Global Control: Information Technology and Globalization since 1845 (review)

In this provocative synthesis, Peter McMahon (who is affiliated with the Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy at Murdoch University, in Perth) examines the history of information technologies having global reach. Global Control focuses on the roles these technologies have played in building or undermining transnational control systems, such as those used by financiers and corporations, that are capable of establishing hegemonies that transcend governmental, military, and corporate forces at the national level.

McMahon identifies three periods. The first is the "nineteenth-century liberal-international world order" (1845-1914), in which global control—aided by the telegraph—lay in the hands of a few immensely powerful financiers. In the second period (1914 to the late 1960s), nation-states gained the upper hand, thanks in part to new communication technologies that empowered corporations and militaries at the national level. During the third period (late 1960s to the present), a new cyber-financial control system of unprecedented scope and efficiency has enabled a small but immensely powerful elite to emerge, this time consisting not only of financiers but also of executives of major transnational corporations. Today's cyber-financial elite exerts control in pursuit of a set of goals that do not include full employment, Third World social development, debt relief, or an equitable redistribution of capital.

To develop his theoretical approach, McMahon draws on books familiar to historians of technology: James Beniger's The Control Revolution (1986), which is given pride of place, as well as related works such as JoAnne Yates's Control through Communication (1989). Information technologies, whether electronic or preelectronic, are seen as control systems, which are intended to bring productive social activities into conformity with preordained goals—or, to put a finer point on McMahon's thesis, to make these activities more efficient. As the cascade of information technologies develops, starting with the telegraph and culminating in the global Internet, some technologies are seen to enable national-level organizations; others tend to favor the nation-state's transnational competitors; while still others strengthen organizations at both levels and heighten their competition. In addition, McMahon argues that adopting a new information technology is risky; although it might temporarily favor one type of organization over another, it may eventually confer equal or greater efficiencies on the organization's adversaries.

One starts to wonder, at times, whether Global Control might have been written by Marshall McLuhan, not Peter McMahon. But McMahon is careful to avoid technological determinism; information technologies are seen to favor or discourage trends that were set into motion by larger forces, such as the Great Depression and, more recently, the decision by transnational corporations to take full advantage of container shipping and move manufacturing jobs overseas. Nevertheless, historians and sociologists of technology are likely to find fault with the nature of McMahon's evidence. Time and again he chronicles the invention, development, and spread of new information technologies as if the mere fact of their growth attested to their utility.

To be sure, McMahon's use of evidence would seem justifiable if one accepts both of Global Control's fundamental assumptions, namely, that (1) information technologies are developed and applied in order to establish control over productive activities, and (2) they do so successfully, albeit in ways that favor national and transnational organizations in different ways. If these assumptions are correct, than one could argue that the development, acceptance, and growth of new information technologies really do attest to their utility. To this reviewer, these assumptions seem unconvincing in light of the continuing debate concerning the contribution information technologies actually make to organizational efficiency and the substantial evidence that people develop and deploy information technologies for many reasons other than mere efficiency. For example, Rob Kling argues that governmental agencies are inclined to spend inordinate amounts of money on information systems that are dysfunctional in every respect, save that their mere existence...