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STUDY OF COMMUNICATIONS AND MEDIA POLICY 15
Much as the technologies before the computer, mobile phone or wireless
were, this utopian or idealist vision of technological change is based
on two central arguments. First, that technological innovation is increasingly
important in shaping changes in society and second that these new
technological innovations are autonomous from political and economic
processes. Thus technological ‘revolutions’ in telecommunications networks
and computer technologies are seen to have an inherent and singular
trajectory of development that will lead to superior social outcomes
improving everyday life for all, if left to competitive market forces. The
integrated intelligent network is seen as the new basis for the reorganization
of education, work, entertainment and all other forms of social
interaction, a basis that is both decentralized and connected. The operators
of telecommunications networks and services are assumed to be fully
accountable to the customer, whereby inefficient or overpriced services
are checked through competition in the marketplace. In this context,
the need for policy intervention and regulation is minimal, except for
the technical arbitration over rates and standards. Similar assumptions
are presented as facts in the broadcasting world: here speedy adaptation
of technology and consumer sovereignty have dominated the discourses
surrounding the liberalization (from the state) of the airwaves and their
privatization.
In contrast to the naturalized assumptions about the logic of the market
in the dominant approach to tele/communications policy, neo-Marxist
critics contend that political and economic interests shape the application
and development of tele/communications networks, content and
services (Hills 1998; Schiller 2000). Specifically, these critical scholars,
who are sometimes viewed as ‘dystopian’ (Graham and Marvin 2001),
argue that technological development is an outcome of social power and
cannot therefore be a neutral force in shaping social change. While the
technologically centred analysis considers innovation and competition as
sufficient in eroding monopolistic control delivering the consumer freedom
to choose from a range of services, this approach focuses on the
importance of communications and in particular telcoms to the very process
of global economic restructuring, on the uneven development and
expansion of new communications networks and services and the ramifications
of transforming a regulatory model that is organized around
consumers as opposed to citizens (Harvey 1989; Mosco 2004).
Moreover, the merger of traditional telecommunications companies
with producers of content further reinforces concentration as opposed to
competition in overall services, raising new concerns about proprietary
standards and intellectual property. Neo-Marxist analysts have argued
that the centrality of TNCs in shaping the terms of expansion to fit their