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This brief chapter stresses the difference between the revolutionary possibilities of applying Information Technology to the Greek and Roman epigraphic record and its limited effects to date. It traces the reasons partly to scholarly attitudes, partly to the lack of a list of prioritised objectives, partly to divergences in the very concepts of ‘inscription’ and of ‘data-base’ and partly to a lack of unity and collaboration.

This chapter looks at the major sector‐specific agreements that have been negotiated under the auspices of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), and in particular at agriculture, and textiles and clothing. Both of these are sectors that have a long history of protectionism in many countries, and much remains to be done to lower barriers to trade to levels that approach the average prevailing in other sectors. Over time, both sectors were gradually removed from the GATT 1947 disciplines, and it was only during the Uruguay Round that they were re‐integrated into the trading system; the Uruguay Round agreements reached on the sectors are due to be fully implemented in 2005. The chapter also discusses the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), which was negotiated amongst a subset of WTO members during 1996, although it is applied on an MFN (most favoured nation) basis. The sections of the chapter are as follows: Agriculture; Textiles and clothing; The Information Technology Agreement; and Conclusion.

This introductory chapter sets out the starting-point for the Programme on Information and Communication Technology's (PICT) research on information technology (IT) and organizations, and thus provides some of the background to the lines of argument developed in the later chapters. In contrast to the surfeit of prophesies in the area, comparatively little effort has been expended in trying to understand how the discourse on organizations and IT operates. Yet all the attempts at analysis and prediction deploy tacit models and concepts of ‘technology’ and ‘organization’. Thus, an important assumption underpinning this book is that the critical study of the development and use of IT in organizations has to start with an examination of these background assumptions and theories that govern how the relationship between technology and organizations is construed. It has to consider, for example, how technology and organization are brought together theoretically while remaining distinct objects of analysis. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

Indian civilization is deep-rooted and far-reaching. There were four encounters that have been seminal in Indian civilization. Each of these four civilizational encounters has deeply influenced the society, families, and individual beings and are living parts of consciousness and ways of living. The fifth civilizational encounter, encompassing all aspects of our living is the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Revolution. Based on connectivity, ICT is radically transforming production and consumption pattern; access to information; governance; and politics. As warned by Mahatma Gandhi, it is also necessary to be aware of the evils associated with machines. There are two divergent views about Mahatma Gandhi's attitude towards ‘machines’ and ‘modernization’. The comments of Rabindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru and Ernest Fritz Schumacher are chosen for further discussion.

There is a wide variety of descriptions and definitions of virtual organization available. This chapter first identifies some of the common features of this new organizational form. It then describes the various form of virtual organization, and considers that there are some conditions under which organizations have to identify the benefits that they expect to attain from virtual corporations and the corresponding limitations. Also, the chapter explains how the virtual corporation is managed, looking particularly on the various organizational, technological, and economic factors and how the need arises for well-developed teamwork in virtual corporations. It also draws attention to how to avoiding conflict may bring about negative effects on the performance of the team, and how Information Technology plays no small part in the managing virtual corporations.

This chapter examines the emergence of an Information-Industrial Complex in the United States, tracking the rise of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the modern knowledge economy. It first outlines the origins and history of Information-Industrial Complex's antecedent, the Military-Industrial Complex, before turning to the beginnings of the Information-Industrial Complex itself. It then considers how the U.S. government has cultivated a close and codependent relationship with companies involved in information production, storage, processing, and distribution, referred to as the “information industries.” It also looks at In-Q-Tel, a corporation that would “ensure that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) remains at the cutting edge of information technology advances and capabilities,” along with the rise of information assurance after 9/11. The chapter concludes by highlighting the commodification of digital information in the post-9/11 environment through its securitization.

This chapter narrates the evolution of a safe harbour provision for internet intermediaries under Indian law. The creation of such safe harbour is crucial for the growth of both internet service providers and online service providers like YouTube. The lack of a balanced safe harbour provision has led to the shutdown of start-ups which had immense potential. A judgment of the Delhi High Court in 2011 further muddied the waters for internet intermediaries. It took an amendment in 2012 for the creation of a very strong safe harbour provision. At the same time, however, there have been concerns that the new safe harbour places too high a burden on copyright owners by requiring them to secure a court order every time they want to take down content. This chapter also explores the manner in which Indian courts have issued ‘John Doe’ orders blocking websites allegedly hosting copyright infringing content.

The Soviet Union entered the 1960s with confidence after its victory in World War II, coupled with promising economic and political prospects. The Soviet bloc was having unprecedented productivity driven by the Information Technology Revolution, along with advances in finance, transportation, and agriculture. The Soviet bloc economy also received a boost following Joseph Stalin's death in 1953 and Nikita Khrushchev's reforms. The Soviets, with East Germany's Walter Ulbricht in the vanguard, were intent on harnessing the IT Revolution and cybernetics to overtake the West. Ulbricht's reform program of the 1960s, the New Economic System, was founded on cybernetics, cybermarxism, and innovation. Erich Apel, head of the State Planning Commission, designed the cybernetics program anchored on three basic reforms: decentralization, price and interest rate reform, and improved accounting and control systems. A focus of decentralization was forest management.

This chapter examines how multistakeholder institutions reflect dominant political and/or economic interests, arguing that the discourse of multistakeholderism is used to legitimize arrangements benefiting powerful, established actors like the United States and its robust Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector. After a brief discussion of what is actually at stake in debates over internet governance, the chapter provides an overview of the origins and theory of the multistakeholder process. It then considers how seemingly participatory, inclusive, and consensus-driven decision-making structures provide legitimacy for existing political and economic interests by using three case studies: ICANN, the Internet Society (ISOC), and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It shows that, by incentivizing inclusion and consensus, multistakeholder processes risk stifling legitimate dissent from external actors who have no interest in lending legitimacy to the facade of an apolitical negotiation.

This chapter examines the legal regime of film and online censorship in India, and some of the important judicial decisions. It analyses the Supreme Court’s judgments in K.A. Abbas, in which the Court upheld a regime of prior restraint for regulating films, and S. Rangarajan, in which the Court emphatically rejected the heckler’s veto. It also discusses S. Rangarajan’s lukewarm approach towards content-neutrality, and the contrasting position taken by the Delhi and Bombay High Courts over the last decade. It concludes with a discussion of online censorship, website blocking and intermediary liability under the Information Technology Act, which—at the time of the writing of this book—is under litigation at the Supreme Court.

That countries will act in their sovereign economic interest is a foregone conclusion. That this is a function of various factors driving domestic economic policy goals is also an immutable factor that governs a country’s negotiating priorities. This chapter explores how country interests in the area of trade negotiations are being manifested in an increasing choice for moving towards plurilateral agreements. At the same time, the ideal of the WTO multilateral trade agreement cannot be substituted by any of the bilateral or plurilateral free trade agreements. This chapter examines this changing landscape of trade agreements and assesses the challenges it presents.

This chapter drills down more deeply into the role of work and career at a time when changing motivations, like adventure and lifestyle, were beginning to dominate the migration landscape. Material improvement remained central to modern migrant motivations, but it was mediated by new elements and subjected to changing contexts of employment in a globalising world. In these ways career stories underline the centrality of change alongside continuity in migration history. Skilled migrant stories point to changes in opportunities and ambitions beyond more traditional ‘job for life’ expectations, and explore the role of trade union pathways to career advancement. The expansion of tertiary education from the 1960s spawned a growing body of upwardly mobile middle-class job hunters for whom migration offered unique opportunities of geographical and social mobility. For some professionals this translated into the stellar success they thought was closed to them in Britain, illustrated by examples in medicine, journalism and Information Technology. Exploration of the traditionally mobile career of academic employment illustrates ways in which old patterns of academic mobility intensified under new conditions. Here career drove mobility, but with surprising developments, including career change combined with return migration.

This chapter further illustrates the explanatory power of the moral orders framework by examining a second case of ‘disruption’ provided by the introduction of the ‘summary care record’ as part of the ill-fated National Programme for IT in the English National Health Service. The significant difficulties and delay experience by the project as a whole and to the attempt to introduce a national EHR are chronicled and various attempts to evaluate and explain the reasons for the difficulties are discussed. The analysis of EHRs as disruptors of moral orders is continued through an examination of the tensions and contests that arose when interested groups applied ‘tests of worth’ to the proposed arrangements that invoked different ‘goods’. As a result, as in other countries, it is suggested that stakeholders expended much energy but struggled to reach consensus regarding a moral reordering around the electronic record.

The concluding chapter lays out a strategy for creating an international governance regime for the digital economy. It identifies a core “club” of nations that could champion new digital trade agreements linked to stronger international agreements to advance a trusted digital environment—the Digital Economy Agreement. This agreement would revamp trade policy to adjust to the impact of the information and production disruption by improving rules for digital market integration and would create a foundation that simplifies and strengthens the ability to forge significant pacts advancing the goals of improving privacy and cybersecurity while safeguarding against protectionist trade risks. The design of these agreements emphasizes binding “soft rules” that allow significant variations in national policy trade-offs while establishing a minimum common baseline of policy through the soft rules. Expert multistakeholder organizations drawn from civil society loom large in the design for implementation of the soft rules through such avenues as mutual recognition schemes for certifying compliance with privacy and security objectives. If trade agreements prove unworkable as a starting point, such agreements could be anchored to other types of binding policy agreements. However, trade is the first best option for consideration before there is any decision to resort to second-best strategies.

This chapter scrutinises the paradox in the 1980s of the coexistence of flourishing discretionary migrations of affluence with deep recession and unemployment accompanying Thatcher government reforms. Some migrants labeled themselves ‘Thatcher’s refugees’, describing flight from austerity while pursuing new opportunities for self-improvement and mobility overseas. There was also a surge in migration of ‘professional and managerial’ classes, often attracted to inner-city living or to rural or coastal locations with emphasis on lifestyle changes and ecological values. Thatcher’s refugees coexisted with Thatcher’s beneficiaries, supporters who attributed success in Britain to government policies, and seized initiatives in new fields like Information Technology, easily adapted to global mobility. ‘Migration on a whim’ draws on stories illustrating the powerful emergence of casually adopted mobility in pursuit of ideological or political interests, global adventure and personal quests for transformations in lifestyle, love and spirituality. These could be effected successfully by tertiary educated migrants easily able to adapt their qualifications to demands of new countries and to satisfy restrictive visa qualifications. Their ease of mobility also translated readily into more cosmopolitan outlooks, skeptical of national loyalties and adopting ‘citizen of the world’ identities, attitudes that would deepen in the 1990s.

This chapter is focused on the intersection of technology, warfare, and visuality. It explores the relationship of orientalism to information technology in the context of “small war”. Said’s Orientalism is read as a failure of the Panopticon, as a story about disenchantment with, and breakdown of, the technical means of seeing the other. Modern information technology and drone fleets represent a new possibility to see the other, where earlier orientalist models failed. This kind of visuality, however, carries its own failures. The argument is that once that second failure occurs, new ontologies—such as that of the network—have to be postulated to understand the other and the foe. This ontology of the network, and the attached technical assemblage, represent a retreat from trying to fix the essence, oriental or otherwise, of a given people. It forms a kind of erasure of the other that can also be detected in videogames and war-games. The weapon is what remains.