The Expansion of ICT: A New Framework of Inclusion and Exclusion from the Global Realm

Abstract

The proliferation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and their interaction with certain social systems, led to the emergence of the phenomenon of globalization. Globalization lays on a technological infrastructure that makes it possible, by minimizing the time needed for communication and inter-systemic interactions. This also, has led to a strong support of the global financial system to the ICT industry, so that the latter can provide faster applications at any level of networking, thus putting both globalization and the ICT industry in an accelerating mutual development. This paper, examines the problems certain social systems face into this new environment, due to the structural coupling of those systems with a technological backbone that functions as a system of inclusion (and thus exclusion as well) of those social systems which do not conceive of the ICT as a prerequisite for their own continuation. That situation is challenging the political subsystems, as to their ability to govern the social systems through their way towards a global society. The paper initially presents the state of globalization in a brief way and next introduces some of the basic concepts of contemporary systems theory. At the rest parts, we examine the problems posed to the basic social system-reconstituting functions by the “real-time” communications global network and finally we introduce some preliminary thoughts about the ways the political system (or any other management system for the matter) can try to solve those problems.