4010 Spring08 Questions and Discussion 19
From Studyplace
This week's respondents: Will and Cyrille
Contents |
[edit] On Castells’ The Information City… and An Introduction to the Information Age
Castells has been an academic sociologist since the late 1960's, working in France and California's UC system. He has written 22 books, with the trilogy "The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture" published in the late 1990s being particularly influential. The two papers we have read for this week's class address many of the themes covered in trilogy and his books since. The books, unlike the papers, are extensively sourced and footnoted, and suggest that Castells has attempted to read and synthesize a massive amount of work in economics, technology, and sociology.
The trends he explores here are broadly related to the theme of networks in the modern world. These trends are indicated by general terms such as 'New Economy', 'Network Society', and 'Information Age'. Most broadly, networks are increasingly important because they are increasingly powerful. This power is rooted in economic advantage, an advantage that has become apparent with the development of a global economy. Global competition “is relatively new in historical terms”(p.152) While global competition is new, economic networks have long existed. These historical networks competed against the ‘big machines’ of armies, churches, and states. Where historically, the centralized organization won out, in recent times, the network has had the advantage. This is due to the abstract network’s potential for change and adaptation. Big machines involve inertia, and cannot easily change direction. Networks make use of nodes and decentralized execution, features which have only now begun to realize their potential through the flexibility made possible with information and communications technology.
As networks have increased in economic power and importance, they have altered the landscapes of labor, investment, politics, and community, and in turn the actual physical landscape in many areas. The new global economy “is characterized by an extremely uneven geography” which “excludes probably a majority of the world’s population”(p.140) These excluded are found not only in the 3rd world, but in “a 4th world of exclusion” including slums in heavily developed cities in the world’s richest countries.
Many of those who have not been excluded find themselves under increasing pressure to be flexible, ‘self programmable’ workers, who can learn and adapt throughout life, and are willing to relocate to work. Innovation by individuals and groups is increasingly important to economic success. Castells connects this emphasis on innovation with the growth of open source culture - “The culture of innovation is a culture of sharing information, not of hiding innovation,” and “the culture of innovation is abased on open source at every level.”(p158)
[edit] Markets
Castells discusses the transformation of investments and exchanges from physical to electronic. This transformation has lead to increasing participation by small investors (due to decreased barriers to entry), decreased time and money cost entailed in moving money from place to place, and a process called “information turbulences” (p156). Large economic systems tend to have some level of ‘noise’ or unpredictable minor movements in prices not related to any real change in information. In stock markets noise is one source of price change uncoupled from the value of a given company. Another source, and the one Castells focuses on, is public perception – in the absence of complete information, which is a given in global financial markets, “markets don’t work on objective reality. They work on the basis of perception.”(p.157) When a large shift in perception occurs, it can lead to large shifts in the value of individual stocks, or the entire market, turbulence which in turn can have global economic effects.
[edit] Cities
While cities have long been “the magnets of our world”(p.161), the new economy has introduced or exacerbated problems including “individualization and fragmentation of society”, “an increasing divide between people with vastly different cultural and educational resources,” (p.160) individual difficulty in adapting to multicultural society, and the tendency for global information and economic flows to bypass some geographical areas entirely. He discusses the importance of cultural aspects in drawing mobile , flexible labor to certain cities over others, and the potential for culture to focus on shared activities rather than the individual, helping to build local identity and restore shared meaning.
[edit] Questions
- On P.148 of An Introduction to the Information Age, some major effects are discussed under the heading “Networking logic is at the roots of major effects in our societies.” At the beginning of The Information City, Castells writes that “Governments created globalization. The problem is now they cannot control it.” (p.152) If governments cannot control globalization, in what ways can they respond to globalization?
- How can individuals affect change through movements that work towards social change through the “affirmation of identity”, affirming “the preeminence of experience over instrumentality, of meaning over function, and… of use value of life over exchange value in the networks.” (p.149) ?
- Could the US-lead war in Iraq be interpreted using Castells notion of networks historically challenging the authority of the ‘big machines’ of state and army?
- Does the rise of the Network society necessarily imply the ascendancy of a post-Fordist model in which buying power is detached from manufacturing jobs?
[edit] Dyson, E., Gilder, G., Keyworth, G., & Toffler, A. "Cyberspace and the American Dream",pp.31-41
In this article, the authors identify three phases of economy: First Wave, Second Wave and Third Wave:
“In a First Wave economy, land and farm labor are the main ‘factors of production.’ In a Second Wave economy, the land remains valuable while the ‘labor becomes massified around machines and larger industries. In a Third Wave economy, the central resource – a single word broadly encompassing data, information, images, symbols, culture, ideology and values – is actionable knowledge.” (p. 31)
The “knowledge revolution”, as the authors call it, is of course a promise of the Internet, and a vision of the epistemological, legal, economic, governmental and ethical changes that it this promise entails:
Dyson et al draw a parallel between the discovery and exploration of America, and the ‘discovery’ and exploration of cyberspace. They argue that cyberspace is a “bioelectronic environment that is literally universal” (in this view, “cyberspace” includes every form of electric, electromagnetic and fiber-optic communication).
The authors argue that cybersapce will lead to the “death” of institutions and bureaucracy as we know them by decentralizing power and placing it in each individual’s reach.
An important point made here is that cyberspace leads to “demassification”, which contributes to greater human freedom. This is a striking claim, as the issues surrounding mass culture, the “culture industry” (to borrow Adorno’s term) and worker alienation have been subject to intense debate since the post-World War II era.
To prepare for the Third Wave, Dyson et al look at a series of ‘recommendations’ pertaining to several areas of public life:
- Nature & Ownership of Property: more attention is given to ‘intellectual property’. Knowledge in the Second Wave was “public”: needed for industry and technological development. In the Third Wave service industry, knowledge is the prime resource and “by nature a private good”. Stronger copyright and patent protections are needed.
- Nature of the Marketplace: technological progress allows for more competition, and hinders monopolies. Differentiation between “dynamic competition”, in which individuals offer new products, and “static competition”, in which several competitors try to achieve the lowest cost on the same product. This is the “start-up” culture of the 90’s: a vastly unregulated market at the time allowed for numerous competitors and innovations.
- Freedom: defines America. Example of the hacker, who breaks rules by hacking into systems and detecting security flaws, then becomes a valuable asset for the same companies he previously targeted. Again, parallel with American Frontiers: cyberspace is unchartered and unregulated territory. Will allow for less standardization and more individual liberties. * “The complexity of Third Wave society is too great for any centrally planned bureaucracy to manage. Demassification, customization, individuality, freedom – these are the keys to success for Third Wave civilization”. (p. 36)
- Community: “If things are so good, why do we feel so bad?” Idea of “disintegrating personalities” reflects much postcolonial literature on the loss of traditional systems of ethics, and the diversification of culture as a whole: with greater communication, national and regional cultures are blended with others. For Dyson et al, this feeling of loss is there because we are the first generation of the Third Wave. But, they argue, diversity creates a “secure and stable civilization” (p. 37)
- Government: This is the most prominent section of the chapter. •Governments hinder the pluralistic and decentralized Third Wave. Should remove barriers to competition and deregulate the telecommunications and computing industries. • Govs must provide access to interactive multimedia: personal computing has grown largely due to lack of industry regulations found in phone or cable, but must be stimulated. • Promoting dynamic competition: Antitrust law is central to competition. It is the most important way in which government can encourage competition. In this context, what to think of Microsoft’s takeover bid on Yahoo? Transition should be measured and slow. • Property Rights: government’s role to define such rights. Should understand that cyberspace belongs to the people. Need for clear rights. • Pro-Third Wave tax & accounting: we have been uneffective at measuring the value of intellectual assets (as opposed to physical assets). Tax system shows the same bias, and hinders technological innovation by favoring long product life-cycles. • Finally, the principles of decentralization, customization and originality should be considered when imagining a Third Wave government.
[edit] Questions
- Is this a realistic, or feasible, idea of the future?
- What parts of this vision have we already witnessed, at this young age of the Internet’s life?
- What effects might unbridled competition have on the environment, workers, culture? Is this a vision that benefits industry and corporations, or human beings, or both?
[edit] Lanier, J. "Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism";
Lanier’s approach is more immediate approach to the Internet, focusing more specifically on the “Hive Mind” and its many expressions on the Internet. Lanier takes up the question of whether a ‘collective’ mind, to various degrees, is preferable to the traditional notion of the author as a single and authoritative author with established expertise on a particular subject. But it is important to see that Lanier’s concern is not the Hive Mind in itself, but rather the idea’s growing popularity, its “centrality”.
Group vs. Person: Lanier argues against the idea that a depersonalized group necessarily arrives at better or truer answers than an individual by perpetually correcting its own mistakes. In other words, that the group provides an epistemological equivalent to the “invisible hand” in the market. “A desirable text, according to Lanier, “is more than a collection of accurate references. It is also an expression of personality.” As such, the voice of the author should be retained. Lanier leans more toward expressive/creative sites like MySpace than Wikipedia and web aggregators – the “meta-“ websites (Google, MetaFilter, del.icio.us): “ In the last year or two the trend has been to remove the scent of people, so as to come as close as possible to stimulating the appearance of content emerging out of the Web as if it were speaking to us as a supernatural oracle. This is where the use of the Internet crosses the line into delusion”. And eventually, to the degeneration of culture, according to Lanier.
Moreover, the tendency to suppress individual voices is not just an ‘aesthetic’ device, but finds its way to many layers of society: “Government agencies, top corporate planning departments, and major universities have all gotten the bug”. One could see the Department of Homeland Security as such a meta-organization. Lanier sees collectivism as reminiscent of extreme left or right-wing populist movements subsuming people and ideas to the single voice. Such aggregation is so popular at so many echelons of society because it allows for a reduction of risk and responsibility. This relates to our previous readings on uncertainty and fear of incompleteness.
Lanier recognizes the value of the Hive-Mind when it comes to matter-of-fact questions, such as the number of jelly beans in a jar. He argues for a “marriage of collective and individual intelligence”. As an example of imbalance between the two, Lanier critiques the lack of aesthetic uniformity in open software (eg. Linux) resulting from the design community’s heterogeneity. In other words, the community can correctly answer questions that do not involve personal judgment. Writing the Law or the Tax Code is therefore unfeasible for the Hive Mind!
[edit] Questions
- What balance of collective/individual thought can we achieve? Which agencies or individuals could achieve this result?
- Lanier notes at the end of his essay that some see wikis replacing the educational apparatus in the future. What do we think of the progress of online learning, alternative teaching methods and technology?
