The Social construction and usage of communication technologies : Asian and European experiences / Raul Pertierra, editor.

This collection acknowledges what has now become an almost trite observation: the industrial age has been overtaken by the informational one and in the process old boundaries have either disappeared or become extremely porous. A world organized around sovereign interlopers, is rapidly disappearing or continues to survive as nostalgia. Globalization sweeps aside everything before it or so it seems. But while the national is increasingly threatened, the local is reasserting its primacy. The new media of communication discussed in this collection makes possible the localization of the global as well as the globalization of the local. This collection is the first attempt to discuss the new global media with Asia as its main focus. The biggest markets for these technologies are in the emerging economies of china, India and Southeast Asia. Japan and South Korea have surpassed most western countries in their deployment of the new technology. Information is the only major resource whose production, distribution, and consumption are notionally available to everyone.