Human Services in the Network Society

The Internet and the many applications it supports continue to transform and expand the ways in which it is possible to relate, communicate, collaborate, and perform human service work. In this book, human service researchers and practitioners explore major opportunities and challenges to well being, social justice, and human service work that technology use in everyday life has exposed. Drawing on the latest research their contributions examine issues associated with human service practices in the network society, including: the implications of an expanded capacity to share human service data across agency and national boundaries; ethical issues associated with the use of remote sensing and surveillance technologies (e.g. the satellite tracking of offenders, and telecare services for older people); the risks and benefits of social network sites including issues associated with online privacy, intimacy, and safety; and the influence of technology-mediated services on human relationships and the sense of ‘being present’ with another person.

Human Services in the Network Society will be of considerable interest to human service professionals, academics and researchers who are concerned about the social impact of networked technologies.

This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Technology in Human Services.

Neil Ballantyne is a New Zealand based independent researcher and consultant and visiting senior research fellow at the School of Applied Social Sciences, University of Strathclyde, UK.

Walter LaMendola is a Professor and Chair of the Doctoral Program at the Graduate School of Social Work, University of Denver, USA.