TECHNOLOGY + INFORMATION – SOCIETY = ?COMN 2312, Jan 25 Lecture

ANNOUNCEMENT Prophetic McLuhan – Douglas Coupland in

Conversation with B.W. Powe Jan 28, 2011, 4pm-6pm

Douglas Coupland in conversation with B.W. Powe on Coupland's new biography of Marshall McLuhan. 

Douglas Coupland, author of Generation X and Microserfs, will be speaking on his new biography of Marshall McLuhan.

The event will be part of the launch of Marshall McLuhan centenary celebrations that will be taking place throughout Canada, the United States and Europe

Location: Founders College Assembly Hall Sponsor: The McLuhan Initiative, Founders College, Department of

English and Canadian Studies See http://www.yorku.ca/yuevents/index.asp?

Event=21938&Category=0&ShowCal=&TimeSame=Jan&Month=1&Year=2011&EventTitle=York%20Events:%20Prophetic+McLuhan+%96+Douglas+Coupland+in+Conversation+with+B.W.+Powe

AGENDA Innis, McLuhan (Canada) Benjamin, Ellul, Illich (Classic critical

technology interests from Non North American perspective

Manovich, Winner – Sample of US critical technology

Next week: Manovich, Gender and Technology

CRITICAL TECHNOLOGY STUDIES Huge field Every country has its contributors So many will not be studied: next week in

addition to gender and technology we will do a brief survey of the many contributors

ELLUL In a post war era, a technological optimism was

pervasive: one might think it inexplicable in view of the destruction of the war – but one must remember that the war was not in North America – and that technology helped rebuild Europe

This optimism was united with the 1950’s and its motifs of technologizing the domestic household

“Third” world countries – development was seen as the key to world progress

Though Hiroshima and other technological fault lines had well emerged – they were not allowed (for varied reasons) to become culturally visible (Still not allowed to be visible)

The cold war provided the drama, around which a distraction could occur and technological competence was reasserted as a answer

ELLUL Ellul began his career concerned like many who

witnessed the rise of Hitler, and other fascist and totalitarian regimes – with propaganda

Ellul watched (and heard through the radio) Hitler and Mussolini rise to power.

He became concerned about how the state merges with media.

He became concerned about how the state wins social approval by using social mechanisms combined with media

He watched as the Fascist leaders in Europe demonstrated their comprehension of the importance of every day rituals and also non-everyday rituals to this process

ELLUL Propaganda is key to helping a society give its

freedom away “This need of a certain cultural level to make

people susceptible to propaganda is best understood if one looks at one of propaganda’s most important devices, the manipulation of symbols. The more an individual participates in the society in which he lives, the more he will cling to stereotyped symbols expressing collective notions about the past and the future of his group. The more stereotypes in a culture, the easier it is to form public opinion, and the more an individual participates in that culture, the more susceptible he becomes to the manipulation of these symbols.” From Propaganda (written across his career and published finally in 1973)

ELLUL Propaganda is key to helping a society give its

freedom away Propaganda does not advertise this as it agenda Propaganda indeed seems to be very much

about something else than giving freedom away. Propaganda is very much about offering

optimism, and “copies” of freedom Propaganda is about symbolic exchanges based

on the culture of symbols that exist in a culture In our culture we are vulnerable symbolically to

the idea of progress, through technology, this has replaced the sacred symbolic systems that once unified western society and become the new symbolic unifier, undergirding western social order

ELLUL Ellul uses this Hegelian dialectic to explore the way in which

technology seems to offer humankind progress but instead actualizes its own form as progress,

The costs of technology is living with its forms Living with these forms is presented as freedom However this freedom when viewed from a macro angle – is not

actual freedom Technology is free to develop (to progress) Humanity is free to adapt to this technology This adaptation has its costs, many of these are de-centered and de

marginalized (left to occur off screen, out of sight, worked by the symbolic order – so they are not seen though they might be in view

Viewed on the small scale these costs seem marginal at the time, Viewed from a macro angle – these cost can seem horrific, akin to

learning to live with in a leviathan As Ellul lives across several “ages” – he can see the losses – the

freedoms that have been sacrificed with the advent of each new technological arrival

TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISM In the Technological Society, ELLUL’s classic work, Ellul uses

sociology to trace technology as phenomenon interpenetrating all aspects of social life including work, and sees this as a means of waking up society to the propaganda of our age.

He is especially concerned regards the relationship of human freedom to its technology

He is dependent on Marx for this trace: Marx was concerned to critic Hegel’s optimism regards historical

evolution and progress He works to show how – though technology offers progress with

each progression technology because the “case” that we are living in

Technology contains us in its forms – thus we must be realistic about the “optimism” it offers in terms of freedom

We are inside a leviathan ,(Jonah and the whale) this is our situation Technology has its own order which is remarkably similar to organic

order – including its decay Our hope in this has to do with being willing to be human more than

we are willing to be technology – it is a smaller hope than we first thought, but perhaps more powerful in view of technologies inevitable decays (another hope)

IVAN ILLICH (1926-2002) Multi-national influence:

Austrian by birth: Serbian–Croatian Jewish heritage, multi-lingual in Serbian, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, Latin, Greek

Studies crystallography Some argue that his concept of

conviviality is a term that has roots in all of his languages including the way in which crystals grow and flourish

IVAN ILLICH (1926-2002) Influenced by scientist: Michael Polanyi and

his brother Karl Polyani a political economist Polanyi (s) Hungarian thinkers who emphasize

the social construction of knowledge: Absolute objectivity (objectivism) is a delusion Knowledge is constructed through communal

conversations under conditions favorable to such construction

Knowledge is socially nourished, this nourishment included the multi-sensual human form and its community of senses

Knowledge appears as disengaged from local context but is always tacit – that is it is always learned through processes that interact with the contextual locus of the body and thus is localized

Tools as means of learning

IVAN ILLICH (1926-2002) Also influenced by the socialist movements that

arise in the wake of Vatican II, in which the priesthood becomes concerned with liberation and the movement of “liberation theology”

Liberation theology has many roots but arises in South America as it responds to it colonial past:

Marxist concern for the oppressed is connected to the Moses story; in Liberation Theology there is a concern to address the oppression and poverty that is part of how many South American countries have come to technology

South America as battlefield for capitalism and communism – in which both trap humans in mechanics of industrialized poverty, and a connected racism, and a propaganda war that keeps this struggle from visiblizing

IVAN ILLICH (1926-2002) In Personal Knowledge, Polanyi wrote it

(conviviality) into his epistemology. All knowledge is rooted in “tacit coefficients.” Tacit coefficients of knowledge are communally held and nourished. Conviviality involves a real communication on the inarticulate level, and shared intellectual passion. Pure conviviality is the cultivation of good fellowship, especially in small groups, in joint activities. Language, culture, and understanding move forward in the context of conviviality.

Illich applies this concept of conviviality to the relationship of human dignity and society

IVAN ILLICH (1926-2002) Illich’s concept of Conviviality:

The progress of science and professionalism are convivial to technology – but not necessarily to humanity

Humanity needs conviviality to prosper – with out it social order decays because it becomes disconnected at root (deep) levels with human meaning and with the relationship of human meaning to social order and its possibilities

This is evidenced in biological and chemical order is which convivial order can be found

Conviviality is a dimension with which to critique a tool, technology or social development

IVAN ILLICH (1926-2002) Illich’s concept of Conviviality:

Latin: “with” “life” – that bubbling thathas to do with irrigating life: water, blood- the

oxygenization processes that allow life to flourish, thrive, emerge

Old idea of “gathered at table” – where conversation emerges that can solve issues, imagine a positive future, create something that irrigates human being.

Freedom to create a thriving world vs freedom to create a technologized world

Conviviality and pain are connected – when conviviality is sacrificed we are also distanced from human pain placed in technologized relationships to it. Thus pain can be a way of locating where it has been injured…

IVAN ILLICH (1926-2002) Illich’s concept of Conviviality:

The epoch of system has replaced the epoch of instrumentality

The distance between the human and the tool is subsumed as the system configures them as a dyad: the system incorporates us and reconfigures us as its ideological body (a virtualized body), this concept, an idea which becomes systematized, absorbs us such that we can no longer step outside of our tools to ground ourselves in our own body and world: the perpetuation of disembodiment as virtual metaphor

Distances us from our capacity to comprehend misery and the problem of human dignity – it is this comprehension that saves us from our systems – pain works as a way to find “our body” (however pain is technologized by the system in several ways – especially as an image)

IVAN ILLICH (1926-2002) Illich’s concept of Conviviality: Latin: “with” “life” – that bubbling thathas to do with irrigating life: The epoch of system has replaced the epoch of

instrumentality

The means of learning has been increasingly professionalized: profession as a “the call” to say – to be what one could be – each human has a certain dignity that surround work – as a creative and passionate contribution to social order

Separation of this dignity from school as school becomes a means to create system which subsumes human usefulness in to human as tool used by this system

IVAN ILLICH (1926-2002) Illich’s concept of Conviviality:

The epoch of system has replaced the epoch of instrumentality

Instead of receiving human as convivial “gift” - the human is re-ordered through education to fit the technology the system creates.

This becomes expoentialized: as profession requires training, thus certificates become required for

work, and education becomes intrinsically consumed by an order that is less and less available to all:

and also is increasingly frayed by it passage through the system in its usefulness: examples: health care, child care

The propensity of capitalism is to turn education – into a means of profiteering – that in order to “work” one must have certain degrees and certificates – means that even education itself becomes less about learning and more about “giving degrees and certificates”

Education becomes disordered in relationship to its purpose – in relationship to human conviviality

IVAN ILLICH (1926-2002) Illich’s concept of Conviviality:

The epoch of system has replaced conviviality as a relationship between humans and tools in which creativity, involvement, passion, conversation, collaboration, are available as the conditions for creating society

The replacement is marked by a certain lone-ness that marks this age – a way in which priorities seem appointed afoot and afar from what people seem to really identify as priorities

In particular “loneliness” itself is visible – but instead of receiving convivial resolutions – is technologized as resolvable through technologies – and thus made amenable especially to solutions that position consumption over community – substituting it in for conviviality.

IVAN ILLICH (1926-2002) Illich’s concept of Conviviality:

The epoch of system has replaced conviviality as a relationship between humans and tools in which creativity, involvement, passion, conversation, collaboration, are available as the conditions for creating society

In particular “loneliness” itself is visible – but instead of receiving convivial resolutions – is technologized as resolvable through technologies – and thus made amenable especially to solutions that position consumption over community – substituting it in for conviviality.

In terms of governments: the image of conviviality becomes very important to affiliate with – conviviality becomes an image to manipulate and promise while actual conviviality becomes more ephemeral, promised but not actualized

LANGDON WINNER Current scholar: Langdon Winner is Professor

of Political Science in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York since 1990.

LANGDON WINNER In 1980 Winner proposed that technologies embody

social relations i.e. power.[2] To the question he poses "Do Artifacts Have Politics?", Winner identifies two ways in which artifacts can have politics. The first, involving technical arrangements and social order, concerns how the invention, design, or arrangement of artifacts or the larger system becomes a mechanism for settling the affairs of a community. This way “transcends the simple categories of ‘intended’ and ‘unintended’ altogether, representing “instances in which the very process of technical development is so thoroughly biased in a particular direction that it regularly produces results heralded as wonderful breakthroughs by some social interests and crushing setbacks by others” (Winner, p. 25-6, 1999) as summarized by Winner in Wikipedia

LANGDON WINNER: THE PRESENCE OF TECHNOLOGY THROUGH ARTIFACT “Let's take the bank teller, the person sitting

behind the counter with little scraps of paper and an adding machine and replace it with an ATM accessible 24 hours a day. Let's take analog recording and the vinyl LP and replace it with the compact disc in which music is encoded as a stream of digital bits. Or let's take the classroom with the teacher, blackboard, books, and verbal interchange and replace it with materials presented in computer hardware and software and call it "interactive learning". From CYBERLIBERTARIAN MYTHSAND THE PROSPECTS FOR COMMUNITY

LANGDON WINNER: THE PRESENCE OF TECHNOLOGY THROUGH ARTIFACT “In case after case, the move to computerize

and digitize means that many preexisting cultural forms have suddenly gone liquid, losing their former shape as they are retailored for computerized expression. As new patterns solidify, both useful artifacts and the texture of human relations that surrounds them are often much different from what existed previously. This process amounts to a vast, ongoing experiment whose long term ramifications no one fully comprehends.". From CYBERLIBERTARIAN MYTHSAND THE PROSPECTS FOR COMMUNITY

LANGDON WINNER: THE PRESENCE OF TECHNOLOGY THROUGH ARTIFACT “In case after case, the move to computerize

and digitize means that many preexisting cultural forms have suddenly gone liquid, losing their former shape as they are retailored for computerized expression. As new patterns solidify, both useful artifacts and the texture of human relations that surrounds them are often much different from what existed previously. This process amounts to a vast, ongoing experiment whose long term ramifications no one fully comprehends.". From CYBERLIBERTARIAN MYTHSAND THE PROSPECTS FOR COMMUNITY

LANGDON WINNER: THE PRESENCE OF TECHNOLOGY THROUGH ARTIFACT “a widely popular ideology that dominates

much of today's discussion on networked computing. A suitable name for this philosophy is cyberlibertarianism, a collection of ideas that links ecstatic enthusiasm for electronically mediated forms of living with radical, right wing libertarian ideas about the proper definition of freedom, social life, economics, and politics in the years to come.” From CYBERLIBERTARIAN MYTHSAND THE PROSPECTS FOR COMMUNITY

LANGDON WINNER: THE PRESENCE OF TECHNOLOGY THROUGH ARTIFACT What is Cyberlibetarianism?

LANGDON WINNER: THE PRESENCE OF TECHNOLOGY THROUGH ARTIFACT What is Cyberibertarianism? Libertarianism makes freedom a priority image no matter what Freedom is a mythology that is used by libertarians Freedom as relationship of choices to reality often remains

unexamined: Who is free? What is free? What is free to grow remain relatively unprobed

For most libertarians – it is capitalism that is free to growThat this comes at the expense of other freedoms is often under

acknowledgedCyberibertarianism: cyber should be free to grow no matter what: Winner argues that libertarianism is already a myth – but when

paired with cyber becomes an especially powerful and unstoppable phenomena (even this idea of unstoppable is mythologized – we are portrayed as powerless in terms of its progress)

LANGDON WINNER: THE PRESENCE OF TECHNOLOGY THROUGH ARTIFACT “The first and most central characteristic of

cyberlibertarian world view is what amounts to a whole hearted embrace of technological determinism. This is not the generalized determinism of earlier writings on technology and culture, but one specifically tailored to the arrival of the electronic technologies of the late twentieth century. In harmony with the earlier determinist theories, however, the cyberlibertarians hold that we are driven by necessities that emerge from the development of the new technology and from nowhere else.

One familiar expression is Alvin Toffler's openly determinist wave theory of history. ”

From CYBERLIBERTARIAN MYTHSAND THE PROSPECTS FOR COMMUNITY

LANGDON WINNER: THE PRESENCE OF TECHNOLOGY THROUGH ARTIFACT Influenced by Ellul and Illich, Winner argues

that such determinism must be met by a more through version of this determinism –

My translation : Winner seems to argue that it must be shown to be really a version of technological optimism in disguise

LANGDON WINNER: THE PRESENCE OF TECHNOLOGY THROUGH ARTIFACT “In this perspective, the dynamism of digital

technology is our true destiny. There is no time to pause, reflect or ask for more influence in shaping these developments. Enormous feats of quick adaptation are required of all of us just to respond to the requirements the new technology casts upon us each day. In the writings of cyberlibertarians those able to rise to the challenge are the champions of the coming millennium. The rest are fated to languish in the dust.” From CYBERLIBERTARIAN MYTHSAND THE PROSPECTS FOR COMMUNITY

LANGDON WINNER: THE PRESENCE OF TECHNOLOGY THROUGH ARTIFACT “In fact, increasingly popular among cyberlibertarians is the

conclusion that rapid development of artificial things amounts to a kind of evolution that can be explained in quasi-biological terms. As Kevin Kelly explains in his book Out of Control "We should not be surprised that life, having subjugated the bulk of inert matter on Earth, would go on to subjugate technology, and bring it also under its reign of constant evolution, perpetual novelty, and an agenda out of our control. Even without the control we must surrender, a neo-biological technology is far more rewarding than a world of clocks, gears, and predictable simplicity." (Kelly, 472) In Kelly's view, the effort to engage in deliberative social choice about technology can only be a destructive practice.”

From CYBERLIBERTARIAN MYTHSAND THE PROSPECTS FOR COMMUNITY

NEXT WEEK: Finish Langdon Winner Lev Manovich Donna Haraway Lynn Spigel