Glossary

(My thanks to the Wikipedia community for many of the following definitions.)

assembly line	An assembly line is a manufacturing process in which interchangeable parts are added to a product in a sequential manner, using optimally planned logistics to create a finished product much faster than with handcrafting-type methods. The best-known form of the assembly line, the moving assembly line, was realized in practice by Ford Motor Company between 1908 and 1913, and made famous in the following decade by the social ramifications of mass production, such as the a¤ordability of the Ford Model T.
blog	A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. ‘Blog’ can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images and links to other blogs, web pages and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog) or audio (podcasting), which are part of a wider network of social media.
broadband	Refers to telecommunication in which a wide band of frequencies is available to transmit information. Because a wide band of frequencies is available, information can be multiplexed and sent on many di¤erent frequencies or channels within the band concurrently, allowing more information to be transmitted in a given amount of time.
browser	A web browser is a software application that enables a user to display and interact with text, images, videos, music and other information typically located on a web page at a website on the World Wide Web. Text and images on a web page can contain hyperlinks to other web pages at the same or a di¤erent website. Web browsers allow a user to quickly and easily access information provided on many web pages at many websites by traversing these links.
civil society	In the modern sense, civil society connotes those areas of culture, politics, private life, the economy, media and so on that are outside or apart from the power of the state and its bureaucracies.
commodification	In Marxist political economy, commodification takes place when economic value is assigned to something not previously considered in economic terms; for example, an idea, identity or gender. So commodification refers to the expansion of market trade to previously non-market areas, and to the treatment of things as if they were a tradeable commodity.
cyberspace	A term coined by science-fiction writer William Gibson to describe his computer-generated virtual reality in which the information wealth of a future corporate society is represented as an abstract space. The word has come to be used as a very generalized term to cover any sense of digitally created ‘space’, from the Internet to virtual reality.
dark fibre	Dark fibre is optical fibre infrastructure (cabling and repeaters) that is currently in place but is not being used. It is referred to as ‘dark’ fibre because optical fibre conveys information in the form of light pulses, so when unused they are dark.
dialectical/dialectics	The word ‘interaction’ is sometimes used as a synonym for dialectic and this captures the dynamic of dialectic – but there is more. The word ‘dialectic’ is derived from the Greek word for open-ended dialogue or debate. A debate begins with a proposition (thesis), then the examination of a contrary view (antithesis), and then arrives at a new view that incorporates elements of both sides (synthesis). In the Marxist tradition this basic philosophical framework was developed, passing through Hegel’s more spiritual meaning, into what was called ‘dialectical materialism’ (the application of this reasoning to real-world criteria). For Marx, this was in the dialectic of history that was being played out in the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat that would eventually be resolved in the ‘synthesis’ of communism. In cultural studies, the dialectic has been imbued with a critical element, or the arrival at synthesis through critical reflection, or what Fredric Jameson called ‘stereoscopic thinking’ – the ability to think through both sides of the argument (1992: 28).
digital divide	Stems from critique of the nexus between neoliberalism and the ICT revolution, and argues that freemarket-based distribution of the fruits of information technologies will always leave behind those with the inability to pay. As information technologies spread across much of society, those who cannot a¤ord them are increasingly disadvantaged.
dot-com bubble	The ‘dot-com bubble’ was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2001 (with a climax in 2000), during which stock markets in Western nations saw their value increase rapidly due to growth in the new Internet sector and related fields. The period was marked by the founding (and, in many cases, spectacular failure) of a group of new Internet-based companies, commonly referred to as dot-coms. A combination of rapidly increasing stock prices, individual speculation in stocks and widely available venture capital created an exuberant environment in which many of these businesses dismissed standard business models, focusing on increasing market share at the expense of the bottom line. The bursting of the dot-com bubble marked the beginning of a relatively mild yet rather lengthy early 2000s recession.
Fordism	A stage in the development of twentieth-century capitalism characterized by mass factory-based production for mass consumption in a mass market. Also characterized in the ‘high Fordism’ phase (1945–73) as the operation of the ‘social contract’ between capital, labour and government. In this ‘managed economy’ phase the ‘strategic heights’ of the economy such as shipbuilding, steel, heavy engineering and so on were planned and regulated to a high degree.
Frankfurt School	Group of German philosophers and sociologists who moved to the USA to escape Nazi repression in the 1930s. Its leading theorists, such as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and, more peripherally, Walter Benjamin, pioneered theories on the nature of cultural production in industrial society.
global civil society	Loose worldwide coalition of diverse groups, including NGOs, social movements, trade unions, political parties, religious groups and so on, that arose to confront neoliberal globalization and e¤ects on their local constituencies.
globalization	In its economic context it is closely linked to the idea of the New Economy. Globalization is characterized by the opening up of markets and borders to economic competition, and the drastic deregulation of economies more generally, making them susceptible to ‘market forces’.
hegemonic	Describes the process of domination of subordinate classes and groups through the elaboration and penetration of ideology (ideas and assumptions) into the common sense and everyday practice of those subordinate classes and groups (see Gitlin, 1981: 253).
historical materialism	Historical materialism is the methodological approach to the study of society, economics and history that was first articulated by Karl Marx (1818–83). Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human societies in the way in which humans collectively make the means to live, thus giving an emphasis, through economic analysis, to everything that coexists with the economic base of society (e.g. social classes, political structures, ideologies).
human–computer interaction	Human–computer interaction (HCI), alternatively man–machine interaction (MMI) or computer–human interaction (CHI), is the study of interaction between people (users) and computers. It is often regarded as the intersection of computer science, behavioural sciences, design and several other fields of study. Interaction between users and computers occurs at the user interface (or simply interface), which includes both software and hardware, for example, general-purpose computer peripherals and large-scale mechanical systems, such as aircraft and power plants.
ICTs	Information and Communication Technologies. Literally, any device or application, hardware or software, such as a PC, mobile phone, scanner or personal digital assistant (PDA) that is connectable, in theory or in practice, to the network of networks that comprise the contemporary high-tech information society.
ideology	An ideology is an organized collection of ideas. Count Antoine Destutt de Tracy coined the word in the late eighteenth century to define a ‘science of ideas’. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things as in ‘common sense’ and several philosophical tendencies, or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to all members of this society. The main purpose behind an ideology is to o¤er change in society through a normative thought process. Ideologies are systems of abstract thought (as opposed to mere ideation) applied to public matters and thus make this concept central to politics. Implicitly every political tendency entails an ideology whether or not it is propounded as an explicit system of thought.
laissez-faire	A French phrase literally meaning ‘let happen’, or ‘let do’. From the French diction first used by the eighteenth-century physiocrats as an injunction against government interference with trade, it became used as a synonym for strict free-market economics during the early and mid-nineteenth century. It is generally understood to be a doctrine that maintains that private initiative and production are best allowed to roam free, opposing economic interventionism and taxation by the state beyond that which is perceived to be necessary to maintain individual liberty, peace, security and property rights.
Luddism	The Luddites were a social movement of British textile artisans in the early nineteenth century who protested – often by destroying mechanized looms – against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt threatened their livelihood.
MIT Media Lab	Institution founded by Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Wiesner in 1985. Funded through corporate sponsorship, the Media Lab conducts research that aims to integrate ICTs into many realms of culture, economy and society.
mode of production	In the writings of Karl Marx and the Marxist theory of historical materialism, a mode of production (in German: Produktionsweise, meaning ‘the way of producing’) is a specific combination of: •  Productive forces: these include human labour power and the means of production (e.g. tools, equipment, buildings and technologies, materials, and improved land), and desire. •  Social and technical relations of production: these include the property, power and control relations governing society’s productive assets, often codified in law, cooperative work relations and forms of association, relations between people and the objects of their work, and the relations between social classes.
MP3	Motion Picture Export Group Layer 3. Digital format for encoding sound, widely used for sharing music files over the Internet.
NASDAQ	National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation. It is a virtual, computer-driven equities trading system for over 3,600 communications, biotechnology, financial services and media companies. It began trading in the USA in 1971.
neoliberalism	Ideology that argues the innate superiority of the ‘free market’ as the principal means for organizing economic life. Arose as a re-reading (or misreading) of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776), which argued that the hidden hand of market forces would bring an economy into an ‘equilibrium’ of supply and demand. Contra Smith, however, neoliberal fundamentalists aim to bring the logic of the market to every realm of society. Neoliberalism underpins both globalization and the New Economy.
network society	A historical trend whereby the dominant functions of society, that is to say, its economic, cultural and media processes, are increasingly organized around networks. ICT-based networks have become, as Castells puts it, ‘the new social morphologies [organizing structures] of our societies’ (1996: 469).
podcast	A podcast is a collection of digital media files that is distributed over the Internet, often using syndication feeds, for playback on portable media players and personal computers. The term ‘podcast’ is a portmanteau of the acronym ‘Pod’ – standing for ‘Portable on Demand’ – and ‘broadcast’.
political economy	Originally the term for studying production, buying and selling, and their relations with law, custom and government. Political economy originated in moral philosophy and developed in the eighteenth century as the study of the economies of states. In the late nineteenth century, the term came to be replaced by the term ‘economics’, and was used by those seeking to place the study of economy upon mathematical and axiomatic bases, rather than the structural relationships of production and consumption.
post-Fordism	The term for the mode of production and associated socio-economic system theorized to be found in most industrialized countries today. It can be contrasted with Fordism, the productive method and socioeconomic system typified by Henry Ford’s car plants, in which workers work on a production line, performing specialized tasks repetitively. Post-Fordism can be applied in a wider context to describe a whole system of modern social processes. Because post-Fordism describes the world as it is today, various thinkers have di¤erent views of its form and implications. As the theory continues to evolve, it is commonly divided into three schools of thought: Flexible Specialization, Neo-Schumpeterianism and the Regulation School.
Regulation theory	Regulation theory discusses historical change using two central concepts: Regimes of Accumulation (ROA) and Modes of Regulation (MOR). ROAs are particular forms in which capital organizes and expands for a period of time, exhibiting some degree of stability. A key example of an ROA from the work of the Regulation theorists is ‘Fordism’. MORs are those constructs of law, customs, forms of state, policy paradigms and other institutional practices which provide the context of the ROA’s operation. Generally speaking, MORs support ROAs by providing a conducive and supportive environment. But sometimes there is tension between the two, and this means that something must give. The change to and from Fordism is explained by the School in these terms.
social capital	The term has been around since at least Bourdieu (1983) but brought to prominence by Robert Putnam (2000). It refers to features of social organization such as networks, norms and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit.
social democracy	Social democracy is a political ideology that emerged in the late nineteenth century out of the socialist movement. Modern social democracy is unlike socialism in the traditional sense which aims to end the predominance of the capitalist system, or in the Marxist sense which aims to replace it entirely; instead, social democrats aim to reform capitalism democratically through state regulation and the creation of state-sponsored programmes and organizations which work to ameliorate or remove injustices inflicted by the capitalist market system. The term itself is also used to refer to the particular kind of society that social democrats advocate. While some consider social democracy a moderate type of socialism, others, defining socialism in the traditional or Marxist sense, reject that designation.
technopolitics	Used here to refer to the politics of the ‘global civil society movement’, whose organization and communications are based around ICTs.
Wi-fi	Abbreviation for wireless fidelity.
World Social Forum	The World Social Forum (WSF) is an annual meeting held by members of the anti-globalization (using the term ‘globalization’ in a doctrinal sense, not a literal one) or ‘alter-globalization’ movement to coordinate world campaigns, share and refine organizing strategies, and inform each other about movements from around the world and their issues.