Includes bibliographical references and index.

The political economy of global communication / Robert W. McChesney -- Modernity, postmodernity, or capitalism? / Ellen Meiksins Wood -- Virtual capitalism / Michael Dawson and John Bellamy Foster -- Global village or cultural pillage? : the unequal inheritance of the communications revolution / Peter Golding -- Challenging capitalism in cyberspace: the information highway, the postindustrial economy, and people / Heather Menzies -- The U.S. rules, OK? telecommunications since the 1940s / Jill Hills -- The privatization of telecommunications / Nicholas Baran -- Selling our children: channel one and the politics of education / Michael W. Apple -- Work, new technology, and capitalism / Peter Meiksins -- Fighting neoliberalism in Canadian telecommunications / Elaine Bernard and Sid Shniad -- Propaganda and control of the public mind / Noam Chomsky -- The propaganda model revisited / Edward Herman -- Democracy and the new technologies / Ken Hirschkop -- Information technology and socialist self-management / Andy Pollack.

Are the new technologies of the information age reshaping the labor force, transforming communications, changing the potential of democracy, and altering the course of history itself? Capitalism and the Information Age presents a rigorous examination of some of the most crucial problems and possibilities of these novel technologies. Not a day goes by that we don't see a news clip, hear a radio report, or read an article heralding the miraculous new technologies of the information age. The communication revolution associated with these technologies is often heralded as the key to a new age of "globalization." How is all of this reshaping the labor force, transforming communications, changing the potential of democracy, and altering the course of history itself? Capitalism and the Information Age presents a rigorous examination of some of the most crucial problems and possibilities of these novel technologies.