Research Area: New Technologies and the Information Society

The growing dependence of all social areas on information and communication technologies is contributing substantially to the transformation of developed industrial societies. This is not only leading to broad social discussion of the function of information and knowledge. The importance of this trend is particularly clear in the structural changes in work, the globalisation of companies and markets, and the emergence of changed life environments (lebenswelt). The transformation is manifesting itself in flexibilisation processes relating to the management of time in society, in individualisation processes which could result in the breakup of hierarchical forms of organisation, and in the removal of borders apparent not only in the convergence of communications and media systems, globalisation of communication and competition as in the blurring of private life and work through teleworking. These processes are redefining the spatio-temporal characteristics of society. This process of transformation is giving rise to serious problems of management and regulation and requires sociological consideration of the emerging type of society.

The reference points for the problem-oriented research of ITAS in this context are aspects of societal development as a whole, processes of change in individual sectors of society, and the development of new forms of communication and modification of existing forms through the use of information and communication technologies. This relates on the one hand to theories of the process of societal development as a whole and on the other hand to concrete transformation in specific sectors and multisectoral areas as a result of information and communication technologies and the resulting question of the application potential of technologies, paradigms for the actors, sequential problems and possibilities for management and steering.

The current projects are concerned with the interactions of information and communication technologies with structures of work and organisation in industry and administration and new forms of social inequity, with the emergence of new structures in industry, e.g. through e-commerce and innovative payments systems, with economic and cultural questions in terms of online bookselling and digital signatures. These projects are focusing on issues of innovation and competition, problems of technical and legal security, questions of the relationship between qualification, technological options and opportunities to access new technologies and services. In the process, comparisons are made between media, areas and countries.