Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-66).

Thesis (M.J.)--Carleton University, 1996. / Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-66). Also available in print.

published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

While most scholars agree that the development of increasingly sophisticated computer-based technologies over the past thirty years and their ubiquitous use in work settings are important technological transformations, it is still question whether they constitute large-scale and meaningful social transformations. In this dissertation, it is argued that transformations cannot be understood by studying technologies in isolated and circumscribed analyses, rather they must be understood in the historical and socio-political context of their development and use. Several important questions are being asked: Will social relations in work settings be transformed so that they are more collaborative and less hierarchical, as many proponents of new group support systems predict? Will workers in computer-using organizations share equally in the production and control of skills and knowledge? Or will the use of new technologies reinforce and reproduce the current distribution of power, authority and knowledge in organizations? In order to answer these questions, a meta-analytic framework is developed. It comprises a continuum from micro- to macro-social interaction contexts, including six key fields of action surrounding the use of new technologies: (1) design; (2) use; (3) infrastructure of support; (4) work group governance; (5) organizational contexts; and (6) organizational fields. Four field studies are conducted with in vivo, ongoing organizational work groups using three new computer-based information technologies. There is little indication that hierarchical forms of work group governance are being restructured along the lines of more flexible and collaborative forms of work organization. There is, however, some evidence for power shifts among relatively disenfranchised high status participants in ongoing project teams. In addition, distinctive cultures emerged in ongoing groups that used group collaboration systems. In the desktop computing and desktop group support system work groups, skills and knowledge about their own computing environment were differentially distributed, so that lower status workers were less knowledgeable. Thus, the routine use of new technologies is most likely to reinforce the current distribution of authority and power in organizations.

In the so-called postmodern era, when networked media are increasingly ubiquitous in everyday life, where the ‘real’ and the ‘simulation’ become ever more indistinguishable; the physical and virtual intertwine; machines and man merge, and audience and stars transpose. To understand consumption in a time when realness and authenticity are no longer relevant, this thesis draws attention to the consumption and production of media content through case studies of consumer participation and social trends in Japan. The work begins in a themed shopping mall, Venus Fort in Tokyo Bay; continues with the reproduction of Audrey Hepburn‘s image; expands to the dramatised ‘realness’ of television; and finally moves to the omnipresent mobile phone and the impact of networked personal media on our idea of the ‘real’. First, through an analysis of a themed consumption environment, it is suggested that a transition is taking place in consumption from objects to experiences, services and spectacle. Secondly, by showing Audrey Hepburn‘s transition from a Hollywood star to a virtualised idol, technologically-aided illusions are shown to make hierarchical realness irrelevant. Thirdly, via Reality TV dating programs, the focus shifts to the role of audience participation in the consumption of media content. These themes are demonstrated individually, then merged into the last example – the social and cultural evolution induced by the mass consumption of networked media, that promise to revolutionise the way we consume, communicate and connect between people, machines and consumer goods.The thesis grounds its analysis of contemporary trends in the culture of consumption in Japan in theories of commodity and culture, the real and the simulation, speed and reality, the spectacle and the self in mediated spaces, and probes further into the collapse of demarcations between the virtual and the real, the event and the everyday and media and the self in the network society / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 143-144). / This thesis investigates five families in Boston who have introduced computers into their homes. The analysis is interdisciplinary and each case has been considered in terms of psycho-social and architectural terms. The conclusions address issues of control, gender relations, feelings toward computers, and architectural constraints to easy adaptation to the computer. The thesis concludes that the computer is not just a machine that one takes out of its box and plugs in. There are many considerations in bringing computers into the home. / by Adriana Franco. / M.S.

Secret and testimony play a crucial role in the forces that structure not only the juridical but also rhetoric and meaning. The failure of universalising narratives to adequately articulate catastrophic sites of trauma and mourning is treated not as a loss but as an opportunity to reinstate a creative and affirmative approach to thinking, writing, and reading, and thus how the world is made. Leibniz's notion of "disquiet" as an affirmative motivator toward creation underpins this thesis. / The thesis considers the place of the personal and the civic in the electronic polis; the role that cybernetics has played in politics and popular culture since 1945; secrecy and autobiographicity in literature from the second world war; in working away from post-Darwinian evolutionary discourses of natural selection, considers the affirmative role the unworking of sense plays in the generation of meaning; and directly tests post-structuralist continental philosophies in local conditions. / Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2006.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Carleton University, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 291-302). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 1996. / Also available in electronic format on the Internet.