The experience of technological change in rural Australia: comparing emancipatory rhetoric with empirical reality

This paper is an attempt to compare the heralded potentials of new Information and Communication Technologies with the real life situation of people who have adopted them. Specifically, it discusses the uptake and utilisation of ICTs in three localities in the rural Gippsland Region of Victoria, Australia. It addresses the question of whether the promised emancipatory potentials of ICTs have been realised in the lives of people who have adopted them in that setting. Using Habermas' constructs of 'emancipatory potentials' and 'communicative action' we develop a theoretical model to test the proposition that ICTs have emancipatory potentials as suggested by the dominant discourses. The model encompasses the four themes of participation, integration, ability of ICTs to overcome context and responses or resistance to change. We conclude that the de-contextualised nature of ICT mediated communications do offer limited forms of emancipation. In addition to that, we contend that while the Habermasian notions of communicative action and emancipatory potentials are ideals, they are no less legitimate than the idealisms expressed in the dominant discourses.