Jeff Gibbens, Book Review, LIS 810 (Uncovering Information Labor),
13 May 2007
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.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Questions from 1 May 2007 Jennifer Light interview/podcast
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?
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?
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Mosco Digital Sublime, 24 April
Comments here and there on Mosco's book:
p. 5: I would like to see a team of serious scholars work up the .com bubble along the lines of the comparison Mosco makes with the Great Depression. We've more or less been told that the economy absorbed the shock of that collapse, but I doubt that that is true. Why isn't the story reported?
p. 16: If as myths become reabsorbed into collective consciousness they exert their greatest political influence, what about the emergence of collective political will? The problem is that things are what we say they are until someone says differently. This relates to the .com collapse: if we had a Depression but nobody talked about it, there was no Depression to generate a political response. It's not an issue of cognition, it's an issue of control over the terms of the debate, or "framing" as it is now called.
p. 39: More provocative than the comments on Gore is the offhand remark that most people "have yet to use a telephone"; if that can be shown, then what significance does it have? Isn't knowing that telephones exist enough for them to have an impact?
About Fukuyama: isn't the issue about Fukuyama one of who pays him to say what he says, and who the target audience might be?
The most pervasive myth of cyberspace is that now the cool people will rule everything. Gore's problem in the 1990s is that he was claiming coolness but had yet to ascend to the appropriate chill level in the public mind.
Ch. 6 is very helpful--that the conspicuousness and lack of utility of the Twin Towers, connected with the economic cleansing of lower Manhattan in the 1960s, contributed to their vulnerability to catastrophic attack, is a point that can't be made often enough (note pp. 151-152).
p. 5: I would like to see a team of serious scholars work up the .com bubble along the lines of the comparison Mosco makes with the Great Depression. We've more or less been told that the economy absorbed the shock of that collapse, but I doubt that that is true. Why isn't the story reported?
p. 16: If as myths become reabsorbed into collective consciousness they exert their greatest political influence, what about the emergence of collective political will? The problem is that things are what we say they are until someone says differently. This relates to the .com collapse: if we had a Depression but nobody talked about it, there was no Depression to generate a political response. It's not an issue of cognition, it's an issue of control over the terms of the debate, or "framing" as it is now called.
p. 39: More provocative than the comments on Gore is the offhand remark that most people "have yet to use a telephone"; if that can be shown, then what significance does it have? Isn't knowing that telephones exist enough for them to have an impact?
About Fukuyama: isn't the issue about Fukuyama one of who pays him to say what he says, and who the target audience might be?
The most pervasive myth of cyberspace is that now the cool people will rule everything. Gore's problem in the 1990s is that he was claiming coolness but had yet to ascend to the appropriate chill level in the public mind.
Ch. 6 is very helpful--that the conspicuousness and lack of utility of the Twin Towers, connected with the economic cleansing of lower Manhattan in the 1960s, contributed to their vulnerability to catastrophic attack, is a point that can't be made often enough (note pp. 151-152).
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Comment from main page, 10 April 2007
No argument with anything anyone has posted. These comments are very helpful.
The book by Ross cited in the Silicon Alley article, No collar, is a text we read in the first iteration of the class, and I recommend it highly. The beginnings of employee organization and traditional labor consciousness are discussed in Ross's ch. 7, "Optimize me." The key issue is that while Internet companies were expending enormous energy to make employees comfortable in the workplace, the survival of the industry in 2000 came down to cash flow. As far as employees were concerned, the financial issues were offstage.
In the article about models, I was reminded of how the public image of flight attendants has changed in 50 years, due to cost cutting in the airline industry, civil rights actions by employees, and unionization by attendants. Glamor has been sacrificed, but attendants have greater status and job security, along with more dignity. How models could organize to protect themselves I don't know. Actors, who have similar physical issues, are very militant.
The book by Ross cited in the Silicon Alley article, No collar, is a text we read in the first iteration of the class, and I recommend it highly. The beginnings of employee organization and traditional labor consciousness are discussed in Ross's ch. 7, "Optimize me." The key issue is that while Internet companies were expending enormous energy to make employees comfortable in the workplace, the survival of the industry in 2000 came down to cash flow. As far as employees were concerned, the financial issues were offstage.
In the article about models, I was reminded of how the public image of flight attendants has changed in 50 years, due to cost cutting in the airline industry, civil rights actions by employees, and unionization by attendants. Glamor has been sacrificed, but attendants have greater status and job security, along with more dignity. How models could organize to protect themselves I don't know. Actors, who have similar physical issues, are very militant.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Slaton and Gordon articles for March 27
I'm impressed by Kihun and Nate's remarks. No specific response to them as yet.
From Slaton on the "Anxious Engineer":
The administrator quote about needing to fail large numbers of students in an open admissions environment shows the orientation of administrators to measurable results that can be presented to higher-ups, trustees, and accreditation agencies. If Deans are managers, then they themselves are being managed and held accountable. Pretty tough on those who are caught below them in the hierarchy.
The poor reception of affirmative action among professionals is parallel to their attitude toward unions. I had an engineering professor who counted as a liberal activist in local politics tell me that he could not belong to the Faculty Association because it would compromise him as a professional engineer.
About the issue of universities' resistance to providing remedial education to cohorts of minority students who require it, there needs to be research on how well the function of institutional research, especially the measurement of educational outcomes for students as opposed to degree production, is being handled in American higher education. No doubt the EPS folks are looking at this, but their work doesn't seem to be getting to people in other academic disciplines who need it.
Nice to see that Slaton has at least one cheer for the progressive impulses of the federal bureaucracy.
From Gordon:
Note his use of the Bourdieu term habitus at the very beginning of his article.
Images from Seinfeld and The office come to mind as background for Gordon's article.
Gordon's Foucault-derived notion of managerialism strikes me as control elevated to a value. Why control by management is off-limits in the workplace discussion makes no sense.
Practical experience showed me that coupling issues of respect for individuals with questioning management practices (Gordon, p. 21: "difference will only work as a guiding principle if it's linked to an antiracism that is explicitly antimanagerial") is effective as a strategy for getting some workplace accountability; management will do almost anything to preserve the fiction that their actions toward individuals are fair and divorced from any private agenda.
Gordon does not touch on the concept of "ownership" and how that muddles the discussion of management prerogative. The supposedly objective, rational organizational structure of American corporations and structures that imitate them is rooted in the origins of enterprises in patriarchal families.
From Slaton on the "Anxious Engineer":
The administrator quote about needing to fail large numbers of students in an open admissions environment shows the orientation of administrators to measurable results that can be presented to higher-ups, trustees, and accreditation agencies. If Deans are managers, then they themselves are being managed and held accountable. Pretty tough on those who are caught below them in the hierarchy.
The poor reception of affirmative action among professionals is parallel to their attitude toward unions. I had an engineering professor who counted as a liberal activist in local politics tell me that he could not belong to the Faculty Association because it would compromise him as a professional engineer.
About the issue of universities' resistance to providing remedial education to cohorts of minority students who require it, there needs to be research on how well the function of institutional research, especially the measurement of educational outcomes for students as opposed to degree production, is being handled in American higher education. No doubt the EPS folks are looking at this, but their work doesn't seem to be getting to people in other academic disciplines who need it.
Nice to see that Slaton has at least one cheer for the progressive impulses of the federal bureaucracy.
From Gordon:
Note his use of the Bourdieu term habitus at the very beginning of his article.
Images from Seinfeld and The office come to mind as background for Gordon's article.
Gordon's Foucault-derived notion of managerialism strikes me as control elevated to a value. Why control by management is off-limits in the workplace discussion makes no sense.
Practical experience showed me that coupling issues of respect for individuals with questioning management practices (Gordon, p. 21: "difference will only work as a guiding principle if it's linked to an antiracism that is explicitly antimanagerial") is effective as a strategy for getting some workplace accountability; management will do almost anything to preserve the fiction that their actions toward individuals are fair and divorced from any private agenda.
Gordon does not touch on the concept of "ownership" and how that muddles the discussion of management prerogative. The supposedly objective, rational organizational structure of American corporations and structures that imitate them is rooted in the origins of enterprises in patriarchal families.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Comment from class blog page
To add to Barbara's and Nate's observations, I'm impressed by the social/ethical focus of the book, and how, by choosing to look at classification, it comes in under the radar of some thorny ideological problems with information labor.
The book seems to take the position that classification is normative, and to proceed to explore the resulting problems. Using the discussion on p. 13 about the work of classification as a starting point, I would argue that work creates labor, which produces class consciousness, which is a form of self-reclassification by a constituency. So the question is whether the presence of classification, standards, and so forth, in the world, is enough social work, or whether we need that additional consciousness of class by laboring people to make political sense of it all.
Bourdieu's work on the self-classification of social groups in France in his book about Distinction is a valuable contribution to understanding this issue.
The book seems to take the position that classification is normative, and to proceed to explore the resulting problems. Using the discussion on p. 13 about the work of classification as a starting point, I would argue that work creates labor, which produces class consciousness, which is a form of self-reclassification by a constituency. So the question is whether the presence of classification, standards, and so forth, in the world, is enough social work, or whether we need that additional consciousness of class by laboring people to make political sense of it all.
Bourdieu's work on the self-classification of social groups in France in his book about Distinction is a valuable contribution to understanding this issue.
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Betamax to Blockbuster 2
On Introduction:
This is about videos as a form of print culture, not about technology as such. The story of the inception of video culture and the labor it created is bypassed, because the intermediaries Greenberg describes only participated in the culture for a short time, maybe a decade. The unpaid or low-wage labor they contributed to the scene was so ephemeral that it hardly existed in historical terms. These appear to have been members of the leisure class who joined this movement on their way to another social place. The example of Tarantino illustrates this.
There is a difference between empowerment and power. While the hobbyists or enthusiasts may have felt empowered, the power in the industry lay elsewhere. The real story is how power succeeds in hiding labor, even from labor itself.
p. 7 of Introduction:
I'm uncomfortable with the treatment of the pornographic segment of the industry. Tolerance of pornography, like that of any sex worker, is predicated on the notion that this labor is "free" labor, that is, the sex workers or performers "choose" to be employed in this industry. That is debatable, starting with the quality of the choices made.
We need to shift attention away from issues of pornography as speech to the exploitation of workers in the pornographic industry.
Chap. 1:
The crazed joy of the self-taping enthusiasts reminds me of the Cheech and Chong line: "I played Black Sabbath at 78 and I saw God." Having lived through that moment in history it's hard for me to respect it.
The reference to The prisoner is apt for a couple of reasons: the first summer (1968) the show played the picture tube on our tv went out, followed by the sound, so I saw only flashes and heard only muffled dialogue from the final episodes. I've always wanted to watch the whole thing but have never had the time.
The second reason is that if the video people had thought about it they were living through a phenomenon not unlike the predicament of #6.
Later in ch. 1, the comparison of video people to ham radio operators rings true.
More general response:
Were the video people media dupes or a class with revolutionary potential?
These are not workers, although there is work, labor, present in their environment. If the consciousness of work does not exist, what then?
This is like the Gold Rush of 1849: prospectors were not miners, but amateurs who used the moment to "transition" to a new region and a new set of opportunities. Although they faced considerable risks, they weren't around long enough to be oppressed--the word exploitation fits.
Does the video industry at this stage really fit into the category of hidden information labor we are exploring in class?
This is about videos as a form of print culture, not about technology as such. The story of the inception of video culture and the labor it created is bypassed, because the intermediaries Greenberg describes only participated in the culture for a short time, maybe a decade. The unpaid or low-wage labor they contributed to the scene was so ephemeral that it hardly existed in historical terms. These appear to have been members of the leisure class who joined this movement on their way to another social place. The example of Tarantino illustrates this.
There is a difference between empowerment and power. While the hobbyists or enthusiasts may have felt empowered, the power in the industry lay elsewhere. The real story is how power succeeds in hiding labor, even from labor itself.
p. 7 of Introduction:
I'm uncomfortable with the treatment of the pornographic segment of the industry. Tolerance of pornography, like that of any sex worker, is predicated on the notion that this labor is "free" labor, that is, the sex workers or performers "choose" to be employed in this industry. That is debatable, starting with the quality of the choices made.
We need to shift attention away from issues of pornography as speech to the exploitation of workers in the pornographic industry.
Chap. 1:
The crazed joy of the self-taping enthusiasts reminds me of the Cheech and Chong line: "I played Black Sabbath at 78 and I saw God." Having lived through that moment in history it's hard for me to respect it.
The reference to The prisoner is apt for a couple of reasons: the first summer (1968) the show played the picture tube on our tv went out, followed by the sound, so I saw only flashes and heard only muffled dialogue from the final episodes. I've always wanted to watch the whole thing but have never had the time.
The second reason is that if the video people had thought about it they were living through a phenomenon not unlike the predicament of #6.
Later in ch. 1, the comparison of video people to ham radio operators rings true.
More general response:
Were the video people media dupes or a class with revolutionary potential?
These are not workers, although there is work, labor, present in their environment. If the consciousness of work does not exist, what then?
This is like the Gold Rush of 1849: prospectors were not miners, but amateurs who used the moment to "transition" to a new region and a new set of opportunities. Although they faced considerable risks, they weren't around long enough to be oppressed--the word exploitation fits.
Does the video industry at this stage really fit into the category of hidden information labor we are exploring in class?
Monday, March 5, 2007
From Betamax to Blockbuster excerpts by Greenberg
Time has been short so I'm going to give initial reactions with the option to correct them before class tomorrow.
I think I get the drift of Greenberg's argument, that the distributors and retailers formed a socially dynamic community that sold the public and manufacturers on the market viability of video. I hope that there will be a discussion of how experimental film/video art of the 1960s provided a template for this enthusiast community he speaks of. Before any innovation enters into general consumption it is heralded by a lot of cultural work by somebody. Video as art stemmed from a desire to use the generally poor visual quality of television along with its immediacy for subversive ends.
Some other cautions: while it is important to look at the content of process as well as the content of messages, it is dangerous to be too optimistic about the utopian potential of the process, like Jacques Attali in the book Noise, where he saw boomboxes as the answer to modern music. They were not the answer, just the continuation of modern music by other means and a larger number of actors.
One of Jim Cortada's observations, which I think is true, but could be ominous, is that (rough quote) "every industry followed the same pattern" in adopting IT. If it's the same pattern, then the information content resides in that repeated pattern, not in the industry implementation. What we need to know is the impacts, intended and otherwise on the work and lives of individuals--did they move up or just shift laterally?
I think I get the drift of Greenberg's argument, that the distributors and retailers formed a socially dynamic community that sold the public and manufacturers on the market viability of video. I hope that there will be a discussion of how experimental film/video art of the 1960s provided a template for this enthusiast community he speaks of. Before any innovation enters into general consumption it is heralded by a lot of cultural work by somebody. Video as art stemmed from a desire to use the generally poor visual quality of television along with its immediacy for subversive ends.
Some other cautions: while it is important to look at the content of process as well as the content of messages, it is dangerous to be too optimistic about the utopian potential of the process, like Jacques Attali in the book Noise, where he saw boomboxes as the answer to modern music. They were not the answer, just the continuation of modern music by other means and a larger number of actors.
One of Jim Cortada's observations, which I think is true, but could be ominous, is that (rough quote) "every industry followed the same pattern" in adopting IT. If it's the same pattern, then the information content resides in that repeated pattern, not in the industry implementation. What we need to know is the impacts, intended and otherwise on the work and lives of individuals--did they move up or just shift laterally?
Monday, February 26, 2007
Cortada readings
p. 179 in A nation transformed...: the criterion of new functionality, the ability to do something that existing technology does not do, is hard to satisfy. I wonder if the personal computer qualifies for criterion four?
p. 200 and elsewhere: key point is that the success of IBM and other computer firms in the 1960s was predicated on their pre-computer base of business machine customers. It is much easier to compete if you have a stable market which you understand and know how to address.
p. 202: what does it mean when a corporation acts as an innovator, as opposed to an individual?
p. 207-208: is the impulse to reform society always the same as the desire to improve society?
About the Digital applications in higher education chapter draft: a critique of higher education practices is more than implicit in the chapter. Cortada is correct to perceive that higher education is an industry that works in part by swaying the public with the institutional equivalent of Weber's "hereditary charisma." One comment prior to the talk: my guess as to why college administrators are so enthusiastic for administrative applications is because they act as an electronic moat to keep the students, faculty, and public out of the institutional fastness. Faculty only gradually become aware of their exclusion from the information network enjoyed by administrators.
From the Digital hand summary article: p. 764, two very important issues independent of technology: how does an industry make money, and how many real players are there? It seems that technological progress, that is, progress that can't be reversed in the foreseeable future, is dependent on financially stable firms that act within markets where real economic freedom, the freedom to succeed, is effectively limited. If not monopolies, then American industry thrives through coalitions of competing firms.
p. 200 and elsewhere: key point is that the success of IBM and other computer firms in the 1960s was predicated on their pre-computer base of business machine customers. It is much easier to compete if you have a stable market which you understand and know how to address.
p. 202: what does it mean when a corporation acts as an innovator, as opposed to an individual?
p. 207-208: is the impulse to reform society always the same as the desire to improve society?
About the Digital applications in higher education chapter draft: a critique of higher education practices is more than implicit in the chapter. Cortada is correct to perceive that higher education is an industry that works in part by swaying the public with the institutional equivalent of Weber's "hereditary charisma." One comment prior to the talk: my guess as to why college administrators are so enthusiastic for administrative applications is because they act as an electronic moat to keep the students, faculty, and public out of the institutional fastness. Faculty only gradually become aware of their exclusion from the information network enjoyed by administrators.
From the Digital hand summary article: p. 764, two very important issues independent of technology: how does an industry make money, and how many real players are there? It seems that technological progress, that is, progress that can't be reversed in the foreseeable future, is dependent on financially stable firms that act within markets where real economic freedom, the freedom to succeed, is effectively limited. If not monopolies, then American industry thrives through coalitions of competing firms.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Comment from main blog page
Jeff Gibbens said...
About the distinction between creative labor and information or other kinds of labor: all labor is potentially "creative"--what we call "creative" is either autonomous or collaborative. In a hierarchy, the presence of "creative" workers undermines subordination.
There's a nuance of meaning between "technician" and "expert" that has to do with the eroding boundaries between blue- and white-collar labor that Nate refers to. Ensmenger's choice of the term "technician" says a lot about what he sees as the value of programming work--that is, the hands-on aspect is essential.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Comment on Ensmenger
Note this title, published by University of Wisconsin Press,
Harris, Howell John, 1951- , The right to manage : industrial relations policies of American business in the 1940s. Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press, 1982.
I referred to this book in the last couple of weeks.
In theory, there could be unions of personnel who hold control functions just as there are unions of prison guards, police, and so forth, but the Taft-Hartley Act (1947) excluded most supervisory personnel from the right to bargain collectively, thus throwing supervisors into the camp of employers because they had no other support options. The "right to manage," mythical because to manage a concern is not the same as to own a company, became according to Harris a rallying cry in corporate publicity throughout the 1950s, parallel with the second Red Scare and disputes with organized labor over labor's legitimacy and control over working conditions. The notion of a right to control what one is hired to control has become inscribed in our culture.
If we are going to understand how programmers and other groups that are networked around a shared skill or expertise can be, or may be seen as disruptive to management culture, we need to know more about how management structures itself socially, what the psychological benefits of holding a place in a hierarchy are, and on the other hand how management may also project itself as a community of practice in opposition to experts or technicians.
Harris, Howell John, 1951- , The right to manage : industrial relations policies of American business in the 1940s. Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press, 1982.
I referred to this book in the last couple of weeks.
In theory, there could be unions of personnel who hold control functions just as there are unions of prison guards, police, and so forth, but the Taft-Hartley Act (1947) excluded most supervisory personnel from the right to bargain collectively, thus throwing supervisors into the camp of employers because they had no other support options. The "right to manage," mythical because to manage a concern is not the same as to own a company, became according to Harris a rallying cry in corporate publicity throughout the 1950s, parallel with the second Red Scare and disputes with organized labor over labor's legitimacy and control over working conditions. The notion of a right to control what one is hired to control has become inscribed in our culture.
If we are going to understand how programmers and other groups that are networked around a shared skill or expertise can be, or may be seen as disruptive to management culture, we need to know more about how management structures itself socially, what the psychological benefits of holding a place in a hierarchy are, and on the other hand how management may also project itself as a community of practice in opposition to experts or technicians.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Follow-up to class discussion
For the record, the thought that I had at the end of class about the priority of function to work to technological constraints was something that I struggled with when Greg offered the class for the first time in 2004. I could never figure out, in the various situations we read about, where the WORK was. In the case of the Calenberg fund, Dies's work is still recognizable as the descendant of social functions that were carried on by the Church or State, so that we can see it as an integrated whole, while at the same time his need for assistance shows the beginning of a division of labor.
The big problem for Dies, comprising the entire work force of this insurance fund, was his exclusion from the control function. I think we will find that this is a persistent problem even in open, networked workplaces, that the work can be made to resemble leisure, but the employees are vulnerable because financial and management systems are made offsite and thus are invisible to them.
The big problem for Dies, comprising the entire work force of this insurance fund, was his exclusion from the control function. I think we will find that this is a persistent problem even in open, networked workplaces, that the work can be made to resemble leisure, but the employees are vulnerable because financial and management systems are made offsite and thus are invisible to them.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Postscript to 12 February post
After rereading Benner Monday night, I admit to having misread him a couple of times. The structure of the guilds is clearly a pre-union organizing structure that can evolve into a union, and logical given industry circumstances. The key shift in consciousness is to begin to question the mythical "right to manage"--Schot's article in Modernity and technology is valuable for its discussion of that shift among the Rotterdam dock workers of the early 20th century.
Should be pointed out that the artificial ambiguity in the classification of workers as supervisory that was introduced by Taft-Hartley and recently widened by Bush's NLRB is one of the main incentives to employers to make the management cohort as large as possible. This is why Wal-Mart calls its employees "associates."
On Sampson and Wu, the question might be where the now-redundant dock workers and sailors disappeared to in terms of employment in the technological evolution of shipping?
Should be pointed out that the artificial ambiguity in the classification of workers as supervisory that was introduced by Taft-Hartley and recently widened by Bush's NLRB is one of the main incentives to employers to make the management cohort as large as possible. This is why Wal-Mart calls its employees "associates."
On Sampson and Wu, the question might be where the now-redundant dock workers and sailors disappeared to in terms of employment in the technological evolution of shipping?
Monday, February 12, 2007
Uncovering labour in information revolutions, 2007 post
I enjoyed reading several articles in the Blok/Downey collection that had been assigned in the 2004 version of the class. They make a great deal more sense than in 2004. The Stalder book clarifies the framework of this research.
On Rosenhaft's article:
While reading it occurred to me that the English-born American and French revolutionary Thomas Paine began his career by obtaining a post as an exciseman after having carried on a trade for a few years. His political problems with England began with his fight to retain his excise post after being accused of corruption, much like Dies's problems with an apparent act of embezzlement. By the end of the 18th century there was a sizable cohort, if not a class, of clerical-type workers who were not making their fortunes in the society but had enough literary ability to find patrons, sell their pens, and stir up trouble (nb. famous Darnton book on literary underground of the Ancien Regime). As it turned out, they had subversive power way beyond their numbers and caused real headaches. So the Calenberg trustees' fear of Dies was probably not exaggerated.
The converse of this, as Rosenhaft puts it, that "control of their public utterance was part of the price they paid in turn for the prospect of promotion" certainly carries over to the clerical type of employment, including the computer industry, today. One question for any organization to address is whether the public loyalty requirement does not also limit internal debate and consequently stifle innovation?
The Bartleby effect experienced by Dies and his successors suggests how much planning needs to go into workload and staffing. The Calenberg insurance fund exaggerated the burdens on Dies because it was an inverted pyramid, all generals (the trustees) and one private.
On Postigo, Benner:
Little to add to the 2004 comments. We have to assume that the programmers and volunteers were not merely dupes of the industry but had bought so completely into the libertarian assumptions of the society that they were truly baffled at how they were treated when they entered the "work zone."
To compare programmers' associations to college professors' organizations, professional and/or union: the tipping points that cause workers who are in the professional class to seek unionization is the fear of various losses--either loss of potential income (years without significant salary increases, or salary compression, or failure to compete in salary with professors in other disciplines), loss of status (threats to private colleges from public universities, threats to public universities from public junior colleges, et al.), or loss of personal negotiating power (administrators who are indifferent, pursue personal agendas exclusively, or who are led from above).
A question for the class, and for any worker, is what constitutes a threat so grave, that it would lead you or any worker to actively seek to organize or to affiliate with a union, rather than to passively accept existing working conditions as the cost of being employed?
On Sampson and Wu:
I note that there is a direct tie-in to Schot's article on the Rotterdam docks industrial action of 1905-1907. The physical realities of an industry like shipping do not yield as rapidly to transformation as hoped.
On Downey:
A comment on p. 251 quote about unions degenerating into online value-added services for members:
In the NEA-affiliated faculty union I worked for, there was a debate about the excessive reliance of the activists on e-mail rather than face-to-face interaction with members. E-mail exaggerates the tendency of faculty to barricade themselves in their office fortresses. (Might there be a difference in the effectiveness of e-mail if the workforce is in a single, large room divided into cubicles as opposed to individual offices?)
To compound the tactical problem of all electronic communication and no grassroots effort, only gradually in the course of our contract dispute did the organization become aware that e-mail on the university server was completely open to monitoring by the administration. I would think that no worker would make the same mistake now. (There was a New York Times story recently about e-mail forwarding by corporate employees to external accounts for their personal protection, a practice wreaking havoc with corporate security. Nice.)
On Rosenhaft's article:
While reading it occurred to me that the English-born American and French revolutionary Thomas Paine began his career by obtaining a post as an exciseman after having carried on a trade for a few years. His political problems with England began with his fight to retain his excise post after being accused of corruption, much like Dies's problems with an apparent act of embezzlement. By the end of the 18th century there was a sizable cohort, if not a class, of clerical-type workers who were not making their fortunes in the society but had enough literary ability to find patrons, sell their pens, and stir up trouble (nb. famous Darnton book on literary underground of the Ancien Regime). As it turned out, they had subversive power way beyond their numbers and caused real headaches. So the Calenberg trustees' fear of Dies was probably not exaggerated.
The converse of this, as Rosenhaft puts it, that "control of their public utterance was part of the price they paid in turn for the prospect of promotion" certainly carries over to the clerical type of employment, including the computer industry, today. One question for any organization to address is whether the public loyalty requirement does not also limit internal debate and consequently stifle innovation?
The Bartleby effect experienced by Dies and his successors suggests how much planning needs to go into workload and staffing. The Calenberg insurance fund exaggerated the burdens on Dies because it was an inverted pyramid, all generals (the trustees) and one private.
On Postigo, Benner:
Little to add to the 2004 comments. We have to assume that the programmers and volunteers were not merely dupes of the industry but had bought so completely into the libertarian assumptions of the society that they were truly baffled at how they were treated when they entered the "work zone."
To compare programmers' associations to college professors' organizations, professional and/or union: the tipping points that cause workers who are in the professional class to seek unionization is the fear of various losses--either loss of potential income (years without significant salary increases, or salary compression, or failure to compete in salary with professors in other disciplines), loss of status (threats to private colleges from public universities, threats to public universities from public junior colleges, et al.), or loss of personal negotiating power (administrators who are indifferent, pursue personal agendas exclusively, or who are led from above).
A question for the class, and for any worker, is what constitutes a threat so grave, that it would lead you or any worker to actively seek to organize or to affiliate with a union, rather than to passively accept existing working conditions as the cost of being employed?
On Sampson and Wu:
I note that there is a direct tie-in to Schot's article on the Rotterdam docks industrial action of 1905-1907. The physical realities of an industry like shipping do not yield as rapidly to transformation as hoped.
On Downey:
A comment on p. 251 quote about unions degenerating into online value-added services for members:
In the NEA-affiliated faculty union I worked for, there was a debate about the excessive reliance of the activists on e-mail rather than face-to-face interaction with members. E-mail exaggerates the tendency of faculty to barricade themselves in their office fortresses. (Might there be a difference in the effectiveness of e-mail if the workforce is in a single, large room divided into cubicles as opposed to individual offices?)
To compound the tactical problem of all electronic communication and no grassroots effort, only gradually in the course of our contract dispute did the organization become aware that e-mail on the university server was completely open to monitoring by the administration. I would think that no worker would make the same mistake now. (There was a New York Times story recently about e-mail forwarding by corporate employees to external accounts for their personal protection, a practice wreaking havoc with corporate security. Nice.)
Uncovering labour in information revolutions, 1750-2000--2004 posts on Benner, Postigo, and Rosenhaft for comparison, reverse chronological order
29 November [2004]
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?for 15 November [2004]
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? Let's try the 2nd question again [3 October 2004]
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 [1 October 2004]
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?
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Here copied for convenience are my responses to the class comments on 5 Feb. discussion questions
Thanks for the comments. These are my responses.
1. About "knowledge" preceding "action," what I was trying to get at is another point of view about action, that of experimental action. One can act based on a projected, desirable result, without absolute knowledge of the details of a situation or the exact outcome. Experimental action is not utterly uninformed, just bolder than what Castells seems to suggest.
Here he seems to react to a theme of 20th century French thought, that to break through unreasoning acceptance of social norms, you need irrationality, which leads to the so-called acte gratuit, a leap more or less into the dark.
2. I agree that the proof of direct action is in observable, desirable change to the society. What is debatable as Electra implies is the boundary between protest and mere violence. I think that the protests against the regime of international trade were valid and effective, unlike soccer hooliganism. What I wanted to get at is that soccer hooligans have a concrete point of view that is expressed by their behavior.
If we are willing to look at psychology, motivation, and causes, as Castells apparently is not, we might learn how to extract the energy from hooliganism while limiting the damage from it.
3. About networks vs. hierarchies, I want to set down what I said in class, that the network embodies equality of position, with nodes serving as inputs and outputs, while the hierarchy is represented usually as a pyramid with resources flowing up and power flowing down. Again to repeat, I think Castells sees the emancipatory potential of networks as stemming from those bridging links Greg spoke about, so that power will flow between nodes that are outside the persisting hierarchies of nation-states, international organizations, et al. I'm not sure I agree that this logic of the network will have this transformative effect.
1:22 PM
1. About "knowledge" preceding "action," what I was trying to get at is another point of view about action, that of experimental action. One can act based on a projected, desirable result, without absolute knowledge of the details of a situation or the exact outcome. Experimental action is not utterly uninformed, just bolder than what Castells seems to suggest.
Here he seems to react to a theme of 20th century French thought, that to break through unreasoning acceptance of social norms, you need irrationality, which leads to the so-called acte gratuit, a leap more or less into the dark.
2. I agree that the proof of direct action is in observable, desirable change to the society. What is debatable as Electra implies is the boundary between protest and mere violence. I think that the protests against the regime of international trade were valid and effective, unlike soccer hooliganism. What I wanted to get at is that soccer hooligans have a concrete point of view that is expressed by their behavior.
If we are willing to look at psychology, motivation, and causes, as Castells apparently is not, we might learn how to extract the energy from hooliganism while limiting the damage from it.
3. About networks vs. hierarchies, I want to set down what I said in class, that the network embodies equality of position, with nodes serving as inputs and outputs, while the hierarchy is represented usually as a pyramid with resources flowing up and power flowing down. Again to repeat, I think Castells sees the emancipatory potential of networks as stemming from those bridging links Greg spoke about, so that power will flow between nodes that are outside the persisting hierarchies of nation-states, international organizations, et al. I'm not sure I agree that this logic of the network will have this transformative effect.
1:22 PM
Clarification
The comment attached to the posting, Comment on 5 February, really belongs with the discussion questions that precede the 5 Feb. Comment. Chronologically they all belong together.
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.
Monday, February 5, 2007
Comment on 5 February post
The discussion questions and comments are based on reading Stalder's book, looking at the Feenberg et al. work on May 1968, and consulting books by Lefebvre and bits of Castells magnum opus. I have printed off some articles from the Stalder bibliography that I hope to review before class, including a Castells article where he starts to respond to his critics.
My conclusion for the moment about Castells "tendency" is that he feels snake-bit by Marxism and by Progressive thought in general. As someone who grew up in Catalonia and later crossed swords with Soviet-influenced Marxists, I can imagine his deep suspicion of anything remotely connected to the Soviet-led Communist movement, even the Eurocommunism of the 1960s. And its not hard to see that he would be pretty bugged by the liberal state under General de Gaulle and others. So his progressive actors are reduced to single-issue political activists, and even with them he seems to have no preference for a side.
What I learned as a union representative, talking to union activists who also had experiences organizing for the SDS etc. in 1960s, is that action has to be multidirectional. So it is important to be an advocate for your own key issue, but it is also important to write letters to the editor, attend meetings of representative bodies, vote, run for office if possible or necessary, to engage in public demonstrations and nonviolent civil disobedience, and work within the workplace, community organizations, and political parties, in an oppositional mode if need be. Asserting one's mere existence may contribute in some mystical sense, but is not quite adequate to the case.
I'm disappointed by the anti-intellectualism of his conclusion to End of Millennium. While intellectuals may not have authority in the sense that Hegel or Kant or Rousseau or Voltaire did in their day, surely they have a role in creating the language of the day and contributing to the discussion. When an author creates a 1500 page document like Castells, even if he conceives of it as an observation-based work contributing to the pedagogy of the oppressed, he has to assume that most of the readers will be scholars or academics like himself. Who is he jivin'?
From my vantage point, I connect this attitude of surrender with the psychology of the US in November and December 2000 which has led to our current predicament. What the concept of the "spaces of flows" demonstrates is that you neglect a traditionally-contested space like the management of elections by states, your opponents will take over that space, and limit your ability to reenter it.
An example that illustrates this point even better is the rise of Rush Limbaugh. The phenomenon of highly-partisan radio talk is a direct result of the FCC abandonment of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. Rush got on the air with his current show in 1988, and the rest is history. AM Radio has become an almost complete wasteland except for the talk on WHA-AM, and how many parallels does that have outside the state?
My conclusion for the moment about Castells "tendency" is that he feels snake-bit by Marxism and by Progressive thought in general. As someone who grew up in Catalonia and later crossed swords with Soviet-influenced Marxists, I can imagine his deep suspicion of anything remotely connected to the Soviet-led Communist movement, even the Eurocommunism of the 1960s. And its not hard to see that he would be pretty bugged by the liberal state under General de Gaulle and others. So his progressive actors are reduced to single-issue political activists, and even with them he seems to have no preference for a side.
What I learned as a union representative, talking to union activists who also had experiences organizing for the SDS etc. in 1960s, is that action has to be multidirectional. So it is important to be an advocate for your own key issue, but it is also important to write letters to the editor, attend meetings of representative bodies, vote, run for office if possible or necessary, to engage in public demonstrations and nonviolent civil disobedience, and work within the workplace, community organizations, and political parties, in an oppositional mode if need be. Asserting one's mere existence may contribute in some mystical sense, but is not quite adequate to the case.
I'm disappointed by the anti-intellectualism of his conclusion to End of Millennium. While intellectuals may not have authority in the sense that Hegel or Kant or Rousseau or Voltaire did in their day, surely they have a role in creating the language of the day and contributing to the discussion. When an author creates a 1500 page document like Castells, even if he conceives of it as an observation-based work contributing to the pedagogy of the oppressed, he has to assume that most of the readers will be scholars or academics like himself. Who is he jivin'?
From my vantage point, I connect this attitude of surrender with the psychology of the US in November and December 2000 which has led to our current predicament. What the concept of the "spaces of flows" demonstrates is that you neglect a traditionally-contested space like the management of elections by states, your opponents will take over that space, and limit your ability to reenter it.
An example that illustrates this point even better is the rise of Rush Limbaugh. The phenomenon of highly-partisan radio talk is a direct result of the FCC abandonment of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. Rush got on the air with his current show in 1988, and the rest is history. AM Radio has become an almost complete wasteland except for the talk on WHA-AM, and how many parallels does that have outside the state?
Copy of 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?
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?
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Comment to 30 January post
After looking at Schot's article about worker resistance to the top-down imposition of a new technology, I was happy to see that there is a reality/history-based article embedded in the anthology.
30 January, 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.
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.
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