Technocities

Jim McGuigan is a freelance researcher, writer and artist. He is also Emeritus Professor of Cultural Analysis at Loughborough University UK.  Previously, he taught at Coventry, Leeds, Leeds Trinity, Open and Wolverhampton Universities. He was a research officer at the Arts Council of GB and a script editor in the BBC TV Drama (Plays) Department. He has been a visiting scholar at, amongst others, the Universities of Bergen, Canberra, Canterbury (Christchurch NZ), Catalonia, Copenhagen, Eastern Finland, Izmir, Jyvaskyla, Rostock and at IFK Vienna. He has delivered keynote addresses at conferences and guest lectures in Australia, Austria, Canada, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Israel/Palestine, Norway as well as at various universities in Britain and elsewhere. He has, for instance, served on the Art and Humanities Research Council and the European Commission. Jim’s main academic interests are in social theory, cultural studies and policy. He has published in many book collections and journals, including Cultural Studies, European Journal of Cultural Studies, International Journal of Cultural Policy, Keywords, New Left Review, New Statesman, Social Semiotics, Sociological Review and Sociology. His books include Cultural Populism (1992), Culture and the Public Sphere (1996), Cultural Methodologies (1997), Modernity and Postmodern Culture (1999, 2006), Rethinking Cultural Policy (2004), Cool Capitalism (2009), Cultural Analysis (2010), Raymond Williams on Culture and Society (2014), A Short Counter-Revolution – Raymond Williams’s Towards 2000 Revisited (2015) and Neoliberal Culture (2016). He is currently working on a book about Raymond Williams.

• Introduction - Jim McGuiganPART ONE: DEBATESTowards Urban Cyberspace Planning - Stephen GrahamGrounding the Global through Urban Telematics Policy and PlanningForeclosing on the City? The Bad Idea of Virtual Urbanism - Kevin RobinsInformation and Communications Technologies - Frank WebsterLuddism RevisitedPART TWO: TEXTURESFishing with False Teeth - Simone Bergman and Liesbet van ZoonenWomen, Gender and the InternetThe Ideal City and the Virtual Hive - Julian StallabrassModernism and Emergent Order in Computer CulturePART THREE: TERRITORIESXs 4 All? `Information Society′ Policy and Practice in the European Union - John DowneyBeyond Infrastructure - Leen d′HaenensEurope, The USA and Canada on the Information HighwayTechnocities and Development - Simon BellImages of Inferno and UtopiaPART FOUR: PERSPECTIVESDesigns on the City - John PickeringUrban Experience in the Age of Electronic ReproductionNew Technologies - Douglas KellnerTechnocities and the Prospects for Democratization

`I would be even more general than the book jacket and suggest that any reader interested in placing their own use of technology in a wider context will find something of interest in this multi-faceted book′ - Outline 9