Mike Gurstein writes:
>I've been following on the GETREAL-L list the discussion about this
>document
[interlude]
According to their web site www.technorealism.org, "Technorealism
demands that we
think critically about the role that tools and interfaces play in human
evolution and everyday
life." They suggest that consensus is emerging around a number of
principles including:
"technologies are not neutral," "information is not knowledge," and "wiring
the schools will not
save them"
>I was moved recently to reply to the overall direction of the
>discussion and more specifically to the items of the "manifesto" as
>follows... I think there may be some interest on this list in those
>comments and especially in the context of the emerging discussion on
>"governance of the net"...
>
>I guess it need hardly be said that these comments below caused hardly a
>ripple in the on-going flow of incredibly intense and riveting discussion
>among the masters of the technosphere about whether and in what time
>frame government could be abolished.
>
>Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1998 11:58:02 -0300 (ADT)
>From: Michael Gurstein <mgurst@ccen.uccb.ns.ca>
>To: getreal-l@mindshare.net
>Subject: RE: GETREAL-L: Tethnocentrism
>
>
>I must say that I've been watching the discussion on this list with guilty
>fascination...sort of like an eight year old watching his parents making
>love from behind the curtain.
>
>You folks are so certain, so definite, so "American"...
>
>We up here in the frozen north get to watch you folks get rich and rule
>the world up close. Hey and your squabbles about the Libertarians and the
>FDA and the EFF are so much similar to watching my cousins quarrel (once I
>manage to figure out who is on which side and what the in-jokes/insults
>really stand for...
>
>But I live in this techno-verse as well and I have my traditions
>too--McLuhan and Morty Zuckerman and... and the Kids in the Hall... (one
>of us invented Superman as well but that's another story...
>I must say that I find the discussion on this list and (going back to the
>8 theses/dicta/commandments/...) Principles of Technorealism really and
>truly bizarre. Sure you guys invented the Internet (but not the www and
>not computers and not the telephone) and even if you are 60% of the
>Internet population right now that percentage is falling fast because your
>user stats are almost saturated and the rest of the world is catching
>up... And you may own a good piece of cybertech but as even you are
>discovering that is maybe a fast emerging problem and not just an
>opportunity....
>
>So what about everybody else, us "lesser folk without the law" as
>Tennyson wrote about an earlier but no less imperial age.
>
>Reading the "Principles" and monitoring (I hate the term lurking) on this
>list, it is like I'm sitting in the airport at O'Hare catching fragments
>of coversations by one set of mid-western computer salesmen niggling back
>and forth with another set-of mid-western computer salesmen. The rest of
>the world isn't to all intents and purposes there...where...anywhere...
>
>The world stops at the Golden Gates (with occasional incentive
>travel excursions to Waikiki...
>
>Let's take a closer look...
>
>1. "Technologies are not neutral... They have biases"...yup...and among
>the greatest and most commonly commented upon (beyond Waikiki) bias is
>language. The fact that the Internet is 85% or so English in many parts
>of the world this is not something to be commented upon and then passed
>over for the next incidental observation...this is fundamental to the
>survival of languages and cultures and peoples. Its the subject of
>emergency studies, and special commissions, and even (god forbid)
>legislation...
>
>
>2. "The net is revolutionary but not Utopian"... Yup... And one of the
>most revolutionary aspects of the Net is the way in which is brings the
>rest of the world into your attention space almost effortlessly. In this
>the net is truly revolutionary (and subversive) most profoundly I would
>say the more distant culturally and geographically is the user from the
>Golden Gates...
>
>
>3.. "Government is important"... Yup... In roughly 100% of the world
>outside of the USA, this point is so obvious it does not even need to be
>discussed. The fact that so much of the discussion on this list has
>consisted of elaborate pirrouations around this point simply demonstrates
>how "tethnocentric" this whole process really is. The issue of government
>and the net is not "if" but "how", and "to what ends", "with what
>controls"... government's role in the Net-iverse may be vestigal but all
>of us will be very long gone before we would be in a position to
>testout this hypothesis.
>
>
>4. "Information is not knowledge"...Yes again... But the question for
>most of the world is "whose information", "whose knowledge", "how much is it
>going to cost to get to use it"...this isn't the rather bland issue of
>"proliferation of data" but rather the very real and material question of
>economic survival in an ever more competitive, knowledge intensive world
>where traditional resources and skills are devalued while the knowledge
>needed to recreate means of livelihood are owned and operated by and in
>the interests of folks a million miles and a zillion nano-seconds
>far away.
>
>
>5. "Wiring the schools will not save them"???... Well for maybe 50% of the
>world's population "wiring the schools" refers to wiring them for
>electricity not for the Internet... and the tethnocentric discussion
>about how/if technology can "save" the schools passes most of the people
>in the Third World right on by as they are more concerned with having
>schools...the issue of how to "save" them being rather secondary at least
>for the moment...
>
>
>6. "Information wants to be protected"???... I guess you mean that
>information like property wants to be owned and thus have access to the
>protection of the State. Well yes and no... The US agri-business folks
>who tried to patent Basmatti rice (a traditional specialized rice of
>India), were I guess, someone might say trying to "protect" something
>informational about the rice... From where I sit (and also from where the
>Government of India sits) this looks like an attempt to privatize in the
>name of "protection" part of the common heritage of the Indian people and
>through them of the world's people (we only eat Basmatti rice in our
>household) and so on and so on.
>
>
>7. "The public owns the airwaves"... Well in the US, the public arguably
>owns the airwaves because of some particularities of your laws...but on
>that basis, the government of Nauru could legislate that the Great Auk
>owns the airwaves and the citizens of Nauru should be paying into the
>Swiss bank account of the Great Auk's representative on earth an
>ppropriate annual tithe. I think it makes more sense to argue that the
>"airwaves" are part of the common heritage of mankind and their
>utilization and development should done so as to benefit that common
>heritage, but then I believe in the tooth fairy...
>
>
>8. "Understanding technology should be an essential component of global
>citizenship"....HEAR HEAR... Now if the snake would only eat its tail...
>
>regs
>
>Mike Gurstein
>
>Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.
>ECBC/NSERC/SSHRC Associate Chair in the Management of Technological Change
>Director: Centre for Community and Enterprise Networking (C\CEN)
>University College of Cape Breton, POBox 5300, Sydney, NS, CANADA B1P 6L2
>Tel. 902-539-4060 (o) 902-562-1055 (h) 902-562-0119 (fax)
> Mgurst@ccen.uccb.ns.ca http://ccen.uccb.ns.ca
>
>
>
>
>
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