NEW BOOK

Transforming Communication:Technology, Sustainability and Future Generations  

Edited by

Sohail Inayatullah and Susan Leggett  

Praeger/damantine Studies on the 21st Century, Vol. No. 39  

Publication date:  Fall 2000  

ABOUT THE BOOK:  

Will the communications (plural) revolution -- the technological feat of converging telecommunications with computing -- also transform communication (singular), the human act of sharing meaning about values, attitudes and experiences? Or will "friction-free capitalism", preoccupied with the much-vaunted information era,  pursue even greater informatics efficiencies -- ignoring the hardware and software gap between rich and poor?  

Will "empowerment" become code for giving the poor their own web site? Will global communications create a  postmodern future where communication comes to be defined as the number of emails sent daily

across the world -- a 21st century where speed of thought becomes far more important than creating sustainable futures?  

Will wiring the world continue to mean sending computers to Africa without adequate training, software and servicing -- or can an alternative model of development communication be created? Worse, will informatics create a communication flatland, where positive silence, and other ways of knowing in non-western cultures, and among women, are lost, such that we travel at the speed of information-light. . .to nowhere?  

In this book, an eclectic array of contributors from a wide variety of  backgrounds -- none are Luddites, all are Net experienced -- ask and

answer these and like-minded questions. Despite taking a critical view of current policies and politics, the authors conclude with powerful transformative scenarios of web futures that they argue can lead to a more communicative future--a "gaia of civilizations".  

ABOUT THE  EDITORS  

SOHAIL INAYATULLAH is professor of futures studies at the IMC-Oxford Brookes (International Management Centres), visiting fellow at QueenslandUniversity of Technology, and Professorial Fellow at Tamkang University, Taiwan. In 1999, he is also Unesco Chair in European Studies, University of Trier, Germany. 

A political scientist with a deep interest in the future, his edited and

authored books for 1999 include: The University in Transformation (Bergin and Garvey); Situating Sarkar: Tantra, Macrohistory and Alternative Futures; Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures (Adamantine Studies on the 21st Century, vol no. 41) and with Jennifer Gidley, Transcending Boundaries.  

Inayatullah is a board member of the World Futures Studies Federation and

Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. He is co-editor of the Journal of Futures Studies and Associate Editor of New Renaissance.  

SUSAN LEGGETT is a freelance editor and writer. She has a background in fine arts and art journalism and has co-authored two books on food and health. Her most recent editorial work was for The Communication Superhighway: Social and Economic Change in the Digital Age (Allen & Unwin Sydney, 1998). She is also part of a team working on world wellbeing strategies.  

192 pp., 6 x 9"  

US Dollar prices: paperback edn. $19.95, hardback edn. $55.00  

Published in association with the World Futures Studies Federation, a volume in the series Praeger/Adamantine Studies on the 21st Century

series website ---   http://www.adamantine.co.uk  

Distributed & marketed throughout the world by Praeger Publishers,

Westport CT, USA  (Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.) Praeger-Greenwood website  --  http://www.greenwood.com/futurestud

 

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