InterActions within telecommunicative extended spaces : a systems theoretical approach

Résumé En Fr

Modem information and communication technologies and their rapidly increasing and diversifying service potentials are influencing the social and the spatial sphere in different ways. And, obviously, these technologies and services respectively were influenced by social and spatial changes -including economic, political, cultural and temporal impacts implicitly. However, one basic difficulty in trying to describe, model, interprète and analyze such (inter-) dependencies between technological, social and spatial impacts is the fact that relationships, causes, effects, cquantitative and qualitative dimensions of influence do not have a clear and definite pattern of orientation and recognition. Consequently, it seems necessary not to search for clear and distinct statements or (statistical) tendencies of development but to accept fuzziness, contradiction and interferences. Accepting these assumptions doesn't imply any impossibility of methodological and theoretical realizations. The theoretical frame which is used in this contribution is based directly (not completely) on the systems theory of Luhmann when social systems are in focus. This theory, however, is also a suitable starting point in constructing spaces as systems, too. Consequently, we do not have only social and technological and spatial systems respectively with their own specific rules, but also interconnected relationships between them. An example called socialware’ will demonstrate this approach empirically.

Les technologies modernes de l’information et de la communication influencent la sphère du social et du spatial selon diverses façons. Le cadre théorique utilisé ici se base directement (mais pas entièrement) sur la théorie de système de Luhmann, dans la mesure où les systèmes sociaux sont concernés. Cette théorie est un point de départ propre pour construire des espaces en tant que systèmes. Par conséquent nous n ’étudions pas seulement des systèmes sociaux, technologiques ou encore spatiaux avec chacun leurs règles spécifiques, mais également des relations qui existent entre ces systèmes.