Frank Webster

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Frank Webster (b. 1950) is a British sociologist. He is well known for his critical writing on the Information Society that has been translated into a dozen languages.

[edit] Biography

Webster was educated at Durham University (1969-1973) and the London School of Economics (1973-1977). He was Professor of Sociology at the University of Birmingham (1999-2002) and Head of the Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology (2001-2002) until it was controversially closed. He is currently Professor of Sociology at City University London.

[edit] Works

Webster has published books on many aspects of contemporary social change. He has resisted the view that the Information Society is radically new, insisting on the primacy of continuities and consolidations of established trends. He conceives today’s ‘informational capitalism’ as a development from corporate capitalism and, before that, laissez-faire capitalism, that advances principles of market society such as private ownership, competition, profitability, commodification, ability to pay, and the centrality of wage labour.

He wrote a Luddite analysis of Information Technology with Kevin Robins in the early 1980s that was one of the first critiques of optimistic analyses of computer and telecommunications technologies. More recently he appears prepared to use the term Information Society, though this seems to contradict his early hostility to the idea.

He often draws attention to the darker sides of informational developments, especially the military dimensions. He has adopted the concept of Information War to examine the changing information environment of recent wars.

[edit] Published books

  • The New Photography: Responsibility in Visual Communication Calder, 1980
  • Information Technology: A Luddite Analysis. (with Kevin Robins) New Jersey, 1986
  • The Technical Fix: Computers, Industry and Education (with Kevin Robins) 1989
  • Theories of the Information Society 1995, 3rd edition 2006
  • The Postmodern University? Contested Visions of Higher Education (with A.Smith) 1997
  • Times of the Technoculture: from the Information Society to the Virtual Life (with Kevin Robins) 1999
  • Understanding Contemporary Society: Theories of the Present (with G.Browning and A.Halcli) 2000
  • Culture and Politics in the Information Age: A New Politics? 2001
  • The Virtual University: Knowledge, Markets and Management (with Kevin Robins)2002
  • The Intensification of Surveillance: crime, terrorism and warfare in the information era. (with Kirstie Ball) 2003
  • The Information Society Reader
  • Manuel Castells: Masters of Modern Social Thought, 3 volumes (with Basil Dimitriou) 2004
  • Journalists under Fire: Information War and Journalistic Practices 2006 (with Howard Tumber)