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W. Gordon West
Feb./98
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek,
receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of
frontiers. (Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.)
Like the industrial revolution, the information revolution is unavoidable.
Consequently, the objectives of public policy should be not to prevent the
revolution from occurring, but rather to turn it to our advantage. (Serafini
and Andrieu/Canada, 1981: 13)
In each new paradigm a particular input or set of inputs may be described
as the "key factor" in that paradigm characterized by falling relative
costs and universal availability. The contemporary change of paradigm
may be seen as a shift from a technology based primarily on cheap inputs
of energy to one predominantly based on cheap inputs of information
derived from advances in microelectronic and telecommunications
industry. (Freeman, 1988:10)
It is no accident that in many economically advanced democratic nations
politics is tending to become more of an elaborate exercise in staged
image management and less of a meaningful conceptual dialogue. (Leiss,
1990: 138)
I. Introduction
In discussions of the widely-acknowledged and -experienced newly-emerging
informational society (e.g., Castells, 1996; 1997a; 1997b), new buzzwords are
increasingly au courant. "Interactivity" and "networking" are two examples of
terminology used to indicate the many "inherent goods" claimed to be emerging from
increased computerization, internet linking, and the new society and new media. Yet a
cursory review of data indicates that the advent of the computerized office, assembly
line, and world has not at all clearly lead to more activity for most workers, but quite
probably less: routinized de-skilling and higher unemployment, better described as
passivity rather than activity. For many, "networking" has meant notworking. How can
we understand these phenomena and the surrounding claims? Recent newspaper reviews
(Airhart, 1998) of books by eminent spokespeople and editors offer little direction in
sorting out why some say a wonderful new world awaits us, others predict dehumanizing
disaster, others perhaps more realistically (even if more boringly!?) anticipate more of
the same old systems of domination and political struggles to attain some justice in this
world.
In an ironic juxtaposition, the above quotes now hailed variously by contemporary
political left (labour/anarchist) and right (technological/global capitalist) contra-echo
those of our liberal-capitalist and democratic-socialist forebearers: working people in
retreat re-espouse bourgeois ideals of liberty, while free-enterprise liberal global
informational society proponents now claim an inevitable economic and technological
determinism which only a couple of decades ago they derided Communists for
espousing! How can we sort out such political and theoretical confusion? Leiss
suggests one direction: we need to uncover not only the hidden agendas behind various
ontological claims, but also to re-examine the epistemological bases upon which we
make such claims. We need to examine not only what we are saying about the
informational revolution and the new societies emerging (and their political
implications), but also how we come to believe such statements as true or false.
To begin, some clarity in background definitions might help any discussion, especially
regarding neologisms carrying slippery unexplicated presumptions, moral and political
baggage, and unexamined epistemological assumptions as to how we might even discuss
issues and claims.(1) "Interactivity" literally indicates "intelligent, meaningful
behaviour between [persons]"; it implies a user-friendly, actively democratic, non-hierarchical style of increasing popular participation. "Networking" means "multilinked
productive action"; it also implies a non-hierarchical, ad hoc, even anarchistic, linking of
emerging, multiple viewpoints and positions.. They have become keywords (Williams,
1952? ) in contemporary (post-modernist) discourse concerning computers, the internet,
and the emerging informational society. As such, they also carry an assumed positive
moral and social valence: more interactivity means active learning and participation;
more networking means unanticipated discoveries and horizontal power relations.
Some typical ebulliantly optimistic claims for the interactivity and networking
supposedly inherent in the new media/informational society will be subjected to a
social research based empirical review of the political economy of "new media"
(especially the Web and the internet.) I skeptically conclude that freewheeling
speculation about developing possibilities are rampantly confounded with existing
(and likely) realities. Furthermore, the loose philosophizing is quite politically
dangerous in that it disguises lived realities, carries unexamined presumptions, and
furthers already entrenched dominant interests at the expense of those already
exploited and oppressed.
The issue of technological restructuring is altering not just our jobs and our
work, but our language, consciousness, and identity. (Menzies, 1996:
xiv)
II Delphic Drivel--and Hidden (Political, Ontological,
and Epistemological) Issues
de Kerckhove: The era of money is being threatened with extinction. In
the age of digital substance, you cannot lose if you give or waste if you
use, the product is always there. So if only as a record of previous
experience, an abundance of data that is beyond measure will soon exist.
It stays there, like the web stays there. Genetic engineering is going to
create an abundance of varieties, an abundance of crops. We are in an
economy of abundance in the sense that we now know that we have
enough food to feed everybody. And we know this planet can sustain up to
11 or 12 billion people, even while keeping the ecology more or less
under control. That kind of abundance is not being factored in enough by
the people who recognize that something is happening. We are in an
economy of abundance and an abundance of means to get to the
abundance and to market the abundance. Now are we going to go on
marketing? This is my basic question. (Coombs, 1998)
While this quotation ends with a quite positive suggestive question, many of the
empirical claims in this statement are simply false, and the overall effect grossly
misleading! Possibilities are stated as if they were existing facts; historically, there are
not great grounds for assuming new technologies will be straightforwardly used to further
human development in positive directions any more than in selfish, exploitative ones.
Money still talks and controls, data is abundantly hoarded in copyright legislation (and
information technology developers are among the most legally aggressively active
hoarders: such as Microsoft!), "third world" impoverishment now affect MORE actual
persons since World War II (even if percentages have fallen), and per capita income in
the developed world has fallen over the last decade, the decade of
"informationalization"! Any initial ambiguities we might have about de Kerckhove's
analyses are quickly eradicated as the guru goes on:
de Kerckhove: "There are the four Ds of virtualization in the economy. It
decentralizes it, something that happened back with the telegraph
and the telephone, but more than ever now that the web allows you access
to everywhere from everywhere." (Coombs, 1998)
Does the increasing market dominance of BCE/Northern Telecom and Microsoft
represent decentralizing trends?
"We are despecializing, in so far as the best and the nimblest economies
and industries today are the ones that are ready for the next wave, ready
for the next turn - be it molecular substance to build motors, ceramics, or
software. So we're talking about despecializing everything from industry
to the new dropout. What is the new dropout? The old dropout dropped
out to get in touch. The new dropout drops out for the same reason but in
an entirely different context. He drops out because he is bored, not
because he is threatened. He's just plain old bored by the traditional
variety. He wants to run his or her own business. The new dropout is a
much more interesting person than the old one who was navel
contemplating for some time and then went back to work. Today, the new
dropout is the motor of the industry, the motor of the economy. "(Coombs,
1998)
Maybe a few exceptional dropouts are, but Human Resources Canada statistics present
exactly the opposite picture!
"This leads to the third D: dehierarchize - where everybody is a nobody or
where everybody is a somebody . And the more you work in teams, the
more you realize that everybody is a somebody, whatever the level, from
the mail room all the way to the chief executive." (Coombs, 1998)
Over the past 30 years of globalization, increasingly disparate income levels within and
between nation states indicate exactly the opposite! (Hargrove, 1998; Menzies, 1996:
chp. 4)
"Then of course, the last D, and the most banal, is dematerialize.
So much is going virtual, and in particular so much of the transaction
business is going virtual. A lot more can. Clearly, the banks are among the
first to virtualize all forms of transactions and they've done it from the
moment they introduced the ABM. But ever since the banks introduced
the automatic banking machine, they were virtualizing human
transactions. They were already on the step toward the e-cash and digi-money. I don't understand why people don't make that obvious point.
Nobody seems to say we've had e-cash for eons. Please note that today
ABM does not stand for Anti Ballistic Missile and that ATM does not
stand for Automated Teller Machine!" (Coombs, 1998)
As the people of Mexico, Baghdad, South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, etc., must surely know: currency collapse, increasing poverty and hunger, these bankruptcies, increasing hunger, and bullets, etc., are just virtual and not material? (Chossudovsky, 1998) Maybe "smart weaponry" is just a dematerialized computer game to Hotshot F-18 pilots over the Gulf, but the incinerated victims were once quite material to their loved ones. What amazing sophistry posing as wisdom! What techno-babble! What Newspeak! What an incredible arrogance! It is quite mind-blowing that such new media/informational age gurus get quoted as factual for statements which are demonstrably false. Of course, the theatrical style is tantalizing: there are just enough historically factual assertions to retain credibility, enough brilliantly clever phrasings to amaze and entertain, and much speculation to set one thinking. But the overall effect is one of confusing realities with possibilities, of ignoring ugly realities while offering beautiful possibilities, of ignoring such nasty things as power and exploitation, while blithely championing a benign technological determinism oblivious to the historical social effects of previous technological change (Dewdney/de Kerckhove, 1995.) A suspicious question immediately arises: whose interests do such unwarranted
statements serve? Why are they proliferated so widely, so unquestioningly?
On a lighter/gonzo level, "theorists"/culturalists Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, in
Hacking the Future, offer a dog's breakfast of hip voyeurism of almost every possible
wacky event/happening/scene/personae/etc. imaginable concerning new media and
possibilities of an informational society. Sections include "The Pregnant Robot", "Cyber
Sex", "Arcade Cowboy", "Tech Flesh", "Shopping for Jesus", "Virtual Road Stories",
"Baudrillard at the Express", "Doors of Misperception", etc. Full of dreadful poetry,
weirdly juxtaposed terrible amateur b/w photos, bombast, and witty parody, it is
undeniably provocative in the tradition of Sunday supplement journalism--as a
collection of oddities and the bizarre, it is a fun book. But it also seductively poses as
serious social science (describing important social realities), given the authors' university
appointments, and the glowing reviews of Arthur Kroker as "the Marshall McLuhan for
the 1990's".
In fairness, in a joint work with M.A. Weinstein, Arthur Kroker gets somewhat more
serious in sketching a "theory of the virtual class": it is an intriguing notion that a new
technological basis for social organization would also empower a new dominant social
class. It is also much more critical rather than celebratory:
Against democratic discourse, the virtual class institutes anew the
authoritarian mind, projecting its class interests onto cyberspace from
which vantage-point it crushes any and all dissent to the prevailing
orthodoxies of technotopia.the virtual class exercises its intense
obsessive-compulsive drive to subordinate society to the telematic
mythology of the digital superhighway. The democratic possibilities of
the Internet, with its immanent appeal to new forms of global
communication, might have been the seduction-strategy appropriate for
the construction of the digital superhighway. (Kroker and Weinstein,
1994: 5-6, 8)
They continue on through the book with many provocative conceptual juxtapositions
(e.g., "telematic kitsch", "transiting to nowhere", "liquid tv flesh", "the horizon of
recline", etc.) But the notion of empirical testing, the very notion that they might be
wrong in one prognostication while correct in another, seems not to concern them; nor do
they suggest any possible directions for such vulgar social scientific notions as
empirically amassing data nor "testing" their prognostications.
But, for instance, take this style in contrast to work by a widely recognized scholar
regarded as a traditional although critical theorist: William Leiss of York University's
Faculty of Environmental Studies. Leiss speculates, philosophizes, and invokes ethical
criteria; but he makes it clear when he is doing so, and appeals to empirical evidence.
Simply put, Leiss is one of the few contemporary theorists who challenge technological
determinism! He also at least makes reference to empirical data to test his theorizing!
He can actually conceive of being proven wrong!! Not only the world, but even he and
his theorizing, might not "unfold as it should!"
III Some Data/Reality
How is it that contemporary talk, political rhetoric, and supposedly learned academic
theorizing has taken such an unselfcritical hucksterish stance in discussing new media,
the information society, etc. (and more specifically, "interactivity", and "networking"?)
How has drivel passed itself off as knowledge or science?
A cursory historical review indicates "we've been there before" with each new
technological revolution, not least of which radio broadcasting, television, and video
(Dovey, 1996; Esche, 1996 ; Lapin, 1995 ), but Eden still eludes us!
The sight of the homeless, the smell of rotting garbage, nor the crying hollowed eyes of
the one third of Toronto's children who are growing up in poverty weren't part of the
optimistic ethical hopes of Robert Owen, Egerton Ryerson, J.A. MacDonald, Laurier, nor
P. E. Trudeau, but they exist and are increasing in our new informational "Eden"--not to
mention the effects of "structural adjustment policy" restructuring on the 80% of the
world's children living in Africa, Asian, and Latin America!
And such local empirical social reality obviously doesn't much penetrate the hallowed
halls of the Director's Office at the McLuhan Centre of The University of Toronto! At
an elementary level then, one should beware of wildly optimistic claims proposed by
exponents of new technologies; past experience should make us skeptical of claims for
new nirvanas.
Even a cursory review/reminder of some themes from older sociological work concerned
with media and communication (Mills, 1962; 1959; 1956; Porter, 1960; Clement, 1972,
etc.) suggests the necessity of looking below the surface, of not simply taking claims by
extant political and economic elites simply at their face value.
Some of Mills' brilliant early essays on communication need rereading (e.g., "Situated
Actions and Vocabularies of Motive",1936/1962?) for their applicability to the ways in
which contemporary discourse on new media derives from a set of socially acceptable
rhetorics as much or more than from some "psychologically/intellectually" internal
"insight". His elaboration of this politically informed pragmatist and symbolic
interactionist stance into both substantive work in The Power Elite (on the American
military industrial complex which even Eisenhower warned against--while the internet
was being founded!), and epistemological and political/ethical issues of doing politically
committed but empirically grounded social research (in The Sociological Imagination)
remain unsurpassed to this day. But Mills should alert us to the issues of control of
media from an American perspective; quite tellingly, he studied at Chicago under the
influence of Robert E. Park (former journalist), as did Harold Innis, one of the father-figures with McLuhan of the "Toronto School of Communication".
John Porter's Vertical Mosaic is a massively documented classic Canadian text (in the
style of British social democratic research championed by the London School of
Economics), debunking notions that Canadian society is less hierarchical than other
modern industrial states, instead integrating our "cultural mosaic" (later "multicultural")
ideology into a vertical ensconced social class structure quite similar to other OECD
countries. Porter tellingly places ideology and media institutions quite central to his
analysis: they literally mediate between the myths of equality with the social realities of
inequality: hierarchy, exploitation, and oppression. Porter's student, Wallace Clement,
followed directly in these footsteps in his major work, analyzing how the Canadian
media are not only intricately linked to the economic and social elites, but also purvey
messages which, while not conspiratorially orchestrated, are structurally channeled to
support dominant economic interests.
Fortunately, such critical analysis does continue, even from within the McLuhan Centre!
The following description of corporate media concentration underneath the warm skin of
Ma Bell would do Porter proud!
"the Canadian Scene: Stentor is the consortium of Canada's 'regional phone companies' the remnants of a monopoly system. This includes: Bell, BCTel, Telus, SaskTel, MTS, NorthwesTel, MT&T, NBTel, IslandTel, NewTel, and QuebecTel. BCE The Canadian Champion (For a map of what they own see: http://www.bce.ca/bce/fs/e/about/corporate/organization/ Bell Canada Enterprises is both one of the largest and most profitable companies in Canada, taking turns with the big banks in the number one position. In 1997 they had a rate of return of 53%, greater than almost any mutual fund, far greater than almost all other Canadian corporate entities. It goes without saying, that they hold considerable power, both in terms of market influence, but also regarding policy. Although Bell is a source of considerable revenue for BCE, the real jewel in the crown is Northern Telecom, now being recast as NorTel. building telecom networks in the US, South America, Europe, Asia, and most notable China. Pioneers of the digital phone switch, NorTel has and continues to experience phenomenal revenue growth and profit return. Bell Canada International (BCI) is the foreign investment arm of the BCE conglomerate. Focusing primarily on the developing world, BCI has substantial investments in telecom companies in India, China, and through Latin America, most notable of which is in Columbia, where both narco-terrorists and para-military groups are able to wage low-intensity guerrilla warfare using Bell's networks and NorTel's technology. In addition to investments in England and Egypt, BCI is positioning itself as a versatile global carrier with a Canadian base, an attractive purchase for larger telecom players in the next wave of telecom mega-mergers. Some other subsidiaries of BCE include Teleglobe, which is the current monopoly carrier (until the fall of 1998) for all overseas traffic in and out of Canada, TeleSat, which owns and operates Canadian Satelites, Express Vu and Direct PC, which offer direct to home tv and internet as well as CGI, which runs Bell's software development (Sygma) and internet access (Sympatico). Bell also has a minority or controlling stake in Canada's Maritime phone companies: MT&T, NBTel, IslandTel, and NewTel, as well as NorthwesTel and Telebec. When push comes to shove BCE will most likely merge with these carriers rather than join up with other members of the Stentor Consortium. It's also worth noting that BCE has a 9% stake in Sun Media, which published the Toronto Sun, and Financial Post. .As officially stated by the World Bank during the Global Knowledge
'97 conference sponsored in part by the Government of Canada and
Northern Telecom: "Information Technology will eliminate poverty."
"The absurdity of it all is that they really believe these ludicrous
statements. Look out, heads up, here they come....(Hirsch, 1998b, "The
Telecom Industry in Canada")
That particular analysis of the corporate concentration and control by BCE is replicated
in the more wide-ranging work of analyses of both the local Canadian situation and the
global picture. In her Canadian oriented study, Menzies (1996) finds similarly disturbing
trends throughout the informationalization of Canadian society. While on the one hand
we are as highly wired as anywhere:
In mid-1995 Statistics Canada reported that nearly half of all workers (48
percent) were working with or on computers, three times the figures of
1985. It also found that "the most elite class of workers, managers, and
professionals" were the most computer literate--with 75 per cent of the
men and 61 per cent of the women in that group working with computer
systems. It also found that 14 per cent of employed Canadians were using
the Internet, information highway, and other "high-technology lines of
communication." (Menzies, 1996: 47)
But, overall, it is unclear at this time that we as a people are benefiting:
"What has sometimes been called the Fordist social contract, which saw
decent incomes distributed widely to a population more of less fully
employed in mass production and mass consumption, has collapsed.
Some 20 per cent of the adult population is either unemployed or
underemployed. " (Menzies, 1996: 4)
Menzies goes on to discuss the structurally dominant issues of collapsing work
opportunities, underemployment, jobless corporate/financial "growth", deskilling and the
declining middle strata, the de-institutionalization of workers and work, computer
monitoring, etc. She provides references to a number of case studies of the devastating
effects of computerization on local workforces: stress, disorganization of union
protections, deskilling, and layoffs.
She concludes (1996: 55):
Her detailed discussion of numerous case studies is replicated in more wide-ranging
statistical presentations in a number of recent journal articles regarding media
infrastructural issues (e.g., Buchwald, 1997), deskilling at work (Symons, 1997), and
media convergence (Winseek, 1997). Buzz Hargrove, in a speech this past month carried
on Open College, reaches similar conclusions, citing figures from Statistics Canada
which indicate that while real per capita income for Canadians doubled in the quarter
century following World War II, it has slowed to a meager 12% increase in the last
quarter century, and actually fallen in the past decade--the decade of globalization, free
trade, and the information society!
Airhart's review summarizes Lerner (1997) as painting an equally grim set of
"unpleasant scenarios of the future", where we find an ever-growing
"working poor:' class, automated out of skilled and middle-management
jobs into lower-paying, non-union jobs in the fast-food, tourism or nursing
home sector." This downward mobility, she says will create long-term
unemployment leading to poverty, eroded self-esteem, family breakdown,
rising crime rates. On this path lies the resort to 'some form of
authoritarianism." (Airhart, 1998.)
Don Tapscott works as "theorist/pundit" in a hip think tank, Alliance for Converging
Technologies, a front operation largely funded by tech companies. Besides praising the
new market in his earlier book (1996), he moves on to trumpet the rise of whole new net
generation ("N-gen") with an enthusiasm not heard since descriptions of how 60's youth
would transform the world! A superficial veneer of unexamined undergraduate social
psychology references is matched with a totally non-representative sample of computer
literate kids, from which wild generalizations are spun which would earn a failing grade
in an elementary statistics or social research course. (Somehow, the 80% of the world's
youngsters living in Latin America, Asia, and Africa are conveniently ignored.)
Somehow, a bunch of hip hacking unorganized and unemployed teens are wresting
control of the world from their hitherto dominant elders ensconced in the corporate
boardrooms, cabinet meetings of the G7, and the Pentagon! (One can hardly wait to see
the movie!)
In spite of his own basically pro-media, hucksterist stance, even Tapscott (1997) admits
there may be some problems indicated by some nastily recalcitrant data. In the US, the
income of the top fifth of the population has increased in the last 10 years by 20%, in
contrast to a measely 1% increase for all families; simply put: for the top quintile to get
that kind of an increase, the other 80% lost! (Tapscott, 1997: 11) More specifically, in
the United States, "Households earning more than $75,000 per year are 10 times more
likely to be surfing the Net than those making less than $30,00 per year.If you look at
the data, there is a growing information apartheid already in the United States. Parallel
to this, there is a growing polarization in the distribution of wealth." (Tapscott: 1997:
259) Is this the brave new world of abundance that gurus like de Kerckhove proclaim as
developing in reality?
Tapscott also worries as he identifies inequities on a world scale:
The information gap between have and have-not countries is growing.
According to Jupiter Communications, of the 23.4 million households
connected to the Net in 1996, 66 percent were in North American, 16
percent in Europe, and 14 percent in the Asian pacific. [That would leave
only some 4 percent for the rest of Asia, all of Africa, and all of Latin
America!] (Tapscott: 1997: 260.)
Menzies' work is prescient in linking our local and nation-state "Canadian" issues with
world market issues, identifying the language of globalization, international markets,
restructuring, etc. as crucial in the politically imposed institutionalization of a new
informational society. She clearly indicates how immediate local destabilizing
campaigns by business against labour, by tax-cutters against social programmers, by
liberal/conservatives against liberal/socialists have relied upon a rhetoric of maintaining
Canadian competitiveness on world markets. In an ironic and devastating circle, the
opening of the global economy to both cheaper consumer product importation and
increased profit through duty-free exports has then been turned back as a whip to demand
the decline of Canadian labour and environmental standards to meet the competition of
murderous third world dictatorships shamelessly exploiting uneducated and unorganized
peasants.
Castells massively documented work (1976; 1977a; 1977b) starts by carefully
analytically distinguishing informationalism from other phenomena, such as capitalism,
and its global restructuring over the last couple of decades:
the most decisive historical factor accelerating channeling, and shaping
the information technology paradigm, and inducing its associated social
forms, was/is the process of capitalist restructuring undertaken since the
1980's, so that the new techno-economic system can be adequately
characterized as informational capitalism. What characterizes the
current technological revolution is not the centrality of knowledge and
information, but the application of such knowledge and information to
knowledge generation and information processing/communication
devices, in a cumulative feedback loop between innovation and the uses
of innovation. (Castells, 1996: 18; 32)
Furthermore, the application of such knowledges now proceeds at the dizzying pace of "Moore's law", with capacities doubling every 2 years in unprecedented exponential growth. The first characteristic of the new paradigm is that information is its raw
material: these are technologies to act on information, not just
information to act on technology, as was the case in previous
technological revolutions.
From such a framework, Castells demonstrates how issues of concentration and control of
the new informational society are not just locally Canadian or North American, but "a
global network of interaction. The products of new information technology industries
are information-processing devices or information processing itself." (Castells: 1996:
66-7)
But, concurring with Menzies' specific analysis of the Canadian economy, Castells,
documents how the new information technology revolution has lead to society-wide
downward trends in productivity growth among the central (G7 and OECD) countries!
(1996: 70ff) He argues this can only be understood through recognizing the central role
of state/political management of information technologies. While globalization is
massively reshaping international relations to such an extent that older categories such as
"north-south" and "third world" are losing their meaningfulness, traditional
concentrations remain: for instance, while North America represented some 42.5% of the
world's R&D expenditures in 1990, Latin America and Africa combined accounted for
less than 1%! Again, innumerable articles confirm Castells' overall analysis (e.g.,
Barnett, 1997).
Of course, we seldom really consider how international finances controlled by the IMF,
the World Bank, the OECD, the GATT, and the G7 now constitute a veritable monetarily
determining secret world-wide cabinet, based upon wealth. The military arm is
constituted more weakly in the 5 veto votes of the UN security council. Even the
General Assembly of the United Nations is based on a one-state, one-vote system.
NOWHERE in this system is even a vague hint of popular representation: REP by POP as
the original American revolutionaries proclaimed! Somewhere, back in the twelfth
century, King John conceded Magna Carta; the aristocratic American 'revolutionaries"
deigned to concede popular represenation (to white male property owners) in congress
while maintaining states rights in the senate. International agencies created out of
Bretton-Woods at the end of the Second World War still await any movement towards
popular democracy beyond the benevolent paternalism of decayed imperial war-machines. Yet these archaic, semi-dictatorial bodies still set the agendas for any so-called "new informational society"!!
This emerging global economy is far less benign and far more sinister than the ebulliant
press releases by multinationals would have us believe.
Let me summarize the salient points of this presentation [Towards a
political economy of information]:
More contemporary empirically-based analyses of both international and Canadian media
and internet organizations, processes of computerization and webification, the emerging
informational society, etc.--all point in the general direction (no surprise!) that the new
technologies are being incorporated most extensively by already dominant organizations,
classes, groups, and nation-states to enhance their present domination, exploitation, and
oppression. The corresponding subordinate groups have been (again, no surprise!) left
groping for any self-defensive response or progressive alternatives.
What has been somewhat different in the last decade is that the "fall of communism" has
left any critique of rampant neo-liberal globalizing capitalism bereft not only of
institutional and political support, but emotionally and intellectually enervated.
Ironically, this is just at an historical moment when, if anything, the classic analyses
offered by left/progressive critiques have been almost embarrassingly been historically
realized!
IV Discussion
What are the effects of emerging network media? How will society be
transformed by the shift towards a knowledge based economy and society?
One thing is for certain: we just don't know. In fact the unknown seems to
be a recurring metaphor of the networked future we face. However, what
we can identify in the present is a total lack of public consultation and
debate concerning the impact and effects of current technological change.
(Jessie Hirsh, 1997)
The above reviews have attempted to provide some grounds for a fundamental
uneasiness I have had with the dominant contemporary technological optimism so
rampant not only among corporations, and in the popular press, but also among many
"theorists" who seem to have lost critical faculties (e.g, de Kerckhove, 1995;
Featherstone and Burrows, 1995; Tapscott, 1997; Hillis, 1996(?); Papert, 1997.) I have
been astounded at the proliferation of glib optimism that the new age of the "digital
information society" will create everything good humanity has always wished for
(e.g., equality, sharing, global distribution and interaction, abundance, social harmony,
etc., etc.)
"I am the earth looking at itself"! (deKerckhove/Dewdney, 1995)
De Kerckhove's wonderful hubris is no better revealed than in this chapter title (which his virturally dis-embodied self apparently didn't have realtime in
streaming biochemical processes to edit itself empirically--or whatever newspeak he
would deign appropriate! Such BS!) The uncritical and non-empirical style of such
"theorizing" seems to fit quite nicely with the interests of international/globalizing
corporations, who regularly sponsor such optimistic gurus at conferences.
In a way, this ungrounded speculative style which so often passes for (empirically
grounded) theory is nonetheless somewhat surprising, given McLuhan's association with
Innis, who was so deeply schooled in American social research empiricism under the
tutelage of Robert Park at the University of Chicago.
Harold Innis describes the bias of space, and the bias of time, that result
from the adoption and employment of communication technologies and
later he extends this analysis to demonstrate the relationship between
these biases, and the machination of empire, as embodied in politics and
religion. Similarly Bagdikian details the rapid rate of corporate media
concentration that has been underway throughout the later half, even later
quarter of the 20th century.
What arises from the combination of these analyses, in light of
developments in media at the end of the century, is a radically different
view of the apparatus of the state. And what is most striking about this
vision, has been the inability of our society to recognize and identify this
phenomena.
"Throughout the world, at the behest of the World Trade Organization
and under the leadership of American legislators, national governments
are being either coerced or seduced to deregulate their communications.
This has had the effect of accelerating corporate concentration, and
centralizing power amidst a handful of conglomerates. Many analysts
have regarded these changes as an act of faith, in which national
governments hand over the basis of their sovereignty to what is called:
market control. The ideology describes an era of free markets, but the
reality depicts global giants operating a capitalist command economy.."(Hirsch, 1998)
In all this, it should not be forgotten that Innis was a student of Robert E. Park, one of the
founding fathers of the quintessential American school of sociology, Symbolic
Interactionism. Park was not only erudite, but activist: he left a career as a journalist,
continued working with inner city settlement houses, was clearly progressive, but
maintained a doubting skeptic's position on any grandiose social claims. Part of a
remarkable interdisciplinary mixed team (including social psychologist G. H. Mead,
architect Frank Lloyd Wright, philosopher and educationist T. Dewey, anthropologists,
etc.) at the University of Chicago in the early decades of this century, Park elaborated his
experiences of mass media (newspapers) into a theory of communications as the basis of
social organization. Innis learned his lessons well, going on to elaborate and use Park's
notions to formulate his work on the communication economy of Canadian political-economic development.
But whereas Innis took Park's liberalism to heart (even within a "dependent" economy
such as Canada's), Mills and others took such issues of communication in a more radical
direction, linking them to mass media domination of subordinate groups. A similarly
critical recent brilliantly researched and argued presentation of Park's work on
communication forming the basis of "new/composite" democratic nation-states is that of
Dario Melossi. In The State of Social Control., Melossi argues that not only has
American Symbolic Interactionism been a major contribution to sociological
understandings of how societies operate, but that it also has identified a quintessential
and unique feature of "new" "multi-ethnic" societies (such as the United States) created
in emerging post-aristocratic, capitalist eras: that new means of "democratizing"
communication are required to formulate and provide a basis for fundamental social
order. Although not elaborated in specific regards to the emerging informational society,
Melossi provides a fundamental theoretical framework as to how
"communication/spin/ideology" issues are central in maintaining social order and
compliance in societies which are economically exploitative and politically oppressive
while claiming equitable prosperity and democracy. It is not an easy task!
This massive restructuring is closely linked to some dramatic new
developments in the so-called labour market: protracted high levels of
unemployment even in times of economic growth and record-breaking
profits; rising levels of underemployment; and a polarization of the
workforce into the working rich and the working poor. (Menzies, 1996: 9)
Epistemologically, much of the presently predominant style of Delphic Drivel--ungrounded prognostication-as-theorizing (speculation, really, as it seriously lacks
empirical referents)--eminating from the information gurus at such places as the
Toronto McLuhan Centre would appear to derive from the English literature roots of
both the Cambridge and Toronto schools of communication (centrally exemplified by
Marshall McLuhan; see Berg, 1985), and their disdainful dismissal of both (largely
American) social scientific (albeit often excessively positivist behaviourist) research
(eg., Shannon and Weaver, etc., but also Clement in Canada) and (largely European)
critical or Marxist concerns (e.g., Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, and the
Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies; Gramsci, Althusser, Fiske,
etc.; but also C. Wright Mills in the U.S..)
McLuhan's politically arch-conservative/fascist-sympathizing, mythic/romanticist,
hierarchist-Catholic, and anti-modernist, arch-aristocratic teachers (Ezra Pound, T.S.
Elliot, F.R. Leavis, J. Joyce, etc.) within an elitist Cambridge environment under
socialist siege during the 1930's, produced a theorist later fortified while teaching in
reactionary Catholic schools in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, and Windsor, Ontario,
Canada, and then St. Michael's College Pontifical Institute at the University of
Toronto. Leavis, for instance decried the demise of the "great canon" of
western/Catholic civilization under the onslaught of popular democratic culture; these
guys yearned for some return of medieval scholasticism (in which, of course, they
would be the controlling intelligences!) They railed against not only contemporary
democracy, labour movements, and socialism as the ultimate downfall of all of
Western civilization, they even praised Hitler and Mussolini! To the extent that some
of them got thrown in jail for treason (albeit, I would judge with many others, quite
unjustly in terms of their civil libertarian right to voice political beliefs.)
In explicit contrast, McLuhan's teachers eschewed and denounced any attempts to
comprehend emerging popular culture in its own terms, such as those being developed
in British documentary cinema in the 1930's, the popular Ealing Studio comedies of
the 1940's, or more "intellectually" by Raymond Williams and Richard Hogarth
(whose ideas were later elaborated by the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary
Cultural Studies, under the guidance of Stuart Hall in the 1970's.)
McLuhan's distaste for contemporary populist culture, his basically conservative high
Catholic faith, and belief in some apocalyptic (apoplectic?) transformation through
almost divinely inspired technology drive his prognostications. Great theatre,
bombast, and rhetoric--but garbage as social (or natural) science! Unfortunately, this
"high-culture" English literature style of "theory" as-clever-wacky-idea (without any
empirical referent) continues to hold sway within discussions of
communications/culture/media. De Kerckhove's drivel from Delphi could not be
more appropriate!
Hence, "interactivity" and "networking" have been recently spoken about to mean every
and all good thing, as if presently realizing themselves, without any responsibility to
empirical proof.
More recently, of course, the demise of the Soviet Union, has made any analyses critical
of the "technological imperative" of capitalist individualism quite outre--but that, of
course, is exactly what critical analyses of ideology would suggest needs to be
examined (Marx and Engels, 1846; Siedman, 1994; Jencks, 1995; Jameson, 1994;
Levin, 1993)!
V Beyond Delphic Drivel: Some Conclusions, and
Suggested Directions
"Some of us involved in social movements are privileged enough to
possess the know how to participate in the economic activities of the
information sector.
A political economy of information would analyze the basic
contradiction in an information economy and its various expressions. It
would identify the new economic relations and classes that emerge out of
the social restratification. It would search for the motive forces that
can be mobilized to initiate basic changes in the property relations. It
would identify the main forces, the reliable allies, the middle forces,
and the opponents of change. It would study what demands must be raised
to mobilize and unite the motive forces for change. It would then try to
discover new property relations that are more consistent with the nature
of information goods.
Developing such a political economy of information has become an
immediate necessity, given the rapidity with which the information sector
has established its dominance. " (Verzola, 1998)
In his book, Leiss (1990: 128) concludes:
Perhaps that is the key to retaining an effective political debate about the future of
"interactivity" and "networking": that the terms are open for debate, and how we
institutionalize them is not set by a technological determinism of a discredited
left/labour, nor by an as yet unchallenged right/capital.
To his credit, Tapscott (1997: chp. 12) does suggest some quite practical and manageable
"public realtions" and "charity" schemes by which IT companies could donate both
hardware and software to schools and community centres to enhance net-literacy and
accessibility. By all means, they should be pursued. Seriously, however, we have no
good reasons to expect that such charity will be any different than that of the past:
medieval workhouses, industrial revolution church-run charities, residential schools for
native children, and sleeping bags for the homeless have not solved social inequities, nor
will dozens of IBM clones and Microsoft Windows 98's distributed through Boys and
Girls Clubs! If anything, such do-goodism has undermined collective organization
among the oppressed and exploited, rather than helping them to transform their social
situation.
Following Verzola, we do need an empirically verified political economy of information,
which moves beyond easy liberal solutions of charity.
But a critical approach to progressively researching the emerging informational society
insists on a much more demanding task. For instance, Marx did NOT just do a political
economy of capitalism: Das Kapital is subtitled A Critique of Political Economy (my
emphasis.) His epistemological approach demanded he do a critique of "political
economy", the self-professed science/knowledge (and pseudo-scientific political
legitimation) of emerging industrial capitalism. That critique insisted on examining the
categories (such as "commodity", "market", etc.) which were taken for granted terms,
unexamined within the social research program of political economy, and unearthing the
preconceptions of such terms, and the taken-for-granted social processes which were
indeed empirically realized to such an extent that such terminology made sense and
allowed more-or-less accurate analysis by the science of political economy regarding
real-world political-economic activities.
One need not be any card-carrying ex-Marxist to follow this logic; what is more needed
than a straightforward political economy of information is a critique or critical
understanding of the categories of our new "information sciences". What are our
presumptions and under what social conditions can we meaningfully use such terms as
"information", "informationalism", "networking", "interactivity", etc. What are the
necessary preconditions in social relations for such terms to be able to represent
meaningfully human activity?
And, more centrally, within a progressive agenda committed to bettering the human
condition, we need to seriously reconsider what kinds of data and research might not
only lead to greater knowledge and understanding, but also to information which is truly
useful for realizing social justice and the meeting of universally acknowledged human
needs. The very format and organization of much research structures it for use only by
presently dominant organizations. Developing exploratory alternative formats and
organizations is essential if any of the wildly optimistic prognostications cited above are
ever to be realized. In a final political, ontological, and epistemological irony, how can
we use alternative processes of knowledge generation to make de Kerckhove's presently
wildly inaccurate prognostications actually come true?
Menzies among others offers some suggestions:
!The function of knowledge is but one: to transform reality!
(Commandante Bayardo Arce, FSLN National Directorate Member)
While any serious historical analysis of the self-interested support for science by
north/western corporations and governments over the last few centuries would verify
Arce's statement, the question remains as to how to organize the generation of
knowledge in the new information society so that it becomes a liberating rather than an
exploiting and oppressive phenomenon. While not denying the importance of real,
political and economic struggles in everyday political life as crucially important,
reconceiving the issues seems very necessary.
VI Footnotes:
1. In some self-acknowledgment, I initially admit a deeply grounded Scottish-Canadian skepticism of both political and intellectual authority grounded in the rebellions of Wallace, Bruce, Knox, Hume, Locke, M.J. Coldwell, T.C. Douglas, etc., on through to Wilson's use of the Presbytery model of checks and balances in designing the League of Nations. I take this Anglo-Saxon sense of empiricist investigation through its contemporary (North) American incarnation very seriously (Mead, Park and Burgess, Mills, Hughes, and Becker--summarized in Rock and Kuhn): I believe in "scientific method", in the sense of statement of presumptions, empirically refutatable propositions, and tentatively stated conclusions (given the communitarian--and hence "interested"-- nature of all human activities, including science.) I also follow a procedure derived from Wittgenstein (1922; 1952) of examining how words are used in ordinary language. In part, I additionally rely upon upon a humanist neo-Marxist tradition, relying upon "continental" "rationalist" traditions: through Plato on to Hegel and Marx, Sartre, Camus, and Foucault, I believe that both the physical and social empirical worlds are NOT actually self-revealing as to underlying structures and processes, but require some critical theoretical intelligence to gain understanding and control. All of this has been further stewed by encounters with North American community development (especially with the YMCA) and Latin American (Catholic?) liberation theology, both in the theoretical (Boff, Cardinal, etc.) sense, but also in practical political terms (Arce, FSLN, etc) (see Walker Larrain and West (1983), and West (1984) for earlier statements.)
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