This page contains materials intended
to facilitate class discussion (excerpts from readings,
outlines of issues, links to resources, etc.). The
materials are not necessarily the same as the instructor's
teaching notes and are not designed to represent
a full exposition or argument. This page is subject
to revision as the instructor finalizes preparation.
(Last revised
2/15/02
)
Preliminary Class Business
Revised, online paper now due March 1st in
class
Drop-in tech support hours in South Hall 2509:
Mondays 11:30-2, Thursdays 2-4:30
Dissenters
Against the Corporate World-view and the Corporate
Domination of IT (2): Cyberlibertarianism
The Cyberlibertarian Concept:
The belief that the social protocols/communities
of networked information technology create a
new form of politics that makes obsolete both
traditional institutions of power and traditional
political influence or protest groups
Famous cyberlibertarian spokesmen:
Stewart Brand (founder of The
Whole Earth Catalog and The Well, alleged
originator of the statement "information
wants to be free")
Radical and anarchist fringe: e.g., the Mondo
2000 crowd. Also see Mark Dery's book on
the cyber-fringe, Escape Velocity: Cyberculture
at the End of the Century (New York: Grove,
1996)
The Politics of Cyberlibertarianism:
"Information wants to be free"
Anti-government & anti-corporate (esp.
in the wake of the Communications Decency Act
[CDA] of 1996):
John Perry Barlow, "A Declaration
of the Independence of Cyberspace":
"Governments
of the Industrial World, you weary
giants of flesh and steel, I come from
Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On
behalf of the future, I ask you of the
past to leave us alone. You are not
welcome among us. You have no sovereignty
where we gather."
"We
are creating a world that all may enter
without privilege or prejudice accorded
by race, economic power, military
force, or station of birth."
"Your
increasingly obsolete information
industries would perpetuate themselves
by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere,
that claim to own speech itself throughout
the world. These laws would declare
ideas to be another industrial product,
no more noble than pig iron. In our
world, whatever the human mind may create
can be reproduced and distributed infinitely
at no cost. The global conveyance of
thought no longer requires your factories
to accomplish."
Individualist
Jon Katz, "Birth of a Digital
Nation":
"Where
our existing information systems seek
to choke the flow of information through
taboos, costs, and restrictions, the
new digital world celebrates the right
of the individual to speak and
be heard - one of the cornerstone ideas
behind American media and democracy.
Where
our existing political institutions
are viewed as remote and unresponsive,
this online culture offers the means
for individuals to have a genuine
say in the decisions that affect their
lives."
"This
is a culture founded on the ethos of
individuality, not leadership.
Information flows laterally, or from
many to many - a structure that works
against the creation of leaders."
Special issues: online privacy (and encryption),
censorship, intellectual property
Or is the individualism of the cyberlibertarians
anti-government but really pro-business?
According to Richard Barbrook and Andy
Cameron ("The Californian Ideology"),
Vivian Sobchack ("New Age Mutant Ninja
Hackers"), and other critics of cyberlibertarianism:
Information does not want to be free.
What it wants is venture capital.
Jon Katz, "Birth of a Digital Nation":
"From
liberals, this ideology adopts humanism.
It is suspicious of law enforcement. It
abhors censorship. It recoils from extreme
governmental positions like the death
penalty. From conservatives, the ideology
takes notions of promoting economic opportunity,
creating smaller government, and insisting
on personal responsibility.
The digital
young share liberals' suspicions of authority
and concentration of power but have little
of their visceral contempt for corporations
or big business. They share the liberal
analysis that social problems like poverty,
rather than violence on TV, are at the
root of crime. But, unlike liberals, they
want the poor to take more responsibility
for solving their own problems."
Is cyberlibertarianism "escapist"?
an escape from "real" society
and politics?
an escape into the 18th-century past
of Jeffersonian democracy" pre-dating
the problems not only of postindustrialism
but even of industrialism?
an escape into the 19th-century past
of "captains of industry" (of
individuals starting and running companies)?
Or are the critics holding cyberlibertarianism
to an impossible standard?
What politics (including mainstream
politics and NGO politics) cannot be accused
of "escapism" in similar or
different ways?
Is there any effective political movement
today that does not in some way participate
in corporatism?
Can cyberlibertarianism learn to interact
effectively with traditional politics?
(see Jon Katz's sequel to his "Birth
of a Digital Nation": "The
Digital Citizen." Wired / HotWired
5.12 (Dec. 1997).
Review of Postindustrial Business
In any case, both the "wired" NGOs
and cyberlibertarianism are responses to a world
in which information technology seems to be central
to Big Business (like railways or cars in the
past), but where "Big Business" has
mutated into "flat" business.
Joseph H. Boyett
and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):
In Workplace 2000,
the newest and lowest-level employee will
be expected to know more about the company
that employs him or her than many middle managers
and most supervisors knew . . .
in the 1970s and 1980s. (p. 47)
William H. Davidow
and Michael S. Malone, The Virtual Corporation
(1992):
The most stunning
feature of the new work life will be the independence
involved. What has been until now the reward
for an exceptional few salespeople, researchers,
and specialists will increasingly become the
rule. (p. 214)
Manuel Castells,
The Rise of the Network Community (
1996):
Some elements of
[the Japanese] model are well known: . . .
workers' involvement in the production process,
by using team work, decentralized initiative,
greater autonomy of decision on the shop floor,
rewards for team performance, and a flat management
hierarchy with few status symbols in the daily
life of the firm. (p. 157)
What [Ikujiro Nonaka]
labels "the knowledge-creating company"
is based on the organizational interaction
between "explicit knowledge" and
"tacit knowledge" at the source
of innovation. He argues that much of the
knowledge accumulated in the firm is made
out of experience, and cannot be communicated
by workers under excessively formalized management
procedures. And yet the sources of innovation
multiply when organizations are able to establish
bridges to transfer tacit into explicit knowledge,
explicit into tacit knowledge, tacit into
tacit, and explicit into explicit. (p. 159)
R. Roosevelt Thomas,
Jr., Beyond Race and Gender: Unleashing
the Power of Your Total Work Force by Managing
Diversity (1991):
Another word for
the process of tapping employees' full potential
is "empowerment". . . . In fact, a managing
diversity capability is implicit in several
innovations already in process in progressive
organizations. Some corporations, for example,
are moving to "push decision making down."
Others are implementing "total quality" initiatives.
Still others have downsized their work forces
in search of greater efficiency and productivity.
All of these initiatives, however they differ,
have one aspect in common: Their success depends
on the ability to empower the total work force.
(p. 10)
[For a contrarian
view, see Mike Parker and Jane Slaughter,
Choosing Sides: Unions and the Team Concept
(Detroit: Labor Notes / South End Press, 1988)]
Disempowerment?
From Workplace
2000 (pp. 42-46):
"Every
American Worker Should Become 'Flexible'
All Americans Should Expect (and Prepare
For) Periods of Unemployment
To Avoid Unpleasant Surprises, All Americans
Will Need to Keep a Close Watch on the
Financial Performance of the Small Company
or Business Unit That Employs Them.
All Americans Should Expect to Work Harder
and Longer Hours . . ."
From The Virtual Corporation (pp. 215-16):
"But the greatest daily challenge
to the workers and the management that
supports them will be dealing with the
unpredictability of life in the virtual
corporation, where perpetual flux will
be the rule. If every revolution brings
with it the potential for tragedy, then
here is where it is most likely to occur."
"Solid and steady, among the most
admired attributes of the traditional
corporation, become negative traits in
the virtual corporation. In the process,
many individuals who have had trouble
fitting the old template will suddenly
find themselves in the most amenable of
work environments; while, conversely,
those who once thrived may discover themselves
disoriented, alienated, and overwhelmed
by the new work style."
