New deals, no wheels: Social exclusion, tele-options and electronic ontology

Attention has largely fallen on the grand providers and users of new inform ation communication technologies, such as corporations, government and muni cipal authorities with their needs to reduce public expenditure bills, but there are new dimensions to social existence opened up by these technologie s at the community and individual levels which have been repeatedly ignored . The paper explores, from a radical organisational perspective, the extent to which new tele-technologies provide new social options for the previous ly marginalised and disadvantaged: tele-options can greatly assist in the d elivery of the New Deal whilst simultaneously reducing the negative quality of the current urban transport environment. The new electronic communicati on technologies have the potential to alter radically power structures and equalise power, through increased transparency, heightened reflexivity and the opportunity for electronic dialogue, between clients and experts, commu nities and politicians and students and teachers. The power-knowledge disco urse is all set to take a new form: a form which fits with Habermas' concep tion of the ideal communication situation. In this context, the paper explo res the ontology-epistemology relationship which new technology brings into play.