A Framework for Understanding Information Technology as Ecology

Abstract

Information technology (IT) deeply influences the way we live, our assumptions, aspirations, expectations, habits -- our very life-and-world-views (LWVs). It has become an environment in which we live and work, a kind of ecology in which modern life takes place. We have created it, but it also creates, or at least deeply affects, us. This area is concerned with what Lyon (1988) called the information society and Castells (1996), the network society, and it is in this area that such things as Walsham’s (2001) discussion of globalisation are considered. It addresses issues of the type found in Vignette 5 in the Preface.