications, Information and Internet Policy), member of the Scientific Advisory Council of LIRNEAsia, Sri Lanka, and Chairs the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) Clearinghouse for Public Statements, having served as IAMCR President 2004-08. She was Trustee of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at Sussex 1999-2009 and serves as a Trustee of the Canadian Centennial Scholarship Fund.

Reviews

[Brooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wordy but mind blowing - incredibly multidisciplinary

[David Gunther · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mansell provides an interesting discussion of the paradoxes that underpin the competing conceptions of the internet or information society. This discussion is overdue and Mansell treats it maturely. However, I find the examination of the dominant and alternative social imaginaries to enforce a binary construction and fails to acknowledge the plethora of positions that are available between or outside of these ideas. Furthermore, Mansell's commitment to liberalism and market practices prevents discussion of positions outside of systems of exchange, as suggested by the alleviation of conditions of scarcity. Finally, Mansell's attempts to reconcile the paradoxes of scarcity and complexity alternately presuppose the values embodied by the 'good society' or suggests that this good society is produced through resolution of these paradoxes, without discussion of which values are endorsed. This presents a problem for the normative suggestions made in the concluding chapter.