CCT 205: Digital Innovation
and Cultural Transformation
Lecture 4: Information Society
as Ideology
Administrivia
• Concept mashup proposals due tonight
• MIA this weekend most likely
• Ignore the wiki message re: expiry
Cui bono?
• Minutes of the the [sic] Lead Pencil Club - a
collection of infoskeptic opinions (that
could have used a grammar checker)
• Literal meaning - who benefits?
• Figurative - To what good purpose?
• Different questions but both important many IT implementations offer nothing but
biased results
Infrastructure as Ideology
• Bowker/Star in Sorting Things Out classification and information
infrastructures as political process
• Early choices in information infrastructure
can shape future use
• What is and is not recorded? In what
format? To what purpose? Why?
Information Technology
and Control
• Early IT implementations were command
and control oriented (e.g., workflow
processes, surveillance, control technologies
for machinery)
• Early days of Internet - emerged out of
military-industrial complex, tight controls
on who had access, strong social and
regulatory pressures of what they could do
IT and Economic Control
• Early workplace implementations - control
of machinery, workflow process monitoring
and optimization, surveillance
• Extension of scientific management
• Also seen as labour saving device - capital
costs increase efficiency of labour, allowing
for eventual reduction in workforce
But…
• For years this did not happen.
• Productivity paradox - investments in IT
were inconclusive, sometimes negative
• Only when businesses changed their models
to meet the IT infrastructure did
productivity increase
• Education paradox
(http://www.nosignficiantdifference.org) potentially similar issue
Alternatives…
• Scandinavia and participatory design - why?
• Alternative technologies and alternative
uses (e.g, PeaceNet)
• Technological cooptation vs. determinism even in hardwired infrastructure, original
goals can be hijacked by determined users
• In relatively neutral infrastructures, this
effect can be broad and even become
dominant
But again…
• Control impulse still exists at various levels
• Vista registration example and similar DRM
technologies
• Google/China
• Net Neutrality
• Others?
Is it just about control
and money?
• Other ideologies of technology exist linked to control and power, though
• Rhetoric of information technology - what
promises are made?
• Marketing has a lot to do with this
• Some already touched on - infoglut and
mass collaboration are themselves
conflicting perspectives on end effects
Technological Determinism
• Age of the Automobile, Age of the Internet,
Age of the Steam Engine…anything with
capital A’s in Age, really.
• Tendency to link all societal change to
introduction to new technology in
cause/effect relationship
• Certainly all these have had impacts, but
how precise is this? How helpful?
Religion of Technology
• Rhetoric rises to seemingly religious
fervour (and becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy as a result)
• Destiny and inevitability of better times but also dystopian visions of vengeful
technology and super-centralized control
• Particularly bizarre when we see man’s
relation to creation and use
Ex: Information Economy
• Information work as inevitable forward
progress.
• What of current primary/secondary
workers? Without either, we have
essentially…well, nothing - and those jobs
lose status
• Qualification: we’re losing this information
quickly, creating new value (e.g., home
renovation) but also potentially permanent
skill loss (e.g., thatched roofs)
Planned Obsolescence
• Technology is always new, and new is always
better than old
• Expectations and incremental improvements
create compulsion to have the new best thing creation of peer pressure helps immensely
• Technology = fashion for geeks - last year’s model
is uncool (although much older is retro cool)
Spatial Relations
• McLuhan and global village - we may reach
out to those who are similar in India, but in
process ignore all those who are local?
• iPod as severe localization - shunning
outside world while listening to world
music? Irony or problem?
• Locality and globalization operate in
creative tension - examples?
Culture of Connectivity
• 24/7 access by email, IM, cell phones, etc.
• We’re constantly connected, but not
necessarily for the best - no downtime for
contemplation, reflection (which is wisdom
building?)
• Examples?
Issues with Connectivity
• Tightly vs. loosely coupled systems accelerated and efficient feedback loops
create vicious and virtuous cycles
• Connectivity spreads bad news as quickly
(worse?) than good news
• Connectivity and resilience - Upside of
Down principle and solution
IT and Ingenuity
• Back to infoglut - if we’re stupefied with
information, are we smarter?
• Ingenuity Gap - we attempt to manage
complex situations we have no intuitive or
grand vision of, and have a tendency to fail
miserably at it as a result
• IT might just accentuate our arrogance in
thinking we know what we really don’t?
A Poem of our Time
The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.
D.H. Rumsfeld
(http://www.slate.com/id/2081042/)
Learning Journal #2
• From your own personal experience,
describe an instance in which the rhetoric of
the information age didn’t quite match up to
reality.
• Cui bono?
Next Week
• Chs. 7,8 for lecture
• Labs tonight - mashup proposal submission
on wiki, tips on feedback