How IT Came to Rule the World: Disciplining IT

This is the third post in the mini-series on How IT Came to Rule the World ©

While the focus here is primarily on the US and its role in developing data communications and computer technologies; IT has increasingly become global in its innovation, marketing, and production. The strength of the US “military-industrial complex,” the predominance of its currency and financial markets (as well as its capital markets that over funded its e-commerce capability and created the credit crisis of 2008), and the strategic role of its policy makers all contributed to the development of digital information technologies and a “disciplining” of the modern Internet. Consequently, these technologies are also involved in shaping modern American society, establishing new rules and protocols for daily life, and in the application and practice of power at the political level. Information and communications technologies have also been “permissive technologies” facilitating the movement of capital overseas, the management of off-shore production and research facilities, and the networks of global e-commerce and social media.