Is Democracy at the Heart of IT? Commercial Perceptions of Technology

The article uses two adverts for Microsoft Office products as a springboard from which to discuss claims about the democratic potential of IT (information technology). Adverts for technological products frequently use glamorous icons as metaphors for the exploratory mode of hypermedia technologies (including the World Wide Web). These metaphors find subtle expression in the textual conflation of virtual and physical ‘realms’ exemplified by the Microsoft slogan ‘Where do you want to go today?’. It is a small step from suggesting that you can go anywhere you want to go, to the assertion that you can be anyone you want to be. This assertion underlies the textual construction of democracy that is singled out in the first advert: a democracy that is forged from individual versatility rather than cultural diversity. Roles and functions become blurred as specialized worker is transformed into jack-of-all trades through the use of technology. This vision of democracy is contrasted with two related pictures of contemporary technologies: the Internet as a world-wide cooperative community and hypermedia texts as the poststructural antithesis of the modern univocal text. Claims of this nature, and their critiques, are positioned within discourse about the impact of technology, both personally and culturally. Personally, job satisfaction and versatility are indicators of success in the texts examined. Culturally, constructions of ‘cooperative community’ and ‘self-sufficiency’ are examined with reference to the myth about the computer as an isolationist tool, revealing a theoretical ambivalence towards the impact of technology that underscores recent intense media and academic attention.