Cover; Contents; List of Illustrations; List of Acronyms; Preface; Chapter 1 A Human Rights Approach to Globalization; Inside the Giant Globe; Turning the Globe; Meet a Nineteen-Year-Old Egyptian; Ways of Looking at Information Technology; Embarking on a Dissertation; From Fordism to Flexible Accumulation; The IT Revolution from a Post-Marxist Perspective; The Social Construction of the IT Revolution; On Regime Theory; Transformation of the State; Autonomy; Measuring Respect for Autonomy; Looking Ahead; Part I: The Rules of the Game are Forged; Chapter 2 Telephony for the Global Economy
Summary
This book challenges the widely held view that the information technology revolution has been a blessing for citizens of the Third World. It shows how the governments and corporations of the industrialized countries created the global IT regime by systematically excluding Third World representatives and their visions of the information society. Then these same actors pressured Third World societies to abide by the new international regime. Using Egypt as a case study, the book explains from a critical realist perspective how Third World peoples are being deprived of the essential human right to shape new rules that govern their lives