Tangentium

Tangentium

http://www.tangentium.org/

Publisher: University of Leeds, School of Computing

TANGENTIUM is an online journal devoted to alternative perspectives on 
IT, democracy, and society.

Broadly, Tangentium discusses the place of information technology (IT) 
in contemporary society. How do computers influence the way we work, 
teach, learn, communicate, act politically, think; in other words, live?

However, it is not our intention to discuss these matters in traditional 
ways. Too often such questions are raised with the following underlying 
and often unstated assumptions:

     * that IT is socially and politically neutral, or that it will 
inevitably lead to benefits for the majority of people
     * that IT, the "information society" and "cyberspace" mark a new 
start for human society and are somehow unconnected with previous forms 
of life
     * that IT's presence in society and in individual lives is a given, 
and that any failure to engage with IT in all its forms marks a kind of 
reactionary rejection of "modern life"
     * that IT will inevitably lead to forms of life and work that are 
more globalised, more strongly based on accessible information, and more 
dependent on IT and the accelerating pace of its new technologies.

Tangentium tries to take none of these things for granted. We seek to 
discuss IT with a critical, political eye. We are not technophobes: far 
from it. Our intention to use the WWW in the most constructive, 
Web-literate way we can should serve as evidence (if not proof) of that. 
But we are aware of some of the great problems which can arise from 
taking the abovementioned as read.

We also base our discussions, wherever possible, on less orthodox 
political perspectives. Our favoured viewpoint is a general scepticism 
towards the political and corporate institutions which currently 
dominate society. This philosophy informs our feature essays and the 
subsidiary information used to elaborate upon them. Having said that, we 
welcome contributions from any political perspective; if and when 
contributions are published from different political stances we will 
make this clear.

ISSN 1746-4757

All papers should be submitted by e-mail to the Editor.

Editor:

Drew Whitworth
Email: drew@comp.leeds.ac.uk

Tangentium is available free of charge as an Open Access journal on the 
Internet.

Content available online.

Current Issue: Volume 2, Number 1: January 2005

Date: 18 Feb. 2005