The collective vision that shaped the emergence of the Internet: what led software designers, managers, employees, politicians, and individuals to develop and adopt one particular technology. In The Internet Imaginaire, sociologist Patrice Flichy examines the collective vision that shaped the emergence of the Internet—the social imagination that envisioned a technological utopia in the birth of a new technology. By examining in detail the discourses surrounding the development of the Internet in the United States in the 1990s (and considering them an integral part of that development), Flichy shows how an entire society began a new technological era. The metaphorical "information superhighway" became a technical utopia that informed a technological program. The Internet imaginaire, Flichy argues, led software designers, businesses, politicians, and individuals to adopt this one technology instead of another. Flichy draws on writings by experts—paying particular attention to the gurus of Wired magazine, but also citing articles in Time, Newsweek, and Business Week—from 1991 to 1995. He describes two main domains of the technical imaginaire: the utopias (and ideologies) associated with the development of technical devices; and the depictions of an imaginary digital society. He analyzes the founding myths of cyberculture—the representations of technical systems expressing the dreams and experiments of designers and promoters that developed around information highways, the Internet, Bulletin Board systems, and virtual reality. And he offers a treatise on "the virtual society imaginaire," discussing visionaries from Teilhard de Chardin to William Gibson, the body and the virtual, cyberdemocracy and the end of politics, and the new economy of the immaterial.

More than 30 forward-thinking scholars contributed these outstanding essays in conjunction with the World Future Society's annual meeting, WorldFuture 2008: Seeing the Future Through New Eyes. The conference and its companion volume explore diverse perspectives that inspire us to think anew about tomorrow. Among the topics included in the volume are technological evolution, backcasting, scenario forecasting, evolutionary economics, high school of the future, learning from the ancient oracles, telegeography, the globalization of crime, future directions for marriage, and much more.

Information Communication Technologies: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools and Applications is the essential compilation of breaking research in the pivotal areas of social adaptation to information technology. This all-inclusive reference source examines through case studies, empirical analysis, and conceptual models the successes and consequences associated with the growth of information communication technologies in the world today.