COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES AND THE POLITICS OF POSTMODERN INFORMATION-SCIENCE

This paper addresses the identity politics of modern communication and information technologies. These technologies are not mere hardware, c ausally related to society through their ''effects'' on individual sub jects. They embody social relations of domination and dependence, espe cially in their construction of specific forms of human subjectivity. Database-constructed identities are postmodern in character: unstable, shifting, and subject to the control of information processing softwa re. The political implications of these identity construction systems are explored. It is argued that the post-marxist political debate abou t the postmodern character of the subjects who participate in the soci al relations configured by the new communication and information techn ologies presents the most urgent issues for the possibilities of intel lectual activism in the service of a democratic politics of informatio n. Six recommendations are made for political work in information scie nce (IS): (1) that it pursue the implications of a social constructivi st view of human subjectivity, (2) that it draw on the debate about th e politics of the construction of post-modern subjectivity through com munication and information technologies; (3) that IS activists investi gate the role of their own literature in the project of manufacturing consent for the social relations embedded in new communication and inf ormation technologies; (4) that IS literature be read to reveal hidden and implicit activist potentialities and possibilities; (5) that IS w ork be suspicious of ''needs and uses'' studies; (6) that the concepts of information needs, information users, and information uses be disp laced by the concept of information power.