Week 11: Digital Economies – Questions By Seung-Hyun Lee
1. Greg explains about digital network and analogue network. Why does technology have to be transited from analogue to digital? What are benefits from this transition into digital network? Who receives those benefits?
2. How does this digital technology affect on society and social construction? What does the connection of the world across the time and space through digital network mean? What does “network society” mean and how does it affect on people’s lifestyle and cultural change? What do people expect from it?
3. How does digital network effect on virtual labor market and the division of work and role between females and males?
4. Greg argues that “today a particular kind of informational mode of development is being created, negotiated through contemporary societal choices”(p.215). How are societal choices formed and by whom?
5. I am a little bit confused about the notion of internetwork. Greg explored that “three networks—telegraph, telephone, and Post Office networks—were operated as an internetwork”(p.234). But what does “internetwork” mean? How does it differ from the notion of “network”?
6. Greg argues that “Different spaces within internetworks reflect not only different work roles but also different class, age, and gender roles—in essence, different levels of social power”(p. 233). But, I think the difference of class, age, and gender roles from it is becoming collapsed online, although such different work roles from different spaces within internetworks remain.
However, what is social power? How is social power obtained by different class, age, and gender? And how does social power work for them? What do they do with social power?
How much does sysop (the computer network system operator) have power to control the inflow? Does the power of the sysop affect on social change, labor market, or virtual economies?