Digital Possibilities, Market Realities: The Contradictions of Communications Convergence

Abstract

Advances in communications technology over the last forty years have generated considerable rhetoric and hyperbole about the transformations in social relationships they would both enable and compel. In particular, the emergence of the computer as a tool for storing and rapidly manipulating increasingly large sets of data, and its convergence with telecommunications systems providing the means for swift and extensive transmission and carriage, has been the root of endless discussion about the presumed arrival of an 'information society'. The convergence of these developments, both technologically and organizationally, with the broadcasting industry has completed a fusion offering genuinely massive transformations in the worlds of work and leisure.