LIS 810: Uncovering Information Labor

Have a great summer

2007-05-29T09:10:00.000-05:00

Grades are posted and summer has begun, but I wanted to quickly thank you all for a great semester. If any of you will be around this summer, keep an eye out for our informal SLIS Summer Reading Group, where we'll be working through three books over the next three months. Cheers,

GREG

Book Review: The Making Of A Cybertariat

2007-05-17T01:59:00.000-05:00

Ursula Huws, The Making Of A Cybertariat: Virtual Work in a Real World. Monthly Review Press, 2003. 208 pp. ISBN:1-58367-088-2

With the advance of the so-called “information age” and the digital technologies that are behind it, prominent social theorists from Daniel Bell to Manuel Castells among many others have talked about the big changes in the industry structures. However, the ongoing debate remained on how fundamentally it will change the existing labor relationships. Are changes such as decentralization and networking of labor breaking the old wall between the capitalists and laborers, or is it even widening the gap? Or is something else going on?

The Making of a Cybertariat is a strong argument that takes the latter view, while incorporating that something else is happening - the rise of a new form of information age proletariat she calls ‘cybertariat.’ This book is a collection of articles labor relationships in the ‘new economy’ from 1979-2001 while Huws has been working primarily as an activist in feminism and labor relations. Over the several decades, she has analyzed and manifested some strong intuitions on the politics of technology and their effects on the positions of laborers, with special focus on the labor of housewives. As such, the collection provides much food for thoughts and controversies on the changing work relationships in the decentralized, world-wide networked world of today’s labor.

As introduced briefly, the author’s main premise in this book is that modern technologies, especially information and communication technologies (ICT) do not ‘liberate’ labor from its constraints but create a new kind of 'proletariat'. Though it is true that time and space become more flexible, she argues that even such flexibility contributes to even stronger constraints in the labor relationship. To examine the processes how such mechanisms work, Huws looks into a vast area of fields ranging from domestic work to office workers in large-scale industries.

The first part which roughly encompasses Chapter 1 and 2 looks into the changes in domestic labor and how technologies that were advertised to ‘reduce domestic labor’ has actually brought even more labor and further instability for female workers. The second part ranging from Chapter 3 to 5 examines the changes in the office work and how the blurred borders between work (space) and leisure resulted in more and unstable position of laborers. The third part, from Chapter 6 to 8, talks about women’s work and technology in the workplace. And the last part (Chapters 9-11) revisits the theoretical claims and attempt to debunk the myth of the labor liberation by technology and even tell us how to make the ‘cybertariats’ become conscious of their labor positions and interests - ultimately, make an open call for the cybertariats to united for the common goal.

In this process, Huws examines changing categories of employment, and modes of organization. She tries to show how new divisions of race and gender are born, and how traditional organizations and individuals cope with them by reshaping themselves. Her whole argument is based on three main ideas. The first is ‘commodification'. She defines it as
"the tendency of capital economies to generate new and increasingly standardized products for sale in the market whose sale will generate profits that increase in proportion to the scale of production"(p.17). It is in accordance with the traditional Marxist concept, but takes a whole new view in scale in the globalized industry and labor structure in the information age (or rather, ‘new economy’ as she refers to). The second is ‘socialization of labor'. Socialization of labor is a phenomenon that arises from commodification. People in different parts of the world co-operate in producing, distributing and marketing the same commodities. Through new forms of communication, contact between them can be virtually instantaneous. The third is ‘externalization of labor’. It refers not only to the outsourcing of labor to distant other places but also delegating parts of production labor to the actual customers - “unpaid time of the service customer is substituted for the paid time of the service worker” (p182) as exemplified by the ATM case where bank customers do most of the service works that had been previously done by the clerks.

The three concepts come together in the model of labor commodification. Activities that had been outside of the market (e.g. unpaid domestic labor) are incorporated into the market, and are subsequently replaced by craft production/consumer service. In turn, it gives rise to new industries and social labor division ("socialization of labor and process"). It causes new types of work and further international division of labor. As such, even with technology, domestic work is not reduced. For example, the laundry machine was supposed to reduce laundry labor, but resulted in more need for clean clothes, Laundromats, and the very need to have an machine in every household. As such, even more money is needed to get the commodities, driving the housewives into social labor. The labor available to them however is limited to the lower paid and unstable work, drawing a parallel to the domestic labor workers in the industrial revolution. When the wages of the First world increases, such labor gets pushed to Third world. Such socialization and externalization of labor is further enabled on a global scale by the development of communication networks. Also, the technologies make the workplace more flexible through communication and outsourcing but require the workers to pay for the tools and make them accessible to the control and demands of the workplace more than ever before. Also, close relationships with co-workers are diminished in this process.

To back up such models, Huws analyzes office workers in various dimensions such as functional relationship of work to capital, occupations, social relation to production, places in social division of labor, comparative income, and social status. And after going through them, she concludes that the workers in this technological and industrial environment can be called as a new type of proletariat. Then, can they also become a 'class' and unite to fight for their rights? It is possible, she argues, but it is not sure if a class consciousness will develop in itself because gender, race, as well as an overtly nostalgic stance of male workers and left-stance activists are in the way. And that in turn is her open call to overcome such hurdles.

Huws’ idea of distributed labor via network is similar to what Castells discovered in his theories of information society. However, she uses such observations to argue the rise of a ‘common’ class of unskilled, low-wage workers rather than the spreading of the work itself. When taking into notice that both are coming from Marxist backgrounds, it is an interesting deviation. While Castells argued that such distribution will lead to the individualization and flexibility, Huws is emphasizing the position that the workers will be placed in will be no different than simply being a low-wage low-skill worker. It is a both bold and useful view to take from an activist’s aspect. It is an attractive open call and guidance to what should be realized in the labor movement in today’s working environment.

However, there are also some drawbacks in her way of explanation preventing it from being hailed as a classic. First, the focus of her problem setting is a little vague in parts. In her accounts Huws purposely emphasizes domestic labor as the prime example of unpaid labor that has been commodified, and takes a gender-centered (‘feminist’) view. Though the gender relationships becomes part of the unequal labor relationship between the employer and the low-skilled worker, it is a little confusing to have the feminist approach and labor-centered approach mixed together. In the latter parts where office workers of both sexes are the main subject, the theme becomes clearer.

The second is that she does not present enough historical or statistical data to support the claims as a firmly grounded research material. The data Huws reviews are not strictly quantitive or historical, leaving a good deal counterarguments on hand. Instead, she draws some parts from personal experiences and focuses more on the arguments and concepts. Though it is not a critical drawback and is even useful in keeping the text to a legible 200 pages, it narrows down the audience and use of the book. It would have benefited from compressing or separating the feminism-centered parts and elaborate on the middle and latter parts on office workers and customer time deprivation.

Despite such, the questions and views raised in this book are useful in even more than the phenomenon it described. For example, the notion of ‘externalization of labor’ - especially how production work is delegated to the actual customers fits nicely into the so-called Web2.0 concepts of today. Whether on Youtube, Wikipedia or citizen journalism sites, people are gladly willing to spend their own time unpaid for production of contents that once had been originally paid work by the employed workers. And it is even regarded to be more fun, more democratic, and simply cool. Does it mean that we users are “deprived of” something? Not necessarily, but the industry is gaining something and it seldom comes back to us in the form of actual rewards (even the psychological rewards of recognition is given by the peer users). Thus, building ideas for a more labor-rewarding Web2.0 would be beneficial for both the individual users and also the development of the web as well. Or how about utilizing the concept of a global spread of similar labor relationship to build a more communicatively connected network of a bigger solidarity of labor unions? Collective bargaining could enter a whole new scale, even global.

In summary, The Making of a Cybertariat is an energetic claim that provokes us to look into the labor relationships today and gives us thought pieces to act upon. Also, it is a good counterbalance to the more intentionally value-absent or even sometimes optimistic analysis of the labor relationships in the information age such as Castells’ works.

Review of H. Crowther-Heyck, Herbert A. Simon: the bounds of reason in modern America

2007-05-13T20:57:00.000-05:00

Herbert A. Simon: the bounds of reason in modern America. Hunter Crowther-Heyck. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.

Hunter Crowther-Heyck’s Herbert A. Simon: the bounds of reason in modern America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), is a biography of Herbert A. Simon (1916-2001), a political scientist and pioneering cognitive psychologist who was also a significant organizer of interdisciplinary, computer-assisted (or computer-driven) research into cognition on the international and national levels. The book is based on Crowther-Heyck’s 1999 dissertation, Herbert Simon, organization man (Thesis (Ph.D.)--Johns Hopkins University, 2000). Crowther-Heyck is currently an assistant professor of the History of Science at the University of Oklahoma.

Crowther-Heyck’s research, including his work on Simon, is devoted to what he calls the “bureaucratic worldview,” as expressed by the research interactions of the Federal Government, foundations, and large research universities since the New Deal. Implicit in Crowther-Heyck’s work is a concern with the fate of the individual in a public sphere dominated by large institutions.

Herbert A. Simon grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His father, Arthur Simon, trained in Electrical Engineering at the Technische Hochschule in Darmstadt, immigrated to the United States in 1903. The family was situated culturally in the German-American professional class of Protestant or Jewish origins (Simon’s father was Jewish; Herbert Simon became a Unitarian later in life) who strongly identified with the nonsectarian American civic ideal of the Progressive Era, which in Milwaukee was also the period of Socialist control of city government. In his autobiography, Simon recounted with some pride that he lived in a neighborhood where both corporate leaders and the Socialist mayor Daniel Hoan were neighbors (Crowther-Heyck, pp. 16-19, 22; Herbert A. Simon, Models of my life (Basic Books, 1991), p. 6).

In the first part of Simon’s career, starting at the University of Chicago, where he became a graduate assistant in Political Science (a program referred to as the “Chicago School” throughout the book) in 1936, he was involved with research into the possibilities of professional, nonpartisan urban planning and the improvement of public services. In the second part of his career, from the early 1950s on, based in the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Carnegie Institute of Technology, later Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Simon became familiar with large, institutional, digital computers, and began to concentrate on making programs to study problem solving in collaboration with Allen Newell (1927-1992). This programming research led to Simon and Newell’s invention of artificial intelligence (Crowther-Heyck, chapter 10) and for Simon, an ever-expanding set of institutional relationships, a true research network. The question for a biographer is how to link up these distinct phases to form a picture of Simon’s work as a whole, and to explain the continuity of what Simon was trying to contribute intellectually.

Notes on the text. Crowther-Heyck’s book is organized around the events in Simon’s life up until the late 1960s. Many facts of the life are presented in an Introduction, “(Un)bounded rationality.” (The term “Bounded Rationality” originates with Simon.) Each period provides a starting point for intellectual histories constructed around the principal theme of the book, the juxtaposition of Control and Choice. In chapter 2, Crowther-Heyck uses the atmosphere of the University of Chicago in the 1930s to explain the background and outlook of the Chicago School of Political Science, particularly its preoccupation with control, here enlightened public administration within the context of representative government. In chapter 3, Crowther-Heyck presents a different facet of the same environment, the interest in applying mathematics and logic, the “sciences of control” to sociology so that research could be constructed and interpreted as much as possible in quantitative terms (“operationalism”). The chapter titles imply an almost mythological narrative about Simon’s lifetime intellectual quest following “forking paths,” an image borrowed from a short story by Borges (see Jorge Luis Borges, “The garden of forking paths,” pp. 19-29, in: Labyrinths (New Directions, 1964)).

The strength of the book lies in Crowther-Heyck’s explication of ideas and institutional relationships. To get at and to digest his interpretations, the reader has to navigate through Crowther-Heyck’s resistance to the ideology of liberal technocracy. This resistance emerges from statements about Simon’s personal beliefs that seem to resonate with the author.

For example, in discussing Simon’s attitude to gender as shown by his use of language and his treatment of women as students and colleagues, Crowther-Heyck writes “he was typical of a generation of liberal men who were taken rather by surprise by the need for a women’s movement in the late 1960s but who were friendly to it so long as it focused on equality of opportunity rather than equality of result” (p. 19). Why does the author feel obliged to insert a slogan about redistribution in an otherwise helpful observation about Simon’s relative gender neutrality?

Toward the end of the book (p. 312), Crowther-Heyck comments on a Simon colleague’s anecdote about his amazement at Simon’s compulsion to invent and solve problems on a car trip, in an effort to temper the impression of the colleague’s conventional and unqualified admiration for Simon, but digresses into the following:

"Most of us chose our field because we had a passion for ideas that was stronger than our passions for money or power or fame, else we would not have become academic scholars, to whom money, power, and fame are but nodding acquaintances. It is unfair to refuse to attribute to others the same 'noble' goals that we attribute to ourselves, just as it is unwise to refuse to analyze one’s own motives the way one analyzes those of others."

Reading this lament about the altruism and powerlessness of academics, one might forget that college teaching is one of the most privileged and personally rewarding occupations in the world today, or that Crowther-Heyck has spent much of the book showing how Simon was able to use the advantage of his academic positions to outmaneuver and overcome opposition (see pp. 258-259, an account of Simon’s lobbying to force the restructuring of the graduate program in Psychology at CIT).

Finally, in the conclusion (pp. 326-327), Crowther-Heyck presents a sort of credo in Simon, explaining that after beginning “as an instinctive supporter of his views on economics and critic of his psychology and his political science,” he had accepted Simon because of what he had learned about Simon’s personal political beliefs. But these beliefs as Crowther-Heyck states them, including “equal rights for all, a federal government that actively supports those rights, stewardship of the earth’s resources, and rational tolerance of different peoples, cultures, faiths, and political views” seem like inarguable, mainstream liberalism. They do not explain the “forking” path that the author has taken us on.

In the Borges story, “The garden of forking paths” two characters have a dialogue about the central theme of a Chinese novel also called “The garden of forking paths,” that is constructed as a labyrinth. The scholar who has reconstructed and translated the novel concludes that the theme of the novel is “time,” because the Chinese words for time are never used. Therefore, time, as its omission shows, is the theme of the book. “In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only prohibited word?” “…Chess.”

In Crowther-Heyck’s biography of Simon, while sociology, social psychology, and social modeling are discussed at length, society and the social impacts of research and research tools are never mentioned. By their omission, we can conclude that Crowther-Heyck is profoundly skeptical about the potential for positive social change through the application of technology. To return to the Borges story, Society is what this book is about, but the narrative excludes it.

To complete Crowther-Heyck’s story of Herbert Simon, his historical context, and the social impacts of elite research communities after World War II, we have to look beyond his work. Through Simon’s autobiography, Models of my life, we get a clear portrait of a liberal scholar who through his interest in computer science transformed himself into a public intellectual, editorializing about rational approaches to reform in opposition to attacks on the “system” in the 1960s (chapter 18), serving on advisory committees at the federal level (see chapter 19, “The scientist as politician”), and traveling abroad to receive awards or as part of cultural missions (chapter 21, “Nobel to now,” 22, “The amateur diplomat in China and the Soviet Union”). Paul N. Edwards’s The closed world: computers and the politics of discourse in Cold War America (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), explores the connection between the development of computers, game theory and other models of control, cognition, and behavior, defense research, and Cold War resistance to Soviet power. His presentation of the evolution of the concept of artificial intelligence (Edwards, pp. 250-255) is crucial to an understanding of Crowther-Heyck’s interpretation of its significance (Crowther-Heyck, chapter 10). From Jennifer S. Light’s book, From warfare to welfare: defense intellectuals and urban problems in Cold War America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), we learn about how socially-conscious intellectuals positioned themselves in the defense establishment, taking advantage of postwar Federal largesse and an atmosphere of creative freedom to explore applications of systems research to urban problems. For the “defense intellectuals,” Simon’s colleagues, the military-industrial complex served as a refuge permitting experimental social thought within the context of applied research.

Evaluation. I found reviews of Herbert Simon: the bounds of reason in modern America in International Social Science Review, The journal of American history, Public administration review, and Technology and culture. The reviews are friendly, recognizing Crowther-Heyck’s pioneering effort to capture the range of Simon’s activities, and especially the academic milieux and schools of thought within which he worked. At the same time, there is impatience among reviewers both with the lack of a “romantic” emphasis on personal details, which to my mind underscores the work's reliability, and Crowther-Heyck’s reticence at drawing conclusions about the validity of Simon’s lifelong preoccupation with planning, modeling, and the understanding of cognition.

To conclude, I would like to suggest some lessons about Simon that might have been drawn from Crowther-Heyck’s extensive research, in the spirit of our class on Uncovering Information Labor. I agree with Crowther-Heyck that Simon embodies the classic German bureaucratic attitude, the notion that a highly trained elite, loyal only to public service and the State, would manage problems, and achieve public order and social control. Simon’s faith in this bureaucratic public sphere is sharply at odds with United States political and economic trends from 1980 to the present, and as Vincent Mosco has discussed, with the tradition of public planning by the financial elite in particular regions like greater New York City.

In contrast to today’s faith, albeit waning, in the power of unregulated markets to solve social problems by concentrating capital in the hands of winners best suited to lead, Simon proclaims, in effect, “I [my generation] am the Revolution!” In the chapter from Models of my life called “The student troubles” (pp. 279-289), Simon recounts with satisfaction his role in damping down revolutionary enthusiasm at Carnegie-Mellon by appealing to the potential for planning within the institutional framework. Clearly, he believed that the real Revolution had already taken place when the intellectuals were able to take charge of so much federally funded research during and in the aftermath of the New Deal. Nevertheless, he reserves a nice parting shot about the charisma of the newly affluent: “Whether the yuppie climate that replaced revolution has been, on balance, an improvement is a question….” Simon, unlike the class of “venture laborers” identified by Gina Neff, always protected himself by embracing the support structures of government and academic institutions. He seems to have little or no faith in a transcendent notion of individual freedom.

The weakness of Simon’s career is that he functioned entirely on an elite level, and that there were no apparent immediate, street-level benefits from his work. Part of the corrective to this perception lies in the greater public transparency to planning processes that is emerging, painfully, in the early 21st century. (The current discussion over the optimal location for a new power line in the Madison region demonstrates the potential and problems of public inputs.) As Amy Slaton suggests, why should the public not participate in engineering decisions that will have significant impacts on their environment? For public participation to work there must be greater and more general technological and environmental literacy. Had Herbert Simon spent more of his time contributing to public as opposed to elite education into the benefits of his many research directions, his legacy would be less troubling.

Questions from 1 May 2007 Jennifer Light interview/podcast

2007-05-12T14:20:00.000-05:00

Here are the written versions of questions that I asked Jennifer Light:

1. Six years after the 9/11 attacks, to which you [Light] allude at the end of the book From warfare to welfare, where are the "defense intellectuals" in the urban policy community? How is that relationship structured and how is it working?

2. You avoid policy recommendations in the book, although elsewhere you have addressed the so-called "digital divide," accommodation of the disabled in the workplace, and the gendering of computer work. What policy might flow from a correct understanding of what "defense intellectuals" have to offer to urban planning?

3. What value, if any, can the Critical Theory tradition that includes a wide range of people, for example, Baudrillard, but also Emerson and Thoreau at its origins, offer to historians who are still in the process of working out the facts of how science and technology have changed the United States since 1933?

Strange Bed Fellows Indeed

2007-04-30T22:49:00.001-05:00

From Warfare to Welfare: Defense Intellectuals and Urban Problems in Cold War America by Jennifer S. Light, tells a history of how American cities were planned in part with military guidance post War World II. This book brings forth the role of dispersal techniques used as an argument to get people from inner-city dwelling to the suburbs and beyond, thus making Americans safe from attacks. Forget the people that couldn't afford to move out of the city or the business people making a living or the fact that it clearly was not a viable option for many of the cities, even after promises of funding from the federal government.

What was highly interesting about this theory is the fact that such a varied collection of people were finally talking about urban planning and it seemed to be a catalyst for planners throughout the nation. Having local and national leaders, atomic scientist, defense workers, military strategists and planners working together on this failed idea seemed remarkable. Though not a complete failure after viewing the powerful legacy this marriage of planning and military defense has had.

It is easy to see a direct line from using the military to fight wars on anything from poverty, the war on Vietnam and communism, to 'black terrorism' and all kinds of activists. Military planning is pervasive in this country. From failures of the Army Corps of Engineers to the Patriot Act.

The late sixties brought an interesting mix of people joining the military crew. The ideas of the counterculture bringing technology, media and mass communication to the people were apparently beliefs that the US government and the Rand Corporation shared to connect the disenfranchised. But with the Nixon era starting and the funding for cable and war on poverty this near utopia was all but dead. Later when the public access channels were up and running they were all but outdated. Though now mandated but eventually its ideal of civic technology was dead.

After reading this book I feel like most social theory is either wrong or never implemented.
I wonder how things like 'think tanks' and all of the military planning and social theory have and are effecting the war in Iraq and shaping that country's future.
What exactly is the RAND corporation and what else has this and other corporations influenced our cities?

Thoughts on digital, sublime myths

2007-04-23T00:20:00.000-05:00

This week's reading 'The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power and Cyberspace' by Vincent Mosco centers on the question of how and why the 'digital age' has been hailed. And unlike the readings of the previous weeks that emphasized the production and market functions, it sheds light on the cultural mindset as the major motivator. Especially the notion of 'myth' as the meaning-making mechanism through which people try to put value on the information and communication technologies(ICT) is discussed in great detail, ultimately incorporating the political-economical dimensions as well.

A short (and clearly oversimplified) recap of the Chapters:

Chapter 1: The need to look into the cyberspace with 'both eyes' is discussed. Not only the material conditions but the cultural dimension - the 'myth' - is required to understand how our society accepts the cyberspace.

Chapter 2: The key dimensions of the myth-making process of cyberspace is discussed. The 'mythmakers' include the academic, political, and business worlds and powerful supporting institutions via means of metaphors (most prominent examples: the digital library, information highway, electronic commerce, virtual community, digital ecology, and narrative stream).

Chapter 3, 4, 5 (the main body): Here, he provides invaluable critical summaries of the literature on the so-called 'post-industirial' information society theories. The myths of the cyberspace as being something sublime and completely world-changing are discussed in three major clusters - the end of history, geography and politics. he looks into the vast body of existing literature and explains how the mythmakers constructed discourses to make the society believe that digital communication will ultimately bring fundamental changes in time, space/place and power relationships. Especially in Chapter 5 he looks into the past historical moments of new communication technologies such as radio and television, and finds out that the principal pattern of the myth stayed similar.

Chapter 6: Here he uses the metaphor of 'Ground Zero' to emphasize that "history, geography and politics returned with a vengeance". The significance of political economical ('material') dimensions are revisited, and again the importance of incorporating cultural analysis (such as foregrounding the local, and taking historical contexts of discourse struggle into account) is emphasized.

Some questions worth thinking about:

- Why do sublime utopian myths of new technology seem to almost always win against the other possible form of myth - the dystopian one? Is it somehow inherent in mythical subliminality to neige to the bright and shiny ideal?

- According to Chapter 5, the principal pattern of the myth is repeated with new emerging communication technologies. Then, how do the outdated technologies lose their subliminality? Are there any myth-breakers at work, or is it simply that people forget their initial awe?

- On p.6, Mosco argues that the technologies become important forces for social and economic change after they have lost their role as source for utopian visions. Is it the case of the technology itself, or rather the utilization of it? For example, the recent utopian vision of the 'Web2.0' concept is mostly the same Internet technology as pre-dotcom burst, but the utilization pattern of that technology has changed so that many believe it is something new...

- What role have the 'sublime myths' played in the changes in labor relationships of the Information age we have discussed all along this semester? (For example, could it be the case that they have been covering up the fundamental exploitative labor structures by fostering a sense of being horizontally networked and decentralized?)

- To take it one step further... how does the concept of myths as the cultural meaning making process fit in the case of information labors? We have already discussed how programmers perceived themselves as active creators and how Video gurus became non-paid experts of the field. Are information laborers themselves myth-makers? Or even, do they need to be demystified to be part of the important forces for social and economic change?

------
PS. There is also a review on this book by G. Bowker whom we met earlier in our course. I think it provides a interesting link on how his research interests connect to this theme... Here's the link.

Privacy and Control: The Function of Surveillance in Society

2007-04-19T07:10:00.000-05:00

Monahan, Torin, editor. Surveillance and Security: Technological Politics and Power in Everyday Life. 342p. Routledge. 2006. ISBN 978-0-415-95393-1.

The growth of information technology has brought with it a growth in our social, cultural, and political awareness. We are now accountable for our everyday lives more than ever before, as even the most unlikely individuals are subjected to ongoing monitoring and disclosure. This increased self-awareness has influence over our daily lives in ways that are not easily recognizable. In Surveillance and Security: Technological Politics and Power in Everyday Life, a discussion of technology's control over institutions and individuals, whether it may be law-enforcement, transportation, diplomacy, or parenting. Its collection of essays questions the limits which information technologies have created in our social networks and collective security. Our present climate of social and political deliberation and mistrust make this book a timely confrontation of surveillance methods and their effects on individual freedom and privacy. It raises questions about the ultimate costs and benefits of surveillance through several contemporary case studies. Overall, the book presents a detailed analysis of current surveillance trends and outcomes without any of today's obligatory flag-waving or defiant neoliberalism.
Surveillance and Security: Technological Politics and Power in Everyday Life features essays from various professionals from the fields of political science, sociology, criminology, and cultural studies. The book appeals to an audience interested in surveillance studies, criminal justice, the sociology of science and technology, and women's studies. An analysis of everyday technologies is presented, ranging from biometric technologies at airports and borders, video surveillance in schools/public housing, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags in hospitals and public transport, national ID cards, and magnetic strips on welfare food cards. The motivations and functions of surveillance technologies used in everyday life are investigated by the essayists. The central issue of the book revolves around the system of tradeoffs linked to surveillance technologies, such as security versus liberty, and security versus privacy. Its authors argue that tradeoffs provide for only brief discussion of the consequences of the current growth of electronic surveillance. Its editor, law professor Torin Monahan, argues: "Some of the obvious issues not discussed when talking about trade-offs are how surveillance contributes to spatial segregation and social inequality, how private high-tech industries are benefiting from the public revenue generated for these systems, and what the ramifications are of quantifying 'security' (e.g. by the number of video cameras for political purposes)" (2). The book investigates the larger motivations and function of surveillance technologies used in everyday life.
In her essay The State Goes Home: Local Hyper vigilance of children and the Global Retreat from Social Reproduction Cindi Katz comments on the growth in child surveillance and paranoid parenting across America. This domestic dystopia reflects the larger national surveillance crisis involving banking and the government. As Katz emphasizes: "But one thing is certain: the discourse of fear has provoked an increasingly serious domestic response to the perceived dangers in our midst" (28). Surveillance and Security: Technological Politics and Power in Everyday Life is also a response to national security, a discussion of the right to privacy and the social aspects of technology, as well as whose interests electronic surveillance actually serves.
Although the book gathers together essays from a diverse background of professionals and researchers, all of the essays come to the conclusion that most forms of surveillance are unnecessarily invasive and overly expensive. In his essay The Growth of Mandatory Volunteerism in Collecting Personal Information- 'Hey Buddy Can You Spare a DNA?" Gary T. Marx investigates the emerging consumer trend of soft surveillance. This surveillance appears to protect and empower consumers, yet Marx argues that this facade serves only the interests of big business, as it is: "Requesting volunteers based on appeals to good citizenship or patriotism, using dangerous communication, trading personal information for rewards, or convenience and using hidden or low-visibility information-collection technologies" (38). These newly emerging forms of technology, from barcodes to biometrics, intrude on our everyday lives without recognition. As Marx continues: "New hidden or low-visibility technologies increasingly offer the tempting possibility of bypassing awareness and any need for direct consent altogether" (41). Surveillance has become an intimate player in our personal lives, determining our social, consumer, and political identities, without any invitation or acceptance on our part.
The increasing costs and supervision created by surveillance has reinforced social hierarchies, as the essayists describe the priorities and agendas of everyday lives and the balance of power created by them. The essayists conclude that many of our everyday surveillance technologies are unnecessary and, in most cases, unwarranted. The goals and objectives of electronic surveillance are too hindered by bureaucracy and capitalism to produce any benefits to society. As editor Torin Monahan writes: "Indeed, most crimes-violent or otherwise-are not prevented by surveillance" (5). Throughout the book, the current ramifications of the global "War on Terror" are investigated. Monahan considers surveillance to be an inadequate approach to terrorism and crime. He notes: "The root causes for crime or terrorism are not engaged and deeper social changes brought about by surveillance and security systems are left interrogated" (10). The essayists of the book agree that surveillance only succeeds in reinforcing social and economic divides, as the poor are often victims of surveillance of the rich, as their personal activities and economic transactions are monitored and criticized. Nancy D. Campbell comments on the phenomenon of workplace drug testing in her essay Everyday Insecurities: The Micro behavioral Politics of Intrusive Surveillance. She writes: "Drug testing in nontherapeutic contexts will remain an unfair and unjust 'new-surveillance' scheme until the day when the poor begin testing the rich" (73). The essayists conclude that surveillance fails to protect identities or prevent crime. Simon A. Cole and Henry N. Pont ell elaborate this perspective in their essay "Don't Be Low Hanging Fruit: Identity Theft as Moral Panic". They argue: "Thus, in neglecting the larger social reality of identity fraud, such narratives allow systematic problems related to such crimes remain unaddressed, which increases the likelihood that the problem will become worse and that a fearful public will support even greater surveillance in the hope of rectifying it" (146). The book concludes by saying that surveillance does succeed in cultivating fear and mistrust, though not in the surveillance itself but the people controlling our society and supposedly provide protection for us.
The book thoroughly analyzes surveillance in our everyday lives and its effect on democratic values. The government and advertising companies hold tremendous power in monitoring our everyday lives. Today, millions unknowingly surrender personal information, social status, and geographic details by simply using a credit card, boarding public transport, or using a mobile phone. The most interesting chapter of the book is Heather Cameron's Using Intelligent Systems to Track Buses and Passengers. Cameron describes London Transport's recent efforts to provide a "transport system that serves the needs of all those who live, work, or visit London, irrespective of economic status or social identity" (226). In their effort to improve customer service, London Transport has applied several technologies to ensure efficiency and security for all of its passengers and employees. It is not surprising for London to be the first city worldwide to incorporate RFID, GPS, and security cameras into its buses. After all: "With the equivalent of one camera for every fourteen people, it is estimated that the average person in a large city like London is filmed three hundred times a day" (3). However, it is surprising to learn exactly how much surveillance these technologies provide. Security cameras both onboard buses and outside of bus lanes monitor passengers and vehicles illegally driving in bus lanes. These cameras may capture the driver's license plate and the driver may then be fined by mail for their violation. Similarly, passenger behavior is captured on video. Passengers can be caught on tape applying graffiti to bus interiors or harassing bus drivers. This video may then be used to identify such criminals and aid in their prompt prosecution. Although these security measures benefit transport users, other forms of surveillance infringe on their right to privacy. By using a London Transport Oyster card, passengers save on their fares but these RFID cards in turn communicate their names, addresses, legal status (i.e. student/senior), credit card information, travel behavior, and geographical location to London Transport. This information can then be sold to advertisers and targeted commercials can be shown on video monitors strategically placed near the doors of each bus. By using RFID, London Transport creates enormous revenues, yet passenger fares continue to rise. Bus fares on London buses are nearly comparable to London Underground fees. Yet bus passengers experience little of the comfort, convenience, and dramatically decreased travel times than that of their Underground counterparts. Through her essay, Cameron emphasizes the need for passengers and government agencies to address such surveillance issues and collaborate on protecting citizen privacy. Surveillance and Security: Technological Politics and Power in Everyday Life presents a thoughtful and provocative discussion of the exchange of information and the role of surveillance in our social networks and personal identities.

Book Review: From Counterculture to Cyberculture

2007-04-18T20:17:00.000-05:00

Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. University of Chicago Press, 2006.

In this book, Turner traces the evolution of the personal computer and the freewheeling Internet from its unlikely origins in buttoned-down Cold War cybernetics. His focus is on Stewart Brand, creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, CoEvolution Quarterly, the WELL and a force behind the influential magazine Wired. Prominent here too is the California counterculture which developed in the 1960’s and 1970’s and provided a seminal influence.

Turner suggests that this evolution is not merely technological—it was not simply the case that computers became smaller and thus more accessible. The origins of computing in a military-industrial setting and the development of small desktop computers might just as easily have led to computers as simply part of a repressive bureaucracy. The development of personal computers as instruments for flattening of hierarchies, removal of geographic barriers, creation of online “virtual”communities and the like are the result in part of a utopian Zeitgeist that can be linked to the counterculture of the 1960’s and 1970’s, and more specifically to the role of Stewart Brand as a figure who brought the counterculture to the world of computing. This development is intertwined as well with a collaborative interaction within the confines of military and scientific institutions—a culture exemplified by lab work at MIT and Stanford which also interrelated with Brand’s ideas and the processes he exemplified. It is with this evolution from idealistic counterculture to vibrant cyberculture that this book is concerned.

Turner gives the label “ New Communalism” to the utopian impulses that led both to the portion of the sixties counterculture which found its central text in the Whole Earth Catalog, and to the embrace of technology which found itself eventually at home in the 1990’s with some aspects of insurgent Republicanism. He suggests further that the values of the communal 1960’s utopian movement exemplified by Brand and his Whole Earth Catalog were not co-opted and distorted in later years by the forces of capitalism or the state as some believe, but rather became a part of the cyberculture of both creators and users of computers and new forms of computing.

The book opens with the defining computational metaphor as expressed by contemporary writers such as Esther Dyson, Perry Barlow (a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead and now an information technology journalist and pundit) and Kevin Kelly (former executive director of Wired magazine): digital technologies transcend the world of governments and restrictions, and are instead tools by which stultifying bureaucracies can be overthrown and new, flexible ways of living, working, and producing for a strong economy can be achieved. Yet, to the students of the Berkeley Free Speech movement in which these writers began and which provided the origin of the counterculture, cybernetics represented a militarized and menacing force antithetical to the longed-for new society. The students of the Berkely Free Speech movement of the 1960’s and their colleagues across the country sometimes demonstrated and protested using computerized punch cards as the emblem of a repressive society.

In spite of the 1960’s students’ perceptions, Turner suggests that the seemingly closed world of the military-industrial complex was not monolithic. Within that complex, beginning with the great collaborative research enterprises of World War II, could be found a computation subculture bound by, in anthropological terms, a “trading language” and a “legitimacy exchange” which facilitated border-crossing and group work by professionals from various backgrounds. At the same time, Norbert Wiener and his associates, pioneers of cybernetics and associated with the wartime computing effort, expressed an idea of human being as automated mechanical information processors but with an added, more benign idea of a system in which men and machines collaborated. Thus it seems, even in the founding metaphors of computing, there were possibilities for divergence in how computing was regarded, along with spaces in which computing work was boundary-spanning and non-hierarchical.

It was the youth culture of the 1960’s, emerging as it did as a reaction against the systems which included the computing of the time, which added the notion of a liberated egalitarian society and communal ideals. It was during this time that two youth movements emerged. One was political, as represented by the SDS and the civil rights struggle, which became the so-called New Left. The other, more inward-turning, embracing new ways of consciousness and relationships and accompanied by drugs and rock and roll music, became the “counterculture”. It is in this non-political, utopian stream that Turner places the countercultural origins of cyberculture in the New Communalism. It is here that Turner arrives at the central questions he hopes to answer: how did the systems visions of the cold war and the seemingly antithetical communitarian visions of the New Communalists become so entwined that, years later as the Internet evolved out of the Cold War systems, it could appear to many to be the New Communalist ideal reborn? Here, Turner suggests, is the pivotal role of Steward Brand as the node connecting these networks.

Brand’s own intellectual journey into the counterculture began as a Stanford student learning about the then-new system-oriented ecological theories of population biologist Paul Ehrlich. After college and military service, he found his way into the avant-garde arts scene in New York city. These artists were developing a countercultural artistic system which were labeled “happenings”—seemingly spontaneous, egalitarian, and participatory, combining lighting, drama, music, art and systems thinking along with Eastern mysticism and involving multidisciplinary collaboration in a workshop setting. These artists were steeped in the communication theories of Marshall McLuhan which celebrated new media and tribal social forms, and the ideals of futuristic technology of architect Buckminster Fuller. Indeed, Brand credited Fuller as the inspiration for the Whole Earth Catalog.

Migrating back to the West Coast, Brand became involved with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, who offered a model of an alternative community involving borderless and interrelated self, technology and community consciousness via drugs. As a result of this collaboration with Kesey, Brand became the entrepreneur of the wildly successful countercultural San Francisco Trips Festival—a multimedia event featuring an amalgam of technology in lighting, images,sound, dance and music. Turner suggests that it was this techno-social amalgamation which formed the beginning ot the fusion of New Communalist social ideals and technological products which had their origin in the Cold War.

Once the Festivals were over, Brand joined the countercultural Portola Institute, newly formed in Menlo Park, which served as a meeting place for counterculturalists, academics and technologists due to its location near both the Free University and the Stasnford Research Institute. It was in this setting that the idea began for a publication that would provide access to tools for those counterculturals who were moving to the country to start their own communities. In 1968 the first Whole Earth Catalog appeared, gathering together in a “single textual space” the countercultural worlds of art with those of technology and academia which by then, Brand could successfully span. Turner suggests that this space became a “network forum” – a place where these communities came together in a process which synthesized new intellectual frameworks and social networks. On the cover of the eclectic catalog, representing artifacts from all sides of Brand’s experiences, was a powerful new image of the whole Earth as seen from space. With its juxtaposition of categories such as “Communication”, Nomadics, “Shelter and Land Use. and artifacts ranging from Fuller’s geodesic domes to hammers to computers and calculators, Brand encouraged his readers to see the world as a single system and linked the New Communalism into a techno-biological system.

In the early 1970’s after the Whole Earth catalog ceased, Brand, by now comfortably well-off, moved back and forth between the counterculture and the new centers of computer research in an environment in which the computer industry, computer hobbyists, and counterculturalists lived next to one another and interacted freely. By this time, smaller computers were being developed and the Portola Institute continued to serve as a space where researchers and counterculturalists could meet. For computer researchers such as Alan Kay, who was working at Xerox Parc on small computers and graphical user interfaces, the Whole Earth Catalog embodied a vision of technology as a source of individual and technological transformation and its format was a kind of hyperlinked peer-to-peer information system which seemed like a model for what the new computers should become.

As the New Communal movement began to die out in the 1970’s Brand became interested in the ideas of Gregory Bateson, whose encounter with cybernetics had led to communication-based social theories. Bateson’s ideas provided much of the intellectual background to the CoEvolution Quarterly, which replaced the Whole Earth Catalog. Brand’s flair for networking and entrepreneurship and his role in inspiring small-computer pioneers continued in the 1980’s as he became enamored of the emerging hacker culture. Through his attendance at the seminal hacker conferences he became interested in software and engaged in the developing computer community. As he began to publish software-related catalogs and to involve himself more in the the countercultural aspects of the growing computer industry, his function as a link between the countercultural ideals and computing became more pronounced. As computing changed, he wanted to be part of it, but on the terms which had formed his life experiences. This led to the leap into formation of the WELL—the Whole Earth Lectronic Link—in 1985. On its surface a teleconferencing system like others at the time, its membership and governance brought together former counterculturalists, hackers and journalists who collaborated in a network forum that had been shaped by countercultural ideals.

As digital technology became networked and as the technology industry in the San Francisco Bay area burgeoned, the WELL became a “virtual community”and an electronic frontier” with roots in the ideals the formed the Whole Earth Catalog. It was to be a free, open-ended, self-governing community in cyberspace, in contrast to the information utilities such as Prodigy which were its competitors. The notion of a community of linked minds and a “gift” economy persisted and found resonance in a setting in which collaboration and community had been a fact of working life in many worlds of computer engineering all along. These formed the basis for the new “virtual community”. Members of this community began to publish their views of the virtual community in mainstream books and journals and these ideas began to flow into the larger culture.

In the 1980’s Brand began to look for new horizons and discovered MIT’s new Media Lab as well as the conferences and networks associated with this new media technology. As he met with the computer entrepreneurs of the developing new economy, he formed the Global Business Network, which continued some of the countercultural ideals but in an overlapping series of business, social , technological and informational networks. This networking led in time to the founding of Wired magazine by GBN members, and the alliance of techno-libertarians of the computer industry, former counterculturalists, and social conservatives of the New Right. Included in this mix were the ideals of a New Economy, the notion that twentieth-century economics and the twentieth-century bureaucracy had been left behind. By the time of the collapse of the dot-com bubble, the notions surrounding the social possibilities of computing and computer networking begun by Stewart Brand and his countercultural colleagues had become so ingrained with the New Communalist notions of tool use and indivual consciousness, that the dot-com collapse could not shake them. New Communalists had succeed in fusing a collaborative tradition found within the hierarchical military-industrial complex with their individualistic search for alternative communities. Coming as it did at the right place and the right time, propelled by a clever and entrepreneurial node in the network in the form of Stewart Brand, the ethos of New Communalism counterculture fused with a subculture of the military/industrial culture to form a vision and a practice of cyberspace that might otherwise have been—and indeed might still otherwise become—quite different.

This intriguing book has been well-reviewed, and rightly so. The author has successfully melded anthropological, historical, cultural, and a degree of spatial/geographical, insight into a convincing study of the impact of a countercultural movement which has been taken for dead or irrelevant in many circles. The notion of a clever, thoughtful, and entrepreneurial individual’s influence as a node in a network fits well into contemporary thinking and seems to be very relevant to Brand and his impact. However, from this book alone it is difficult to see what other streams of thought might have contributed to the development of the utopian ideal of digital culture. The impact of Tim Berners-Lee, the rise of the open access movement in the field of information, the open-source coding movement, the information superhighway ideals of Al Gore, the concerns about the Digital Divide, for instance, find no place in this consideration of digital utopianism. Although Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay form an important node in the digital network, this is not the only place where ideals of digital utopianism might be found. Did these other ideals have no impact on Brand or on the development of digital utopianism in the Bay area? Are New Communalism and scientific collaboration the only wellsprings of digital utopianism? It is to be hoped that this book will inspire other attempts to understand the utopian streams in the digital world; there are more waiting to be examined.

Guest Speaker: Gina Neff

2007-04-08T20:53:00.000-05:00

In her articles, Neff notes that personal innovation and creativity shaped the creation of the internet and cyberspace. She describes the earlier forms of cyberculture, as observed in the social networking of workers in New York City's Silicon Alley. All of Neff's articles represent a few of the many stages of the social history of information.

The Changing Place of Cultural Production: Locating Social Networks in a Digital Media Industry, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 597 (2005): 134-152.

Several scholars have suggested that networks increase workers' mobility within industries that rely on network forms of organization, and regional networks may substitute for types of workforce support that used to be found within organizations, such as internal labor markets, job training, and job security (137-8).

Silicon Alley's tech workers had the same job security as low-end service workers. Why was individual recognition and social networking so important to these workers that they were willing to tradeoff more traditional forms of support?

Regionally based networks encourage collaborative practices across and within organizations, help diffuse continually changing technical information, and build environments of innovation that provide positive economic externalities for firms and workers (138).

The dotcom crash signaled a re-development of the technical industry and corporate culture moved back to the foreground of the economy. Can creativity and an independent culture truly compete in a capitalistic market?

The parties and nightlife of Silicon Alley helped to constitute the production of the industry, not the other way around (140).

What other forms of networking have emerged among tech workers that have shaped our understanding of new media?

Entrepreneurial Labor among Cultural Producers: “Cool” Jobs in “Hot” Industries, Social Semiotics, 15 (2005): 307-334, with Elizabeth Wissinger & Sharon Zukin.

An unappreciated dimension of the impact of one relatively small sector of the overall economy is that work in culture industries has cultural value: the industry is "hot," and the jobs are "cool" (310).

What is it about these new media jobs that makes them so alluring and why are workers so willing to take risks in order to achieve such a position? What are the tradeoffs for "cool" jobs? Who ultimately benefits from such risk-taking: corporations or workers?

Permanently Beta: Responsive Organization in the Internet Era, in Philip Howard and Steve Jones, eds., Society Online: The Internet in Context, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003, pp 173–188, with David Stark.

Permanently beta would be a product that never leaves the test phase. The internet makes it possible to distribute products that are continually updateable and almost infinitely customizable-- products that, in effect, never leave a type of beta phase (177).

What shift in cultural values accompanied the commercialization of the internet?

Education for technology labor

2007-03-26T19:08:00.000-05:00

Two readings this week, broadly speaking, consider the racialized science of management. In “The Anxious Engineer,” Amy Slaton explores how the seemingly value-neutral field of engineering, one of many educational enterprises, is related to strengthening or correcting social stratifications. If engineering schools can strengthen or weaken social stratifications, they are not only educational institutions, but also centers of social business in which minority inclusion – or exclusion – is carried out. Two cases – the University of Illinois and Prairie View University’s Center for Applied Radiation Research (CARR) – exemplify this point. Though the University of Illinois accepted minority students – African-Americans and Latinos – based on the idea of educational equity, the school hesitated to provide remedial coursework for those minority students with insufficient math skills. Thus, though the school lowered entrance standards, it did not couple this measure with corresponding changes in curriculum, consequently resulting in the exclusion of minority students from the field of engineering. In contrast, CARR produced increasing numbers of minority PhD students in the engineering field, supported by NASA’s flexible definition of productivity.

In “The Work of Corporate Culture,” Avery Gordon explores the racialized science of management in corporative settings, focusing on its ahistorical framing of race and gender issues. At base, Gordon situates the issue of diversity management in the context of the changing social contracts of the 20th century, in which the function of the state is transferred to private enterprise as a result of the development of capitalism. Diversity management in corporations is, in essence, “capitalist management,” in which maximizing profit is the only goal. In this context, Gordon argues, diversity management “upholds and defends systems that produce racializing effects,” though it rejects discrimination on the basis of race or color. He calls this new type of management “liberal racism,” which is an “antiracist attitude that coexists with support for racist outcomes” (p. 17). However, he does not specify or give the evidence of “racist outcomes” in corporations. It seems that he focuses more on ‘who’ manages for ‘what’, and what is maintained by diversity management, than on what they manage. Thus, it appears that his distrust of the managerialism on which hegemonic blocks lean in order to maintain their social status leads him to further suspicion of one of managerialism’s variations, i.e., diversity management.

Discussion questions

1. Amy Slaton appears to argue that racial inclusion (i.e., equity) should be seriously considered in the production of even high-tech engineers. Do you agree with her argument? If you were in a position to screen students applying to engineering school, which criteria would you give more weight – race and gender or skills required and background knowledge?

2. Is education’s primary social function to maintain the status quo (functioning as one of the ideological apparatuses as Louis Althusser argued) or to reform society? Engineering education is somewhat related to the distribution of technology. If this distribution excludes certain social groups and in doing so perpetuates social stratification, technology is also somewhat related to solidification of the status quo. Is the purpose of technology to maintain social structure or to transform it (as exemplified in the digital divide debate)?

3. If the establishment of a classification system implicates serious political concerns as Geoffrey Bowker argued, removal of a certain classification system must include political dimensions as well. Do you find any removal of an existing classification system in diversity management? If so, what is the political implication of such a removal?

4. It appears that ‘effectiveness’ governs the development of any technology. What other factors can we identify in the development of technology according to Amy Slaton’s article?

Thoughts and Questions for Tuesday

2007-03-18T17:05:00.000-05:00

Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, Sorting Things Out

Thoughts and questions for Tuesday’s class.

This very rich and deep book invites readers to consider the infrastructures of information—the often invisible or unexamined structures of categorization and classification that underlie and affect many aspects of the perceived world and its participants. The authors use as their examples the classification of diseases and mortality, of nursing practice, and of race, drawing out the impact of classification not only upon individuals and populations, but also the conflicts and changes that arise when classifications extend across various groups, and the role of classification in the development of a profession such as nursing. They note the tensions in classification at the sites of conflict in medicine and society, such as AIDS, abortion and stillbirth. They touch as well upon the importance of classification in remembering/forgetting, and in the interstices, silences, and human cost when classifications fail.

The authors suggest that classification is part of a “built moral environment”—here is what struck me as the core of the argument : “The importance lies in a fundamental rethinking of the nature of information systems. We need to recognize that all information systems are necessarily infused with ethical and political values, modulated by local administrative procedures. These systems are active creators of categories in the world as well as simulators of existing categories”……

Questions: How are information systems infused with values? Where do these values come from? What is the interplay between administrative procedures and values? Can we relate this interrelationship to any of the other reading we have done so far, such as the development of information technology before the computer? Or the development of contemporary information technology? What kind of role do information work and workers play in this “built moral environment.”

On a more mundane level, Bowker and Star offer a definition of categorization/classification that we might want to examine: In relation to developing their analysis of classifications as a co-construction of nature and society, they distinguish between prototype and Aristotelian classifications. Prototype classifications are fuzzy, involving a broad picture, and they involve extensions by metaphor and analogy as we try to decide if something is part of this classification. Aristotelian classification works according to a binary set of characteristics that the object being classified either possess or does not possess.

Questions: how important/ useful are these distinctions? Do these differences alter or affect the idea of classification as part of a built moral environment? Can we provide examples of these distinctions beyond those provided by Bowker and Star? If so, can we describe a co-creation such as that suggested by Bowker and Star?

Well, that is a beginning.. add more if you'd like to. Barbara

From Betamax to Blockbuster

2007-03-04T22:55:00.000-06:00

The tool, The Artisans, and The Invisible Hand of the Market.

Greenberg tells the story of how the mediators — film lovers, VCR aficionados, and the business that they helped shape — often considered passive actors in the realm of technological development, played a major role in the story of the video business. The title itself, very succinct and meaningful, points to where everything started and what it became.

There are several questions that come up from reading Greenberg's book. Most interestingly, we have already discussed many of them in our previous meetings, although under different perspectives. In a way, "From Betamax to Blockbuster" illustrates what we have otherwise discussed in a theoretical perspective. I have particularly focused in some aspects that relate to our previous discussions. For instance:

1. In the introduction, the author mentions some of the theories of mass communication and what they focused on. Later, he points out that "if we are to take the perspective that the history of a technology is essentially the history of knowledge-production about that technology, then it seems natural to look not merely at its producers and consumers, but at the spaces in between them through which such knowledge is mediated." (p. 9) How does this relate to the spaces defined by Castells? To what extent is the action happening in such spaces able to cause change and affect the decision-making process in the two different poles of the process?

2. Talking about the video rental stores, Greenberg starts by quoting Oldenburg's "Third Spaces" definition. He goes on to say that "over time, video stores became known as repositories of film knowledge, and at moments video clerks found themselves in the role of reference librarians" (p. 149) Were they the same as the 'guilds'? Was their strategic position as intermediators not only of the content (the movies) but also the technology something that would give them a special status in that segment of the society? (Greenberg has his view of this, but what do you think?)

3. "Having moved from a view of the history of technology that is about the production of artifacts to one that focuses on the production of knowledge about the nature and use of those artifacts (essentially studying ideas rather than things per se), the question of whom should figure as protagonists becomes problematic. One response shared by many sociologists of technology is that we should focus on 'relevant social groups,' those groups of social actors (bound together by a common identity) who have the skills and credibility to define the cultural meanings of a technology." (p. 8) How does that relate to the idea that "technology is socially shaped"? (p. 50 of Modernity and Technology) Can you think of some products that were initially designed for one thing and ended up becoming something completely different? Bring examples of such products and their respective turning points to the discussion!

Videophiles: an example of pre-internet community?

4. About the videophiles: "...usually male, 21 to 39 years old, often single (because they spend so much time with their machines they have little time left to be sociable), rarely look the way they sound on the phone, rarely sound the way they write…are hospitable, trustworthy, generally reliable, and all have enormous telephone bills!" (p.28). Any similarities to the web addicts of our days? Differences? What do you think fuel the differences?

5. The videophile community: "Ultimately, there was only so much that an individual videophile could tape on his or her own, and video enthusiasts quickly realized that their results would be far better if they pooled their efforts."
(p. 33) Also: "As a social practice, the general protocol for trading was straightforward whether in person or by mail (…). Thewhole system was held together by good will..." (p. 37) What are the similarities between their community and those of AOL? What are the main aspects that make this community different from the virtual ones?

Although these questions are based in the chapters assigned for this week, I would wholeheartedly recommend reading through the book. It's the result of a thorough investigation of the story of the VCR and the social events that surrounded it, told as one would tell a love story, regardless of the ending. (That's my opinion, feel free to comment/disagree/etc)

Discussion for Jim Cortada Week

2007-02-25T09:50:00.000-06:00

To recap, the James Cortada articles for this week discussed the integration of the computer chip and the computer in the United States as well as the effect this had on the country in the latter half of the 20^th century. Additionally, the two readings related to The Digital Hand: How Information Technology Changed the Way Industries Worked in the United States discussed the impact of the computer, the computer chip, and related technologies on industry and society.

Progenitors of the information age: The development of chips and computers

Cortada looks at the development of the transistor and the integrated circuit as being an important lens to understand the United States from the 1940s to present. His chapter begins with AT&T sharing the rights and knowledge to create transistors and moves on to a discussion about how this has effected and changed (or not changed) the United States in both the government and industrial sector.

An interesting section of this chapter ties in with our past discussion of Chris Benner’s Computers in the Wild. Cortada mentions that an important component of chip development was the proximity of developers working together, the idea that ‘everyone knew everyone else,’ and their ability to move from job to job without physically relocating. He then goes on to state that the industry burgeoned and expanded rapidly to the rest of the country from its initial foundations.

Q. Does this add more or less credibility to Benner’s thoughts on Guilds and Professional Organizations as New Unionism? Is it possible that the ‘guilds’ are a transitory entity in an undeveloped industry?

Cortada ends his chapter with a passage about American ideology and technological growth.

Computers are central to a reformed world.
Improved computers can help reform society even more.
More computers are better than few; there are no limits to how much is good.
Nobody loses, everyone wins; in the worst case, it is neutral or apolitical.
Those who resist computerization are hostile to social reforms.

Q. How accurate is Cortada’s depiction of this American ideology? If accurate, how does this effect decision making in industry, government, and at the academic level? What could be some of the possible negative effects of following this ideology?

Chapter 9 of the Digital Hand: Digital Applications in Higher Education

Cortada describes the applications of IT in administration, teaching, research, and libraries. He states that IT has had marginally less effect on academia than in industry and government even though the academic community has invested major time and effort into their IT infrastructures.

Q. Cortada quotes a university professor as saying “the problem is that the academic culture and the IT culture simply do not mix together well.” What are some examples of this? Is this an accurate statement?

Q. Cortada mentions that research is the main area where IT has dramatically changed academic life. He also states that science and engineering are heavily funded and that new disciplines, like bioinformatics, were in part shaped by the new access to technology. How has the type of research that IT encourages effected the way that we look at our world? When problems are simply 'atomized' by the binary logic of computer chips, what does this mean for scholars with a more holistic approach to research?

Q. According to Cortada, librarians have embraced “every new form of information technology that came along.” In Cortada's discussion of industry, being the first adopter of a new technology has had added benefits for competition. Is the same true for libraries and academia? By adopting new technologies, have libraries and librarians given themselves an advantage similar to the early adopters in industry?

Q. Cortada argues that IT has not fundamentally changed academia at the institutional level. Can we think of examples or instances where this might not be an accurate statement? Has IT only been used as a tool to support the underlying structure of academia?

The Digital Hand: How Information Technology Changed the Way Industries Worked in the United States

In this overview of The Digital Hand, Cortada discusses the research questions he was trying to answer as well as key findings. He also discusses how he acquired his archival materials and his research methods.

Q. The idea of a 'tribal' firm is discussed and is used as an organizing principle of the book. What exactly is a 'tribal' firm? How do these tribes come into existence, and what impact does this have on the way that individuals view industry and individual firms?

Q. Standardization and regulation are central themes in the book. How does standardization effect entry into industries, and how does this hinder or help competition? Relatedly, Cortada speaks of the competitive advantage of being the first adapter of a technology. If standardization is key to IT in industry, does the early adapters have the ability to create a standard that will allow them to wield power over industry in the future?

Q. Finally, Cortada states that he is surprised that flows are more important to understanding industry than the technical aspects of the technology themselves. How does this relate to our past discussions, especially pertaining to Manuel Castells? What does this mean for our previous discussion about defining technologies?

Podcasts and a photo now on our web site

2007-02-21T15:57:00.000-06:00

Check out the hastily-edited podcasts of Nathan's interview (thanks, Anna) and public talk, posted to the regular course web site under the entry for his week. Should be accessible to anyone within the UW-Madison network, or who uses a UW-Madison netid login remotely.

Chess Players, Music-lovers, and Mathematicians

2007-02-20T07:28:00.000-06:00

Finding a way to pigeon-hole programmers into a set of questions and personality tests to weed out other perhaps better programers speaks to a way of narrowing a new field. By doing this these hiring companies/government can exclude otherwise perfectly qualified people i.e. women in this field. THe other interesting section aside from programmers finding their 'place' in this field (professional or technical?) is the struggle between theory at the university and the technical schools that had popped up in this emmerging field. How is this struggle still playing out in the field?
Also when I was reading this chapter I was thinking of my programmer friends, all composers or musicians, highly creative and they all complain about their colleauges lack of social skills.

Labor of Computer Programming

2007-02-18T19:25:00.000-06:00

Questions for discussion:

Historicizing the labor of computer programming, Nathan Ensmenger traces a power struggle between programmers, who occupy a new category of information labor in the 1950s, and the corporate structures of organizational management that were transformed with the introduction of electronic digital computers. He explores a number of key issues and concerns, such as:

The conflict between craft-centered practices of programmers and the “scientifically” oriented management techniques of their corporate managers
The changing visions of computing that helped transform computers from calculators to business machines, and the necessary labor requirements needed for this transformation to take place
The struggle over occupational categories (programming is considered at different moments clerical, analytical, technical, creative, and [potentially] professional) and how this affects the balance of power in corporate organizational structures
The construction of the “software crisis”—in terms of personnel problems, highly publicized software disasters, and difficulty recruiting “quality” programmers (itself an elusive characteristic)—as a development that prompted the re-negotiation of the computer programmers proper place in corporate and professional hierarchies
The role of professionalization in attempting to solidify job security, professional status, and authority for programmers (and interestingly adopted by managers as well, who embraced this as a business-like perspective on the computer skills market)
The lengthy debates and techniques concerning how to identify which aptitudes were essential to good programming and “high quality individuals”

With these in mind, I put together a few questions for our discussion this week (a challenging task considering that Prof. Ensmenger will be joining us). Hopefully these will get our conversation going:

1. Creative Labor vs. Information Labor

Q: One of the key cultural stereotypes that emerged with the computer programmer was an emphasis on individual creativity. “Creative work… just cannot be managed,” one report concluded. What are some characteristics that distinguish creative labor from information labor? How are they different, or in what ways is there some overlap? What are the implications of this distinction for studying information workers?

Creative labor is a kind of information work… but is it (or should it be) treated as a different beast entirely?

And a question I would be interested in asking Prof. Ensmenger: how do these struggles and categorizations of labor impact the types of programs that are created? Is there a dominant programming aesthetic that emerges in different historical moments in response to power shifts within organizational structures?

2. Role of Occupational Categories and Occupational Identity

Q: Ensmenger describes early demarcations between coders (clerical work that requires little conscientious precision) and programmers (analytical work that implies a higher level of thinking and management), but then explains how these boundaries were eroded over time. Programmers, he explains, are neither laborers nor professionals; they defy occupational categorization. How do different groups use occupational categories as a way to jockey for power within organizational structures? Why does Ensmenger find it most useful to think about the computer programmer as a technician? How does gender figure into these analytic categories?

3. Historicizing the Labor of Computer Programming and Software

Q: The IRSH reading begins by pointing out that computer programmers represent a perplexing problem for historians because we know so little about who they were, where they came from, or what their daily work lives were like. Compared with the detailed letters, documents, and public records that Rosenhaft was able to draw on in her account of Anton Dies, computer programmers of the 1950s are made visible in Ensmenger’s account largely through the management literature which is very critical of the authority and power that programmers were able to command. What kind of methodological challenges does this pose in trying to understand the labor of programming from the perspective of those workers? How does this color the kind of narratives that get produced? How can historians best cope with these gaps? Are there any unconventional sources that we might be able to turn to in order to get a sense of these missing voices and perspectives?

4. Micro, Macro, Meso Revisited

Q: Is this a meso analysis? (a la Paul Edwards in his essay “Infrastructure and Modernity”). How might Ensmenger’s accounts of the labor of programming be critiqued from the perspectives introduced in Modernity and Technology? Can the notion of infrastructure be used to understand these developments, and if so, how?

2007-02-12T12:29:00.000-06:00

Uncovering Labor in Information Revolutions

Introduction

Aad Blok begins our analyses of information revolutions by calling our attention to an often overlooked factor with ICT study: labor. Research and literature usually focus on the “information” or the “technology” sides of the revolution, while the work implicated within such phenomena goes unnoticed (with the exception of notable innovators or inventors).

Therefore Blok and Downey take labor to be the unit of analysis within information revolutions and propose three framing questions:

what is the role and position of labor within the information revolution?
what are the implications of these IT revolutions for labor?
how have the spatial and temporal divisions of labor changed with temporal and spatial changes in capitalism enabled by technology, particularly with regard to globalization?

Within these questions we can see the influence of an STS approach that emphasizes the mutual shaping of labor and information technology. It is not a one-directional process of cause and effect.

Hands and Minds: Clerical Work in the First “Information Society”

Rosenhalf tells the story of eighteenth-century German clerical workers whose labor is qualitatively affected by an increase in the amount of required data processing. In these cases, workers experienced great mental stress and physical injury as they struggled to keep up with the growing number of pension cases. The troubling aspect from a Marxist perspective is that they were given no additional compensation for the demand of greater work productivity.

Q: Is this a classic case of capital-labor exploitation? In what ways would advances in technology at the time mitigated this exploitation?

If we consider the relationship between labor, technology, and information in the case of the pension clerks, we can see how an increase in information processes outstripped both the labor and technology of the time. As a reader on the edge of my seat, I cry out, “Oh, won’t someone please give poor Anton Dies a copy of Microsoft Xcel to help him make his calculations!?!”

Q: How may the need brought about by increased information processes driven the technological developments that led to such accounting software?

ICT, Containerization and International Shipping Labour

Sampson and Wu bring us into international shipping to consider the ways in which advances in technology have changed the work of various sectors of industry. Being driven by the capitalist logic of efficiency and productivity, the implementation of new technologies throughout the industry has speeded up many processes. This is a mixed blessing, however. While this may mean less time adrift at sea for sailors, it also means less time anchored in port. The authors also cite examples of changes in the social relations of production, such as in the Tetra terminal where dock workers no longer interact with sea staff. Furthermore, the analysis shows how innovation and technology do not necessarily change privilege along lines of division of labor, as in the case of only certain crew members having access to Internet aboard the ships and wealthier crew mates being less negatively affected by the distance from port to city center.

Q: Throughout the discussion, we read of instances and fears of machines taking away or deskilling jobs, making the work more mundane. Are these not the echoes of Marx’s theory whereby the cycles of innovation contribute to increased alienation of workers (eventually leading to the rise of consciousness)?

Q: While interesting and poignant, does Sampson and Wu’s article err toward a more technological determinist description of these processes? It is clear that innovation and technology “impact” the shipping industry in a number of ways. But in what way is the design, use, and interpretation of these innovations shaped by the people working with them? Where is the “interpretive flexibility” within these technologies?

Unionism in the Information Revolution

Benner discusses of the formation of “guilds” within Silicon Valley’s high-tech industry. He describes the formation of new cooperatives of skilled technology workers organizing to share knowledge and strengthen their collective position in a quickly changing labor market. The distinct nature of IT work in this time and place calls for arrangements between workers that professional organizations and unions can not facilitate. The guilds offer an alternative, though remain isolated and less powerful than their counterparts.

Q: How are these guilds different than other online communities of IT enthusiasts, other than that the people actually meet in person? What is the significance of actually meeting together, versus simply web blogging and chatting?

Q: How can such guilds begin to build alliances and strengthen their position within the workforce?

The Case of America Online Volunteers

Postigo writes about the AOL volunteers who helped pioneer America’s introduction to cyberspace, and their spiteful abandonment by the company. This article raises an interesting notion of work being multidimensional and including volunteerism, leisure, and hobbies. The lines between work and these other practices blur within the case of the web and cyberspace, as people engage with the Internet out of fascination and an ethic of knowledge sharing and technical development. Of course, this story has an unhappy ending when corporate need for profitability helps reify a distinction between work (paid, official, and sanctioned) and non-work (denied access and then invisible).

Q: The ethic of volunteerism and knowledge sharing continues strongly on the Internet through the Open Source movement and many useful websites and blogs. Is it inimical to this movement for AOL volunteers to be leveling a lawsuit that may undermine the value of these underlying principles at the expense of more material work-value ideology?

The Place of Labor and Information-Technology Revolutions

Downey reiterates our need to consider labor as a unit of analysis in IT revolutions before problematizing our conception of “revolution” by considering a historical account of various advancements in technology (some of which had far-reaching effects for capitalism and globalization, while others did not). He then challenges some normative assumptions about IT and labor. (note: do people really wonder why the Internet didn’t make work more efficient? Have they seen Google Earth!? I haven’t gotten any work done since it was released …).

Downey goes on to offer 4 dialectical themes that may facilitate making labor more visible within our analyses and discussions of ICT revolutions. He ends with the hope that critical historical narratives will help the history of IT inform societal change.

Q: How to define a revolution? Does it need to fundamentally alter the structure of society or the economy? On a time-scale, at what point does an evolution become a revolution? How fast does it need to happen? If, as Harvey suggests, we’re experiencing a time-space compression, is today’s evolution yesterday’s revolution?

Q: How does a geographic awareness (of space/time transformations, for example) enhance our understandings of ICTs? Why are geographers so awesome?

Q: Why do historians dislike normative assumptions? Is there any room within historical analysis for normative statements at all, and if not, is that a disconnect between historiography and the situated epistemologies of particular identities and movements that are invested in politics?

Citation for Castells article available electronically in MadCat

2007-02-07T12:56:00.000-06:00

Castells, Manuel. "Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society," British Journal of Sociology 51/1(January/March 2000): 5-24.

This is a convenient summary of Castells' argument in the trilogy.

Discussion questions for Stalder on Castells

2007-02-05T11:24:00.000-06:00

I have difficulty creating open-ended questions, having been trained to analyze the language of arguments and make counter-arguments.

So here I'm just marching through the Stalder text with my marginal notes and extracting the questions that occurred to me as I was reading.

For Castells political background, to supplement what Stalder says, I would look at Feenberg, Andrew. When poetry ruled the streets : the French May events of 1968 / Andrew Feenberg and Jim Freedman ; with a foreword by Douglas Kellner. Albany, N.Y. : State University of New York Press, c2001.

Feenberg is one of the editors of the Modernity and Technology anthology we read for last week, and was living in France in 1968.

One of Castells' colleagues and later antagonists, the French Marxist Henri Lefebvre, is mentioned several times in Stalder's work. I would recommend taking a look at his list of books (including a work translated as The production of space) and some of his background to get an idea of what Castells is revolting against.

1. Does the organization of Stalder's exposition of Castells make sense theoretically?

Both Castells and Stalder use the word Theory pretty freely for what feels like enlightened speculation about social structure. So they have to bring a scientific organization and/or vocabulary to bear in order to make their theory sufficiently theoretical. The problem with this is that the quasi-scientific exposition is confined to the last two chapters, while one would expect it at the beginning if it is important to framing their arguments. I like the foregrounding of the context of Castells' ideas and Stalder's critique, but if the theoretical concepts are secondary to the argument, what is really going on with them (either the concepts or Stalder and Castells)?

2. From p. 7 of Stalder, a good question, "why does this transformation from hierarchies to networks as the dominant form of social organization matter so much?"

I think it does matter, but is this question answered adequately by Stalder as he introduces the network concept? Why does Stalder present in chapter 6 a long digression about networks in biology and markets while he ignores the obvious origin of networks in theory about computing and information (Cybernetics, Information Theory)?

Is faith in the "organic" nature or quality of networks justified? If networks are "organic" does that make them more, or less, beneficial?

3. From p. 39, Castells is quoted as follows, "I believe that knowledge should precede action, and action is always specific to a given context and a given purpose." This belief should be debated. What happens to experiment, either empirical or in thought, if we act only on our knowledge? (Language elsewhere in the book shows that at least Stalder acknowledges that knowledge can be and is created.)

4. About the "Network Enterprise," (p. 55): Stalder describes the emergence in the 1980s of a new type of business organization "in the West," "less hierarchical, more modular, and thus much more flexible." Is this mythology or a fact-based statement?

I don't dispute that there are flatter organizations in the economy in the last 25 years, but I'm struck more by the almost prophetic language used. Out of the West, out of the East: these are images with powerful cultural resonance.

The analysis on pp. 58-59 is helpful. Why isn't the term "outsourcing," (for project organization or organization by project) used?

5. Key point on p. 61: the belief that the logic of networks, where the players are roughly equal, will prevail over the attempt of any single player at a node to assert authority over the players at the other nodes. Can we find examples of this? How could this observation support either reorganization of work or organization by employees within the workplace?

6. PP. 77-81: how about the characterization of social movements as significant due to their mere existence, and irreducible, or without any basis in society? If they are without origin or any reason to exist, then are they different from soccer hooligans, and how would that be?

7. There seems to be a conflict between the idea of diffused power in a network, seen overall as a good thing, and the cultural conservatism of the remark (p. 102), "the more we select our personal hypertext, under the conditions of a networked social structure and individualized cultural expression, the greater the obstacles to finding a common language, thus common meaning." Is the problem to maintain a common language, thus a common meaning, or to get rid of the notion of "commonness" and to create new language and new meaning?

(The composer Ken Gaburo (d. 1993) had a nice performance piece called Commonness and other conceptual dysfunctions.)

8. P. 109, et al.: what is the relationship between the movement beginning in the late 18th century that Stalder and Castells call "liberal democracy" and the concept of the "State"?

9. P. 179: there is an unexplored distinction between "collective" as a disorganized mass at one node and the network. Isn't a network potentially a different kind of collective?

The term collective brings to mind marching hordes out of the 1930s, but I question if "the masses" can really said to be a collective, in the sense that the collective since the 1840s has been seen as an agent with the potential to bring about desirable social change. My mystical bias tells me that actors working in parallel and connected by a network may be more effective in bringing about change and thus closer to a true collective. Castells' example of the WTO/G7 protests indicates this, but neither Stalder nor apparently Castells actually say this.

10. I'm disturbed by the threads of conservatism, pessimism, even helplessness running through Castells' thought, at least in the period 1996-2000 when the first version of the three volume work was created. Stalder says (p. 193), "major social movements...do not really represent anyone"--the late Mayor Richard J. Daley could not have put it better. Yet Castells sees the sole social transformative potential in contemporary society precisely in these movements.

I looked at the conclusion of Castells' vol. 3, "End of millennium." In the "Finale" he makes an emotional plea for non-ideological, collective problem solving based on the personal experiences of all of us. His sincerity is convincing, but he utters some troubling, Rodney-King-like phrases, for example, "if business will assume its social responsibility; if the media become the messengers, not the message...." in projecting how world problems might be addressed.

Each of us has to answer personally the question of "what needs to be done," a question posed by various Russian 19th century thinkers, later by Lenin, and by Castells at the end of "End of millennium"--my hope is that some of the analysis we read this semester will give indications of positive directions out of the current situation. Can we talk about what those might be, based on this reading?

Which modernity and which technology?

2007-01-30T01:40:00.000-06:00

First, I am still struggling to define 'technology'. If I take the broad term so as to match the equally broad concept of 'modernity', technology could encompass all the mechanical inventions plus the social systems of communication, management, governance among others. But then, anything systematically constructed could be called technology which would make the definition too broad. Brey's notion of the micro-macro levels should not be applied to the social phenomenon only, but also the scope of technology (e.g. telecommunication technology in overall, or simply SMS). And in both areas, the various levels intersect and interact.

In this sense, one thing that can be easily overlooked is that it's not the broad terms of technology per se that characterized modernity, but the way some specific technologies were utilized. Murata's piece partly implies this subject by comparing modernization of Japan and China, but in most other chapters it is rather untouched. What specific forms of modernity has chosen to utilize some specific technologies while ruling out the others? It gets even more complicated if we take into account that there is not a single modernity, however broad we may want to define it. For example, there are huge differences between the 'Western' modernity that resulted from the Renaissance, enlightenment and capitalistic developments and the forced Westernization of the other parts of the world (Which again differs significantly among them). This notion is important not only in the philosophical sense, but that the social construction and values can differ. Different forms of values and labor relationships take place, and it inevitably results in different choice of technologies in each society or different use patterns of the same technology. Thus, I think the contextualization is the most crucial step that should be present when exploring into the interaction of technology in the modern life.

PS. Weren't we supposed to keep our personal blogs (e.g. http://nkim3.blogspot.com/) for the reading notes, instead of posting it here? Well... in fact, for comments and feedbacks, it looks better this way.

Modernity and Technology

2007-01-30T00:00:00.001-06:00

It sounds quite strange that there exists a ‘gap’ between modernity theory and technology studies. Even authors of this week say that the gap can be bridged. Can we imagine modern world without technology? It is not possible according to our daily experience of life-world. Modern life begins with modern experience, whatever it may be, and the modern experience occurs when we encounter modern technology, such as ipod. However, modernity ‘theory’ and technology ‘studies’ cannot be explained solely based on our daily experience. According to readings, the definition of ‘modern’ and ‘modernity’ are extremely diverse, so that one can never confine modernity in a single perspective. For this reason, Misa urges readers to understand the fact that “the concepts of technology and modernity have a complex and tangled history” (p.5). Since the concepts of modernity and technology have not been clearly established, even making a link between these concepts produce more complex theoretical problems: linearity in the concept of modernity cannot be applied to multi-directional evolution of technology. Here is the irony: Linearity that characterizes modernity cannot be applied to technology on which modernity is based on. However, isn’t linearity in modernity refers to the operational principle of modernity, not the evolutionary process of it? And does linearity of technology still play a crucial role in the logic of technology’s operation, though not in the evolutionary path of technology? It seems that linearity in both area – modernity and technology – refers to totally different things.

Modernity and Technology

2007-01-29T21:06:00.000-06:00

This was an interesting read, but I can't help but wonder if the authors of these articles would still agree with many of their writings. I suppose they would, but perhaps further clarification and social history would help to elaborate their arguments. As with many of my fellow classmates, I felt that this anthology too heavily relied on theory and lacked much substance. Misa comments: "It is important to understand the contextual dynamics of the development of new technologies and their actual embedding in society" (370). However, I felt that this set of articles would have benefitted from empirical studies and sociology, with much less philosophy (as Electra et. all have posted previously).

2007-01-29T17:42:00.000-06:00

I am really struggling with this reading. My background is in ecology and botany so a lot of this is new territory for me. I guess an easy discussion question from the readings is do we live in a modern or post-modern society? Also I don't really understand the lack of empirical study involved in a lot of this theory. Is it just not possible or how did it stray from the research? I am excited to hear how others did with this reading and how y'all interpreted it.

30 January 2007 post, Modernity and Technology

2007-01-29T13:25:00.000-06:00

The primary goal of these authors is to establish the reciprocal relationship between Modernity and Technology as a legitimate object of study, which fits with the original context of the papers, a conference in the Netherlands in 1999. So they are selling "Modernity and Technology." It's always good to read the fine print of any offer, so I found the conclusion by Rip to be more helpful than the four introductory papers in explaining what they were about with this collection. For me, the undercurrent might be called "post-relevance," because either they assume that things are pretty OK in today's world, or they wish the target audience (Deans? Potential funders of interdisciplinary programs?) to think that they think things are OK.

Some thoughts about Modernity vs. Modernism vs. the Modern as engaged in the book.

For us to perceive ourselves as Modern, we have to have consciousness of a history distinct from the present day. The present has to be seen as tangibly different from the past. Once a culture has embraced the consciousness of history, there is no going back, as the post-historians (Francis Fukuyama) are starting to acknowledge.

Modernity seems to be more global than "the Modern"; that is, Modernity includes up-to-date-ness, hipness, currency, attractiveness, glamor. How could there be a Post-"modernity"; who wouldn't want all these good things?

As for Modernism as a cultural or artistic movement, the identification of the Modern movement as a formalist reaction against Realism (Brey, p. 36) is wrong: modern art including abstraction began with Realism and incorporates its conventions. Realism is still the dominant way of representing reality in popular culture. In familiar parlance, it is convenient to identify Modernism in art with the period 1905-1975, with its peak in the 1920s and 1930s. The problem with this usage is that the culture, especially the popular culture of the '20s and '30s displayed all the characteristics-(p. 44:) "consumerism, commodification, the simulation of knowledge and experience...." that Brey identifies with the post-modern.

Rip acknowledges that the offer of Modernity as a topic is deliberately misleading; the real issue is whether technology is playing a modernizing role, that is, is helping to improve the quality of life in contemporary society.

Where the authors become vague is in identifying the controlling hand of technology. As Brey and Feenberg have it, that is a space for theory. I was happy to see that Feenberg touches on the conflict between operationalism and any issue that might lead to opposition. In this space between theory and a systems approach there does not appear to be much room for political action.

The distance learning issue is one we need to discuss in class. For those who are working or plan to work in libraries, you may find your institution depending for support on maintaining a distance learning program of some kind.

Discussion topics for the Modernity and Technology Reading

2007-01-29T09:22:00.000-06:00

Sorry, I guess this is late. I don't know why I had written in my notes that the topics/questions for discussion needed to be posted only 24 hours in advance . . . Anyways, this reading was oh-so-much more theoretical than I ever imagined. I think I must have increased my vocabulary by 50% by chapter 4. I hope the topics I came up with make sense - I noticed that most of the posts from the previous class were phrased as questions, but I couldn't seem to put these ideas into a question format. See you in class tomorrow!

Topic 1: Information Labor and Online Education

I thought that the section in chapter 3 dealing specifically with online education presented an interesting contrast to the documentary we watched during our last session. For the manual laborers who form the groundwork of our “information economy,” work conditions seem to be of greater concern that the number of jobs available due to the high demand for inexpensive manual labor. Chapter 3 presented, however briefly, a perspective from another professional group whose future employment may well be seriously affected by the evolution of different consumer technologies: educators.

The “faculty resistance to proposals for automated online learning” in the “name of human values,” addressed by Feenberg, highlights the fact that the current technological demands of contemporary society still rely on large quantities of inexpensive manual labor while threatening positions that, for lack of a better word, I will refer to as “intellectual” here, such as teachers, librarians, salespeople, etc. While technologies that make a fully-independent education possible (online, interacitve lessons, self-study distance courses, etc) might also make education more widely available and less expensive, educators question the value of a completely impersonal education process. However, given that their jobs may be at stake, how valuable is their opinion that these automated learning tools cannot replace classroom teaching? And could they create setbacks in the future of education with their concern for the future of their profession?

Topic 2: Micro & Macro versus Theoretical & Empirical

Throughout the readings, it seemed to me that the authors argued that the tension between the abstract and the applied, or the theoretical and the empirical, presented one of the more significant obstacles to progress in modernity and technology studies. The issue of combining macro- versus micro- is also cited as a great challenge to the field. For myself, I am not sure that I understand how this dichotomy presents a greater obstacle for modernity and technology studies than for any other discipline that involves the need to combine different levels of analysis across various fields. Perhaps it is a result of my liberal arts background, but I find it difficult to consider that any subject can be investigated comprehensively without including aspects of other areas or disciplines. Consequently, many of the authors’ proposals seemed somewhat obvious to me. For example, the idea of modernity and technology being entwined in a complex co-constructive relationship (without origin, as stated in Chapter 3 under the heading of Instrumentalization Theory on p.95) seemed self-evident, making me wonder whether or not I entirely understood the purpose of the author’s argument.

Topic 3: Agency in Complex Systems

In several of the articles, authors refer to the increasing complexity throughout modernity and into high-modernity or post-modernity (I’m not exactly sure what the difference is between the last two, but then again, I got the impression that the authors weren’t either). The best quotation encapsulating this idea I found in Chapter 7, which I will cite here since I don’t trust myself to paraphrase it accurately: ““As Paul Edwards points out (chapter 7, this volume), a major distinguishing feature of modern societies is their reliance on infrastructures, large sociotechnical systems such as information and communications networks, energy infrastructures, and banking and finance institutions. As Edwards argues, these infrastructures mediate among the actors that are studied in a micro-level analysis. In this sense they function as disembedding mechanisms, defining social relations and guiding social interactions over large distances of time and space . . . . The recent transition to a post-Fordian global economy has heightened the inadequacy of microlevel analysis by fragmenting industrial production and marketing and reorganizing it on a global scale.” (Modernity and Technology, p.60) Increasing complexity and layers of management in large corporations provide decision-makers the ability to distance themselves from the sometimes harsh realities engendered by their professional choices. Then there's the idea of corporate responsibility. It seems like a nice idea in principle, but is it realistic? When there are so many layers of organization it seems impossible to engender a sentiment of personal responsibility on the part of those in power. To use an example from the last class, how can we begin to hold decision-makers of companies like HP responsible for Manpower's actions?

Topic 4: Information Systems and Complexity versus Complicatedness

Another suggestion I would like to make regarding the book’s treatment of the idea of complexity, is the contrasting idea of complicatedness and how it may relate to the history of the development of technology. Increasing complexity forming complex systems, I gather, is usually seen as the ordered expansion of systems that integrate and include other systems, making possible the flow of energy, information, or matter inside the larger system itself through multiple layers of connection within an interrelated structure. Complexity in systems preserves its structure as the system grows, leaving it more resilient to opposition and navigable in terms of organization. Complicated systems, on the other hand, instead of developing different layers of organization that work together, grow in unstructured ways and generally lead to chaos due to lack of organization. Could it be possible that, where technological progress is concerned, complexity and complicatedness work in a manner similar to Darwin’s concept of “fit” and “unfit” in natural selection, thus forming a sort of “technological selection” for maximum rationalization and effectiveness? This may have already been mentioned in one of the chapters I didn’t examine deeply enough, but I though it would make for interesting discussion in any case.

Syllabus and texts now set

2007-01-23T14:13:00.000-06:00

Welcome to our special seminar this Spring. The syllabus is now online and half-a-dozen books should be in the bookstore. There is no xeroxed course reader, but I will likely throw other readings your way as the semester progresses. Thanks for joining us!

Spring 2007 course details coming soon

2006-11-08T12:30:00.000-06:00

Hello folks, I'm working on the syllabus for the Spring 2007 version of this course, a joint production between SLIS and STS. We'll have at least six outside guest speakers. It should be a great seminar. More soon. Cheers,

GREG

No Collar

2004-12-12T22:13:00.000-06:00

I'm ill. I haven't finished reading. I feel like rolling over to die.

1. Does it seem to anyone else that the corporate culture of such organizations is to give employees what they think they want in order to elicit more productivity and thus more profit?

2. For all the talk about sellouts by the fish, aren't they, in their own way, elitists? And, as noted by Ms. Snyder, they seem oblivious to the power hierarchies under which they are employed. How can they both rail against the traditional models without knowing exactly how those models are structured? Does this ignorance/naivete leave them susceptible to corporate structure changes that would/will move them closer to older models?

3. The cult metaphors seem strong, but there is this similarity in the sense that work becomes one's life. Fellow employees are "family" and the head of the family, the corporation itself, is entity worth sacrificing oneself for. Do the images and the rhetoric these workplaces exude "trick" people into thinking that they aren't part of the machine while sacrificing their lives to it? How is this any different to the cold war business environment in which loyalty to the company was the thing?

I will try to be in class tomorrow, but right now I feel wretched.

Katy

Ross questions

2004-12-12T19:16:00.000-06:00

1. How does HR fit into the No-collar workplace? Management appears to play the role of HR staff. At Razorfish, management appeared to be the HR-like motivational force, a seperation in a workplace without much hierarchy. Although this worked better when the company was doing well, it became another cause for restructuring, during hard times. Also causing these individuls extra emotional wear.

2. I thought it was interesting when Ross contrasted a few individual throughout the book who were successfully doing freelance work during a time when the rest of the industry was struggling. Does this suggest anything about the structuring of the no-collar workplace, the financialization of the dot-com industry or perhaps a desire to belong to a group doing poorly rather than risking self-employment? Ross does not offer any examples of individuals failing at this, so it is unclear if he is intentionally juxtaposition these two possiblities.

3. At Razorfish and 360hiphop, workers were very concerned about both who their clients were and also not wanting to "sell out" to the bigger corporate businesses or clients. Is this attitude distinctive to the no-collar workplace? In the end, Razorfish was forced to start catering to those bigger clients in order to survive and 360hiphop was bought out by a huge media conglamerate. Could this aforementioned attitude have been part of their failures or were the shortcomings merely a product of the dot-com crash?

Ross questions

2004-12-12T16:56:00.000-06:00

I was happy to see that Ross intended "no collar" ironically rather than as a description of an ideal historical state or status, like "post-industrial" or "creative class."

1. On p. 252, Ross describes the "needy" organization, where no-collar workers suddenly found themselves as managers reasserted control during hard times, as an experience of managerial power in the absence of authority. What are some of the sources of authority in organizations, as opposed to power? What are legitimate sources of authority, if any? What kind of power is more hazardous to one's health, filtered or unfiltered?

2. After a series of massive layoffs, Razorfish managers were telling their employees that the 1/6th who remained represented the network of "Competents"; similarly, a manager claimed that he kept on some of the trouble-makers because they provided "useful energy" to the organization. How convincing are these statements in terms of the evidence?

3. The big question left at the end of the book is whether or not the vision of a "creative class" or "no-collar" workforce or class of knowledge workers is sustainable for the foreseeable future in the United States. Is it? How are knowledge workers going to negotiate with the new managerial regime? Is workplace reform likely to continue in this country at some point in the near future, or do we have to look to Finland or someplace else for models?

no collar questions

2004-12-12T13:25:00.000-06:00

I don't know much about the stock market, so when I want to make reference to it, I'm just going to refer to 'Wall Street.' It's more faceless than I'd like, but I don't quite know where specifically to point fingers.

1. During the panel discussion "The Future of Silicon Alley," Michael Wolff makes the comment that Internet industry should never have been treated as a separate industry. If Wall Street is largely to blame for what happened to the dot com industry, this leads me to two questions:

a. If the dot coms had stayed smaller, more organic, and more attuned to the "Golden Age" ideals of the mid-90s, would they have fared better? To what extent did they have the choice to leave the market out of their kind of work, or was going public just inevitable?

b. How culpable and/or malevolent was Wall Street in the over-financialization of the New Economy? Were they just honestly trying to find a way to attach a value to companies that didn't produce goods and services in a way people found familiar? Or was it an excuse to restructure the economy to reward corporations and destabilize the labor force?

2. We discussed this some with the Florida book, but I'd like to talk more about the environmental impact of a Silicon Alley or any other concentration of information workers in cities. Ross mentions the working class populations and information sector support staff being driven out of formerly affordable communities in San Francisco and San Jose. Teachers in Silicon Valley live in subsidized housing (and they're supposed to be 'professionals!'). There's a tension between these information professionals as both unwitting victims and unintentional victimizers. What do we think about all of this?

3. Ross seems to leave us with the idea that maybe hating your job just a little bit is better for you in the long run. In what ways was Razorfish a humane workplace and in what ways was it ultimately not? This sounds like an obvious question, but I'm curious to see if there are differences of opinion in the class about management styles, organizational structure, work environment, company culture, etc. - where are we all coming from when we talk about a 'humane' workplace?

Questions, No-Collar

2004-12-12T10:18:00.000-06:00

I'm having trouble formulating this question coherently, but here goes: It seems to me that one of the holdovers from the Industrial Age is the notion that "the job" is one-size-fits-all for both business and the individual laborer. A lot of our readings this semester challenge that assumption from both directions; businesses can't afford or don't want to provide "jobs" to everyone whose labor they need (Temps, Granny, the unionism articles), and people don't always want the "jobs" that business can provide (Creative Class).
The no-collar workplaces, for all their apparent job-structure and atmosphere innovations, strike me as falling into exactly the same trap; their world was just as narrowly-conceived and ill-tailored, just in completely different ways.
So how do we conceive of a humanized workplace that acknowledges that different businesses and different people have different labor needs, without falling into exploitative labor relationships?

Do we know what happened to the ex-dot-commers generally? Ross tries to provide an answer for his limited sample of people, but I'd be interested to hear a wider survey of what these people are doing and what they think of the dot-com experience now that it's behind them.

Related to the previous question: A lot of our readings assume without question that the workplace will be and should be organized (physically as well as structurally) around the needs of whatever segment of the labor force is currently "hot." In No-Collar, this means the chaotic, noisy, all-with-all (as opposed to all-against-all) Razorfish floor. When do we get to a more inclusive vision of labor practices, such that all work and all workers have attention paid to their varying needs? (Because, I gotta say, an atmosphere like Razorfish's would drive me bats in extremely short order.)

Questions, three articles

2004-11-28T22:02:00.000-06:00

Is Kraut and Cummings's definition of computer "domestication" (as "that which is not work") defensible? Training a gender lens on it seems to produce the old, old canard that only paid work is work, and household labor is not work. (I was particularly dubious about "finance" being a "personal, leisure, non-work" use of the Internet, p. 224. I don't get paid for maintaining my household's investments, no, but it sure ain't leisure in my book.) I am tempted to wonder if the more "labor"-ish uses of the Internet were actually the wedge driving its use in the home. And how does the increasing contingent workforce (especially contractors and micro-businesses) play into this? Are they counted as "workers"?
On the other hand, I can certainly accept their guess that increasing demographic heterogeneity in Internet use reflects the greater diversity of American homes as compared to the American workplace.

Is Mark Porter's contention that software development invented "entirely new patterns and cultures of work" (p. 342 et seq.) anything more than wild ahistorical romanticism? This guy's never programmed for a living, has he?

Postigo's account of the AOL situation seems to imply that community effort is incompatible with paid labor (or at least with management thereof). Is that true in all cases, or was AOL just particularly hamfisted in handling its volunteer labor force?

questions, 11/29

2004-11-28T19:59:00.000-06:00

1. Kraut and Cumming's article discusses the social trends of Internet usage up until 2000. Since then, we have even more modes available for online communication, for example, blogging and skype (internet telephony). Does this suggest a continuing increase in social use or a response to meet user needs or both? What about paying bills online, would you consider this a social use or a cross over and are there other examples of the two blending together?

2. Volunteer is defined by both freely entering a transaction and not being compensated for it. It seems from Postigo's article that both parties had other informal expectations. For example, the volunteers wanted to gain experience, more access and possibly more recognition while and AOL needed more control. Is the definition of volunteer evolving and what do you think are reasonable expectations for both parties? In some ways the arrangement almost sounded more like internship, where experience was the primary reason for working without pay, there was still some compensation from fringe benefits and the possibility of working for AOL in the future.

3. That said, why aren't other corporations exploiting this type of volunteer arrangement? Was the eagerness surrounding the volunteers for AOL unique to this time and place in the technology boom (or whatever we should call this time period)?

29 November

2004-11-28T15:27:00.000-06:00

1. On Postigo, I had a question of just what content the volunteers created when they had access to the in-house text editor/publisher? It had to be pretty thrilling to yield as much volunteer buy-in as it did. When AOL changed its pricing to attract users in the mass rather than well-heeled enthusiasts, what had changed in its business model? (A history of which I am ignorant.) Are there alternatives to the models of Internet users Postigo presents, to wit, enthusiastic volunteers, unpaid web proletarians, or company-designated community leaders?

2. I am not familiar with the standard use of statistics to interpret social trends, so will appreciate some clarification of how Cummings and Kraut are saying what they are saying. How does their prediction of the disappearance of surface mail square with what Poster says about the penetrability of e-mail? If there is an upper limit on the computer security that novices will invest in, isn't there also an upper limit on their trust of e-mail and online chat? What about the content issue? Isn't there more reliable, general purpose information available now and in the last five years than there was in 1994-5?

3. It seems as if the best way to read Poster is in conjunction with Lucore's article. Poster seems to have gotten to the store a little late. What concrete evidence, or proposal for action, does Poster present to indicate real hope for workers to use the Internet to "throw off their chains" etc. For some reason I'm thinking of Kramer's reversal of the peephole in the door of his apartment.

11/29 discussion questions

2004-11-28T13:37:00.000-06:00

1. I was interested in the question Cummings and Kraut asked regarding whether the Internet has become "domesticated" because of a change in the user base or because of a change in the online environment. While they are able to show to some degree that the demographics of Internet users increasingly reflect U.S. demographics, they were unsuccessful in showing a change in the environment with their data. Does their suggestion of using adaptive structuration theory address this question or something else?

2. In many ways, the technocentric tone of the Poster article makes it sound like something that would have been published in the mid to late 90s, when everybody was supposed to be working from home, provided of course that work as we knew it didn't end outright. Is there a more sober way of discussing the impact that networked computing has on the nature of work? I'm not convinced by the "posthuman" argument, especially given the discussion we had last week (how easily and quickly the technology disappears when we really start talking about the labor).

3. Does Postigo's example of the changes in community-building activities at AOL ("community as commodity") take a step towards understanding changes in the online environment and online culture, or is the corporatization of the Internet only part of the big picture?

Not me

2004-11-22T11:20:00.000-06:00

Just to get my beef out of the way, I think there's more hand-wringing and hand holding than militancy in this book. As a worker sliding into the age "cohort" in question, I don't feel empowered by this text.

1. The cover and title set up certain expectations for the content that are not fulfilled; what if any relevance does a New Deal image have for Riggs's message? Is the woman on the cover over 55? Is she a granny? How does skilled machinist work compare to the amorphous tech work of today?

2. In ch. 7 Riggs discusses the images of seniors/elders in advertising, and observes that products marketed to affluent retirees are not making it with seniors in general. Are advertisers really trying to sell to an age group, or are they trying to sell to people who have money to spend?

3. PP. 181-182: isn't there a distinction to be made between Riggs's matures (pre-boomers) and Tom Brokaw's "greatest generation" (born before the 1929 crash, like my parents)? What are the differences in the ethos of those old enough to have been born in prosperity but to have experienced the Depression (before 1937-8) and late Depression/WWII children? Note that 1944-1954 was on balance a reactionary period in American history.

4. One more: where is the work in Granny@work?

jjg

granny questions

2004-11-21T21:28:00.000-06:00

1. What are the limitations, if any, to Riggs use of technology (such as monitoring web discussions and interviews over email) in her research?
2. As the next generation ages, will the preference for technology skills over experience, that Riggs seems to suggest, disappear?
3. Is it significant that Riggs choose Harley Davidson, a self-described high road company and a male “mystique” to look at how aging and technology affects women’s work?

Electronic Arts

2004-11-21T20:39:00.000-06:00

Jumping the gun a bit, but this New York Times article is a good introduction to the kind of thing we'll see in No-Collar.

Questions, Granny @ Work

2004-11-18T17:55:00.000-06:00

Both Riggs and her informants emphasize heavily personal factors that create difficulty in the labor market—training, workplace changes outstripping competencies, outlook, etc. Even "ageism," when cited, is assumed to be a personal onus on the part of young managers. How can we inject structural factors (the cost of pensions and health care being two obvious ones) into this discourse?

Was there a point to the movie chapter other than "Hollywood stereotypes old people"? (Yeah, them and everybody else besides.) I seem not to have gotten it, if there's a point there to get.

A lot of the attitudes toward job-searching and workplaces that Riggs recounts don't seem to me to be specific to elders; I know plenty of people who externalize job difficulties and shove technical work off on others, for instance. How many of Riggs's findings are really specific to the aging population, as opposed to the job market as a whole?

And a bonus question, because my second one was pretty lame: How many of Riggs's findings are due to generational cohort effects rather than effects of aging per se? Do we expect the X and Y Generations to age the same way the Boomers are doing?

granny @ work questions

2004-11-17T13:34:00.000-06:00

1. Although Riggs mentions the digital divide and the importance of continued training for older workers, I never quite got a handle on what kind of baseline she was using to define technology competency - sometimes it seemed as simple as the ability to use the Internet, sometimes it seemed to require a more complex set of skills. What defines technology competency, skill, or a closing of the digital divide?

2. Something I hear fairly often from people in graduate programs (either leading to jobs in academia or librarianship) are optimistic opinions about the future of the job market, since many Matures and Boomers will be retiring in the next five to ten years. According to Riggs' research, it sounds like this is a myth. Additionally, because of downsizing and budget cuts, some vacant positions are either not being filled or are being restructured to involve reduced hours and benefits. What are some ways that organizations in general, and universities and libraries in particular, can balance the interests of older workers who have invested loyalty, time, and creativity with an organization and younger workers, who want to get their foot in the door and begin their careers? Is there enough work to go around?

3. Through the reflections of older individuals who have enrolled in continuing education technology programs and classes, Riggs shows the benefits of this kind of learning. What are the limitations? What is the optimal setting and curriculum for information literacy and technology training?

Questioning Unity

2004-11-14T23:42:00.000-06:00

1. Where might Benner and Lucore place teachers' unions in all of this? Drawing from Dorothea's comments, I wonder if this field is too feminized to merit consideration.

2. I suspect that we could all curse Wal-Mart and like entities all day. My question is, at what growth point does a company become a target for unionization? Is it always necessary? Do employers have a right to control the work conditions within their own company (and set wages, etc.)?

3. In his brief list of professional associations, Benner left out the ALA (est. at the same time as the AMA). How do librarians fit into this idea of professional associations and guilds? Is the association path the best one? Might a guild be more useful? What does your association do for you?!?

questions

2004-11-14T21:03:00.000-06:00

1. Could unions and/or guilds be more effective organizing around changing federal legislation rather than organizing workers?

2. When Brenner discusses guilds and union history, in relation to the technology sector, he seems to imply that individuals are becoming increasingly responsible for self-promotion and justification of their importance in the workplace. Is this unique to the technology sector and why?

3. How can the rights of low-waged workers be established when consumers are unwilling to sacrifice individual access to low priced products, even when it means supporting corporations like Wal-Mart, also the largest private employer in America?

for 15 November

2004-11-14T15:33:00.000-06:00

1. Benner talks about the history of professional associations and how "high-status" professions like medicine have been able to organize to maintain status by limiting "the supply of skills and knowledge." Evelyn Geller has identified librarianship as a "semi-profession," while Benner recognizes IT workers as semi-professional in that their expertise gives them an advantage in the labor market but not quite the skills monopoly enjoyed by physicians. Do librarians have a skills or knowledge advantage in the labor market, and if so, how can they translate that into greater employability, and by extension, more control in the workplace?

2. What do we know or think we know collectively about the history of the Teamsters' Union, and how does that play into a reading of Lucore's article? (The changing image of the Teamsters is key to Geoghegan's (corrected spelling) book "Which side are you on?" which I will try to bring to class.) Does that history and/or image deter workers hovering on the margins of professionalism from even thinking of forming or joining unions?

3. a. Tax "reform" strategist Grover Norquist recently said that the New Deal alliance of Washington bureaucrats and "union bosses" will never again be in charge, after the Bush reelection. Combine that perception of the nature of "Big Labor" power with the missionary zeal of the Wal-Mart anti-union crusade, which seems to be tinged with more fervor than mere loyalty to the fortunes of the Walton family: how did Labor, which has at its core a class-based agenda for social justice, even in the old anti-socialist AFL, get labelled as the number one enemy, even though all workers including management have benefitted from reforms it has advocated?

b. Do pre-capitalist attitudes about work condition our collective perception of class in the US? Consider the concept of "economic rights" as opposed to that of the "ownership society."

union-a-go-go

2004-11-13T09:22:00.000-06:00

1. From the Silicon Valley guilds Benson writes about to the "open-source unionism" advocated by Joel Rogers, there's a sense of the union becoming less of an agent for change and more of a career training center/social group/symbol. Yet there seems to be some optimism and enthusiasm about this as the future face of unionism. Is it false hope? If you don't have collective bargaining, what do you have that makes a real difference in the lives of workers?

2. Let's say we had us a genuine, organized, fully funded collaborative effort involving all American unions to unionize Wal-Mart. How could this movement work with international Wal-Mart unions to improve its chances for success? In general, how can union organizing become more global in nature, and what kinds of results might we expect?

3. The idea that technology and information workers aren't usually a good fit for unionization efforts has come up a number of times this semester in the readings. Whether because of tenuous professional status of the workers, or the instability of the labor market in this field, or because workers are employing "exit strategy" rather than "voice strategy," the traditional union model doesn't work as well in this field. What will unions need to do to fit this labor force? Do these workers even have any desire to unionize?

Rural Outsourcing

2004-11-12T21:23:00.000-06:00

The solution to offshore outsourcing? Help for rural economies wanting to enter the Creative Class? Who knows?

Questions, unionism articles

2004-11-12T08:28:00.000-06:00

I was intrigued by the extent to which Featherstone and Benner were willing to admit that unions have made their own bed. (Lucore, conversely, was all like, "Of course unions use IT! We're not backward! Really! [But those darn members, when they get together and talk, that's bad, you know...]") Are unions listening to this criticism? How are they changing because of it?

From my undereducated perspective, it seems to me that unions clung to largely-male preserves as much as they possibly could, bypassing any employment territory that might contain (gasp!) women. To what extent is women's greater participation in the labor market relative to men a source of unions' membership attrition?

Following Benner's analysis, what other new services could unions provide that would help their members and reduce membership attrition? (Dare one suggest HEALTH INSURANCE?)

I don't think this is the mobility Florida has in mind...

2004-11-09T01:16:00.000-06:00

$17 an Hour Technology's Nomads

Slowdown Forces Many to Wander for Work
IT Unemployment Now Exceeds Overall Jobless Rate

By Greg SchneiderWashington Post Staff WriterTuesday, November 9, 2004; Page A01

YORK, Pa. -- David Packman knocks on the motel room door and his wife lets him in. His 9-year-old son is waiting with sneakers on, hoping for a trip outside after a day of sitting around. Packman's other son, 4, dances gleefully around the room. Dad's home from work.
This is no holiday getaway; this motel room, for the moment, is where the family lives. Packman, 34, is one month into a four-month contract fixing computers at a local company, and one day closer to the end of the line. It's Monday, and the $50 in Packman's pocket will have to cover food, laundry and incidentals for the coming week.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35193-2004Nov8.html

Meeting of minds re Florida, 3rd try

2004-11-08T13:21:00.000-06:00

Appreciating the previous blogs and anticipating Florida's conclusion from halfway through:

1. Florida implies that the creative class can move freely from job to job in defiance of universally incompetent management in search of greater autonomy. How do they make a living, pay for their health care, save, guarantee their retirement? Is he totally goofed, or does he not recognize that to enjoy this much autonomy requires a sizeable support community? Who might that include, besides his ever helpful service workers, Porsche-driving hair-dressers, et al.? How does educational background factor into shaping the creative class as Florida defines it, and how will the increasing exclusion of low-income people from college education shape this class in the future?

2. Noting that Florida's tables show that members of the greater Creative Class make more money on average than the Super-creative core, what happened to the Sciences/Humanities split that everybody was talking about in the late 1980s? Do Scientists/Techs and Humanists suddenly have common economic interests? And if so, why are the financial rewards of the two paths so disparate?

3. Getting at Florida from two different angles: would any of us choose to have a cappuccino with Florida? Is he an agent-provocateur for cultural conservatives? (Consider all the players in a regulated capitalist economy who are missing from his world.)

Questions for a Creative Class

2004-11-07T22:46:00.000-06:00

Did anyone else have trouble with Blogger earlier today? Maybe I'm just not creative enough - just one more idiot drone laboring in the university sweatshop.

And by the way, I certainly hope that pox Dorothea is casting about isn't too contagious!

1. I really really was planning to 'play nice'; then I read this: "Employing millions of people merely to do rote work is a monstrous waste of human capabilities. Someday it may be seen to be as retrograde, both ethically and economically, as compelling humans to pick cotton on a plantation" (321). How do we feel about Prof. Florida's assertion that (paid) rote work is analagous to slavery?

2. Florida assumes that workers have mobility, that they are able to move to the region or city of their choice. Is this a valid assumption? How does this effect his analysis of cities' creative environments? Are certain workers (within the 'creative' groups) more mobile than others?

3. Towards the end of the book, in the small section "beyond nerdistan" on page 284, Florida quotes someone who quotes someone saying "Ask anyone where a downtown is and nobody can tell you. There's not much of a sense of place here...." Is this a problem of not drawing creative class people? Or is it just bad city planning?

4. In what ways does or doesn't Florida understand social services/welfare's role in society?

Did anyone else feel like they were reading a Tony Robbins publication?

I LOVE the idea of the 'whitey index'!!

creative class

2004-11-07T21:42:00.000-06:00

1. "Creativity," as Florida uses the term in his book, seems like an elusive label to me. While the trends that Florida bases his arguments on seem to be valid, it is unclear whether they are captured with or how they relate to the concept of creativity. In what ways is creativity linked to job growth as opposed to other factors like the urban/rural divide?

2. Although Florida briefly touches on housework and childcare (he even gives kudos to his maid!), he does not adequetely address how this type of invisible work fits into his hierarchy of the creative class. Does low paid childcare or unpaid housework have a place in his arguement?

3. On a note similar to Mary's question about privelige. Florida bases much of his arguement on statistics showing creative class workers are more concerned with job stimulation then with pay or benefits. With health care cost on the rise, pay and benefits are of growing concern for both lower and middle class workers. Is this a large hole in his arguement or is it not even necessary to address this discrepancy?

Questions, Creative Class

2004-11-05T15:32:00.000-06:00

(Well, that took long enough. I've been waiting for Blogger all day.)

Is it just me, or has Florida got serious problems picking definitions for "creative" and "class" and sticking to them? For the former term, he dances around with impressionistic ideas about what creative people do and how they do it, and I can't see anywhere he solidly establishes how to tell a creative-class worker from a non-creative-classer. (What about me, for instance? I have a Creative Classer's education, but I just spent two and a half years doing data entry and database code-monkeying. Real creative. Not. And, I need not say, not highly-paid.) At one point he even says that any job can be a Creative Class job—in which case what's the use of the distinction?
As for "class," Florida insists that it depends entirely on the work people do (on which, see above), but when he actually talks about the Creative Classers, it seems to me they have much less in common laborally (if that's a word) than culturally.

How is the Creative Class gendered? Mary established pretty neatly that it's racially weighted. Surely the gendering of work perceived as "desirable" that we've talked about previously in relation to temps and computer workers has some relevance here. Surely, also, mothers and girlfriends and wives as well as the Service Class are taking up a lot of the housework and childrearing slack to give their Creative Class men room for their jobs and their oh-so-wonderful "experiences."

What do the results of Tuesday's election say about the political viability of the Creative and non-Creative classes?

And a rant: This book irritated me even worse this time than the last time I read it. Suddenly I have sympathy with Daniel Bell's attitude as retailed by Florida. Florida's Creative Classers, despite his lip service to "diversity," are the Slashdot demographic writ large: self-absorbed white boys, zero sense of social responsibility (if they don't like a place, they can always just leave it!), interested in "diversity" only insofar as it amuses or coddles them and they don't have to engage seriously with it. Bah. A pox pox POX on them.

creative class questions

2004-11-04T21:21:00.000-06:00

Richard Florida did not include a "Whitey" Index, so I have taken the liberty of doing so for him (although I wouldn't make any claims of statistical significance for it). Being a library geek and a census junkie, I went to the 2000 census and looked up some race/ethnicity statistics for about 20 of the cities at the top and the bottom. Now, about 75% of Americans reporting in the census are white, while 12.3% are African-American. Of the 9 cities that I looked at, ranking highest in the Creativity Index, 8 of them had a population that was less than 10% African-American, and 6 were over 70% white. Of the 12 cities ranking lowest in the Creativity Index, 10 of them had a population that was over 33% African-American, and 3 were over 50% African-American.

There were definitely some outliers - Atlanta, for example. I'd be curious to know about the role of Atlanta's large African-American population in the creative class there.

On that note:

1. Could we talk about the undercurrent of white upper middle class privilege in the idea of the creative class? How does this relate to the digital divide and the information have's and have-not's? How could this be changed? Also, Greg, could you suggest some good readings on race and ethnicity and information labor?

2. I was surprised to see in the Appendix that Florida considers librarians to be part of, not only the creative class, but of the "super-creative core." Throughout the book, I really thought that librarians fit more into the service class, according to his definitions. How do librarians fit into this core? How do they not fit?

3. When Florida describes the working patterns and habits of the creative class, I wondered, 'Are these people being valued for their talents, creativity, and ability, or are they being taken advantage of?' What kind of toll is the creative class taking on itself? Similarly, what kind of toll are the service demands of the creative class taking on the lower and lower-middle class?

questions

2004-10-31T19:00:00.000-06:00

1. Prasad discusses the issue of quality control. Has this focus transferred from actual products to the workers within the service sector? Prasad argues that customers' look to quality control for both distinction and assurance, is it possible for these properties be displayed in people, thus causing a change in the management's focus?

2.Both Prasad and Brynjolfsson/Hilt's article look at operational attempts to harness workers' knowledge/skill or IT benefits to best suit the company. Does the required input for IT differ from the steps necessary for quality control in terms of how it effects the workers?

3. All of the workers from these articles possessed qualities or work habits that were somehow unwieldy to management, requiring new strategies of work organization. All three articles discussed the different attempts of management to gain more control over quality, productivity and workers' knowledge. How is this idea similar to temp workers, when the individualized aspects of work are not viewed as advantageous to the company and instead become the focus of restructuring?

Questions for Halloween

2004-10-31T18:07:00.000-06:00

1. Brynjolfsson and Hitt claim that with the investment in computer and information technology, a "firm has a new system with lasting value" (55). But how lasting is that value? If hardware and software advancements continue, will prior investments retain their value?

2. Prasad discusses the phenomena in which "an informal norm had developed such that styaing with a company longer than four or five years begins to be seen as deviant, such an employee may be presumed to be stagnating, or to have reached a limit" (437). How might this effect corportate/work culture(s)? How might it effect the worker and the worker's family?

3. B & H's discussion of workers' resistance to change - Why might those in charge, those who institute change, fail to plan for such resistance? How can they avoid it? Are humans/workers simply stubborn when they resist change? Or are they, at some level, concerned about how the job might change? That the change could lead to no job? That they might need to be 're-educated'?

for 1 November

2004-10-29T17:20:00.000-05:00

1. What is the connection between the arguments made and the evidence presented in each of this week's articles? Do Ensmenger, Prasad, and the authors of the article on computers and productivity bother to prove their points?

2. What are the real life alternatives to the historical processes which are described in the three articles, i.e., resubordination of programmers to managers, artificial caps on job growth due to industry adoption of international standards, and organizational change induced by information automation?

3. Do management rights exist?

Questions, this week's trilogy

2004-10-29T14:13:00.000-05:00

(Now, when's the Return of the King extended-edition DVD coming out again? Er, sorry.)

How much "productivity gain," either historically or currently, is attributable to moving work further down the skills-and-pay chain? Brynjolfsson and Hitt paint this rosy picture of empowered workers doing better work -- but what happened to the workers at the one firm who resisted change? Demoted? Fired? Outsourced? What?

Ahhhhh, management happy-talk. But seriously. Is it at least possible that the gains in "efficiency" realized by standards-and-TQM-implementing firms in India lead eventually to actual quality gains? I'm not sure there's been time enough for the changes to sink in (again, see Brynjolfsson and Hitt). I'm not wedded to this suggestion, mind you; I just don't think Prasad considered it adequately.

Perhaps Greg would be willing to comment on how his experience speaks to Ensmenger's assertions about management and computer programmers?

11/1 discussion questions

2004-10-27T16:06:00.000-05:00

1. I was fascinated to read Prasad's description of the "dark side" of TQM. We've been talking about it quite a bit in my management class (and taking a postive perspective), mainly as a customer-based, customer-driven process of analysis and evaluation that actually empowers staff to be decision-makers in their organization. So, does Prasad's view of quality management as driven more by cost-effectiveness than actual quality apply to the nonprofit sector as well? Or do the focus and mission of nonprofits make it a more benevolent management strategy in that context?

2. Ensmenger makes a convincing argument for fitting computer programmers into the realm of technicians; however, something about it didn't quite sit right with me. In what ways do programmers NOT fit into the role of technician? Are there other ways of classifying programmers that also work?

3. Brynjolfsson and Hitt make the observation that while purchasing technology is relatively cheap, managing organizational change is expensive. Considering points from the Ensmenger article, what are some ways that management and "technicians" can work together to make this process smoother?

Shwartz, "Getting Real"

2004-10-26T11:28:00.000-05:00

The science-fiction story about temps I mentioned in yesterday's class was "Getting Real" by Susan Shwartz. It has been anthologized in Newer York (Roc, ed. Lawrence Watt-Evans 1991) and Suppose They Gave A Peace and Other Stories, a Shwartz-only collection (Gale Group 2002).

SCLS has the Shwartz collection, but not the Watt-Evans. The UW has the Watt-Evans but not the Shwartz. Go figure.

I forgot one...

2004-10-25T01:04:00.000-05:00

In what way(s) does the idea of temp work foster hope? In what way(s) is this 'false' hope? What leads people to temp work and what do they hope to gain from it? How is this different from the worker identity that agencies construct in their marketing enterprises?

Temps Questions and Commentary

2004-10-24T23:54:00.000-05:00

Another comparison to Orr: Rogers remarks that 'dress' and 'appearance' are important for good/high-end placement for clerical temps. How can we correlate the temps' experiences with dress and appearance to that of the xerox technicians? How does dress construct identity within these systems?

2. While on the subject of identity construction...How does naming serve to identify workers' status within these forms of employment? What does it mean to be a contract attorney vs. a temp worker? What are the implications?

3. The student of rhetoric asks, in what way do the means of discursive control outlined by Rogers exist or operate in all forms of employment? In what ways are these methods specific to THS? For those out there who have temped, can you throw some examples our way? And how can we compare the storytelling we see in Temps with that which we see in Talking About Machines?

temps questions

2004-10-24T18:42:00.000-05:00

1. Although Rogers has stated that the comparison between clerical and lawyer temps is a general overview, with not enough interviews from the lawyer temps to draw any conclusions, I found some differences between the two interesting. For example, Rogers includes both the martial and child status of the lawyer temps but not the clerical. Also, perhaps less significant, is the lack of discussion of jobs being cut short for the lawyer temps, are we to assume this wasn't a problem for temp lawyers? Do Roger's ommisions add or take away anything from her arguement?

2. While white, middle class, female workers seemed to be the epitome of what temp agencies and their clients were looking for in terms of clerical temps, the women lawyer temps seemed to be on the lower spectrum of options within their temping. What do these findings imply about women's place within the general labor market?

3. I could not help comparing the discussion of the isolation facing temps with that of Orr's community of technicains, dependent on talking to each other. Do you think that having a profession to identify with decreases this isolation? The clerical temps section seemed to focus on isolation much more than the lawyer temps, where instead the concern was networking.

temps questions

2004-10-23T11:51:00.000-05:00

I guess I must watch too many movies related to information and labor - anyone seen Haiku Tunnel, in which a white man in his 20s performs temporary clerical duties (sort of), works on writing his novel on the job, and finds he doesn't want to "go 'perm?'" And who are his clerical co-workers? Two young white women and a gay man.

1. Could we talk some more about the implications of 'doing' gender on the job? I don't disagree with Krasas Rogers that this happens, but the concept is introduced rather abruptly. If a gay Asian man is, in fact, 'doing' white heterosexual femininity to secure better placements, I'd like to know a little more about the how's and why's of that. Or is that necessarily the kind of gender he's 'doing?'

2. In contingent labor and 'three party' employment structures, how can the worker become more empowered and more in control?

3. I think this can be looked at both as labor that is temporary (and everything that entails) and labor that is... well... pimped out. There are two sets of issues going on. People who work for a company like Merry Maids have as much in common with clerical temps as do the temporary attorneys, just from a different perspective. What additional conclusions would be reached by analyzing temporary labor from the 'contracted out' angle and comparing it to other employees in that position?

4. Is this 'three party' employment structure more likely to occur when the labor pool in question is predominantly female?

LT questions about Temps

2004-10-22T16:20:00.000-05:00

1. Is not eliminating temporary employment a desirable societal goal? Is it achievable? Or do we buy the notion that the state of the economy makes temporary employment an inevitable component of the contemporary labor market?

2. Are lawyers, who as portrayed in Temps have less social control on their economic activity than wandering samurai, a good representation of the reality of professional employment? Consider physicians, dentists, architects, and artists, in addition to the book examples of engineers and computer programmers.

3. How do the conditions of private agency supplied temporary clerical work compare to those of project and limited-term (indefinite part-time) employment in Wisconsin state government?

HP, IBM, Dell set `code' for treatment of workers (MercuryNews.com)

2004-10-22T09:25:00.000-05:00

In January, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, a non-profit organization based in the United Kingdom, issued a report stating that workers who make computer components for IBM, Dell and HP in Mexico, China and Thailand are suffering ``atrocious conditions for extremely low pay.''

Read the whole article at: MercuryNews.com | 10/21/2004 | HP, IBM, Dell set `code' for treatment of workers

Questions, Temps

2004-10-20T18:51:00.000-05:00

Is there any way to consciousness-raise (sorry about the verb) the agency owners and managers so that they give more weight to the needs and concerns of workers?

How has the temporary-labor industry reacted to the negative attention it has gotten in the research?

Can information help the temporary worker? What information? And how does one reach them with it?

Pass the Prozac

2004-10-18T01:48:00.000-05:00

What a depressing set of readings!

1. This question is for anyone who feels qualified to answer it (really, it isn't meant to be gender-determinate). How/why is it that complete devotion to the machine and its workings is seen by these undergrad male computer science majors as normal? At what point and in what type of environment does such a life (one that I would consider grossly unbalanced) become normalized?

2. Same article as above - This study was conducted in the late 90's. Does anyone know if there has been a follow up study? I guess my question is, do we know or do we think that the changes the university instituted helped alleviate the problem?

3. Tympas is critical of Light's focus on intellectual work, but Light does mention that the women are crawling around the machine looking for things that they need to fix/adjust/etc. To me, this did seem to indicate that she acknowledged the manual labor aspect of the job. I guess my point/question is, as much as manual labor seems to be gendered masculine, there are occupations that involve physical labor that are gendered female - occupations such as nursing. Is this because of the nature of the physical labor? Does this occur when the labor seems repetitive, boring, or odious for some other reason?

October 18 questions

2004-10-17T18:40:00.000-05:00

1. According to the Light and Margolis, Fischer and Miller articles women have been getting the short end of the stick in terms of the technology sector, at both the beginning and the end of the century. Do you agree? If so, why have women been adversely marginalized and stereotyped in regards to technology labor when in other societal aspects women have made some relative progress over the last century?

2. Is the tendency to discuss a machine's impact/importance over invisible human labor merely a result of ingrained capitalist and economic measurement? Would this help to explain why labor can become invisible, particularly in terms of technology?

3. Why do you think that women's lower confidence and self-comparison to male counterparts is so high in computer science, according to the article? Did Light pinpoint some defining moment in the history of technology that society has not found its way out of yet?

A question that goes back to last week's discussion. How important is the geography of Orr's study being located in Silicon Valley in his results? Would this same "community of technicians" be plausable anywhere, how about someplace in the Midwest region, besides the few large cities like Chicago or Milwaukee?

for 18 October

2004-10-16T16:51:00.000-05:00

1.
From last week, based on p. 158, pgh. 2 of Orr: How does the subjective concept of "productive" work relate to the concept of skill in an occupation, and how does the perception of relative "productivity" determine the status of the worker? Apply these questions to the women working as computers or human calculators described in the Light article and alluded to by Tympas.

2.
Issue of fact: do we understand the history of how women came to replace men as clerical workers (for example, as personal secretaries) in the early twentieth century? What is the connection of computers to the traditional information worker roles of women as governesses, companions to wealthy matrons, school teachers, telephone operators (this is for Greg to answer), and librarians (traditional only from the inception of Dewey's Library program at Columbia in the late 1880s)?

3.
Light brings forward plenty of evidence that the labor of the WACS on early digital computers was highly regimented in the development phase, then hidden deliberately when the invention was publicized after World War II. Based just on the article, do we know enough to assert that the reason for hiding the women was sexist absolutism, a desire to bury the fact of women's contribution to the computer so as not to disturb the social relations of 1946, or were there issues of control of information, trust, and maintenance of subordination that the sexism played into? Consider how the identity politics of the late 1960s to the present have factored into the legal gains made by workers from the Wagner Act of the late 1930s to the cost of living adjustment contracts of the 1960s.

Questions, this week's three

2004-10-15T16:21:00.000-05:00

Has anything changed? (Think of this asked in the most despairing tone of voice imaginable.)

Women's work = devalued work; devalued work is given to women. Does one break the cycle more easily by re-valuing women, or by re-valuing work independent of who performs it?

Creditably, Margolis and Fisher focus on what we have to do for girls and young women to keep them in high-tech fields. This skates perilously close to victim-blaming, however, as Light's article amply demonstrates; there's really only so far women can go faced with a deeply hostile and dismissive atmosphere. So what do men have to do, hm? And how does anyone convince them to do it?

tympas/light/margolis et al questions

2004-10-13T10:59:00.001-05:00

Before I get started, does anyone remember the movie Real Genius? The guys are all building super high-tech laser crap and making ice out of unstable gases in their free time and the woman in the movie's big accomplishment is building some sort of sled. Well, that and seducing a minor. Still... a fine film.

1. Light writes that hardware design was considered to be a man's job, while software programming was woman's work. Working on the assumption that computer science is now a solidly masculinized field, how and why did women lose their niche in programming?

2. Among participants in the Margolis et. al. study, male and female students reported different ways of relating to computers and different visions of what it was possible to do with them. What are the implications of the traditional ways of being a computer scientist? What would change about the field if the dominant 'ways of being' changed? What is specifically masculine about those ways of being? What is not?

3. Tympas is critical of Light, writing that by focusing her study on the mental labor of a handful of women as opposed to the manual labor of many women and men, she reproduces traditional hierarchies in the division of labor. Is his criticism valid? Why or why not?

tympas/light/margolis et al questions

2004-10-13T10:59:00.000-05:00

Questions about Talk and machines

2004-10-10T23:26:00.000-05:00

1. Is Orr's treatment of talk and discourse and narrative undertheorized? He writes about the place of discourse and narrative, of storytelling, to these technicians, yet he ignores a lot of research on discursive practices and narratology. How might this effect his conclusions? How does it effect his treatment of the place of discourse in the work environment?

2. While it is clear that Orr refers back to Geertz's work, how does he envision his ethnographic processes within the context of these methodologies? How does he approach fieldnotes? What method of data (audio tape) transcription does he use? Why? While he is taking his fieldnotes, what interactions between his subjects does he miss? Why didn't he take post-field work interviews with the participants? What cognitive processes and/or thoughts did he miss because they weren't articulated?

3. "white-hatted wrench-slingers" (160). This notion of the technicians as rescuers reminded me of a great ethnographic study by Ann Dyson - Writing Superheroes - about early elementary students who construct themselves and their place in the classroom community by writing and acting out "stories" they write about superheroes (X-Men, Ninja Turtles, etc). The children, like these technicians, position themselves within their world in a way that often valorizes them.

I guess this isn't really a question as much as a comment. Or maybe it is part of a question. Does this indicate some sort of human need to be important within the context of one's life? Is it a way to find power in a world that renders us powerless? Are these workers able to demonstrate (at least to themselves) that they are more than just cogs in the corporate machine?

Temps

2004-10-10T23:15:00.000-05:00

I know the Temps book comes later in the semester, but y'all might find this article at the washingtonpost.com interesting.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22773-2004Oct10.html

Orr post

2004-10-10T18:18:00.000-05:00

1.
My 1969 American Heritage dictionary defines Ethnography as 1. Descriptive anthropology of technologically primitive societies; 2. Ethnology. Ethnology is defined as "the anthropological study of socio-economic systems and cultural heritage, especially of cultural origins and of factors affecting cultural growth and change, in technologically primitive societies." If we apply this non-PC definition, which clearly identifies some societies as "technologically primitive," to Orr's technicians, can they be said to be "primitive," either technologically or otherwise? Are they primitive today, in 2004, compared to when the research was done in the late 1980s? What is the position of technician jobs in terms of industrial production?

2.
Orr invokes Levi-Strauss's concept of the Bricoleur, a small town French handyman, as a model for the diagnostic smarts displayed by his technicians. Orr calls bricolage "the reflective manipulation of a closed set of resources to accomplish some purpose." Is this a good or useful analogy? And if so, so what?

3.
In the chapter "Warranted and other conclusions," Orr mentions in passing the management threat of "deskilling" jobs, but suggests that the "occupational community" in the case of the technicians possesses sufficient expertise and social cohesion to resist deskilling and the associated loss of control and status. Are they strong enough to resist other threats--discrimination in hiring, layoffs, cuts in pay, cuts in benefits, retraining, drug testing, background checks by Homeland Security?

Extra, based on p. 158, pgh. 2:
Orr argues convincingly for ethnographic study of all types of skilled practice, and seems to have a clear concept of how one may find skilled practice at play in the most "unskilled" or low-status occupations. How does the subjective concept of "productive" work relate to the concept of skill in an occupation, and how does the perception of relative "productivity" determine the status of the worker?

questions about machines

2004-10-09T20:01:00.000-05:00

1. More on the ethnography question, is it important for Orr to earn the respect of the other technicians in order for this research to work? Several times he seems to emphasize this knowledge and there are times when it is even acknowledged by the other technicians. Does this elicit more disclosure and allow Orr "membership" into their social network?

2. Is there anything significant about the public presence of this community of technicians, for example meeting at restaurants for breakfast, lunch or coffee? Orr seems to really focus on the dialouge that occurs as a major influence on both the workers and their jobs. He also refers to this aspect as being potential invisible or disregarded by management, yet it often occurs in very public places.

3. When Orr does refer to management it seems to be a matter of pointing out a discrepancy between the technicians and the management. Do you agree? Does this give readers a biased view of management?

For my fellow librarians

2004-10-09T10:12:00.000-05:00

Not entirely sure what patronized will turn out to be, but it purports to be "a semi-annual publication about the lives and labor of librarians."

Questions, Talking About Machines

2004-10-07T18:44:00.000-05:00

This doesn't count as one of my questions, but what is with that title? When the whole point of the book is not just talking about machines!

Right. Questions.

Could we get an overview on ethnographic research methods? Observation, interviewing, fitting oneself into the population being researched, making sense of the results -- this is all very interesting, and I know very little about it.

On the management and de-skilling question (p. 150): I'm not even sure where to start with this. So-called "knowledge management" efforts have struck me as management's wishful attempts at de-skilling employees ("if we could only get that knowledge out of their pesky heads, we could fire 'em and hire youngsters at half the cost!"). Is invisible labor invisible to management too? Why doesn't management employ some of the same ethnographic techniques Orr uses in order to understand what their workers actually do? And whence cometh this delusion that hands-on experience can be reduced to an intranet or a training session?

That said, is Orr's service triangle really a quadrangle? Where is IBM management in all this?

orr questions

2004-10-06T13:07:00.000-05:00

1. Orr emphasizes the importance of studying work practices, because the picture of work that emerges from these studies is frequently much different than the one revealed by studying the employment relationship or identity construction through one's work. The ethnographic approach, as evidenced by this book, uncovers much, but what does ethnography miss and what are its limitations? What important aspects of work, if any, cannot be adequately addressed by the ethnographic approach?

2. While reading, I kept contrasting Talking About Machines with an article by Elfreda Chatman about alientation theory and information behaviors of janitors. It is the most depressing article ever written, while Orr's is, at times, almost celebratory. The research methods are different and so are the research aims, so the fact that I kept putting the two works together struck me as odd.

There were some obvious similarities - both groups of workers had few prospects for advancement within their organization, both lacked a constant 'space' in which work took place, and both were separated, both physically and ideologically, from management. However, while the janitors did not have an active social and information sharing network with their co-workers, the technicians obviously did. The janitors overwhelmingly lived in an alientated social world. The technicians, as a result of this network, did not seem to. They did sometimes express frustration and the sense that their concerns were not being heard by management, but they didn't seem exactly alienated.

So, finally coming to the question: is the social and information-sharing network among co-workers enough to eradicate alientation? Mask it? Or is it possible that Orr did not include this because it was not part of a work practice?

3. Throughout my experiences in different work environments, people always seem to be attributing human characteristics to the machines they work with daily (i.e. 'The copy machine hates me,' 'My computer died,' or my personal favorite, watching a co-worker 'pet' and whisper encouragements to a printer in an attempt to coax it into printing). The technicians don't do this, and thankfully, don't seem to have this kind of relationship with their machines. How could we characterize the relationship between technician and machine, and how is it different from the relationship between technician and customer?

Questions Rosenhaft and Downey

2004-10-03T21:07:00.000-05:00

1. Downey's article discusses the importance of human interaction and the focus of the telegraph company on image in the business, as helping to make the workers visible. Is the invisiblity of information workers due to a decrease in face to face (and even voice) interaction? If so, why has this affected information workers more than other workers where electronic communication is also increasing? How has the changing interface of the web influenced the perception of workers behind it?

2. Rosenhaft compares the mental and physical stresses that Dies, Rath and Eisendecker experience in their clerical work, as it relates to the conditions of the 18th century. To what extent have technological advances decreased mental and physical stress at work? How does it relate to job satisfaction? Rosenhaft implies that "cramp seemed in many cases to include an element of psychic resistance to the specific task," doesn't this suggest something?

3. Jeff seperates Mr.Dies job into three different areas, and Rosenhaft connects work involving new fields of knowledge and new technology with prestige. As Mary points out, Mr. Dies never benefits from this prestige. However this connection has interesting implications in terms today's workforce in comparison to Rosenhaft's study. Is the increased segmention of work responsible for decreasing prestige (data entry) or increased prestige (computer programers) in terms of information workers? Are there factors that determine this hierarchy?

One, Two, Three Questions

2004-10-03T18:26:00.000-05:00

After commenting on student papers all weekend, I now have scrivener's palsy....

1. This is probably similar to earlier questions - In the Rosenhaft essay, it seems that attaining certain levels of literacy is necessary to attain these work positions, yet it is the production of literacy that constrains these men; in fact, it is what leads to Dies' job loss. Contrary to what many might assume, the attainment of literacy leads to oppressive work conditions, not advanced status. How might we apply this idea today?

2. Again, similar to other questions, but I am interested in the injuries and maladies that tend to arise from this sort of work (in Rosenhaft). While clearly in the Rosenhaft essay the workers are male, it seems that today many of these workers are female. And many of these maladies are seen as "phantom" illnesses. Many of the occupations/duties described by Rosenhaft are now considered feminized occupations; they entail drudge work. I'm wondering how (or if) gender figures into the credibility given to these injuries and illnesses, as well as the status accredited to these jobs.

3. This question is more a plea for help. Can someone (the author of the article in which the term is used, perhaps) explain the technological systems paradigm to me in more detail?

4. Access to information (in Rosenhaft) supposedly means that the worker will earn more, but it seems that the workers in question don't have the level of access to merit retaining them. They seem to have become machine parts that come in contact with the information and produce more information, yet aren't seen as a large threat to company security (it took Calenberg quite a bit of time to determine that Dies might be a threat, that he might spread his expertise to companies in other cities). I don't know where this is going, it is a point that keeps gnawing at me.

and I would like to discuss the "boundaries" issue, too.

Let's try the 2nd question again

2004-10-03T16:26:00.000-05:00

2. After rereading this at home, it seemed garbled to me, so here's another go. Thanks to Mary for bringing up the status issue explicitly.

Dies and Eisendecker had work responsibilities at different levels of status--(1) menial and/or clerical work (all phases of record-keeping for the Widow's fund), (2) public and customer relations = professional work, and (3) confidential work like money handling, communication with the trustees--these would be managerial or proprietary functions. How did Dies and Eisendecker and and how do their analogs in the late 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries mediate between their personal interests and their job responsibilities depending on variations in working conditions, treatment by the employer, and their stake in the success of the employer?

To add to this, were the professional recognition accorded to Dies as a polemicist for the fund and the proprietary information to which he had access enough to compensate him for his stagnant salary and lack of control over his work?

rosenhaft/downey questions

2004-10-02T08:32:00.000-05:00

1. Rosenhaft explains that poor Mr. Dies had every reason to expect that his work with the Intelligenz-Comtoir and the Calenberg would expediate his assent to the class of gentlemen and the scientific community. He was working with new technologies in a new field that directly affected the lives of a great number of citizens. Yet, it did't work out that way - Dies didn't do any social climbing. In fact, it seems that the longer he held his position, the lower he fell in the estimation of his employers and the public. Why wasn't Dies welcomed into the fold of the new information class? Why was he, in fact, actively excluded, and in what ways?

2. Barley & Orr and Zabusky all view technical work as being somehow positioned at a crossroads. Technical workers have a foot in two worlds - one moving forward technologically and one "not quite ready to leave behind the categories of industrialism." I agree with Dorothea that there are many places where this concept of boundaries fits in, and wanted to add to her examples the idea of boundaries in the nature of the labor performed by tech/information workers. Argh... this isn't coming out as a question. I guess my 'question' is pretty much: "Yeah, I want to talk about boundaries, too."

3. "The past isn't over - it's not even past." Post-industrial society, information age, technological revolution - whatever you want to call it - isn't happening in a vacuum. How do the social structures and institutions created by industrial and pre-industrial society still operate now? How "appropriate" are they - do they help us or hold us back? Also, what aspects of industrial and pre-industrial society have disappeared, and what has replaced them?

Rosenhaft/Downey questions

2004-10-01T16:51:00.000-05:00

1. We know from Rosenhaft's evidence the base sum from which Dies's and Eisendecker's salaries and pensions were drawn, 500 Rtl. (=Reichsthaler?), and also that each suffered from a work-related health problem. What else can we infer about their hours and other "terms and conditions of employment"?

2. Although responsible for all phases of record-keeping for the Widow's fund, Dies and Eisendecker seem to have been responsible for maintaining the fund's public image, much as the help desk workers, telephone operators, and messengers Greg discusses are held accountable for being the company's public faces. Dies also had the opportunity to damage the Widow's fund in private, because he handled money and knew the Fund's secrets, just as system operators have control over users and access to proprietary information. How did and do these employees mediate between their personal interests and their job responsibilities depending on variations in working conditions, treatment by the employer, and their stake in the success of the employer?

3. What control if any would access to collective bargaining have given Dies and Eisendecker over their working conditions? What advantage would accrue to system operators if they were not treated as managers and had the opportunity to bargain collectively?

Questions, Downey and Rosenhaft

2004-09-30T08:14:00.000-05:00

Perhaps Greg would unpack his notion of "boundary" a little in class? He defines it as relative to subnetworks within an internetwork, but it seems to me there's more going on there: boundaries between network users and maintainers, boundaries between labor and the study thereof, boundaries between labor and management.
In Rosenhaft's article, poor Mr. Dies, despite obvious competence his managers lacked, could not parlay that competence into, shall we say, a competency. Rosenhaft appears to attribute this to vestiges of the patronage system, but I'm not so sure -- it seems a tremendously modern situation to me. So I'm asking: why is the power relationship there so one-sided? Why are Dies's numbers trustworthy when it comes to actuarial analysis, but not when it comes to his own household's financial needs?
Could we talk about the boundaries between "technical" and "professional" work (Downey p. 228, in re: computer programmers)? I'm sure there's a set of distinctions; I'm just highly unclear on what they are, which makes it hard for me to see how the situation of programmers violates them.

Drat, Last Again!

2004-09-27T01:55:00.000-05:00

It is a good thing I chose not to indulge in reading the latest Lemony Snicket novel, or this would have been even later.

In the interest of full disclosure, I need to mention that not just once, but twice I fell asleep while reading Bell. While his prose is not quite as turgid as a certain historian of literacy who shall remain unnamed, it comes close.

1. Not a question so much as a statement (namely, ick!): "Whatever the extaordinary appeal of Marxism as a social appeal, it was in backward countries, not advanced capitalist countries, that Marxist movements have been most successful" (56). [italics are mine]

Bell fails to examine his own assumptions, those ideas and ideologies upon which his own worldview are based. Maybe this is my question: if we were to flesh out the assumptions on which Bell grounds this statement, would the argument hold up? How do his biases effect his conclusions and/or affect reaction to his conclusions.

2. "Not only is there a much greater degree of educational attainment, but there is also a greater degree of cultural homogeny" (143). What is Bell's basis for this correlation. Does greater "educational attainment" lead to "cultural homogeny," or are there other factors at play here? In a text full of references to information, he doesn't seem to consider the manner in which information (and entertainment) are disseminated and how this might also be a factor. Or does he?

3. As you probably noticed, I've been busy examining the assumptions behind Bell's argument. Here is another item that troubled me. "News is no longer reported but interpreted"(468). When had it ever been otherwise? While admittedly discussions of representation are perhaps more in vogue now than when Bell wrote his book, he has, I think, quoted enough dead Germans (and others) as well as referred to ethos, the representation of character, the idea of information/knowledge, to understand that all news, all information, is interpreted. Since he refers, at times, to Plato, shouldn't he be more consciously aware of the Forms?

I guess all of this (and other points of question that I didn't post) stem from this issue of assumptions and biases. What did or didn't Bell see, consider, "forecast, etc., because of assumptions he made based on his definitions, the methodologies he privileges (and I have heaps to say about this), etc?

Relevant quote from Herbert Brun's "my words and where i want them" (London and Zurich: Princelet Editions, 1986)

2004-09-26T16:16:00.000-05:00

19

The liberal proposes to share with
almost everybody
the liberties he takes but has not.

bell questions

2004-09-25T17:16:00.000-05:00

1. How can a post-industrial society exist as a seperate entity at the national/state scale, when it uses resources from other pre-industrial and labor from other pre-industrial and industrial societies? Is our national economy still distinct or is it dependent on other national economies? How can post-industrial society be defined at national/state scale when the economy apparently transcend these very boundaries (by being dependent on the resources of other societies)?

2. Why has Bell's terminology of the "post-industrial society" become so well known when the point of his book, the growing sector of technology labor and its forcasted implications, has remained largely ignored/invisible by other social sceintists?

3. On page 75 Bell states that in a industrial society, "there is a separation of the economic system from the family system. Is there a seperation between work and home in a post-industrial society, as our homes and persons become increasingly wired?

Post 2, second try

2004-09-24T14:34:00.000-05:00

Notes on Daniels:

p. 117: for our benefit, we need a "classic" definition of productivity, since the reality of the concept is one of the contested areas in labor relations.

118: ICT makes the work place, especially for proletarianized workers, more like a play place; yes, I and my faculty colleagues tended to relieve stress by shopping online, especially late in the afternoon.

Is there a causal link between new information technology and labor market deregulation, or is the new technology just an excuse for deregulation that is motivated by political goals?

Table 3, p. 124: 5.37% of US population being enrolled in tertiary education is still not much, but for some reason we don't regard this as an industry that should be allowed to grow. This connects to the table of shifting jargon below: right-sizing is not a joke, the term has a political history in academia.

p. 126, figure 6: why so many job cuts in Telecommunications in UK in 2001--increased automation?

Concept of foreign direct investment (FDI) needs to be fleshed out.

p. 128: what is "prudential supervision"?

p. 129: "just-in-time" systems are what?

p. 130: following on the question of whether or not there is equilibrium between economic activity and employment in developed economies, can we identify a date when equilibrium of this kind existed in the US economy? (I would propose ca. 1958.)

p. 133: "A select subset of very high order service functions may still hanker after the accessibility or face-to-face contact opportunities of a downtown location; for everybody else telephone and video-conferencing for example, will be more than adequate substitutes."--in other words, elite business will still be done in the old-fashioned way, through quasi-informal contacts, while the bulk of functions will be routinized and pushed offstage. In Zweizig's Management class (654) in 1999, we learned that high-level decisions, i.e., at the CEO or presidential level, are still made based on verbally-conveyed information from a handful of close advisors or confidants, thus defeating the purpose of ICT--instantaneous delivery of accurate information to decision-takers. Ultimate leaders only act supported by trusted intimates who can filter raw information and validate decisions.

About "Robots": I have an anecdote about robots in the Silicon valley ca. 1977 to share in class.

"American Prosperity Myth":Article seems to avoid pointing out that the current economy is paid for by excessive consumption combined with low rates of personal saving.

Bush/Cheney and their core supporters are more mercantilist than capitalist--take example of Wal-Mart profits, based more on control over underserved workers and a vacuum in the marketplace than productivity--similarly, the administration plan for the economy is to secure control over resources, not to produce more with what's available--production being too costly and tending to lead to demand for workers at higher wages. Note end of article: "the injunction is to sweat assets rather than be creative."

jjg 27 September questions

2004-09-24T14:15:00.000-05:00

1. Three related questions:

a. What can we infer from "Coming of post-industrial society" about Bell's political leanings, educational background, and career path, and how does this personal context shape his conclusions?

b. Are Bell's forecasts convincing based on the evidence he presents, or is he presenting a personal utopia?

c. Who (as a political grouping) is Bell anxious to refute in the process of forecasting?

2. Who are the winners and who are the losers in Bell's projection of the post-industrial society?

3. How does the self-styled Conservative movement of the last twenty-five years fit into Bell's agenda? Why isn't the corporation "subordinate" in 2004?

Questions, Daniel Bell

2004-09-24T09:59:00.000-05:00

How does the notion of "intellectual property" affect Bell's Chapter 6 claim that we are moving away from a system based on private control of property? Is it really who's holding onto the property that's changing (as Bell asserts), or is it what "property" is being held? Or both?
"Clearly, when there is a change in the nature of the system, new groups come to power." This strikes me as a fundamental claim in the book, and frankly, I don't believe it; the New Overlords look an awful lot like the Old Overlords if you're female, non-white, or poor. What is there about the reproduction of social class through generations that Bell doesn't account for?
There have been significant attacks on the notion of "rationality" in human psychology and sociology in the past five to ten years or so, from Tversky and Kahneman's Nobel-prize-winning lambasting of homo economicus (short summary: we don't always make the objectively "rational" economic choice for a variety of reasons), to the emergent-behavior and tipping-point models of idea diffusion, to the notion of quick-and-dirty "heuristics" rather than ponderously meticulous examination of options as a basis for decision-making. What do these challenges mean for Bell's assertions about the destiny of the rational technocrat?

"Committee blocks minimum wage increase" (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)

2004-09-24T09:31:00.000-05:00

Saying an increase in the minimum wage would threaten small businesses and Wisconsin's fragile economic recovery, Republican legislators Thursday blocked Gov. Jim Doyle's plan to raise the $5.15-per-hour minimum wage to $6.50 over the next year.

Ideas on how this relates to "information labor"?

JS Online: Committee blocks minimum wage increase

bell questions

2004-09-23T21:06:00.000-05:00

1. When Bell talks about the diffusion of technology, the job seems to be in the hands of the bureaucracy, both corporate and political. Where's the little guy in all of this, the invisible labor? Is there room for individual agency in the process of diffusion?

2. Bell hints at a changing class structure as a result of the shifting social structure, positing scientists and professional technical workers as a potential new ruling class and education as the basis of social mobility. At the same time, Bell undervalues the power, prestige, and status that come with wealth, providing the examples that wealth doesn't lead to prestige and political power doesn't guarantee wealth. However, it seems that we're no closer to post-capitalism than we were when the book was published and the class system seems as inflexible and influential as ever. Much of Bell's forecasting has proven shockingly accurate. However, I would suggest that when Bell's forecasts were off base, they were off base because he neglected to acknowledge the strength and resilience of class structure in America.

I'm boiling any weaknesses in his forecasting primarily down to this one thing and wondering whether this is simplistic, controversial, or just a big old 'duh.' Whaddya think?

3. In Bell's post-industrial society, scientists outweigh even the other professional/technical elites in terms of importance, and even in status. In the conclusion, however, he admits that it is "not the power to say 'yes' or 'no' which is where real power lies." What are some ways this group (I hesitate to call them a class) might infiltrate the bureacracy to get that power? Is that a desired part of their group's role? Would science and technology benefit or suffer from such a shift of power?

questions for 9.20

2004-09-20T16:15:00.000-05:00

There are already so many questions posted that interest me, but will go ahead with mine, just for the record.

Definitional: What are ‘symbolic analysts?’ (226)

Is increasinging individualization of labor necessarily a bad thing? Aren’t there connotations of autonomy and self-expression here? No longer a cog in the machine?

What happens without labor movements? Are they an absolute and necessary good?

Why does the innovation get all the attention? In the words of my friend John, is it a ‘gadgety guy-thing’?

pat's intro

2004-09-20T15:44:00.000-05:00

Hello all,

Since I will be joining you tonight for class, I think it's time to introduce myself.

I am itinerant doctoral student, yes, I have been at this for quite some time, embarrassingly so. I'll spare you the details of my student career, but will say that if I had scurried rather than strolled through this program, I would now be on sabbatical. Instead, I am scurrying to write my dissertation. Which takes me to the reason for being in this class.

I have been teaching Info Org courses at the University of Illinois since Fall 2000, and have enjoyed every minute of it. But one can only be 'Visiting' for so long. Since being at Illinois, I have heard countless conversations about designing progams centered on "Digital Libraries" and have more often than not been stunned by the proposed courses. Mathematics, algorithms, in short, what looks much more like a CS than an LIS degree.

For the last ten years, there has been a tremendous amount of money and energy invested in creating digital libraries. Infrastructure and getting things to work and developing new tools have, rightly so (arguably) been the main object of grant monies. Now, the funding pendulum is swinging towards preservation and use. What I have yet to see much of, though, is discussion of the nature of the work for digital librarians, or, 'digital era librarians.' Indiana just received an IMLS grant that includes a needs assessment for digital librarianship, this is encouraging.

My research will examine the nature of the work, the context, the values, and perspectives of the LIS digital librarian. Via case studies, I hope to discover these aspects of digital librarianship, and with this, contribute to the design of relevant LIS programs.

Thank you all in advance for letting me join in your conversations.

See you tonight.

pat

Post three: questions for discussion, 20 September

2004-09-19T16:56:00.000-05:00

1. What is a "unit of analysis"? How is this concept relevant to terms as broad as "technology" or "information"? Is the notion of objective analysis useful for subjective, ideologically-driven, non-quantitative studies, or is this just a metaphor?

2. What are CERN and NCSA?

3. From Downey p. 235: Shoshana Zuboff says that IT produces a "voice" which changes the language of the workplace so that workers think and feel differently. Whose voice is it? Is it new information, or does it drown out the possibility of creating new information? And what about the workers' voice?

4. Since 2. is not really a discussion question: Downey p. 246: how might the corporate history of McDonald's help to predict the future of Wal-Mart?

downey article questions

2004-09-18T12:10:00.000-05:00

1. What are the differences between the invisible work of women and the invisible work coming from the Information sector?

2. How can the effects of IT and Neolibralism be seperated and are there any interactions between them?

3. Why does IT create competition that leads to job loss instead of creating better jobs?

Film reaction (and brief heads-up)

2004-09-17T16:28:00.000-05:00

Heads-up first: Karen Riggs's book is so new that finding reviews is proving to be a challenge. I'll keep an eye on incoming stuff in the SLIS library.

Next, film reaction: What's stuck with me nearly a week later is a disconnect in the word "skill" that the film hinted at deconstructing but didn't quite fully address: broad, transferable, long-term skills (group work, management, artistic or writing skill, "learning how to learn") and focused, immediate, obsolescence-prone skills ("Photoshop 4").

For all the verbiage about the former type of skill, much of the effort expended goes toward inculcating the latter type.

Why? Well, immediate business needs are part of it, of course, and the film made that clear. I think there's more to it, though. I don't think educators are nearly as confident as the film made them sound in either their ability to communicate the former type of skill or its long-term viability in the job market. Given that, it's hardly a surprise that they turn to skills that are easier to teach, easier to measure, and easier to make an immediate business case ("these students will get hired!") for.

It does a long-term disservice to students, naturally; I think we were all wincing at the airy assumptions about job security and financial success based on quickly-obsolete software skills. Moreover, it leaves the educators open to charges of wilful cluelessness or even hypocrisy; surely they know what they're teaching will become obsolete? But the educators are in a cleft stick -- if they admit they don't know where the job market will go or how well their preparation for it will hold up, who will value their service?

I don't have an answer to this conundrum myself, though I do wish educators could acknowledge it openly. Hiding it does little to solve it.

Questions, Downey article

2004-09-17T10:20:00.000-05:00

I doubt I'd ask this if the article author weren't teaching the class, but nonetheless: Why the apologetic captatio benevolentiae stance in the opening section? What is the methodological, ethical, or other problem with analyzing a phenomenon in which one happens to have participated? Julian Orr was a copy-machine repairman himself; Jackie Rogers was a temp. That hasn't brought their work into question that I'm aware. So why apologize?

The article discusses how researchers are now making certain classes of information labor (e.g. women, freelancers, production workers) visible that had been swept under the carpet. How'd they become invisible to researchers in the first place? Is it (as implied) just a thoughtless error of emphasis, or is something else at work?

Is collectivization our best or our only response to the growing problem of low-wage low-status work? As information laborers of one stripe or another, what is our recourse, what is our likeliest plan of action, to keep our dignity and raise society's perception of our value? Consider the Schlage workers in the film, whose merely obsolete skills were compared to the nonexistent (with relation to that job, anyway) skills of a fast-food restaurant worker. Moreover, is "information laborer" really the right scale to use when considering labor action? Do we need a broader perspective?