Media Policy and Globalization - Blogs Unpad

THE INFORMATION SOCIETY 137
subsumed in a market-focused agenda that expands across several sectors
of social and private life. Global telecommunications and electronics
companies seek to direct the use and development of technologies, in
ways that can construct new markets, geographically and in terms of
demand. Technological development in the electronics sector, as is, for
example, the case of digital radio or television, as well as the development
of new computer software and hardware requires the constant updating
of workers’ technological skills. The control over the use of technologies,
as is the case on control over conditions of e-commerce, is pursued by
the private sector through policy suggestions for surveillance practices as
well as control over the way in which products are consumed, whether in
public or private, shared or selectively. Thus, certain conditions must be
met at a national and local level to ensure a predictable environment for
the function of ‘informational’ capitalism. Traditional institutions play a
very important role in providing a cultural and political economic framework,
through training and education, socialization and the legal system
and providing the cultural frameworks of human communication and
cultural expression. 9 Emerging traits of this international system are: 10
1. a culture of so-called ‘lifelong learning’ or continuous deskilling and
reskilling of workers and the subsequent production of new forms
of socioeconomic inequalities based around the possession or lack
thereof of skills associated with the use of ICTs and access to means of
production
2. a gradual process of criminalization of previously ‘legitimate’ forms of
private consumer behaviour, such as the private consumption of music
or other AV products and their reproduction through technology
3. a culture of surveillance, translated into increased surveillance and
control over civil liberties but also consumer behaviour, which is not
only limited to market interaction but allows the commercial use of
private data and invasion of privacy
4. a paramount emphasis on technological consumption and use of means
of communication for a limited range of purposes and the neglect of
other sectors of primary importance to human survival, such as the
agricultural sector, especially in developing countries
5. a shift in state discourses and policies tackling social inequalities towards
a direction that specifies poverty and inequality predominantly
in terms and in relation to the consumption of ICT-generated goods
and services.
In this global environment, where international organizations attain a
more significant role than those the world was accustomed to, the ones deriving
from the Bretton Woods agreements, social, political and economic