Thoughts on digital, sublime myths

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?

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

1. Computers are central to a reformed world.

2. Improved computers can help reform society even more.

3. More computers are better than few; there are no limits to how much is good.

4. Nobody loses, everyone wins; in the worst case, it is neutral or apolitical.

5. 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

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

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

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?

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:

1. what is the role and position of labor within the information revolution?
2. what are the implications of these IT revolutions for labor?
3. 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

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

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?

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

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

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).

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

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

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.