Things are changing gear. The experience of Russia has made clear what happens to a society without functioning institutions, and the global economic crisis has demonstrated the profound inability of our financial institutions to contend with the instabilities of a global economy. Faced with these profound questions, the millennialism of cyberspace counsels us to have faith in the inherent reforming power of technology. But that is not how information technology works. Information technology is a plastic medium, formed by inscribing human ideas into software and silicon.
Human choice shapes the machinery.
And then the machinery interacts with its institutional environment in complicated ways. Take, for example, the case of education. Societies from the United States to Brazil are preoccupied with repairing their educational institutions. And computers seem, in some vague way, to hold the answer. To provide any educational benefits, computers require teacher training, maintenance personnel, phone lines, electrical connections, curriculum materials - an elaborate institutional framework of their own.