tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52324502024-03-17T23:02:48.181-04:00TechnopolisPolitical artifacts in humanity's uncertain futureLangdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.comBlogger334125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-10369546618999203072017-06-26T13:22:00.002-04:002017-06-26T13:24:40.122-04:00Langdon's Web Site Has Moved!<h2>
Hello! My website including Technopolis has moved. </h2>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><a href="https://www.langdonwinner.com/" target="_blank">Click here to go there.</a></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>- Langdon </b></span></div>
Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com69tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-46195049379014165142017-02-14T13:10:00.001-05:002017-02-14T13:10:27.031-05:00Comparing Trump and you know who ...<br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Comparing Trump and
you know who …</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">A fascinating
aspect of the rise of Donald Trump in American politics has been a rebirth in
discussions about fascism, racism, authoritarian politics, enfeebled democracy,
propaganda, and similar themes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While
much of the conversation is rather thin on substance, the need to explore these
possibilities is, in my view, both relevant and highly significant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Within Internet
blog posts and discussion threads the warning offered in “Godwin’s Law,” penned
by attorney and writer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law" target="_blank">Mike Goodwin</a>, suggests that “</span><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"As
an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving
Hitler approaches 1.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/14/sure-call-trump-a-nazi-just-make-sure-you-know-what-youre-talking-about/?utm_term=.bcf62037e30c" target="_blank">strong implication</a>
is that </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“if you
mention Adolf Hitler or Nazis within a discussion thread, you’ve automatically
ended whatever discussion you were taking part in.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Be that as it may, the two ugly characters now under consideration exhibit some notable features in common.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At present I’m reading Ian Kershaw’s
excellent book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hitler: A Biography</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of the parallels are striking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here is a preliminary list of features that
caught my eye. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">Both men: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">1.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Preferred the big picture and its vivid, propagandistic aspects; <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">2.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Relished speaking to large gatherings of enthusiastic admirers; <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">3.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Emphasized ruthless, hard-nosed strategies and tactics that could lead
to "winning;" <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">4.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Had few if any close friends; <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">5.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Disliked detailed meetings, briefings and matters of day-to-day
governance (which they left to subordinates); <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">6<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Tended to form alliances with people (mainly men) who were, if anything
just as emotionally fringy as they themselves; <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">7.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Usually regarded women as beguiling ornaments;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">7.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Often saw conflict -- including
international conflict – as first and foremost a matter of settling scores;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">8. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Quickly </span>eliminated anyone who stood in
their way; <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">9.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Emphasized the urgent need to
recover the lost glory of a nation's earlier times; <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">10.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Showed little if any empathy for the suffering of everyday people; <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">11.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Relied upon a particular, favored right wing propagandist even for the
most crucial matters of policy making; <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">11.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Always had a virulent race card, xenophobic rhetoric and ideas of fear,
terror and hatred ready at hand;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">11.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Were basically narcissistic autocrats in their relationships with
others, seeking to foster a culture of great “leader" around them to stoke
a voracious but insecure ego; <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">12.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Were doggedly persistent, pressing onward, never relenting, toward
imagined victories even as calamitous outcomes seemed increasingly likely for
themselves and their followers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">- Langdon Winner </span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;"> 2/14/2017</span></div>
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Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-67215355614245088482016-11-11T16:20:00.001-05:002016-11-11T16:20:33.165-05:00Why I've Unplugged from DirecTV<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0LnlrKx9czhO5Ho1KePupx0qlbekrduyUzcnFtBVVtbnk8Mvqc0Ay3mn6H5q6tKsiSQKWi3-8RKb5_-HCLy3SGJDHmnbORrG-6cha0ArFJuSfsbypX2DRLA7Ujv9KI7HivVKj/s1600/beale_trump.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0LnlrKx9czhO5Ho1KePupx0qlbekrduyUzcnFtBVVtbnk8Mvqc0Ay3mn6H5q6tKsiSQKWi3-8RKb5_-HCLy3SGJDHmnbORrG-6cha0ArFJuSfsbypX2DRLA7Ujv9KI7HivVKj/s320/beale_trump.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<h2 style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Why I've Unplugged from DirecTV</h2>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Although long in the brewing,
today Gail and I finally pulled the plug on DirecTV altogether. The main reason is that cable news coverage
in general and that of election 2016 in particular has deteriorated to a point that
it has become literally unwatchable. Reporters
and pundits, especially those on NBC, MSNBC and CNN who seemed somewhat
credible in earlier times have now become happy talk apologists for corporate
power and willing shills for Donald Trump, despite their well-rehearsed posturing
as thoughtful, critical journalists.
Their knee jerk maneuver is to hold high the banner of “both sides do it”
false equivalency, giving cover to each and every lie, misdeed and failing of
public figures, encouraging viewers to abandon the idea that underlying truths
might be discovered with a little more searching, attention to evidence and
reasonable conversation. This media
posture has become more obvious, less credible with each passing day. TV talking heads now go miles out of their way to avoid asking the most important, most troubling questions of the political figures they interview. Frankly, we’re done with this ongoing dodge. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">While the particulars here
are too numerous to list, three stand out as patterns too often repeated to be
mere glitches in programming. One was
the preference for showing – often for hours on end – the empty podium where
Trumpy was expected to speak rather than telecast even a small segment of
speeches by Bernie Sanders and other candidates running for office. By some estimates the value of free TV
coverage for our now Confidence Man Elect eventually totaled $2 billion – a
lavish gift from networks supposedly licensed to serve the public interest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Another telltale sign was the
utterly negligible amount of time devoted to substantive issues in the
presidential campaign broadcast by nightly news programs on ABC, CBS and NBC. According to the Tyndall Report, an
organization that has tracked network news coverage for decades, the total for months
from January through October came to 32 minutes total. Even more astonishing, no attention at all was given to what is
clearly the most crucial issue facing the nation and Planet Earth: climate
crash (often politely called “climate change”).
Not ONE minute. Pathetic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Finally, I’d note the glaring
lack of diversity among the voices and perspectives of those asked to speak
even on the paltry range of issues, rumors and scandals that now fill the screen 24 hours a day. With a little work, the cable channels' election campaign coverage might
have found any number of articulate people from across the broader range of
American opinion – women from different points on the economic spectrum, African
Americans, Muslims, Latinos, millennials, blue collar workers, farmers, leaders
in small business, climate activists, Native Americans, techies, labor union
officials, notable social scientists, etc. Instead what we were invited to hear was very short
list of talkers – the usual suspects, most of them white – comprised of “conservative” blowhards,
Democratic “strategists,” Bush administration retreads, and a stable of amiable
dimwits invited to try to get a word in edgewise over the obnoxious shouting of
Chris Matthews. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">While I regret to say it,
particularly annoying to me in recent months has been the once engaging
presence of always chipper, always bubbly, compulsively enthusiastic Rachel
Maddow. Yes, the content of her evening
show is often solid in its history and analysis. But the mood in which she probes the
disasters unfolding these days often seems simply fatuous. “We’ve got a great show tonight!” she
exclaims as the litany of horrors unfolds. Hey, what a fabulous spectacle American public life has become! Golly Gee! It’s also obvious that some topics are
strangely off limits for Maddow’s intelligent probing, for example the syrupy right
wing propaganda dished up each day by of her officemates in the Comcast office
suites. While it may be unfair, it
occurs to me that Rachel and her colleague Chris Hayes are just too nice as
people to seriously confront the ghoulish, destructive forces now looming in
the U.S.A., global economy and biosphere. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Fortunately, there are fine
alternatives: reading books, following serious websites, pulling down video
news clips from the Net, talking with family and friends over dinner. It turns out that local TV news is readily
available to us via our (slow rural) Wi-fi.
And, hell, I’d pretty much given up on watching pro football anyway, acknowledging what I know now about long term health problems that confront NFL
players. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Hence we’ll spend some of the
$90+ a month satellite bill to support
intelligent podcasts -- The Majority Report, Professional Left, Radio Ecoshock, and Best of the Left along with other good programs and causes.
Most of all we’ll be relieved of the agony of trying to pretend that cable and satellite TV offer a serious, reliable source of news and commentary about the world in
which we live. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> - Langdon</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-67542377360605334212016-07-15T14:27:00.001-04:002016-07-15T14:45:39.229-04:00Radical Upheavals in the 60s and Since: Illusion and Reality<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJWTn9yYJgTa1BW1Rx497KXw4qJ041337YQbZxbArjEp77AJrnSNSQx_4eDhvJA_dHX8_6hBFYqemRNyIxs8YdN87t2sXtOQhCmVwV0tnwiSgYG6fY9aL_Op_LLAuJyvgYE1Z2/s1600/newsevents_conference-helicopter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJWTn9yYJgTa1BW1Rx497KXw4qJ041337YQbZxbArjEp77AJrnSNSQx_4eDhvJA_dHX8_6hBFYqemRNyIxs8YdN87t2sXtOQhCmVwV0tnwiSgYG6fY9aL_Op_LLAuJyvgYE1Z2/s400/newsevents_conference-helicopter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><b>Radical
Upheavals in the Sixties and Since: Illusion and Reality</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">By:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Langdon Winner<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
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<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">[A
talk given at the Conference on Politics without Illusion, Revolution Without
Violence, International Jacques Ellul Society, Berkeley July 6, 2016]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Today
we often hear news that someone has been “radicalized on the Internet.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Well, </span>I was radicalized in Berkeley during the
Sixties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">My
comments today are the reflections of one who graduated from The University of
California 50 years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The focusing
lens for my remarks is Jacques Ellul’s work <i>The Political Illusion</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">As I
prepared this talk, I thought, well, I certainly must read the book again and
compare my response now to what I could remember about my impressions back
then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I went to my library was pleased
to find the very copy of The Political Illusion I’d read in summer of
1967.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was filled with extensive
marginal notes, ones that revealed what I was thinking as I struggled with
Ellul’s unsettling challenge.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">At the
time I was living in Washington D.C. -- a long haired Bay Area hippie, U.C.
political science grad student, anti-Vietnam war demonstrator, frequent
presence at psychedelic rock concerts, and also a student intern in the
Pentagon working in the office of Army Chief of Information, i.e. Propaganda.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Back then a profile of that kind was called
“heightening the contradictions.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Going
through the pages of my old copy of <i>The Political Illusion</i> this spring, I was
interested to see that many of my jottings were written in the characteristic
dialect of the time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, in the
chapter on “The Necessary and The Ephemeral,” Ellul argues, “How can people
fail to see that liberty requires integration into a continuity, a genuine
basis in reality obtained in very different ways than through ‘information.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As radical as it may appear, I am not afraid
…to claim that a man who reads his paper every day is certainly not a free
person.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Next
to that passage young Langdon had written:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Ellul is far out!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Actually,
two of his earlier books published in the U.S.– <i>The Technological</i> <i>Society </i>and
<i>Propaganda</i> – had already made a deep impression on me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>The Technological Society</i> was ultimately the
work that paved the road from my study of conventional political theory to a
lifelong engagement with questions about technology and politics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More than anything else, Ellul’s writing
helped give me the courage to move beyond the pale progress talk that that
filled scholarly writings in the social sciences and humanities during that
period.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Reading
<i>The Political Illusion</i> now as well and reviewing my marginal notes, its clear
that the book was in its basic features fully in tune with the temper the
time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Among the general upheavals of
Berkeley in the Sixties were<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the Civil
Rights movement, the Free Speech Movement, anti-Vietnam War movement, student
revolt, rise of the hippies with all the music, ideas and cultural trappings
involved, arrival of the Black Panthers, along with the early rumblings of the
ecology movement, feminist movement, movement of people with disabilities, as
well as surfacing of the LGBTQ community.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">In
many ways questions posed in The Political Illusion were central to concerns of
that decade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The political crucible of
the New Left stoked widespread desire to explore and develop new modes of
politics, community and citizenship beyond the dreary formats of the two party
system and the deeply conflicted agendas of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great
Society’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In its basic themes, Ellul’s
book was definitely in the zone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">This
is not to say that the book was a favorite among new left activists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other key writings of the period, C. Wright
Mills <i>The Power Elite</i>, Herbert Marcuse’s <i>One Dimensional Man</i> and Paul Goodman’s
<i>Growing Up Absurd</i> attracted a much broader audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My guess as to why The Political Illusion did
not “catch on,” as it were, was that it staunchly refused to offer simple
answers to the questions it posed and the criticisms it launched.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Above all did not offer a clear radical or
utopian vision to help people of the time resolve the issues they faced or
believed they faced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The insistent flow
of Ellul’s book carries the reader in directions that are not easily packaged
as a program, a movement or a clear road map for building a better
society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, many of his arguments
strongly suggest that measures favored by young activists were not only bound
to fail, but actually mirror the very evils they were railing against.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In that sense, The Political Illusion was
perhaps more radical in its understanding of politics and society than radicals
of the day could handle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">For
example, a common feature of student uprisings on college campuses at the time
was to seek the validation of television in the struggles of the day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The whole world is watching” was a common
chant and, in fact, demonstrators in Sproul Plaza would often leave the day’s
battle with campus cops and administrators to go back to their apartments and
watch themselves on TV.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Using the media
to spread images of protest would, many of us believed, would alter people to
the problems at hand and move public opinion in favorable directions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there was always “Hey, there I am on the
screen!” response, a sure sign that one’s own role was highly significant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, a key argument in Elull’s book is
that action that seeks confirmation in information systems or in waves of
public opinion is futile to its core and tends simply to reinforce patterns of
state power, a lesson perhaps even more painfully evident today than in the
Sixties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Looking
back on the evidence from my own jottings, I am reminded that despite its
relative lack of significance as a text for the student movement, The Political
Illusion was significant within another domain of my political education .<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much of the substance of the discussion is
Ellul’s commentary on twentieth century European and American social science,
the very stuff I was studying in my seminars and preparation for doctoral
qualifying exams.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It happens that Ellul
had closely followed the prominent works in sociology, political science,
psychology, communications studies, and the like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what he took away from the various
theories and empirical findings was usually far removed from what the authors
intended. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Much
social scientific research in the post World War II decades sought to show how
the volatilities of mass society and the excesses of fascism and communism that
had erupted earlier in the century, could now be avoided, replaced by
reasonable, well-grounded forms of democratic politics and government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Equipped with new knowledge and new
technique, modern institutions would produce wonders of stability, rationality,
and responsiveness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was the
prevailing view.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Without
distorting the conceptual or empirical foundations of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>studies in this genre, Ellul argues that a
deeper understanding of the classics twentieth century social science
reveals<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>varieties of domination,
oppression and disconnection from reality that emerge within the newly
refurbished institutions of political society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In much the same way that Marx claimed to have turned “Hegel on his
head,” Ellul takes the corpus of mid twentieth century social science research
and turns it on its head, revealing not the realm of enlightenment and progress
its writers hoped to reveal, but a kind of twilight zone in which benighted
souls wander helplessly in search of meaning, happiness and security.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">In
political science at that the time a key quest was to shed light on pluralist
forms modern democracy, ones based upon economic, social and cultural interest
groups engaged in the push and pull of electoral outcomes and intricate
negotiations of policy shaping.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Distinctly American versions of the story, the Yale School of political
science for example, welcomed the structures and dynamics of late twentieth
century political society as the maturation of democracy, an accomplishment
enriched by supportive environs of electronic media, social psychology, public
relations, methods of opinion polling, and improved practices in public
administration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Within
the lively interactions of key interest groups and voting blocks in political
pluralism, conflict would happen in ways that produced sensible accommodation
achieved through graduated incrementalism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>With increasingly thorougy penetration of society by radio and
television, there would arise a public much better informed about public
affairs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">And
within legislatures and bureaucracies leaven by the refined methods of social
science, intelligent, well-balanced policy outcomes were assured.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">For
many of us studying politics and sociology during the 1960s this tidy picture
of political pluralism was notable for what it left out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the top of our list of qualms was the
almost total absence of any role for citizenship in the various models of
democracy widely heralded as cutting edge political science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Doesn’t democracy have to do with
self-governance?” we asked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where in
this picture are citizen participation and genuine political freedom? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">While
some of our faculty mentors found such questions interesting, a many of them
were outraged at their students effrontery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Don’t you understand?” they would say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“The well developed patterns of structure and process we’ve described
are what mature, representative democracy is all about.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Nevertheless,
among a good number of undergrad and grad students, the feeling grew that the
pungent criticisms of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Students for a
Democratic Society about participatory democracy and social justice were more
to the point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">What
kind of democracy is it that excludes the vital, authentic unscripted political
activity of everyday people?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Entirely
similar concerns are central to Ellul’s critique of the social scientists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Within their rigor he detected a good amount
of mortis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, his chapter on
“Participation” takes note of the ways in which leading social scientists of
the day were busily advocating principles quite far removed from genuine
democracy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One writer he finds
especially noteworthy is Seymour Martin Lipset, U.C. Berkeley sociologist,
author of the acclaimed book <i>Political Man </i>and a formidable presence on the
Berkeley campus during the Sixties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Ellul had obviously read the man’s work and summarizes its position
succinctly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">“There
still remains Seymour Martin Lipset’s theory; a group of associations of
oligarchic character contributes to maintaining democracy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For society to be democratic, it is not
necessary that the democratic rule be applied inside the organisms that
constitute it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unions, for example,
represent the general interest of their members, who do better by joining unions
than by remaining at the mercy of industry) … all the associations combined
represent the divergent interests of all society; whereas every one of these
associations limits the individual’s freedom, it gives the leaders a much
greater real freedom.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">At
that point Ellul offers a wry comment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“This conception of democracy is really very touching, for it literally
reproduces the description of feudal society.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">(Oh, my!)</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Throughout
ongoing series of commentaries in this vein, Ellul gently rips apart many of
the central ideas and arguments of the disciplines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To use a legal metaphor, his careful
rendering of social scientists’ own apologies for the condition of contemporary
democracy amounts to using the best evidence for the defense as the center of a
pungent argument for the prosecution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The thrust of Ellul’s position is that what are ostensibly open,
democratic institutions achieve a certain “political autonomy” that makes them
unrepresentative and unresponsive to the needs of the populace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His concept of “autonomy” here means that key
institutions of decision-making and administration have become things unto
themselves with internal dynamics of their own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Organizations both within and around the modern are tightly closed,
largely immune to any outside influence, especially that of lowly everyday
citizens. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">How do
these matters look today?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even a quick
scan of our politics shows the substance of Ellul’s mid-century warnings
confirmed in at least two important ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>First, one can note the rigorous, data driven analyses of leading
political scientists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Deploying state of
the art quantitative methods, Martin Gillens and Benjamin Page have
demonstrated that the preferences of middle and low income people in the U.S.
have no influence in actual policy making.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Zero, nada, zilch!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What matters
in actual practice are only the preferences of the rich, the top socio-economic
layers of political society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s what
the surveys and analyses clearly demonstrate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As Gillens and Page summarize the implications of their massive study,
they carefully conclude: “America’s claims to being a democratic society are
seriously threatened.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(That about says
it.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">A
second way in which Ellul’s misgivings are now confirmed is evident in a number
of prominent political eruptions in the U.S. and Europe where grievances about
entrench oligarchy have become a common rallying cry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011 and
2012 -- as well as the revolt of the indignatos in Spain that preceded them –
were outbreaks of widespread unrest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>More recently the themes of Bernie Sanders presidential campaign of 2016
have carried awareness of oligarchy and its grim consequences for jobs, income,
health care, education, pervasive inequality, and student debt onto center
stage of American politics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Senator
Sanders and his followers are convinced that the U.S. needs nothing less than
“a political revolution.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">In
somewhat similar respects, Donald Trump’s campaign, with all its bigotry,
racism and xenophobia, appeals to millions of people who feel the system isn’t
working for them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reports on about
rapidly widening gaps of inequality in wealth and income in the U.S.A. are now
common in print, television and Internet political commentaries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Looking across the Atlantic, especially the
recent Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, one finds the widespread conviction
that distant, unresponsive, self-interested bureaucrats in Brussels have lost
touch with the needs and desires of everyday people and serve only the
interests of bankers and billionaires.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As we observe these signs of an unhappy, restless populations, Ellul’s
diagnoses of the maladies modern political society seem not only confirmed, but
increasingly prophetic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The
question in America right now is whether voters will again buy the threadbare
neoliberal canard that technological innovation and renewed economic growth
automatically will automatically generate a better way of life?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or will people rise in revolt as they realize
that promises of this kind are an illusion propagated by cloistered,
self-interested elites in Wall Street, Washington and Silicon Valley?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As people ponder the economic, technological,
ideological, and political landscape that confronts them these days, a good
many of them are eager to say, “Frankly, we’re not buying it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much of the energy of politics in 2016
involves eruptions of this kind, a disturbing genie that politicians,
businessmen and figures in the corporate media now frantically struggle to put
back in the bottle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the current
issue of the Atlantic, there is a long article by Jonathan Rauch lamenting the
fact that the people have lost faith in “the political class.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His essay along with a recent pieces by
Andrew Sullivan argue that today the problem is, sad to say, too much
democracy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Looking
back to the 1960s, its possible that concerns in Ellul’s Political Illusion had
less affinity with the specific agendas of the New Left than with those of
another movement brewing at the time, one that eventually came to be known as
“the counter-culture.” Resonance of this kind can be found throughout the
book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A particularly revealing passage
is one in which Ellul’s argues that theory of economic alienation in Marx along
with remedies of economic democracy proposed on the Left no longer describe a
much deeper predicament that faces humanity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The economic, political, technological, informational order that
envelops social life infects people’s very souls and neutralizes their best
inclinations, their ability to think and act in meaningful ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He writes, “Now the problem is for the powers
that be … to possess man internally, to organize fake appearances of liberty
resting on fundamental alienation, …<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to
fabricate false appearances of personality resting on integration and radical
massification.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">If
those words had been sung with suitable guitar feedback at Filmore Auditorium
concert in the late 1960s, we hippies might have exclaimed, “Oh wow, man,
that’s so heavy…”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">It’s
true that Ellul does not go so far as to advocate out mass revolt against ways
of living built on materialism, consumerism, conformity and a hollow happiness,
but his book suggests that an uprising of that sort would be fully
justified.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14pt;">His
brief comments throughout the book, especially the chapter on “Man and
Democracy” offer the outlines of what an appropriate response would be.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">He
insists that any aware, thoughtful person needs to step outside the stagnant
oppressive economic, political and technological milieu that claims one’s being
and to begin life anew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The problems in
modern politics are far deeper, more systematic than any obvious malfunctions
in governance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One must find ways to
reclaim and revitalize one’s basic humanity and restore the manifold promise of
social relationships.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">When I
first read Ellul’s advice in the 1960s what stood out was what I took to be its
tone of stern, elevated, moral, individualism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Some of my marginal notes suggest that I found the book rather cloying,
something of a “downer.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More appealing
were the writings, songs, and festivals that held out the promise of a happy
community – “peace, love and good vibes” --<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Ecotopia perhaps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On my reading
of his words this spring, however, I noticed what the younger me had missed:
Ellul’s insistence that a genuinely democratic politics must engage the classic
question: How are we to live together?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Steps
toward that end, in his view, begin with the identification and open discussion
of what he calls “tensions” in society, ones that divide people one from
another and yet offer a opportunities for dialog, mutual respect and common
action. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14pt;">Instances
of significant tension from earlier periods of history include the tension
between church and state, between the bourgeoisie and laboring people.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14pt;">He implies that people today would have to
identify significant tensions of the present day, points of “differentiation”
and possible contention within the sphere of inter-personal relationships.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14pt;">Involved here would be concerted effort to
rescue the powers of language and reason from the toxic fog that surrounds the</span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14pt;">technological systems and mass media of the
modern state.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">He
writes, “The common measures of what we have to say to one another and of what
makes communication possible, of what we jointly have to live for … must be
constantly rediscovered and recreated.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">“We
must understand that democracy is always infinitely precarious and mortally
endangered by every new progress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
must be forever started again, rethought, reconstructed, begun again.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">What
Jacques Ellul offers, then, is a very stern challenge, one that sets a very
high bar for the attainment of anything remotely resembling a democratic way of
life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is not especially optimistic
that his generation or any later ones will be able to realize it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unlike the comforting nostrums offered by
politicians and social scientists, he depicts democracy as something extremely
difficult to attain, something often advertised but seldom realized, something
extremely fragile and always subject to abuse. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">He
writes: “If man were left to himself -- his inclinations, his responsibilities,
his personal choices, on his own level, without systematic influence,
propaganda, “human relations,” group dynamics, obligatory information, directed
leisure, then slowly, humbly, modestly, democracy might perhaps be born.” To
which he adds: “But how newborn, how weak and fragile it would be!” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">* * *
* * * * * <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">To
conclude, I want to add a brief historical coda.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our meeting takes place in the Heyns Room,
named for Roger Heyns, Chancellor of U.C. Berkeley during the late 1960s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is perhaps best know for his opposition to
the peaceful occupation by students and towns people of People’s Park, a plot
of land south of campus, still there, that the university had slated for
development as an apartment complex. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">At the
climax of a series of tumultuous events in May 1969 Governor Ronald Reagan
called in the police to remove the occupiers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At that moment Chancellor Heyns, bless his heart, abruptly skipped town,
leaving the protesters to face a barrage of shotgun bullets that killed one
man, blinded another and sent scores to the hospital.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The
demonstrations (in which I participated) ended with the first and only aerial
attack on a civilian population in American history, tear gas spread over the
campus by a helicopter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A photo of that
event appears on the Ellul Society’s web page for this meeting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">I
mention this story to indicate how even a place of scholarly gathering and
quiet reflection like this on can bear the stain of the kinds oppression that
Ellul’s book so eloquently describes, forms of power and violence that confront
us to this day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Peace
be with you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
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Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-46830948313565119622015-11-13T10:22:00.000-05:002015-11-13T10:22:33.886-05:00Thoughts on Operation Wetback<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4HV-KjtDYDh89e4IUVR6AsUt2ZLAxXS1RnHpwhAuN1qZRYg8dn1yQzt7988DvQPoQg8M053iXFO33S2hzc1PzacONU07SJXikyQIMVXHf-M3Xacxd-P0fAgP-_BDADWsApsW0/s1600/GettyImages-90018822.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4HV-KjtDYDh89e4IUVR6AsUt2ZLAxXS1RnHpwhAuN1qZRYg8dn1yQzt7988DvQPoQg8M053iXFO33S2hzc1PzacONU07SJXikyQIMVXHf-M3Xacxd-P0fAgP-_BDADWsApsW0/s320/GettyImages-90018822.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Migrant farm workers, many of them "braceros," from the 1940s<br />
(Getty images)<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">A story, "Operation Wetback, the 1950s immigration policy Donald Trump loves," <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/11/11/9714842/operation-wetback" target="_blank">in Vox</a>, brought back some vivid memories. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">As a central coastal California native, the presence of "migrant
workers" was a fact of my childhood. During the worst winter storms, our church in San Luis Obispo would gather and deliver canned goods and other necessities for
workers who couldn't go to the flooded fields to earn a living. Yes, the mood
was that of charity and pity, but it also contained an element of
respect for people who have to do society's hardest labor. Seeing first hand how the workers lived made a deep impression
on me. I was fortunate as well to have parents who stressed a simple message of human equality. An often repeated phrase around our house was, "You're no better than anybody else, and nobody is any better than you!" </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />Much later when I was in graduate school in the middle 1960s, a friend
and I made a tourist visit to Mexico. At the Tijuana border we stood
in line and struck up a conversation with a friendly "bracero" in his
late 30s who told us about his work back and forth across the border, about his family and community. As we moved to the Mexican side of the border
we two long haired "hippies" were approached by police who started some
aggressive questioning. "You've come for the drugs, si?" </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">At that point
the bracero just behind us stepped forward and firmly let it be known
that this approach was not acceptable. "They're friends of mine," he said. The police relented. On the
train south we talked with the man further and he invited us to visit
his village, Juanocitlan (sp?), when we ultimately reached Guadalajara.
So we took the long bus ride into the hills, stayed in his home a couple
of days, met his wife, kids, extended family and many people in the village.
Today, it is not possible for me to listen to all the vile blather about
immigrants without remembering that experience with a "wetback." </span>Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-55959815215780840042015-09-20T12:44:00.003-04:002015-09-20T12:44:56.686-04:00Earth's water crisis: A vision from space<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisEftdig-QGDgWYAYJ2UeKSTH2-wss9HeYw9M2zMUvLOKmdZL67UvDBmpHaspuzIS3CE6gVxJzTQq60OpJdHnPDc1Er3EpnFFmjp7oJjnp3Ar3r2HxNtES5u7c3nGAD5v73qTF/s1600/saudi-arabia-irrigation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisEftdig-QGDgWYAYJ2UeKSTH2-wss9HeYw9M2zMUvLOKmdZL67UvDBmpHaspuzIS3CE6gVxJzTQq60OpJdHnPDc1Er3EpnFFmjp7oJjnp3Ar3r2HxNtES5u7c3nGAD5v73qTF/s640/saudi-arabia-irrigation.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
(NASA photo of irrigation patches in the Arabian peninsula, verdant and dry)<br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Earth’s
water crisis: A vision from space</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">By: Langdon Winner</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;">About fifteen years ago I took part in a conference on the
future of space exploration held at the Rice University campus in Huston. There were a number of talks by philosophers
of technology along with a colorful presentation by Story Musgrave, American
astronaut who had traveled into space on six NASA missions. My own contribution stressed the need for
nations of the world, including the U.S., to go beyond the breast thumping
nationalism and militarism that had characterized the early decades of “the
space race.” “Why not make space a truly
universal human concern, rather than a demonstration of a particular country’s
power and prestige?” I asked.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Musgrave, a brilliant engineer, MD, philosopher, poet, and
scholar with wide-ranging interests, is renown as the person who flew on the
Space Shuttle Endeavor in 1993, going outside the ship to repair equipment
problems in Hubble Telescope, glitches that had rendered the satellite basically
useless. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His main contribution at the
conference was to show and comment upon photographs he had taken during several
of his flights in orbit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Among the
scenes were panoramas of whole continents, oceans and islands, cities lighted
at night, lakes, clouds, and an array of human-made systems of dwelling,
energy and transportation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One
especially astonishing sequence of slides showed a lightning storm spreading
across a vast landscape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“From space one
can clearly see,” he noted, </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">“</span><span style="font-family: Georgia;">that
lightning bursts are not singular events, but systematic patterns fanning out
from a center along a chain of electrical points.” (1)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Musgrave explained that his use of photography in space
over the years stemmed from an insight that dawned on him during his first
flights into the stratosphere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As he
worked with his fellow astronauts, he noticed how few seemed genuinely
interested in the marvels that surrounded them as they circled Earth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of them scarcely bothered to look up
from the instruments and displays they were monitoring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just outside the windows of their satellites
were the most extraordinary vistas ever witnessed by a human being.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“But many of my colleagues were so thoroughly
involved with their assigned routines that they didn’t</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia;">take time to gaze into universe
that beckoned.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;">Appalled by this odd, unnecessary convention, Musgrave
quietly rebelled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As he told our
gathering, “I cultivated a particular habit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Wherever I was in orbit inside the capsule or outside in a space suit,
whatever it was I had to accomplish, I would remind myself every 90 seconds or
so: Story, look around!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In that spirit,
he made it his practice to pause, turn his eyes from the equipment for a
moment, and gaze out at the stars and down toward the Earth. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He persisted in doing this even during the
intensive, delicate work floating weightlessly to install new electronics packages
for the Hubble. “Why should I avoid taking a moment to gaze into the universe?”
he exclaimed. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“After all, I was one of
the few persons in all of human history to have had this wonderful opportunity.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;">During our panel discussion of the future of space travel,
Musgrave expressed some sympathy with the general argument I’d made about the
need to reject the Cold War patriotism and military ideology of the first
generation American space programs. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps
he was just being polite, but he offered no objection to my provocation that
the earliest steps in U.S. space initiatives were an afterthought, attempts to glamorize the production of intercontinental ballistic missiles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">My subsequent reading about Story’s life and work made it clear
that, in fact, his experience of space travel had always been intensely spiritual,
informed by his readings in philosophy poetry, and natural history including
the classics of European romanticism, the works of American transcendentalists </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">-- </span><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and
others -- sensibilities expressed in some 300 poems about space he’s written
over the years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;">In a 1997 interview for the Academy of Achievement,
Musgrave took care to emphasize the literary and philosophical roots of his vision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Whitman expressed the whole
universe in his poetry and in his catalogues. That attitude almost defines what
we call American romanticism, or American transcendentalism. I feel
particularly close to them, because I am now out in the universe. I'm in a
position to see nature from another point of view, to be outside the earth and
see the big picture. To have an absolutely clear shot at the skies and to see
stars that you can't see from down here, Magellanic clouds, auroras, a new
perspective of nature.... It's clear to see why I like the English romantics
and the American transcendentalists. I like their poetry as literature but
also, from a philosophical point of view, I have very close ties to them.” (2)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;">One of the slides he showed at the conference left strong,
lasting impression on me, enough so that I’ve used it -- along with his “Story,
look around!” maxim -- in my classroom teaching over the years. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From a vantage point high above the Earth, the
photo showed the Arabian Peninsula in bright daylight, revealing massive arrays
of little green circles in precise geometrical patterns within the yellow
desert terrain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“What you see here,” he
explained, “are systems of irrigation using gigantic water sprinklers that move
slowly in circular swaths, watering fields of wheat and other agricultural
products.” Clearly, the dozens of green circles were expressions of one of
the signature projects in the “conquest of nature” celebrated during the
mid-twentieth century: “making the deserts bloom.” He paused for a moment and
then quietly mused,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It took tens of
thousands of years for water to gather in the deep aquifers that these farms
now pump to the surface.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will take
only twenty years to exhaust them.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
with that he clicked on to the next slide.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;">Musgrave’s comments are echoed in a series recent
scientific studies and news reports about one the excesses of contemporary
civilization -- the increasingly frantic quest to extract water from the world’s
remaining aquifers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many of the green
circles from satellite photos of the Arabian Peninsula have already turned
brown as the underground wells that quenched them have dried up, never to be
replenished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to recent
estimates, four fifths of the water in Saudi Arabia’s wells have been tapped
out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although the country has built
desalinization plants to provide water from the sea, the cost of $1 per cubic
meter is prohibitive for agricultural applications. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A desperate alternative has been to secure
lands and water for Saudi agriculture at distant locations including the
headwaters of the Nile River in Ethiopia. Projects of this kind have repeatedly
brought the Saudis in conflict with local populations unhappy with the coming
of billionaire oil sheiks. (3)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;">A similar predicament now faces my home state of
California. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Four years of persistent
drought have eliminating much of the water that once flowed in abundance from
rains and snowmelt in the Sierra Nevada mountains, forcing farms, towns and
cities to draw upon deposits of water from underground wells and deep aquifers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to the March 2015 estimate of NASA
hydrologist Jay Famiglietti, “Right now the state has only about one year of
water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater,
is rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a persistent
drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except,
apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short, we have no paddle to navigate this
crisis.” (4)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An additional unhappy
surprise is that as water is pumped from the ground to supplant customary
surface supplies, some communities have experienced the sinking of large patches
of land as subsurface caverns give way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;">The larger picture of events in Arabia and California is
offered in a comprehensive scientific study published earlier this year,
warning that many of the world’s largest and most crucial sources of
underground fresh water are now in steep decline. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From 2003 to 2013 NASA’s GRACE satellites measured
changes in the Earth’s gravitational pull, ones caused by reduction in the mass
of water from the world’s aquifers. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(5) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As reported by the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Washington Post</i>, “Twenty-one of the world’s 37 largest aquifers –
in locations from India and China to the United States and France – have passed
their sustainability tipping points, meaning more water was removed than
replaced during the decade-long study-period....” (6) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Roughly 35% of all water used by people around
the globe comes from underground sources of this kind.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"><span style="font-size: large;">Among the troubles that afflict our planet today are the
alluring power fantasies left behind by the era of reckless modernity of the twentieth
century. Some of the more prominent lingering delusions assume a limitless
supply of resources crucial for economic growth, consumerist materialism and
“the good life,” including what were long assumed to be the “free” and
“inexhaustible” resources of fresh water from the skies and in our lakes,
streams and rivers. To some extent the worlds’ growing awareness of
resource depletion, global climate disruption and other features of
civilization's assault upon Earth’s biosphere arose from observations and
measurements gathered by space satellites and those skillfully employ them. Today,
as the world's people seek new policies and creative alliances to address these calamities,
the availability of good scientific evidence from satellites and elsewhere is,
of course, absolutely crucial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But for a generation
inclined to stare passively, even obsessively into video displays and smart
phone screens, the wisdom of Story Musgrave’s astronaut invocation seems more
relevant than ever: “Humanity, look around!" <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span># # # # # # # # # # # <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: 42.5pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -20.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">(1)<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Georgia;">The quotes from Dr. Musgrave I
offer here are from my memory and should be understood only as, I hope, faithful reconstructions
of his remarks at the Rice conference.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: 42.5pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -20.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">(2)<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Georgia;">“Interview: Story Musgrave, Dean
of American Astronauts,” May 22, 1997, Baltimore, Maryland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/mus0int-1">http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/mus0int-1</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: 42.5pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -20.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">(3)<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fred Pearce, “Saudi Arabia stakes a claim on
the Nile,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">National Geographic</i>, Wed.,
Dec. 19, 2012. <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/12/121217-saudi-arabia-water-grabs-ethiopia/">http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/12/121217-saudi-arabia-water-grabs-ethiopia/</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: 42.5pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -20.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">(4)<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jay Famiglietti, “California has about one
year of water stored. Will you ration now?” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Los
Angeles Times</i>, March 12, 2015.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-famiglietti-drought-california-20150313-story.html">http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-famiglietti-drought-california-20150313-story.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: 42.5pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -20.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">(5)<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alexandra S. Richey, et al, “Uncertainty in
global groundwater storage estimates in Total Groundwater Stress framework,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Water Resources Research</i>, July 14, 2015.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
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<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: 42.5pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -20.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">(6)<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Todd C. Frankel, “New NASA data show how the
world is running out of water,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Washington Post</i>, June 16, 2015.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/16/new-nasa-studies-show-how-the-world-is-running-out-of-water/">http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/16/new-nasa-studies-show-how-the-world-is-running-out-of-water/</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></o:p></span></i></div>
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Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-3118499674100702802015-02-13T15:52:00.000-05:002015-02-13T15:52:35.435-05:00Facing the Plague: Economic and Political Inequality<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> <br />
[Note: This essay was first published last December in Teknokultura, Vol 11, no 3 (2014)<br />
http://teknokultura.net/index.php/tk/article/view/246<br />
I reprint it here for the convenience of those who read items on my blog.]<br />
<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<b>FACING THE PLAGUE:</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL INEQUALITY</b><br />
<br />
By: Langdon Winner<br />
<br />
Department of Science and Technology Studies,<br />
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
Hopes for the future of democracy must now confront a basic power shift that has emerged since the early 1970s and is now reaching its advanced stages. This shift in control over key decisions and policies is clearly visible in my own country, the U.S.A., but is evident in many other nations as well. At stake is a seemingly ineluctable transfer of power from national governments to the transnational firms; from elected officials to directors of large banks, hedge funds, and global firms; from citizens to plutocrats; from democracy to corporatocracy.<br />
<br />
Recognition of this shift is by no means new. In recent years it has been thoroughly described and theorized in books on globalization, the rise of the information society and creation of the new economy. It is, for example, a key theme in Manuel Castells books on the “network society” and in Sheldon Wolin’s masterful study, Democracy Incorporated (Wolin, 2010).<br />
<br />
Especially remarkable today are the numerous, troubling manifestations of power shift as it achieves maturity, specific signs of the obvious erosion at the very heart of democracy within nations, including the U.S.A., a country that has long believed it was prosperous enough and powerful enough to maintain the integrity of its fundamental principles and institutions against any unfriendly incursions. <br />
<br />
An awareness of undeniable symptoms of this malady have made it necessary for me to change how I teach politics to university undergraduates. For many years the topic was perfectly straightforward, predictable and even a little dull. I offered a class entitled “American Politics and Elections” that included such topics as how our three branches of government work and interact, how a bill becomes a law in Congress, and how elections in a pluralist democracy operate. It was a basic, well-worn overview right out of the standard political science textbooks.<br />
<br />
But about five years ago, it dawned on me that I could no longer honestly teach the standard narrative because the political system had changed fundamentally and was no longer working as advertised. How could I go on teaching the old, outdated myths as if nothing had changed? For example, if you look at how “a bill becomes a law” in our House of Representatives at present, you would have to admit that there are very few instances when that actually happens. During the Obama years (with few exceptions) the Congress has refused to pass laws and policies expected to have any positive outcomes for American society. Legislation is blocked, totally obstructed by intensely ideological “conservative” politicians as those on the other side watch helplessly dumbfounded. Everyone in Washington, D.C. recognizes this gridlock, but few own up to its deeper implications. The flimsy excuse -- “But both sides do it” – is about as far as most observers are willing to venture. Indeed, the prevalence of “both sider” explanations are a tell tale sign that political discourse and journalism have simply relinquished any willingness to probe the basic causes of widely noticed maladies in American politics and, indeed, in American society as a whole.<br />
<br />
After several years of observing the paralysis, the public has begun to take notice. Recent opinion polls show that Congress has become a total laughing stock with approval ratings that hover around 5%. The nominal leader of Congress, “the Speaker” John Boehner, proudly announced that his success will not depend on how many laws he passes, but how many laws are repealed. For this reason when I teach introductory politics these days, I must explain the void: how a bill does not become a law. <br />
<br />
A similar need arises in helping students understand the current status of the three branches of government in our Constitution – the executive, judicial and legislative branches. It is now apparent that two of the three have been radically transformed<br />
their workings. The legislative branch is now more accurately called the “obstructive” branch, since it obstructs any constructive legislation aimed at addressing national problems of any significance. In similar ways, the judicial branch – especially the Supreme Court – now functions as a group of nine unaccountable kings and queens who usually uphold whatever the corporations and wealthy elites demand. Thus, the three branches of government, I explain in my classroom (with only a small touch of irony), are now the executive, the obstructive and the monarchical.<br />
<br />
Beyond this comedy of labels, of course, lie some gravely serious issues. Perhaps the most shocking surprise flowing directly from the power shift at the heart of American politics right now – a surprise that has recently erupted with extraordinary force – the enormous gap in the inequality of income, wealth and political power that has arisen in the U.S.A.<br />
<br />
Most Americans are simply befuddled as they learn the sad facts about extreme inequality and their implications, for the situation is completely at odds with the most basic American beliefs, including what has traditionally been known as “The American Dream” (Smith, 2012) (Barlett & Steele, 2012). From its beginning, the the nation has supposedly been committed to equality as its founding principle. “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal…,” Thomas Jefferson proclaimed in The Declaration of Independence. Perhaps the greatest work of political theory about the USA, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, could more accurately have been named “Equality in America,” for that was what the French philosopher and statesmen observed when he visited the young republic in the 1830s. In every town and village, what Tocqueville noticed were ordinary American people busily realizing dreams of equality as the nation expanded westward (de Tocqueville, 2003).<br />
<br />
Of course, there were always notable exceptions to this grand ideal. America’s native peoples, African slaves, the indentured servants of the Republic’s early years, women until the mid 20th century, and African-Americans during the decades of “Jim Crow” segregation were all excluded from the dynamics of equality. (These are stories for another occasion.) Suffice it to say the idea of equality and of equal rights is central to America’s understanding of itself as a very special and virtuous place – “American exceptionalism” as some observers (even now) like to proclaim. <br />
<br />
Unfortunately, during the past four decades or so there has arisen a remarkable turnaround in the legend of equality in the USA, the appearance of trends long documented by social scientists, but ones ignored by the media and most politicians. The lid finally blew off the story with the eruption of the Occupy Wall Street in the autumn of 2011 when “the gap” between the 1% and 99% became headline news.<br />
<br />
Some of the basic facts are these:<br />
<br />
Since the early 1970s there has been an astonishing shift in the distribution of wealth and income in the United States.<br />
<br />
The real wages of working class and middle-class people have essentially flattened, while the incomes of the top 1% to 2% have soared. <br />
<br />
The differential can be seen in the comparison of the incomes of chief executive officers (CEOs) in banks and corporations to the earnings of ordinary workers. In 1978 CEOs earned 29 times more<br />
than the average employee.<br />
<br />
In 2012 they took home roughly 203 times more than workers overall (Mishel & Sabadish, 2013) In fact, one recent analysis shows that CEOs today earn 311 times the pay of the average American worker (Paywatch, 2013), while some estimates of today’s inequality in the U.S. soar even higher. <br />
<br />
During several decades marked by steady economic growth and steadily rising productivity, workers have captured very little of the gains. Today’s exaggerated levels of inequality in wealth in the U.S. are comparable to those of ancient Rome. The magnitude of inequality of income is worse than any other industrialized country, even worse than developing countries such as Pakistan and the Ivory Coast. A recent study of the statistics revealed that the top 0.1% of the U.S. population commands wealth equal to 90% of the rest of the populace (Saez & Zucman, 2014) (Monaghan, 2014). And the economic crevasse continues to expand with dizzying rapidity. <br />
<br />
While many America citizens are vaguely aware of this unhappy situation in contemporary social life, very few comprehend the sheer size of the gap that separates the excessively rich from everyone else (Utrend, 2014). What is truly unsettling to citizens, politicians and academics alike is that what have long been understood as conventional remedies for economic malaise available to the nation are no longer functioning. Most notable is the lovely conviction that economic growth in itself will boost the fortunes of the working class and middle class Americans. In fact, there has been considerable expansion of the economy as a whole and growth in the productivity of workers in recent times, much of it due to computerization. But since the middle 1970s real wages have flattened or even declined for roughly 60% of the population. Trends of this kind are intensifying. Since the economic crash of 2008, 95% of the income gains in the USA during the so-called “recovery” have gone to the top 1%. (Saez, 2012)<br />
<br />
In fact, according to recent opinion polls, most Americans do not believe there has even been a “recovery.” Recovery, you say? What recovery? Where? When? The fact that Wall Street is prospering and corporate profits are skyrocketing means very little or ordinary people whose salaries have stalled or are among the long term unemployed and are still struggling to make ends meet. Happy talk from the Obama administration about many months of “job creation” and “economic growth” have done little assuage the very real fears of the middle class and working poor that “the economy” no longer functions for them.<br />
<br />
Perhaps even more unnerving sign of the effect of inequality is growing skepticism about the cherished belief that America is a “land of opportunity.” Social surveys indicate that in recent times there has been almost no upward economic mobility. If you are born in a particular socio-economic stratum, you are almost certainly destined to stay right there. Vanishingly few people are able to rise to higher levels (DeParle, 2012). Deeply entrenched inherited wealth has become a dominant, enduring feature of the social order.<br />
<br />
Taken together these surprises about people's real economic conditions point to a predicament often noted in today's political discussions -- the collapse of the aforementioned “American Dream" -- the celebrated belief that if a person worked hard and played by the rules, one could prosper, buy a home, give one's children a good education, and retire comfortably in one's later years. Along with evidence of stagnant or even declining wages there is undeniable evidence that other important features of the dream are rapidly fading as well. Funds for public education are being slashed, several hundred thousands teachers have lost their jobs since the 2008 crash and college education is affordable only to the wealthy or by those by willing to take on crushing burdens of debt. Buying a house is possible for fewer and fewer people. Old age pensions have largely been eliminated. People expect to work many more years than in previous generations. <br />
<br />
Recognizing trends of this kind, our politicians and journalists have begun talking about a crisis. They ask, “Whatever became of The American Dream?” As the great comedian George Carlin once observed: “"The owners of this country know the truth: It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it." (Carlin, 2005).<br />
<br />
When I ask my students about their visions of life’s possibilities they often choose to avoid the trends glaring at them in the statistics. Their eyes still shine brightly as they intone the lovely myth that America is “the land of opportunity.” But they have no solid answer to my question: “What in the world does opportunity mean these days?” A common move is to embrace fantasies of becoming the next great billionaire and joining the 0.01%. One of their favorite examples is Elon Musk, a South African/Canadian who, as a young man, came to the U.S. and co-founded Pay Pal, got fabulously rich and went on the found the Tesla automobile company and a firm that builds space rockets. Here, students explain, is grand proof of what’s still possible in America. When I ask what’s the sample size for the likelihood of success on that scale, they admit it’s one in 30 million people or so. But they remain confident that they themselves will be the next winners in the great entrepreneurial lottery. They plan to overcome inequality (and pay off their staggering student loans) by becoming fabulously rich in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street. I smile appreciatively and wish them “Good luck!”<br />
<br />
For those who look more closely at this predicament, it becomes clear that the phenomenon of inequality is not simply a matter of wealth and poverty. A widely read survey of cross-national data shows that societies like the USA that exhibit wide gaps in income inequality are more likely to experience a range of social and psychological ills – higher rates of mental illness, suicide, depression, illegal drug use, lack of trust, and other maladies. In their book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Strong, demographers Kate Picket and Richard Wilkinson and suggest that inequality is kind of collective disease, a pervasive malady that afflicts members of society as a whole – both the poor and the rich – a disease of the body politic itself (Pickett and Wilkinson, 2010). <br />
<br />
Attempts to explain the origins of pathological levels of inequality we see today are hotly debated among economists, sociologists and public-policy analysts. In the list of causes one finds the influence of free trade agreements, corporate outsourcing of jobs, the financial and organizational features of globalization, decades long rates of return on capital as compared to ordinary economic growth, the lingering effects of racial discrimination, and numerous other factors. The debate has recently been galvanized by Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a magisterial study of decades of international economic data, an attempt to explain the reappearance of staggering inequalities reminiscent of the Belle Époque in Europe (Gilded Age in the U.S.A.) of the late 19th century (Picketty, T., 2014).<br />
<br />
One element of the story that, although probably not the most important in the overall situation, is one that attracted the attention of scholars and policy makers in the late 1970s. I first took note of this body of research during a time in which I moved from conventional political science to the field of science and technology studies (STS). A hotly contested issue back then was that of automation, computerization and what was often called “the future of work.”<br />
<br />
It was perfectly clear to industrial workers, corporate managers, and academics in the emerging field of STS, that digital technologies were involved in a wide range of changes in the material and social settings of industrial production. Significant examples of developments underway were the creation of the regimes of containerized cargo in international shipping as well the creation of new generations of machines in factory production, including computer numerically controlled machine tools, CNCs. Conferences, seminars and public debates in universities and other venues pondered the innovations on the horizon with an emphasis upon how intelligent, caring people could participate in planning for and shaping the changes underway. No one knew exactly how these events would unfold, but a great many observers understood that sweeping transformations in technologies of industrial production would surely affect the fabric of social life.<br />
<br />
Thoughtful participants in the debate wondered about whether or not there should be an overall "industrial policy," a set of plans cooperatively fashioned by leaders in government, the corporations, and labor unions to guide the future of technological development and the qualities of working life in the decades ahead. As the “post-industrial” economy took shape, of course, intentions of that kind were never realized. The vogue of neoliberalism with its faith in the exquisite beneficence of the market transfixed leaders in the corporations and political parties. Within this magical mindset no American “industrial policy” was ever devised, no democratically formulated plan for the future of factory work, no strategy for managing technological change for the greater good.<br />
<br />
An important study within this field of issues was the research of historian David F. Noble on the design, development and introduction of computer numerically controlled machine tools during the 1940s through the 1970s. Noble’s research pointed to a struggle between two distinctly different conceptions of industrial innovation within projects the sought to connect factory lathes used to mill metal parts with the power of computers. One model – the record playback machine -- left much of the initiative and creativity on the shop floor in the hands of skilled unionized workers. In the shaping of metal parts, such machines were guided by the hands of conventional factory workers, their motions electronically recorded for playback on the cutting of production runs of metal parts.<br />
<br />
An alternative model, computer numerically controlled machine tools, CNC, favored by the Air Force corporations like General Electric, was a design that relied upon white collar engineers and managers off the shop floor to do the intricate computer programming that would guide the actions of the machines. <br />
<br />
In his book Forces of Production, Noble details the history of these developments, using historical records to test various hypotheses about why CNC was eventually victorious while the record playback machine more favorable to ordinary workers was rejected (Noble, 1984). What, he asks, was decisive in the outcome? Was it the quest for precision, efficiency, flexibility, or even profitability for the corporation?<br />
<br />
Noble argues that if one looks carefully, none of the favored explanations holds up very well. What was decisive in the end was the quest for managerial control over the production process. The managers at GE wanted a technological design and mode of implementation that favored their own power over that of unionized workers. Thus, they chose the CNC design with all that entailed and rejected the material design and social relations of record playback.<br />
Directly in question was the role of the participation and creativity of blue-collar working people, the survival of their jobs, their incomes, the labor unions, and ultimately their very way of life.<br />
<br />
Within the great confrontations during the 1960s into the late 1970s, the workers lost and the US military and its corporate contractors won. At stake were momentous choices about which machines would be designed and implemented and where control would be located – a crucial dimension of what today see as a sweeping power shift.<br />
<br />
Recently, sociologists and economists have been going back over the data about productivity and technological change to see which patterns can help explain an increasingly troubled state of affairs in the USA – the decline of manufacturing and the demise of the kinds of work that supported a prosperous working class in the U.S. during the thirty years or so after World War II. One retrospective of this kind is a study by Tali Kristal published in the American Sociological Review, "The Capitalist Machine: Computerization, Workers' Power and the Decline in Labor's Share within U.S. Industries” (Kristal, 2014), a lengthy, sophisticated, quantitative analysis that teases out of the data the various circumstances that account for widening inequality within the US populace.<br />
<br />
Kristal notes that since the late 1970s there has been a “decline in labor’s share of national income” of 6%. Much of this is “due to a large decline” (as much as 14%) “in construction, manufacturing and transportation combined.” She notes that earlier, during the 1950s and 1960s, labor’s share of income had steadily increased. However, “Since then, labor’s share has declined in all rich countries, as labor unions and labor-affiliated political parties fell on lean times and workers were left without a strong collective voice to confront employers.” Looking at the U.S. data she concludes “that computer-based technologies are not class neutral but embody essential characteristics that favor capitalists (and high-skilled workers), while eroding most rank-and-file workers bargaining power.”<br />
<br />
To be more precise, Kristal writes, “computerization has reduced labor’s share indirectly through its role in reducing unionization.” This echoes David Noble's position argued in the late 1970s and early 1980s in his study of numerically controlled machine tools. In his book, Progress Without People, Noble argued that this was not an isolated case, but one representative of a wide range of computerized applications in industry (Noble, 1995). The corporate formula was: Remove control from rank-and-file workers. The CNC model of new machine tools was merely part of an ongoing technologically embodied attack upon the power of labor unions aimed at liquidating entire categories of skilled factory work. <br />
<br />
Of course, the whole story here has many additional, noteworthy dimensions, including surveillance of workers on the job, strategies of divide and conquer especially in payment schedules, firing union activists, and a good deal more. But, as Kristal’s research makes clear, the influence of particular kinds of technological initiatives strongly shaped the broader outcomes.<br />
<br />
Noble’s study emphasized the question: Can factory workers’ skills be replicated by computer programs used to run production equipment? Today the equivalent question can be stated more broadly: Can all or most forms of productive activity be embodied within the countless, rapidly proliferating algorithms that do useful work with little or no human presence? In studies such as Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, the classic debate about technology and the future of work and income is reborn, this time on steroids. (Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2011). Books and articles in this genre, often written by people in schools of management and by Silicon Valley gurus, openly speculate that in the decades just ahead countless millions of people will be thrown out of work by a flood new artificially intelligent algorithms in every conceivable field of human activity. Will the ongoing ruminations and proposals in this genre be more fruitful than the “future of work” debates of the 1970s? (Don’t count on it.)<br />
<br />
Another feature of the power shift evident in spiraling levels of economic inequality in America is a distressing trend in the nation’s political life, one slowly beginning to dawn on the citizenry -- the recognition that those who now derive their riches from international finance and global regimes of production and service no longer much care about vitality and coherence of democratic society. The evidence mounts that wealthy corporations and business moguls are often busily at work seeking to undermine the integrity of democratic institutions and vitality of civic culture (McChesney and Nichols, 2013).<br />
<br />
Ominous indicators here include the hundreds of millions of dollars spent in the U.S. by wealthy individuals and their campaign organizations to dominate the outcome of elections. Their explicit goal is that of placing in office people who will lower taxes on the rich, eliminate barriers of regulation on corporate activity, dismantle government programs that help ordinary people, and reduce the share of income that everyday workers can expect to receive. Because the enormous amounts of money spent by wealthy individuals and organizations is largely secret (“dark money”), it is difficult for citizens to know exactly what is happening in elections, much less in public policy making. But the facts dribble out bit by bit. For example, two of America's most powerful oligarchs -- the Koch brothers – Charles and David Koch -- spent more than $400 million on the 2012 elections (Gold, 2014). During the same period the network of moneyed interests organized Karl Rove spent hundreds of millions as well. In this vein, a long list of millionaires and billionaires are involved in flagrant efforts to undermine the choice of government officials and processes by which pubic policies are made. A series of recent Supreme Court decisions, the notorious “Citizens United” judgment in particular, have ratified such bald-faced varieties of corruption and extortion as constitutionally protected “free speech” available to corporations defined now defined as “persons” (Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, 2010).<br />
<br />
To a great extent influence of this kind has simply absorbed one of our two political parties, the Republican Party, a once reputable organization that now serves as a kind of hollow shell for priorities of America's increasingly open and aggressive corporatocracy. Within elections at the level of our fifty states, forces of this kind are now engaged in campaigns of neo-Jim Crow voter suppression, “gerrymandering” (controlling the shape of electoral district boundaries), instituting a variety of measures that make it difficult for their opponents to vote at all. This amounts to an increasingly open, explicitly shameless declaration of war on the most elemental expression of democracy – the vote.<br />
<br />
Although seldom stated as such, the underlying goal of these machinations is to eliminate the role of government as a positive force for recognizing and solving important problems that face American society. The idea that a democratically elected government can be and ought to be an active, creative problem-solving institution is now directly under attack. During the years of Obama’s presidency this has largely been achieved. After his first two years during which there were a few modest reforms in government policies, Obama’s opponents have blocked every significant reform he has proposed. His presidency has been reduced to a sequence of flowery speeches with no consequences for legislation or public policy (Pierce, 2013).<br />
<br />
An increasingly tangible, visible consequence of this situation is that “the world’s richest nation” is simply no longer engaged in plans or projects to address the country’s most urgent needs. Even simple matters about which one might expect an easy consensus – rebuilding crumbling roads, repairing decaying bridges, replacing outmoded airports, revitalizing the public schools, etc. – are left unattended. This is readily apparent to anyone who travels to the USA from foreign, still ambitious countries – China for example – that are constructing new public facilities at a rapid clip. Signs of torpor and inaction in the U.S. at present are positively breathtaking.<br />
<br />
By the same token the country is not building new schools, not launching programs in job creation and certainly not responding in any serious way to the need to address the emergencies of climate change. While the government still funds scientific research, levels of spending in that category have been frozen. <br />
<br />
Evidence of this kind reveals the power shift in stark detail. A yawning vacuum in public priorities and the exercise of democratic government points to a ruling elite that has simply ceased to care about the U.S. populace as a whole. Justified by bombastic talk about growing debt and deficits and excessive government spending, the standard nostrums involve cutting taxes, eliminating government regulations and slashing programs that offer resources to the working poor: food stamps, higher minimum wages, unemployment insurance, job training, social security, and so forth. <br />
<br />
In their recent, meticulous, data driven study, political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page demonstrate what most careful observers of the American system already understood: elected officials pay almost exclusive attention to the priorities of society’s most wealthy segment, very little heed to the expressed wants and needs of the great mass of citizens (Gilens and Page, 2014). As the authors note, “When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” At the article’s conclusion, Gilens and Page reflect upon what their data has revealed and lament that “if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threated.” <br />
<br />
It is no mystery why the wealthy economic and political elites – the 1% as Occupy Wall Street called them –would favor measures that consolidate their power. But, you may be asking, isn’t it true that there are tens of millions of everyday people in the middle class and even among the working poor who regularly vote for the policies that favor today’s conservative oligarchy?<br />
<br />
Yes, in fact, a fairly large segment of the American people is beguiled by an ideology of so-called “freedom” that justifies the kinds of market measures the oligarchs prefer. Beyond that, a great many even be seem to be aware that, in actual practice, the term “market” identifies ways that large business firms are shipping their jobs to China, Vietnam and elsewhere and devastating their standard of living. But how can one explain a situation in which of 30% or more of the voting populace supports corporate interests and elects politicians that work to undermine the wellbeing of everyday citizens?<br />
<br />
In my view, the answer can be found in the power of resentment. It’s increasingly clear that people who are not wealthy come to be persuaded that government is simply in the business of taking their money and giving it to the "others" -- giving it to the underserving poor, those lazy louts in other neighborhoods (Frank, 2004). A cleverly crafted, intricately coded language of “dog whistle politics” evokes feelings of that kind-- diatribes about “welfare queens,” “young bucks,” the “culture of inner city males,” and so forth – strongly suggesting that the “others” are unworthy black and brown people or immigrants from foreign countries (Hanley-López, 2014). This is a topic Americans do not like to discuss explicitly in public: How race and racial discrimination are very much a part of distribution of power in the country both historically and in the present moment as well.<br />
<br />
How is it that so many people in the US whose own fortunes are visibly sinking nevertheless repeatedly vote for the interests of billionaires and a well-organized corporatocracy? The basic mind set appears to be: Precisely because I realize that my own prospects are sinking, I will do my best to make sure that the government will not spend and tax dollars to help anybody else, especially those undeserving “others.” A mentality of this kind has been spectacularly on display in recent election, especially the “off year,” non-presidential elections of 2010 and 2014 in which “conservative” Republicans were notably successful at the polls.<br />
<br />
This is a remarkably different attitude from that of European social democracy or American New Deal liberalism in which a majority agreed: "We're all in this together. Let's pool our resources and move forward." That was the prevailing view in the USA during the middle of the twentieth century – a view of hope, solidarity and national community. Alas, sentiments of that kind have pretty much evaporated within today’s mainstream political discourse and media coverage. The one exception is occasional mobilization for war, currently “the war on terror,” including the attack on and occupation of Iraq in 2003 and other battles in the Middle East, e.g., the offensive against ISIS in Syria and Iraq in 2014.<br />
<br />
Much of the American populace today – a great many older, white, working class and middle class voters have moved from the mentality of hope, solidarity and national community – a mentality that many of them formerly embraced -- to a mood of rigid, embittered resentment heightened by waves of fear – fears of an Ebola outbreak, of imagined waves of immigrants flooding the nation’s borders and the fear-of-the week fanned by reactionary politicians and “pundits” on cable TV. This makes them natural allies with the wealthy ruling oligarchs who have now rather openly and unabashedly written off much of the U.S. p0pulace altogether. <br />
<br />
Recently, attitudes of this kind have erupted within the very mainstream of American public life. During the 2012 presidential campaign candidate Mitt Romney gave a talk, secretly recorded by a waiter at a funding raising event, in which Romney let the cat out of the bag, arguing that about half the country’s voters, — 47%, “believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. …. My job not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." (Corn, 2103)<br />
<br />
From this point of view the nation’s population is divided into two opposing segments: “The Makers and The Takers”. As argued by corporatist elites as well as the long-standing extremist conservative faction re-branded as “The Tea Party,” the message is in effect: We’re fed up with half the American people and we’re not giving them another dime of “our money.”<br />
<br />
Sentiments of this sort reflect circumstances in which the vitality of the nation state in steering the economy and responding to social needs has yielded to priorities of transnational, intricately networked, increasingly voracious 21st century capitalism. As this transformation continues, it becomes increasingly obvious that many of the traditional practices, institutions and modes of communication in national politics suffer from a profound paralysis and derangement. <br />
<br />
One symptom of the derangement is evident in the decay of mainstream political discourse -- the discourse of our politicians as well as communication formats that prevail in our mass media, a crippled discourse that blocks an effort to imagine fruitful strategies of action. A regrettable instance took shape in 2013-2014 as President Barack Obama, an intelligent, caring, obviously competent man – began to talk about the scourge of inequality in occasional public comments. In the weeks leading up to his 2014 State of the Union address, Obama seemed to be getting ready to tackle inequality forcefully, head on. His speeches emphasized the gravity of the problem of inequality how it was eating away at the nation's soul and its very future. Many of his supporters expected that Obama would soon propose strong policy measures to reverse this trend.<br />
<br />
But when Obama’s opportunity to speak to the nation finally arrived, any mention of the lethal collective disease of inequality had somehow vanished, replaced by Obama’s vague happy talk about how America was still a wonderful land of opportunity (Obama, 2014). A great many people listened to the talk and said to themselves: What! Please, Mr. President, the model of our society that you are talking about is the very one that is rapidly collapsing before our very eyes. You’ve recently admitted as much yourself. Why is it that we cannot we come together to talk about these matters in, open, honest, decisive terms?<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Along with the other problems I’ve mentioned, a crucial problem is that America’s capacities of political speech are increasingly vacuous, irrational and absurd, out of touch with anything even remotely resembling reality. As reflected in the widely watched Fox News Channel, a 24 hour a day of well produced, colorful, generally hate-filled commentaries on the news, and non-stop right wing talk shows on hundreds of AM radio stations, there is little desire to discuss the pressing issues of our time (Brock & Rabin-Havt, 2012). Instead, Fox News propagates a series of largely imaginary scandals. The current set includes what happened during the chaotic the events at Benghazi, the claim that Obama used the government’s tax office to attack right wing political groups, and the bungled introduction of the nation’s new health care plan.<br />
<br />
Thus, Fox News channel’s exclusive message about government in Washington is the drumbeat – scandal! scandal! scandal!– even when rumors supposedly revealing the scandal have, for the most part, been thoroughly discredited.<br />
<br />
As Manuel Castell’s writings of the 1990s argued (Castells, 1997) one sign of power shift and the weakening of the grasp of national governments is an obsession with pseudo-events, what some observers today call “anti-news” (Engehardt, 2014). Because government officials can no longer perform the positive duties of office and because government is no longer a focused, resourceful problem-solving entity, the void in public life is filled with the latest sex gossip or reports about the misappropriation of public funds. Stories of this kind fill the television screen twenty-four hours a day, making it seem as if issues of great importance are being presented to a well-informed public. What is actually happening, of course, is that the public is being fed a steady diet of info-trash.<br />
<br />
Looking at the predicament from a wider standpoint, it seems that the U.S.A. has met roughly the same fate as its political opponent in the Cold War, the Soviet Union (now Russia). Both have shed the high ground of political principle that supposedly inspired their epic struggles for power – socialism for one country, freedom and democracy for the other -- only to collapse into rough, raw money hungry oligarchies ruling over increasingly dispirited populations. <br />
So it goes for would-be empires. <br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The successful strategy of political capture engineered by the billionaire Koch brothers and their compadres in the top 0.1% can now be easily summarized. If one funds enough policy think tanks, buys enough radio stations, owns enough cable television channels, endows enough university chairs, purchases enough election attack ads, pays for the favors of enough politicians, bankrolls for enough voter suppression laws, and employs enough lapdog pundits spewing right wing blather twenty-four hours a day, enough to dumb down political speech and most people into distraction, despair and passivity — then one has essentially bought a whole nation. From the billionaire’s perspective, the total cost of the campaign was relatively cheap. As the wipeout victory of the right wing in the 2014 elections made clear, the success of this oligarchical onslaught now looks less like a "challenge for American democracy" than the culmination of a slow moving coup d’etat (Democracy Now, 2014). <br />
<br />
The situations I’ve described here defy any easy solution. Beneficial policies would certainly include raising taxes on the wealthy, greatly increasing the minimum wage, providing free education for all citizens from kindergarten through college, giving poor families the real resources they would need to realize the “opportunity” that our politicians cynically proclaim in their speeches. A clear, hopeful sign would be that massive numbers of people, especially young people, begin to recognize that the game is rigged -- that society is now systematically unequal, unjust, undemocratic, and unable to chart a reasonable future for them –, people who announce their vocal, active resistance to an economic and political order that now works only for the very rich.<br />
<br />
A response of that kind began to emerge in the autumn of 2011 in the Occupy Wall Street movement and similar Occupy demonstrations across the United States. This uprising called attention to the glaring gap between the wealthy 1% and the rest of the populace, many of whom are suffering severe decline in their incomes and life chances.<br />
<br />
While the Occupy movement generated extensive lists of demands, it did not announce any specific set of goals or anoint a telegenic leader, a situation that made it difficult for the corporate media and our deeply bought off politicians to embrace its perfectly clear, urgent message. Asking for widespread debate on a previously taboo subject – glaring conditions of inequality in America – Occupy refused to elevate any particular celebrity as its spokesperson. Within their encampments in public parks and general assemblies, participants openly debated the most basic questions. What is the problem here? What can be done?<br />
<br />
After a period in which the authorities allowed the demonstrations to continue, there was finally a brutal, nationwide crackdown. Documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act reveal a coordinated attack planned by the F.B.I., Department of Homeland Security, local police, large banks, and several universities (Wolf, 2012). <br />
<br />
Scattered pieces of the Occupy movement still function online as well as in focused political initiatives such as the formation of a watchdog group to influence new regulations in the Securities and Exchange Commission and a program that raises funds to buy up mortgages homes subject to foreclosure. At present there are Occupy-like demonstrations in the “Moral Monday” movement in North Carolina and other parts of the south, demanding an end to voter suppression laws and an end to ongoing attacks on women’s rights.<br />
<br />
In sum, we live in a period of history in which the maladies of inequality have repeatedly surfaced, only to be swept under the rug; a time in which crucial “elections” have been reduced to mere “auctions;” a turning point in which the traditional workings of democracy have been replaced by pungent, thinly disguised forms of oligarchy and corporatocracy. In this dire situation, the open, intelligent, resourceful resistance of a mass populace -- expressed in a variety of ingenious projects -- is the best course of action and, perhaps, the only pathway left to us. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>References<br />
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<br />
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<br />
<br />Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-83527194636871550492015-02-03T14:48:00.000-05:002015-02-03T14:48:45.940-05:00Congressional Inquiries into the Origins & Consequences of the War in Iraq<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Complete Text of all U.S. Congressional Hearings on the </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Origins and Consequences of the Iraq War from 2003 to present:</span></b></div>
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Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-41817490124257306212014-12-26T16:48:00.000-05:002014-12-26T16:48:01.267-05:00The ideology of "innovation" -- interview with Langdon Winner<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, helvetica, san-serif;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; line-height: 21px;">Here's an interview that Nick Ishmael-Perkins did with me last summer. Nick edited the piece for its first <a href="http://www.scidev.net/global/innovation/feature/langdon-winner-tyranny-new.html" target="_blank">publication in SciDevNet</a>, the fine web site he runs on "Bringing together science and development through original news and analysis." </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, helvetica, san-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, helvetica, san-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Langdon Winner calls himself an “</span><a href="http://www.scidev.net/global/enterprise/innovation/" style="border: 0px; color: #e10000; font-family: Arial, helvetica, san-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">innovation</a><span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, helvetica, san-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"> critic”. The political theorist based at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, United States, thinks that most people talk of innovation using the word uncritically and buying into the ideology that change is always a good thing. Winner wants to challenge that assumption.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, helvetica, san-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">He spoke about this in August in a keynote speech at the International Conference for Integration of Science, Technology and Society, hosted by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon (4-8 August 2014). After the event</span><em style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, helvetica, san-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">SciDev.Net</em><span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, helvetica, san-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"> caught up with him to ask about how misuse of the word innovation impacts international development. Among other things, he says Bill Gates’ framing of innovation as the only solution to global challenges, such as global warming, risks missing easier and quicker answers.</span></span><br />
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">You have described innovation as a ‘god term’ — what do you mean by that?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, helvetica, san-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">In every generation there are certain concepts </span><strong style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, helvetica, san-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">— </strong><span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, helvetica, san-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">like ‘revolution’, ‘frontier’ and ‘progress’ </span><strong style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, helvetica, san-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">—</strong><span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, helvetica, san-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">that change over time. I think the god term ‘progress’ has worn out. This is welcome, largely because its metaphysical character seems to promise universal benefits from science and </span><a href="http://www.scidev.net/global/enterprise/technology/" style="border: 0px; color: #e10000; font-family: Arial, helvetica, san-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">technology</a><span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, helvetica, san-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">. For many reasons this is difficult for many people to endorse now.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, helvetica, san-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">There are currently two terms that people establish attachments to: innovation and </span><a href="http://www.scidev.net/global/governance/sustainability/" style="border: 0px; color: #e10000; font-family: Arial, helvetica, san-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">sustainability</a><span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, helvetica, san-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">. People interpret innovation as coming up with a new use of science, a new unfolding of technological creativity. You could start a new company, generate some income, benefit your nation. It’s become a focus of aspiration and longing. And it’s one of the terms in our time that is widely and uncritically used.</span></span><br />
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Do you think it’s destined to go the way of the other ‘god terms’?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">Not in the short term because it’s now achieving its high tide. It’s the jewel in the crown of the economic and social philosophy of neoliberalism that emphasises action in the market and leads to a fascination with entrepreneurship. Innovation doesn’t have the broad sweeping claims of progress. It's the idea that if you are innovative you are likely to get rich, maybe people around you will benefit, and that will somehow trickle down. The market is the motivating force. I think that fascination is going to continue for decades.</span><br />
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">If you were going to make a critique of innovation, where would you start?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">I have several lines of criticism. The first is summed up in what I describe as ‘the gadget folks’. You come up with some nifty device, like the iPad. These tend to be high-end consumer products that are seen as sources of renewal. Innovation comes from the Latin word ‘innovare’, which means to renew, and in this case the positive revitalising force literally comes out of a little device.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">People associate innovation with high-end products intended for wealthy consumers or global corporations that realise hopes and dreams at that level. In many ways this is nothing new. It’s the same basic strategy used in marketing in the 1930s. It says: by purchasing this toaster or refrigerator you are going to improve your life and help the economy grow, but it will also give you the sense that as a consumer you are casting in your fate with the modern. You are driving off into the future with your beautiful new car, television set and so on.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">I think products and accomplishments that are identified as innovative today have much the same character. There are stories in the newspapers with a strong emotional attachment to the new. So that is one of the points of criticism.</span><br />
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What are the other lines of critique?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">One is about a foolish enthusiasm for anything new. But more serious criticisms relate to a common ideological position found in business schools, some categories of engineering, and certainly in Silicon Valley. This is around the notion of disruptive innovation that goes back to the Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter, who wrote about ‘creative destruction’.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">His idea became the founding principle of innovation. This is what is good about capitalism – it is endlessly innovative. It means that old sources, institutions, practices, and configurations of apparatus are destroyed, and new and better ones arise.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">So today we have creative destruction and this is what is glorious and hopeful about the modern economy. In the last 20 years or so, this idea has been pushed rather aggressively in new directions, especially in business schools. And there is one figure in particular, Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, who has been a leading proponent of creative destruction. Here the idea is that through evolution, particularly of digital technology, it is possible to find the old institutions, practices, and complex arrangements that produced and distributed things of value, and deliberately target them for disruption so that something new can appear in its place.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">My criticism about this is the rather disrespectful and destructive focus on rushing into established domains of human activity and saying “this has been around a long time, it needs to be disrupted and something new put in its place”.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">There are many professions, including medicine, journalism and teaching where crazy schemes are packaged as innovations. And because you are just an old-fashioned teacher with a teaching plan who has spent the past 20 years trying to find creative ways to engage kids — well, that has no credit because we now have tablets and standardised tests and metrics that show how well things are going. So there is a kind of tyranny of the new.</span><br />
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The tyranny of the new is a nice phrase, but would it not be fair to say that much innovation is driven by the desire to improve?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">I call this benign innovation. Very often these are changes proposed within traditions of knowledge, skill and practice that don’t seek to destroy the tradition but to add something new. That something may be quite revelatory and doesn’t seek to replace but builds on what went before.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">One example is the never-ending quest of musician Miles Davis to modify jazz substantially to make new things possible. So he moved from be-bop to cool jazz to orchestral jazz, and then back to hard bop and then fusion jazz.</span><br />
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In 2010 Bill Gates spoke of the need to ‘innovate to zero’, meaning that we need to create new technologies to achieve zero carbon emissions. Do you think that is problematic?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">One can identify and track useful innovations to address inequality and poverty. The use of cell phones in developing countries is a good example.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">But the tyranny of the new, expressed as ‘innovation’, produces a disposition to say — as Gates did in his ‘Innovating to Zero’ TEDTalk — that we need astonishing breakthroughs developed over several decades, and then and only then can we address carbon emissions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, helvetica, san-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></span>
<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">This becomes a strategy of evasion and delay. We know fairly well, if we have the resolve, how to substantially cut carbon emissions right now. It doesn’t require much new knowledge. It could be done, for example, by imposing a stiff carbon tax or reducing speed limits from 65MPH to 45MPH — you would immediately get reductions.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">So my argument is that our primary need is for planning and the resolve to act with what we already know, and to get on with it today. Whereas Bill Gates is saying: if we have these innovations over a period of four or five decades then geniuses like me from Seattle will lead us to a better world. To me this is not only a strategy of delay but self-congratulation and self-aggrandisement.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">Researching innovations in this way is misdirected energy at a time when the world needs to get busy: much of the knowledge and equipment required is already at hand. We need to be poking fun at this idea. I don’t know anybody who is an innovation critic. I think there probably needs to be more than just me.</span><br />
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So you are criticising an ideology rather than all innovation. How might this critique inform global development?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">There is a centre at Stanford where they say: “what about these poor people in the South, let’s have some innovation for development”. They have programmes in Africa and they send out their students with solar cookers.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">But the problem with that, as the anthropologist Arturo Escobar points out, is that it has a kind of missionary quality. Once it was the Bible that would change your life for the better, and now you are bringing the great new technology. The problem with this is that is discounts whatever local knowledge there might be.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">This missionary stance comes with a tendency to broadcast, rather than to listen to local people.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">I think it would be good to have more careful reflection on what developing countries need. When I talk to my students, I say: “you shouldn’t start designing something until you have done at least several months getting to know the people, the situation and the real needs, rather than helicoptering in and plopping down some innovative device.”</span><br />
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You have also been critical of the term Anthropocene, the idea that we are living in a new epoch where human activities define ecosystems. It’s an idea that could shape development planning over the next few decades. Why do you think we need to be wary? </span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">It’s the idea that you can name geological epochs according to some identifiable characteristic. The people who proposed the Anthropocene say humanity is responsible for the significant changes of the past centuries and changes in the future. But naming this geological period after humanity is kind of deterministic — “this is what humans have done”. And it is self-exulting — “look at our grand role in the history of the cosmos”.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 21px;">But if you look at what is being projected, a better name might be Thanatopocene, after Thanatos, the Greek personification of death. It appears that instead of a grand exultation and transcendence of humanity, we are at a death spiral. So why exult ourselves with concepts like Anthropocene? I find its self-congratulatory power fantasy highly suspicious, at the very point where we ought to be looking at the good evidence that challenges the way of life that’s been built up over the last three centuries.</span>Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-57184750597127965962014-12-12T16:08:00.000-05:002014-12-14T21:12:10.563-05:00Power Fantasies at the End of Modernity<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The talk below was given at the Teach-In on Techno-Utopianism & the Fate of the Earth, October 25-26, 2014 in The Great Hall of The Cooper Union, New York City. The spoken version included slides and video of contemporary power fantasies in action, illustrations that were botched in the execution, alas. This revision has been substantially rewritten in its last half to present the themes and questions in text alone. </span><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">Power Fantasies at the End of
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">By:
Langdon Winner<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">As I
ponder the issues that this conference has addressed, I wonder why there aren’t
masses of people in the streets of every town and city demanding basic change
in ways our civilization operates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Alas, what we see instead is a widespread mood of passivity and inaction
often bordering on despair.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">While
there are many possible explanations for the torpor that surrounds us, I’ll
focus briefly on just one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My guess is
that people are having a devil of a time getting used to an increasingly
widespread perception: The Future has been cancelled.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">Well, you’re
probably saying, that’s just absurd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Surely
there will always be a future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our clocks
keep steadily ticking as we move along the line from past to present to future.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">But that
is not “The Future” I’m thinking about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">The
Future that has almost certainly been cancelled, one that is thoroughly defunct,
is a period of history imagined and partly constructed during the 20<sup>th</sup> century – “The
Future” offered by a collection of ambitious modernists, techno-triumphalists,
utopian visionaries, urban planners, industrial designers, Madison Avenue
advertisers, and others who projected a better world just over the horizon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">All of us
have been fed a steady diet of this “Future” over the years, for example the futures
depicted in science fiction from the 1902 movie “A Trip to the Moon” to the
recent blockbuster, “Interstellar.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
skyscrapers, airplanes, rocket ships, robots, sleek and shiny cities, time
machines, space stations, and the like depicted the apparatus of tomorrow, of
widely shared prosperity, of excitement with the new, of personal wellbeing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The basic idea of generations of modernists
and futurists has been that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">if you built
it</i>, humanity would move in and flourish. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By moving from a dreary paleo-industrial past
into a technology-rich future, the world would be vastly improved, ennobled and
uplifted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">Yes, it should
be noted, much of science fiction writing and movies dramatized (as stories
must) what might go wrong if even the most hopeful visions were fully realized.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at the level of social planning and
promotion, “The Future” was projected as uniformly favorable for humanity as a
whole.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">Schemes
of this kind were exquisitely detailed in a steady stream of architectural
drawings, urban plans, science fiction novels and movies, Worlds Fairs, advertising
and marketing campaigns in the United States, Europe and around the globe for
several decades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of these visions
were, one can say, socially progressive, for example, the reformist designs of
early Bauhaus modernism that sought to provide agreeable architectures, tools
and appliances for everyday working people. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But much of the standard treatment was
narcissistic fantasy, presented in ways that left audiences amused and
delighted with images of personal helicopters, automated factories, appliance
filled homes, energy too cheap to meter, robot servants, and the like. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">It seems
to me that the basic but often unstated theme here was that ordinary, everyday people
of modest means would be emancipated and empowered by participating in “Modernity.”
That was, for example, the explicit promise of an ongoing sequence of Worlds
Fairs, the one in New York in 1939, for instance. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the minds of its planners, a society mired
in The Great Depression could bootstrap its way to prosperity and by adopting all
the new vehicles, household gadgets, super highways, and electrical gear on the
drawing boards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The “Futurama” ride, designed by Normal Bel
Geddes, offered the crowds a comfortable flyover of the spectacular landscape
of “Tomorrow.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At another exhibit,
adults and children could feel the power by interacting with Electro, the
gigantic metal (but entirely fake) talking robot.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">Notions
of this sort were strongly favored by industrial corporations of the period along
with the teams of designers, advertisers and marketers they employed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One popular format<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>was
that of streamlining, its smooth surfaces embossed on everything from
locomotives to toasters from the late 1930s through the 1950s. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Evidently, you needed a streamlined toaster or
vacuum cleaner in case you encountered unusual wind turbulence in your suburban
home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">Crucial
in campaigns of this kind was the conviction that by purchasing and using a new
car, washing machine, radio or television, consumers would become full
participants in and, in fact, citizens of a world based upon science and
technology. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">The explicit
sales pitch in countless advertising campaigns was the promise of personal
power to be gained by joining the Modern World. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">A
succession of new historical periods or “ages” (or “centuries”) embodied supposed
transformations of this sort – the machine age, automobile age, air age, radio
age, atomic age, television age, space age, computer age, information age,
personal computer age, biotechnology age, nanotechnology age, etc. -- each one
heralded in a stream of books, magazine article and movies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alas, an unfortunate feature of these “ages” was
that they grew old rather quickly, soon to be forgotten, replaced by the next
great techno-contender just over the horizon. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">While there
are still strong boosters for nuclear power even today, nobody talks about coming
of the Atomic Age any more and for obvious reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The words “Chernobyl” and “Fukushima” come to
mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Similarly, there is no longer any mention
about the glorious arrival of “The Space Age.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Once the U.S. had flown its astronauts to the Moon, a notable victory in
the Cold War standoff between the U.S.A. and U.S.S. R., there was little public
enthusiasm for spending money on space rockets, space stations, or manned
missions to distant planets.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">Eventually,
incessant proclamation of one visionary “Future” after another began to seem rather
like an elaborated con game in which the public was the rube.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The point of exhaustion seems to have arrived
with the approach of the year 2000 when one might have expected a fresh batch
of futures to come rolling out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that
didn’t happen, at least not to any great extent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much of the chatter that accompanied the
approach of the “new millennium” centered upon worries about a “Y2K bug,” a
technical glitch that seemed to threaten all the world’s computers and
communications systems.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">For
better or worse, the extravagant futurism of earlier decades is by now thoroughly
exhausted<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b>There are for example, no plans for any
new World’s Fairs to show us the new gadgets of tomorrow. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although planning continues on ambitious metroplexes
like that in Dubai, their construction <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>has less to do with modernist hopes for
universal human improvement than the risible vanities of a few dozen billionaires.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And while there are still dewy-eyed dreams
of trans-humanism, the “singularity” and of massively robotized society, prophecies
of this generation are little more that pet schemes of isolated technophiles hoping to
attract funding from the Silicon Valley nouveau riche. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">Taking
note of the demise of genuine technological utopias of yesteryear, Neil
Degrasse Tyson, eloquent spokesman for the accomplishments of science and
technology, recently launched a TV mini-series lamenting the fact that “We have
stopped dreaming.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By this he meant that
Americans now seem incapable of the visionary Space Age enthusiasms like those
that followed Sputnik.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, Tyson
argued, the U.S. has gradually defunded NASA and no longer seems willing to
recruit, inspire and educate a new generation of space scientists and
engineers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">Well, what
has happened to the visionary enthusiasms of decades gone by?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">The answer
is fairly clear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When people today,
especially Americans, think seriously about times to come they typically avoid
idle speculation about a New Space Age or any heroic World of Tomorrow, but instead
attend to a set of obvious, immediate, urgent, challenging, often unhappy
realities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Among these are: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">Global climate
crisis and its highly visible consequences; <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">The end
of the era of cheap fossil fuels; <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">Ocean
acidification;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">The rapid
decline of world wildlife populations; <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">Huge and
growing inequalities of wealth, income and political power; <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16pt;">Destruction
of well-paying jobs;</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">Demise of
the middle class, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">In brief,
my argument is that what came to be known as <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">“The
Future” -- the technology saturated tomorrow of twentieth century utopian visions
-- has already been cancelled and that in down-to-earth, practical terms a great
many people fully understand this is the case and are prepared to face the
situation squarely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of the most
intelligent voices of this kind have spoken – creatively and persuasively --
at this gathering. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">But, as
the old adage has it, dreams die hard. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite what the best of our knowledge tells
us about climate change, environmental crises, the end of the era of cheap
fossil fuels, the increasingly oligarchic character of our “economy” and
“democracy,” there remain within the most common representations of the world
and its possibilities, a collection of increasingly exaggerated, absurd residues
of “The Future” from the recent past. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As one might expect, the basic vision still
derives from the massive sales campaigns that enticed consumers/citizens with
illusions of empowerment, with participation in power itself. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16pt;">But the message has shifted its focus.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16pt;">Sorry, folks, it’s no longer possible to offer
you decent jobs at high wages; to offer comfortable, affordable apartments in
clear, sleek urban wonderlands; to offer cheap, speedy transportation around
the globe even for those of modest means; to offer a wonderfully favorable
relationship between Nature and Artifice that uplifts and dignifies the Earth
and its species.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16pt;">No, alas, all of that
is now beyond our reach.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16pt;">But what we still
have on offer is a never-ending, multi-faceted array of power fantasies that will
delight and beguile you, perhaps even more thoroughly than in our earlier versions.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">A comprehensive
list of categories within the production of today’s power fantasies would be a
lengthy catalogue indeed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would
include much of what passes for political communication, product advertising, national
security propaganda, entertainment, sports, fashion, social media, and even
education in our time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">One could
begin with the exotic power fantasies that carried the United States into the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan following the 9/11 attack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This would surely include the spectacular
video of “Shock and Awe” during the bombardment of Baghdad in 2003, broadcast
in prime time for an audience promised that the war would be short, cheap and
easy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of those colorful bombs, deafening
blasts, carefully scripted rockets suggested that victory was at hand, that
“we will be greeted as liberators.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Feel
the power!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">In much the
same mode came the fabulous “Mission Accomplished” episode, a TV reality show
produced shortly after the attack on Iraq in which President George W. Bush,
dressed in Air Force gear with a noticeable codpiece, landed in a fighter jet
on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, greeted by an
enthusiastic group of military stand ins, to proclaim that “the United States
and its allies have prevailed.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Feel the
power!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">As the conflict continues (now more than a decade along) an
enduring, highly marketable genre of combat fantasies combines images of
warfare – battlefield shootouts, fiery explosions, cruise missile launches,
drone aircraft strikes, and the like – within television news segments,
Hollywood films and, most notably, the first person shooter video games that
are now the most profitable and fastest growing segment of the entertainment
industry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here the hideous realities of
war blend seamlessly with ghastly on screen imaginaries that occupy much of the
leisure time of the world’s youth, especially young men and boys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Aware of the indelible attraction that
violent video and computer games have for their target generation, the Pentagon
now uses video games at all stages of their soldiers’ careers – to recruit them
into the “service,” to train them for combat in foreign lands, and finally as therapy to
help the troops recover from post-traumatic stress disorder when they return
home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">Evidence
that everyday Americans are completely enthralled by the vicarious experience
of watching and hearing explosions, planes and cars moving at dangerously
vertiginous speeds, high velocity crashes, and mega-force collisions of all
kinds is evident in the daily fare of advertising, feature films, television
serials, and two of the nation’s most popular sports – NASCAR racing and NFL
football.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As news slowly leaks out about
the long term brain damage caused to thousands of high school, college and
professional football players by repeated bashing and crashing on the field,
the nation ponders (but seems eager to reject) the possibility that the game will
have to be modified to make it less lethal to body and brain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">Certainly
the most significant “innovation” in recent decades that has helped spawn the
riotous spread of power fantasies within our central institutions and troubled
ways of living is the exquisite perfection of Computer Graphic Imagery – CGI –<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">within
every corner of the new digital realm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Where earlier modes for the production of fake imagery were clunky and
far too costly, today’s methods of computer programming make them easy to
fashion and replicate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What this means
is that the expensive, risky, or destructive realities of warfare, hand-to-hand
combat, space travel, and other ambitious undertakings can be conveniently sold
to today’s consumers as CGI marvels on the screen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">Exactly
the same “big magic” depicts speed and explosive power has become standard coin
of the realm in advertising, especially in television ads for automobiles where
CGI helps cars appear to “fly” from place to place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, it may be that the most thoroughly
satisfying and marketable experiences of the adventures of today’s
technological civilization are likely those realized within CGI and nowhere
else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The most widely engaging,
personally fulfilling accomplishments of the nation’s space program were not
those of, say, the Apollo moon missions or even of today’s robot vehicles
scratching around on Mars, but rather the CGI filled extravaganzas of Hollywood
films and TV series such as “Avatar” and “Battlestar Galactica.” By the same
token, the most gratifying representations America’s otherwise forlorn military
encounters in recent years are those fought everyday on Xbox, Play Station in
homes and dorm rooms across the nation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Feel
the Power!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">For those
averse to the sheer violence that characterizes much of this domain, there is another
focus of technology-centered fantasies that has an irresistible allure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At long last our civilization has designed a
splendid, affordable little implement that anybody can hold in one hand, a
gadget that combines telephone, camera, texting, video screen, video recorder, and
GPS, along with countless thousand of “apps” that enable a person to read the
daily news, handle one’s social media contacts, schedule one’s appointments,
monitor one’s diet and exercise, guide one’s zen meditation routines, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is, of course, the iPhone or, alternately,
the smart phone – what many consider the signature accomplishment of the 21<sup>st</sup>
century. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Surely (we tell ourselves), no
emperor, king, or pope has ever commanded such magnificent power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And because (we confidently imagine)
every-man and every-woman now has this device at his/her fingertips, a more
perfect democracy must be just around the corner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, we happily gaze at the little black
mirror, seldom looking up to notice the troubling realities on every side. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">Oh oh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d like to offer you a little more help on
these matters, but, damn, my Android is ringing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16.0pt;">Never
mind….<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-33230976437072180922014-09-03T13:21:00.001-04:002014-09-03T14:19:06.730-04:00Celibate ecstasy meets rock and roll revery<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I'll be leading a discussion after a showing of the film </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">"Rock My Religion," by noted American artist Dan Graham. The movie compares the ecstasies of the Shakers to the reveries of 1950s - 1970s rockers. Here's the poster. If you're in New Lebanon in upstate New York the evening of September 12, drop by!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-28599360690446802242014-07-18T09:01:00.000-04:002014-07-18T09:01:06.658-04:00Name the "Cene" contest -- Enter today!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbL1Z3lnMfJxinxuMcQ5TTh8Vhz9moc9ERSlaz24vsS1Jyx-hWOLHsVGpFiwDN1ydSBCXD5v1YlDc0mpvB-aHpBQ_9yAE1rVuzCFeq8Z7Ep2uKHJNqwZJAbAYnw0ItK4H3DV8M/s1600/Mammoth2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbL1Z3lnMfJxinxuMcQ5TTh8Vhz9moc9ERSlaz24vsS1Jyx-hWOLHsVGpFiwDN1ydSBCXD5v1YlDc0mpvB-aHpBQ_9yAE1rVuzCFeq8Z7Ep2uKHJNqwZJAbAYnw0ItK4H3DV8M/s1600/Mammoth2.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></div>
Mammoths marching to protest the vile designation -- "Anthropocene"<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">As a way to express my bemused astonishment at the narcissistic attempt by techno-enthusiasts to name the current geological epoch "The Anthropocene," I recently suggested what I initially thought to be a sensible alternative, calling this world historic period "The Langdonpocene." It has a nice ring to it, don't you think, and after all, I am definitely among those in the category "anthropos" identified in the ongoing branding campaign. So I figure: Why not go all the way?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Unfortunately, there has been stiff resistance to my idea, angry emails and the like. Some readers find it silly, pretentious and even offensive that I'd propose giving MY name to the dynamics and changes of the planetary eons now unfolding. Upon further reflection I've decided the critics are right. "Langdonpocene" is just as absurd as "Anthropocene." Clearly, there's a need for further reflection. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In that light I'm starting a contest: Name the Cene. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I invite any and all suggestions for the name that best characterizes the extended period of time that includes a significant slice of the recent past with anticipations of the thousands or millions of years ahead. You may, if you like, designate the period -- as the "Anthropocene" crowd has </span><span style="font-size: large;">done -- after the particular group or club of which you are a member. In the era of the Internet, of course, many people will probably want to name this epoch after their cat. I'm open to all proposals. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Please enter your pitch for a suitable name in the Comments section below. I'll tabulate the results and update this page occasionally. We'll see if a firm consensus emerges. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I'm sure it will be quite a "Cene". </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-12383574312679758052014-07-14T15:22:00.000-04:002014-07-14T15:22:54.233-04:00A Future for Philosophy of Technology - Yes, But On Which Planet?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEierYDAsfo1k4hmbXymMoALKuEu9wAsEmdnZNh0em7PfRwEnyKM89FjnPE8seW2PKRwptUHNoBw4pf3sd3c2ClI4VlllP-hTFL_kuq3TcSdErIvRKFsQQdUKXkSELXPkjZAM6sM/s1600/sb04_Statue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEierYDAsfo1k4hmbXymMoALKuEu9wAsEmdnZNh0em7PfRwEnyKM89FjnPE8seW2PKRwptUHNoBw4pf3sd3c2ClI4VlllP-hTFL_kuq3TcSdErIvRKFsQQdUKXkSELXPkjZAM6sM/s1600/sb04_Statue.jpg" height="170" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">[This is a talk I gave at the Society for Philosophy and Technology, Lisbon, July 2013. It has now been published in a Chinese Journal, <i>Engineering Studies, </i>but here's the English version.]</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">A Future for Philosophy of Technology -- Yes, But
On Which Planet?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">By:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Langdon Winner<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas Phelan Chair of Humanities and
Social Sciences<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy,
New York<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">It
is gratifying to see a once rather obscure topic of inquiry – philosophy of
technology – become the diverse and vibrant field of study it is today. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Especially notable are several blends of
social science, history and philosophy that scholars are cultivating at
present.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since I am not eager to suggest new pathways
for those already at work on these interesting projects, I will simply point to
a couple avenues that seem especially interesting and urgent to me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">1. Democracy and security<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Within
the domain of information technology and its relationship to the future of political
society there are a many theoretical and practical questions that are wide open
for study and speculation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During the
past several decades a steady flow predictions and practical programs have
sought to clarify about the horizons of networked computing, some of them
pointing to a new era of democratic participation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">A
common argument holds that inexpensive computing and communication in a variety
of novel forms empowers everyday people, enhancing their capacity for self-government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over the years I have remained skeptical
about claims of this kind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since the
early 19<sup>th</sup> century there has been long litany of proclamations in the
grand tradition of techno-utopianism about the politically redemptive power of
the steam engine, railroads, telegraph, centrally generated electrical power,
the automobile, radio, television, and other technologies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ideas in this vein often feature an
underlying belief in a benevolent technological determinism accompanied by an unwillingness
to raise questions about the steps needed to prevent the rise of obnoxious
concentrations of economic and political power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">In
recent years, however, I have been encouraged by evidence of depth and
substance in writings about the information and networks that suggest a strong
possibility that ordinary citizens could actually be empowered by information
networks. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Philosophical discussions of
the Internet and of social networks now sometime include imaginative, coherent,
well-argued, well-documented, and highly persuasive positions about the actual
promise that information technologies hold out for community, public
participation, democracy and social justice now and in the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some notable advocates for these hopes have
clearly moved beyond barefoot technological determinism and dreamy utopianism
to specify concretely what the possibilities are and how they might be fully
realized.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">A
good example is the work of Yochai Benkler.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wealth of Networks</i> and his more recent book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Penguin and the Leviathan,</i> Benkler
observes that during the past 30 years or so the basic capital requirements of
an information economy have shifted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“The declining price of computation, communication, and storage have
…placed the material means of information and cultural production in the hands
of a significant fraction of the world’s population.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rapidly falling costs of technology support
the rise of a “networked information economy” increasingly characterized by
“cooperative and coordinate action carried out through radically distributed,
nonmarket mechanisms that do not depend on proprietary strategies.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5232450#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Benkler builds upon this basic argument
to explore a variety of ways in which everyday people are using today’s
information networks to rediscover the power of a cooperative economy and to
fashion ways to revitalize participative democracy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">In
short, the recent contributions of Yochai Benkler, Lawrence Lessig, Robert
McChesney and other thinkers offer detailed, forward looking arguments about
possibilities the Net contains along with stern advice about what would
involved in struggles to draw upon information technologies to create a more
democratic future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Aware of patterns that might proliferate in a
networked society -- centralized, hierarchical, power oriented, ultimately
oppressive, corporate structures – writings that defend a more open, more
inclusive future have begun to offer alternatives to the well worn intellectual
furniture used to buttress the old industrial model.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One
such contribution is the deconstruction and reconsideration of the threadbare
but still high venerated fictions known as “property” and “property rights,”
recently resurfaced as “intellectual property” for faster transit on the
information throughways of globalization. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A fruitful alternative, the new writings
suggest, is to explore notions and practices of “the commons” in a world that
now combines pervasive electronic connections with familiar cultural, economic
and political institutions as well as humanity’s complex relationships to
nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is the status of things
that should rightfully be shared in common? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why must neoliberal obsessions with “property”
and the imaginary of “free markets” dominate policy discussions when there are
now robust alternatives? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">At
the same time, and in stark contrast to work on these hopeful, speculative
themes, there have arisen new concerns about ominous patterns of corporate
power now commanded by information giants – Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft,
an others – especially the political character of their relationships to their everyday
users.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The configuration of power and
authority that characterizes these organizations now is very far from
distributed democracy in which ordinary people are the beneficiaries of
computer power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some Silicon Valley
experts who study the new regimes of computer system security argue that the
actual, emerging relationship in the era of “cloud computing” amounts to kind
of feudalism in which powerless individuals seek shelter in a world of large
information corporations that function as lords of the realm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ordinary,
every computer users have no real power over firms that manage the data about
them, but must somehow find ways to trust these companies to behave
responsibly.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5232450#_edn2" name="_ednref2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of
course, the amount of data the large Internet firms have over one’s life and
communications, the capacities for surveillance they command, suggests that
such trust may not be justified at all <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In effect, everyday computer users are reduced
to the condition of techno-serfs, powerless participants in the Net who find
themselves fully subservient to the new lords of the realm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">The
situation is especially egregious in light on the military-security-industrial
complex that has expanded so quickly during the years following the terrorist attacks
in the U.S.A. of September 11, 2001.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
the spring of 2013 a wave of the stunning reports by Edward Snowden, former
employee of the National Security Agency and its corporate contractors,
revealed the extensive power of surveillance over US. citizens and elected
leaders in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere around the world. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Backdoor channels that Google and other Internet
giants have crafted with the N.S.A. make the phone calls, web browsing, email,
and other Internet centered activities of everyone (not just suspected
terrorists) visible to government authorities with little if any limitation or
legal oversight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Laws that supposedly
protect the rights and liberties of citizens are regularly and secretly
breached when it suits the purposes of a matrix that now blends government and
corporate power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Although
the relevant questions for philosophers are many and complicated, the basic
question comes down to this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Will the future be characterized by the open
informational society imagined by today’s internet visionaries, or the closed,
menacing information/security state that fills our newspaper headlines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What kinds of political order are likely to
emerge or ought to be crafted in ever advancing systems of information
technology?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What kinds of limits should
be strongly installed against insidious threats to our freedom? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">The
measures that legal scholar Alan Westin urged for privacy protection and recognition
of citizen rights at the dawn of “the information society” decades ago were
seldom if ever realized in practice. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alas,
his argument that people must insist upon a right to control the information
gathered about their lives and activities is an insight that now seems a mere
historical relic. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">In
this light, my suggestion would be that philosophers vigorously renew their speculation
and argumentation about the political character of the networked society and
the qualities of public life it contains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Edward Snowden’s reasons for leaking what he’d learned about N.S.A. and
corporate information systems are simple yet heart rending.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I don’t want to live in a world
where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every
expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded. And that’s not
something I’m willing to support, it’s not something I’m willing to build, and
it’s not something I’m willing to live under. So I think anyone who opposes
that sort of world has an obligation to act in the way they can.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5232450#_edn3" name="_ednref3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">2.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Unthinkable changes<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">As
I looked over the program for the Summer 2013 meeting of the Society for
Philosophy and Technology I noted with great pleasure the range, diversity and
quality of the topics the various scholars would be discussing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as
I read the titles of papers as well as of some of the abstracts and essays, a
gnawing question began to arise:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Upon what
planet do today’s philosophers of technology think they <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>are living?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And in what period of human history do they imagine themselves to be involved?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Trajectories
of development within prominent schools of thought and in policy deliberations
seemed familiar and yet strangely oblivious to some obvious emergencies that
have powerfully surfaced in our time and that will surely disrupt the agendas
of philosophical and social inquiry in the decades of the 21<sup>st</sup>
century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much of philosophical thinking
still quietly presupposes and leaves unquestioned basic underlying conditions
of that have served as foundations for the rise and continuation of modern
industrial societies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">There
now at least two general conditions that philosophers, STS scholars and world
societies at large can no longer take for granted, ones that challenge us to
ponder the distinct possibility that the advanced technological societies in
which we live may soon be forced into paroxysms of drastic change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One vastly important situation is our
long-standing dependence upon the cheap, readily available petroleum that fuels
virtually every function of our technological civilization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Taking my own society as an example,
America’s factories, homes, cities, automobiles, trucks, airplanes, and the
rest all presuppose the primary condition of their creation, namely a steady
supply of oil at roughly $20 a barrel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That price threshold vanished many years ago, replaced a $100 or more
price tag, a point at which the whole interconnected system begins to stall
out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one likes to talk about it, but
since the financial crash of 2008 the U.S.A has been essentially a no growth
society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While there are many reasons
for this predicament, the price of petroleum is certainly a key
determinant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is not much building
going on in America, while profuse evidence of deterioration in crucial
material and social systems, the nation’s infrastructure for example, is
everywhere to be seen. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">In
my reading of the steady stream of reports on energy, economy and society, the
peak in extraction of conventional fossil fuels has already been passed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While there is now a modest boom in
“unconventional” fossil fuels – tar sands, “tight oil” and natural gas from
hydraulic fracturation (“fracking”) – the economic and environmental costs of
such alternatives are daunting and their long term prospects highly uncertain
at best.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Equally important, there are no
cheap, easily installed replacements for the petroleum energy resources that
have served as the foundation for industrial societies during the past
century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What we see today is a frantic
stampede to grab what’s left of fossil fuel resources through deep sea
drilling, “fracking” and dead end technologies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This means that our grossly overpowered civilization faces a period in
which it will be forced to power down rather soon and with astonishing rapidity.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5232450#_edn4" name="_ednref4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">It
is possible that this transition could offer highly favorable possibilities for
human wellbeing – new ways of living more lightly on the earth, new forms of
community and human relationships superior ones that have characterized the materialistic
consumer society of recent decades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Will philosophers have a role in exploring those possibilities?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the time being it appears that although they
are not in complete denial about the implications of the end of cheap fossil
fuels, the basic perspective of most philosophers of technology remains that of
business as usual, the expectation that our way of life will continue to chug
along basically unchanged from patterns of the past two century. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Along
with a frank recognition of the many-sided energy crisis ahead, a second,
closely related condition demands our attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The most fundamental functioning of modern
technological societies depends upon the existence of a stable, favorable
climate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As most scholars surely
recognize by this time, conditions of climatological stability that have
favored the rise of world civilizations for the past 10,000 years or so are now
undergoing rapid change caused by the warming of the Earth as a consequence of
carbon gases released by human activity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While estimates vary, the scientific consensus among a wide range of
disciplines now points to global warming of 2 to 4 degrees Celsius or more by
the end of this century, temperatures that bring monster storms, wicked
droughts, floods, melting ice caps, rising seas, and other calamities often
lumped together under the comforting term “climate change,” but better
identified by English writer George Mombiot’s label, “climate crash.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">The
science that supports such findings is truly impressive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A decade ago, researchers predicted that
melting ice in the arctic would shift weather patterns northward on the North
American continent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This would bring far
less rain in the western states of the U.S.A. with persistent droughts and
burning wild fires throughout the region.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Today that has become the new normal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">During
the past two decades both the weight of evidence and intensity of warnings from
climate scientists has increased.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the
research group Real Climate announced in 2009: “</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We feel compelled to note
that even a “moderate” warming of 2°C stands a strong chance of provoking
drought and storm responses that could challenge civilized society, leading
potentially to the conflict and suffering that go with failed states and mass
migrations. Global warming of 2°C would leave the Earth warmer than it has been
in millions of years, a disruption of climate conditions that have been stable
for longer than the history of human agriculture.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia;">”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5232450#_edn5" name="_ednref5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn5;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">In
short, both the impending energy crisis and climate crash will, with a high
degree of certainty, produce a lengthy period of disruption within humanity’s
most fundamental material, social, cultural, and political patterns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many of the institutions, practices,
relationships, and beliefs that philosophers and social scientists are busily
studying and reporting in their conferences and journals will be placed under severe
stress (or worse).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">To
dramatize their theories and speculations, philosophers sometimes talk about “ruptures”
in historical thinking that their inquiries seek to describe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, if you have a taste for rupture, there
are a great number of them on the near horizon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They present us with a wide range of challenging questions of which I
can only mention a few.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">What
kind of world will be or should be created in response to the extraordinary
conditions humanity will confront?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">What
kinds of people and relationships will this world contain?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">What
will its basic institutions and technologies be?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What will become of the ideology of
limitless expansion and techno-triumphalism that has characterized the longings
of our political and economic elites in recent decades?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">During
the decades ahead philosophies of technology must somehow come to terms with
extreme, ultimately physical ruptures for which we are now utterly unprepared.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once again, as Cold War intellectuals
advised, we must begin “thinking about the unthinkable.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unlike the situation presented by the specter
of the atomic bomb, however, the world changing forces we must think about today
are not possibilities buried in covert weapons silos, but realities already
fully apparent to anyone who cares to notice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><br clear="all" />
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<!--[endif]-->
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5232450#_ednref1" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">References<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yochai Benkler, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and
Freedom </i>(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006) p. 3.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5232450#_ednref2" name="_edn2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bruce Schneier, “You Have No Control Over
Security on the Feudal Internet,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Harvard
Business Review, </i>June 6, 2013 [https://www.schneier.com/essay-430.html]<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5232450#_ednref3" name="_edn3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Edward Snowden, full transcript of interview
conducted by Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, in the website “Mondoweis”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[<span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">http://mondoweiss.net/2013/07/i-dont-want-to-live-in-a-world-where-every-expression-of-creativity-or-love-or-friendship-is-recorded-full-transcript-of-snowdens-latest-interview.html]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5232450#_ednref4" name="_edn4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A good survey of the situation in energy
can be found in the work of Richard Heinberg, especially his books <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New
Economic Reality</i> (<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Gabriola
Island, BC Canada, 2011) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Snake Oil:
How Fracking’s False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future</i> (Santa Rosa, CA:
Post Carbon Institute, 2013).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div id="edn5" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5232450#_ednref5" name="_edn5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn5;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Hit the brakes Hard,” editorial in the
website “Real Climate: Climate science from climate scientists,” April 29,
2009<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[<span style="font-family: Georgia;">http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/04/hit-the-brakes-hard/</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com76tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-22158589215965882402014-06-07T20:35:00.002-04:002014-06-07T20:38:24.945-04:00Free Libre Open Knowledge -- FLOK Society research plan<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH7md04X8KE4dsv9aDoA6bzPw_hFUe-mbKyLAh3ow-vLabSp5MeqKfaCgA2BQDsXcSbXaBZXR4Vw2KkwECLjg6-Xpwp-9I4QTrIPvcIVbKCdz0TKMfCbmEr7UgtvJ5qulYRmgj/s1600/Plan2en.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH7md04X8KE4dsv9aDoA6bzPw_hFUe-mbKyLAh3ow-vLabSp5MeqKfaCgA2BQDsXcSbXaBZXR4Vw2KkwECLjg6-Xpwp-9I4QTrIPvcIVbKCdz0TKMfCbmEr7UgtvJ5qulYRmgj/s1600/Plan2en.png" height="337" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">For all those interested in the vision and research plans of the Free Libre Open Knowledge Society discussed at the summit on "Buen Conocer" in Quito this past May, here is a link to the FLOK Society's <a href="http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan" target="_blank">current research plan</a> and its detailed, ambitious proposals for social, economic and political change. I'm still digesting and pondering all of this. It brings out the hopeful utopian in me. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEgr4-AsAplqHtK25p7rVk7L0XIk_MPfyatoU-lGFp1Ored77Q4ZatNKNQ5Ufc4NhRYtjFN-UVWe6BhVXE4o0wM3or3lPMvQnnom6IkyAw2-v1v7mAIEVtHo0d1-GI249_9WPF/s1600/Plan4en.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEgr4-AsAplqHtK25p7rVk7L0XIk_MPfyatoU-lGFp1Ored77Q4ZatNKNQ5Ufc4NhRYtjFN-UVWe6BhVXE4o0wM3or3lPMvQnnom6IkyAw2-v1v7mAIEVtHo0d1-GI249_9WPF/s1600/Plan4en.png" height="345" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-39776412119083599762014-06-06T11:28:00.001-04:002014-06-06T11:28:56.783-04:00The Buen Conocer Summit of the FLOK Society in Quito<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYIBQRZVlMuF5ROLyNcQDGazHvcmXA7ixUouLg6cRIa7zKDguM95VA9GYsbZJbgCyAbI0N8-WGkS-Xu6vFBoBJl-HvMD_PQY1u4NPkcdP3r9KlEBDgZBLWimNPx8MvHGeNkc_K/s1600/FLOK.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYIBQRZVlMuF5ROLyNcQDGazHvcmXA7ixUouLg6cRIa7zKDguM95VA9GYsbZJbgCyAbI0N8-WGkS-Xu6vFBoBJl-HvMD_PQY1u4NPkcdP3r9KlEBDgZBLWimNPx8MvHGeNkc_K/s1600/FLOK.jpg" height="353" width="640" /> </a></div>
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<b>Session of the Free Libre Open Knowledge summit in Quito </b></div>
<br />
<span class="userContent">I've just returned from the best conference
I've ever attended. It was the "summit' of the Free Libre Open
Knowledge FLOKSociety held in Quito, Ecuador. In recent times I've
followed the free software, open source, open knowledge, open cu<span class="text_exposed_show">lture,
new commons movement and its leading advocates. What happened in Quito
was phenomenal: a gathering of activists, academics, pubic policy
types, writers, hackivists, indigenous people, visionaries, etc. -- all mapping plans to take
the "open knowledge" and the "new commons" approach into education,
agriculture, new industrial production, public affairs, and other
spheres of contemporary life. Under the general label of "Buen
Conocer," the event and the year of extensive research projects that
preceded it were supported by the government of Ecuador. The next step
is an attempt to realize at least parts of the vision mapped at the
summit within that nation's public policies, perhaps becoming a model
for other countries as well as they seek alternatives to the toxic forms
of capitalism and old fashioned socialism that earlier centuries have
left behind. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show">There was a enormous amount of good energy and lively debate. Unlike the dreary scholarly gatherings I sometimes attend, there was very little show boating and trade show self-promotion that academic conferences usually feature. People seemed committed to making good ideas come to life in down-to-earth practical ways. </span></span><br />
<span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /> This <a href="http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-06-02/open-knowledge-society#" target="_blank">site</a> on the Resilience web page provides a good introduction and links for anybody interested. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show">Here in Spanish, is the <a href="http://www.floksociety.org/" target="_blank">summit's site</a>. I was primarily involved in the "Open Data and Open Government" table ("mesa," shown below), skillfully moderated by Enrique Rojas, one of fourteen "mesas" where the issues were hammered out. </span></span><br />
<span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /></span></span>
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<span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show">I'll have more to say about this later as I ponder what I heard, saw and felt about it all, and as the results of the gathering emerge. Evidently, this June will be a month in which the central organizers and researchers edit and publish the summits findings and recommendations. The only newspaper reporter from the U.S. or Europe covering the scene was a fellow from <i>The Guardian</i>. I spoke with him at length. We'll see what he has to say about the deliberations. </span></span><br />
<span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /></span></span>
<a href="http://www.floksociety.org/"><span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /></span></span></a>
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<span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /></span></span>Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-82598781232130892652014-06-02T20:56:00.001-04:002014-06-02T21:24:33.444-04:00Video of my talk: Thinking Outside the Box IS the New Box<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs-oBS53R_jP4aRiEb99OfIGFOziGGT_U8D4S-HSwcSjzC4-0X6oJZfQpZda9_hk6fqWyZK7KoijwZGCz8_J27nyWPrDk9L9YU5Pyn_IScSL__LqLV_UduHsFhrNaD1dXJ272F/s1600/God+terms.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs-oBS53R_jP4aRiEb99OfIGFOziGGT_U8D4S-HSwcSjzC4-0X6oJZfQpZda9_hk6fqWyZK7KoijwZGCz8_J27nyWPrDk9L9YU5Pyn_IScSL__LqLV_UduHsFhrNaD1dXJ272F/s1600/God+terms.png" height="212" width="320" /></a></div>
The "god terms" of world societies have an "inherent potency" <br />
- Richard M. Weaver<br />
<br />
At the request of a group of Rensselaer students last May I delivered a Ted-ish "TALK" in a new series of short lectures by the university's faculty. My topic was "Thinking Outside the Box IS the New Box." You'll see that I poke fun at one of the untouchable sacred cows of our era. <br />
<br />
Now a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=L4hWK6KArI4" target="_blank">video of my remarks</a> has been released by Rensselaer along with the <a href="http://rensselaertalks.com/" target="_blank">other lectures</a> offered that afternoon. <br />
<br />
An <a href="http://technosciencepeople.wordpress.com/2014/05/17/outside-is-the-new-box/" target="_blank">illustrated transcription</a> and Soundcloud recording of my presentation was prepared by RPI graduate students in the Department of Science and Technology Studies: Dan Lyles, Ben Brucato and Taylor Dotson. Many thanks guys! <br />
<br />
(No more Aspen for me.)<br />
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<br />Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-13562130775854840762014-05-25T12:25:00.000-04:002014-05-25T12:27:34.409-04:00Mysteries of "intellectual" property revealed<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR-Ie9pf19qh9xIutjKg2-jLorqahv75XA4b60DBFtrYHfFcwxj6y2OEN0iE0DGFyDv33vRpctCo1lte4R0MMRtEfWbgsbzrtY9BPWq1hNEl9eoiQ-wtxAFOL21JscvAqCM3Um/s1600/csp_savio-arrest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR-Ie9pf19qh9xIutjKg2-jLorqahv75XA4b60DBFtrYHfFcwxj6y2OEN0iE0DGFyDv33vRpctCo1lte4R0MMRtEfWbgsbzrtY9BPWq1hNEl9eoiQ-wtxAFOL21JscvAqCM3Um/s1600/csp_savio-arrest.jpg" height="320" width="255" /></a></div>
Mario Savio arrested in an attempt to speak at a<br />
campus colloquium on The Free Speech Movement,<br />
U.C. Berkeley, fall 1964<br />
<br />
<br />
The plot thickens on the shutdown of my lecture on the "Qatsi" films of Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass and the influence of Jacques Ellul upon their themes, a little talk scheduled for the conference of the Jacques Ellul Society at Carleton University this July. <br />
<br />
The messages from the university spokespersons have gotten increasingly stern, schooling me on the fine points of intellectual property practice in Canada nowadays. Below in total anonymity once again are the latest messages to me with other identifying information deleted as well. None of the writers has asked for confidentiality on the content of the messages and their names will not be part of anything I write about this debacle. Actually, they are all very fine people and I don't blame them for what's happened. <br />
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[message from pseudonym "Fred" mentioned in previous post]<br />
<br />
Dear .... If you read the law it is designed for creators...not just writers. Below is what the university has to say. Also, your interpretation of the writing situation isn't quite correct. Canadian copyright includes provisions concerning moral rights which aren’t concerned with lost revenue...but the right of a creator to have some control over where the creator’s work is used. As I understand it, this is one difference between Canada and the US. I demand that all my authors who use another author's work [quotes etc.] get permissions. What is interesting are the few cases where they are refused permission to use the work even if they are willing to pay. This typically occurs when one poet uses a small bit of another's work as an epigraph. I’m sorry that this is upsetting to folks. This may be an issue of free speech, or it may be an issue of a creator’s right to have control of his/her work. If the person who wants to use the work knows the creator, as in this case, then there shouldn’t be any problem since the creator will give permission, no doubt. Moral rights may seem silly, but I know that many of my poets wouldn’t like to see bits of their poems on porn sites…even if the site host would pay. .... Perhaps your suggestion is best, [name]... to just shift responsibility to you. This would require that the conference rather than [university unit X] be the host for the talk. Hopefully, my obviously absurd affronts and incompetence [in asking a simple question] won’t prevent Langdon from attending. .... Sorry about all the difficulties.<br />
<br />
**********<br />
[message from another campus person the email writers consulted]<br />
Hi ...<br />
Generally guest speakers are responsible for clearing the copyright of what they present. I can give you some general information about copyright. One of the questions here would be the length of the film clips, and to ensure that no digital locks were broken in creating the clips.<br />
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From Langdon:<br />
<br />
Well, there you have it, folks. Under the circumstances, I WON'T be going to Ottawa to give my talk. A lawyer friend and expert in the wiles of IP has now warned me about the troubles I might be getting into. What interests me now is less the outcome of the current dispute, but something I've been wondering about for a long while, namely, the meaning of the beguiling term "intellectual property."<br />
<br />
At this point it appears that at the national level there are legislators writing laws, bureaucrats crafting regulations, both probably responding to large corporations and trade associations that make sure their demands become part of a nation’s legal framework. I imagine that at the university level there are lawyers who oversee which activities and resources are permissible on campus, advising academic departments and research units about the complicated conditions that now inform and constrain their inquiries. At the end of the chain, I suspect, are timorous faculty required to observe the increasingly complex rituals of compliance that now comprise the center of academic life. Hence, professors dutifully advise students to probe the key questions in sciences, the humanities and social sciences of the 21st century -- questions about the liabilities, law suits, insurance policies, restraining orders, and career threatening hazards their research entails. <br />
<br />
An imaginary dialog:<br />
<br />
“Do I dare to eat a peach?”<br />
<br />
“Great question, Professor Winner. Of course you’ll have to check the extensive legal implications and entanglements entailed in peach consumption or, for that matter, even talking publicly about peaches. And oh, by the way, wasn’t that “peach” line you just used taken from T.S. Eliot? His property management firm has been up in arms recently, challenging our proposed “Waste Management Systems” logo as an infringement of their global “Wasteland” trademark. They may lodge a complaint. So it’s probably wise to delete that “peach” reference altogether. It might be prudent to change your question to: Do I have the requisite authorizations to taste a small portion of an avocado without obtaining permission from the avocado producers? That might work, for a little while longer maybe."<br />
<br />
In the months ahead I plan to do a lot more research, thinking and writing on these matters. For the moment, my simple, perhaps overly naive questions are these:<br />
<br />
1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Is the regime of property protection now thoroughly installed in our institutions offensive to academic freedom, scholarly inquiry, political free speech, and open public debate? Answer: yes.<br />
<br />
2.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Does the current regime of property protection buttress the unequal economic and political power of corporations and the wealthy few in world societies while seriously weakening the power of possible critics of the system of Techno-capitalism? Answer: yes. <br />
<br />
3.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Were my own rights of academic freedom and political free speech undermined by the property protection measures that now govern “the life of the mind” in Canada? Answer: yes.<br />
<br />
4.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Are scholars, scientists and their students now being enlisted as thought police in today’s property protection rackets? Answer: yes.<br />
<br />
To all of this I would only add that I’m looking forward to celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Free Speech Movement in Berkeley 1964, an event that changed my life and thinking profoundly. Back then it was pressure of a ham-fisted political kind that challenged free speech and academic integrity on the university campus. Students and faculty resisted and eventually won. Today the threats are more subtle, insidious and likely more destructive in the long run. Alas, the “intellectuals” have become front line troops in the war to defend the citadels of global capital.<br />
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<br />Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-9021485074999807972014-05-22T23:28:00.000-04:002014-05-23T16:30:31.863-04:00Intellectual property? Where the hell are the intellectuals?<style>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS3JtEAMLDIQA9Z8JnpwzNRPjrv1lDjcdQj930Mn44D8Ncnu86v-UaIouAUkmUydHKuvmDBJs8AB6G2LKXJrQvFJUqO5pXyQHkkuZNni4U5SC7FPqp6b4jLZLk62Y1RzXeOMpw/s1600/Cagney-in-White-Heat-1949.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS3JtEAMLDIQA9Z8JnpwzNRPjrv1lDjcdQj930Mn44D8Ncnu86v-UaIouAUkmUydHKuvmDBJs8AB6G2LKXJrQvFJUqO5pXyQHkkuZNni4U5SC7FPqp6b4jLZLk62Y1RzXeOMpw/s1600/Cagney-in-White-Heat-1949.jpg" height="238" width="320" /></a></div>
James Cagney in "White Heat" (1949)<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Stop Me Before I Lecture Again!</b></span><br />
<br />
There I was working quietly in my study when suddenly ...<br />
<br />
I've been invited to give a talk at conference of the Jacques Ellul Society in Ottawa this July 13-15. It should be a wonderful event. I'd planned to give an illustrated lecture, "The 'Qatsi' Films of Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass," focusing upon the three films -- "Koyaanisqatsi," "Powaqqatsi," and "Naqoyqatsi" -- and the influence of Ellul's thinking upon their overall conception. I've given the talk a couple of times before, using selected segments from DVD copies of the movies. I offer my interpretation of the images and music, drawing upon key on themes in Ellul's writing. The film clips are treated as, in effect, "texts" for philosophical discussion. <br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span> Alas, as I was making travel arrangements and checking on the technical details of my talk, a strange cloud gathered over the plans. Below is the email exchange with names changed (to "Fred" and "Prof. Williams") to protect the two fine Canadian scholars who were unfortunately bearers of bad news from the Carleton University pettifoggers. <br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times;">Hi
Langdon, <br />
<br />
Just one further question. The university is very concerned with intellectual
property rights. I'm assuming you have permissions to use the clips. In case
someone asks, however, could you confirm. Thanks. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times;">Cheers, </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times;">Fred </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times;">Dear Fred, <br />
<br />
No, and I won't bother to get them. I take this to be fair use for <br />
scholarly purposes and public discussion. I've given the talk <br />
informally at conferences and on university campuses with no problem, <br />
simply pulling out the clips from the DVD. The only thing I'm doing <br />
differently here (as opposed the Wheaton College version) is to smooth <br />
the transitions by editing segments into a flow easier to sequence with <br />
my lecture remarks. But if the bean counters are worried, the lecture <br />
will have to be cancelled. <br />
<br />
It that happens, it certainly will make a great story I can tell at a <br />
conference on Free Libre Open Knowledge I'll be attending in Quito next <br />
week. <br />
Best wishes, <br />
Langdon </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times;">Dear Professor Williams, <br />
<br />
Could be lights out. <br />
<br />
See Fred's message … and my response. <br />
<br />
Best wishes </span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times;">Langdon</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times;"> % %%%</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times;"><br />
Hi Langdon, <br />
I agree with your approach. This is a non-paying audience, and you are using
clips to illustrate your points, not to act as a substitute for the films. In
fact, your presentation can be expected to attract people to a film by the same
film-makers. If I were Godfrey Reggio or Philip Glass I'd be very happy with
what you are doing. <br /> </span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times;">A request for permission may be interpreted as a request for permission to go
beyond fair use, and if such permission is refused what do you do? If the idea
was fair use from the start, why would you have to ask? <br />
I hope this gets resolved quickly and in your (our) favour. The University's
Film Studies department must have dealt with this question before and I could
ask them about their practice. <br /> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times;">Best, <br />
</span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times;">Professor Williams</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times;">Hi all, <br />
<br />
I am looking into this. As I understand things, Canadian and US copyright law
differ on fair use. When used in Canada, Canadian law applies. I don't want to
have to deal with permissions, but the university insists that we are responsible
for applying copyright. <br />
<br />
Cheers, <br />
</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times;">Fred</span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times;"> % % % % % % </span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Dear Fred, <br />
<br />
I await the results with baited breath. Meanwhile the story is already
the source of great guffas among those preparing for the Summit on Free Libre
Open Knowledge in Quito at which I'll be speaking next week. Open
Culture, Open Knowledge indeed! <br />
<br />
Even if cleared for takeoff, I seriously doubt I'll attend the Ottawa
conference after this absurd affront. <br />
<br />
By the way, I receive a credit in the first of the Qatsi films and have known
Reggio for decades. I'm sure he'll be amused when he hears that I'm
unable to describe, interpret and reflect upon his work in a free, public
forum. <br />
<br />
Best wishes, <br />
Langdon </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;"> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Note (May 22, 2014)</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I will supply updates on this situation if the anything changes or if sanity breaks out. This is the best (worst) personal experience I've had with the insidious consequences of "Intellectual Property" regimes for scholarship and public debate. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>May 23, 2004:</b> Here are the latest points of clarification. Evidently there is a new "Intellectual Property" law that has some noble purposes but with annoying consequences for the life of the mind. I have edited the message below from the pseudonymous "Professor Williams," excluding parts of the message that point to the person's identity. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;"> <span style="font-size: large;"> * * * * * * *</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<pre wrap="">Hello all,
The new copyright law in Canada was designed to protect writers, who generally don't get paid well, in contrast to educators who generally get a decent salary. All too often, excerpts from books have been used in courses and the writer, whose chapters would be reproduced, got nothing. The idea was that just because the purpose is education it doesn't mean that the writer should not be compensated.
The situation with Langdon is very different, in the way I described in my last letter. Far from ripping off the movie-makers, he is providing his own valuable content and encouraging his audience to acquaint themselves with their works. Indeed, we are renting "Visitors" for that very purpose. The movie-makers should be happy.
The Canadian copyright law is rather complicated, and bean-counters with less of a concern for the overall knowledge exercise will naturally be conservative. Their natural instinct is to rein professors in, since they are concerned with financial risk-reduction and a lawsuit is one of those lose-lose situations (even if you win, you lose with your legal costs). What we, as educators have to do is to look at the larger picture of what the spirit of the law is, and how we can accommodate our work to it without jeopardizing our own mission.
Lawyers and administrators are not likely to be helpful. I suggest just going ahead ..</pre>
<pre wrap=""><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></pre>
<pre wrap=""><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> * * * * * * * * * *</span></span></pre>
<pre wrap=""><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Langdon's comment:
</span></span></pre>
<pre wrap=""><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Well At this point I think I'll go ahead an give the damn presentation, intellectual property crimes and </span></span></pre>
<pre wrap=""><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">all. However, it will now begin with the following introduction, offered James Cagney style: </span></span></pre>
<pre wrap=""><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></pre>
<pre wrap=""><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;">"Come and get me coppers! You ain't takin' me alive! The only way </span></span></span></pre>
<pre wrap=""><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;">I'm gonna stop is when you rip these lecture notes from my cold dead </span></span></span></pre>
<pre wrap=""><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;">fingers!"</span></span></span></pre>
<pre wrap=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span></pre>
<pre wrap=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span></pre>
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Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-79507707315007132622014-04-11T11:28:00.000-04:002014-04-12T11:07:57.197-04:00Hitler finds out he's not admitted to Design program<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Recently, in my class on Design, Culture and Society at Rensselaer, we've been talking about humor and creativity. I made the classic argument that a joke or comic expression of some kind typically springs forth when two or more seemingly unrelated frames of meaning temporarily collide to produce a laugh or a smile. The larger point is that creativity in a much broader sense can also happen during collisions of that sort. I noted that in New York City and elsewhere there are literally boiler rooms where talented people sit around every day engaged in crafting these events, writing and testing dozens of amusing lines for the comedians on late night television shows. As I understand it, they start with the daily news and start exploring points of connection, an odd variety of mass production.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">With these thoughts in mind, I happened upon a version of the famous Internet gag, the "Hitler finds out" program, one that lets anybody write subtitles for a scene lifted from an old movie about Hitler's last day in his bunker in Berlin. There are probably thousands of versions of this on YouTube. </span>So I decided to produce one for the class, "Hitler finds out that he's not been admitted to the Design, Innovation and Society program" at RPI. I included several in jokes from the semester, for example a reference to the three weeks we spent reading and discussing Jeff Wiltse's wondeful book, <i>Contested Waters</i>, a history of swimming pools in the USA. The script took all of 20 minutes to write and, alas, includes some typos. (You get what you pay for.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I showed the clip yesterday with brief introduction that took note of the fact that young Adolf Hitler desperately wanted to become a painter, applying twice to an important school of art in Vienna and twice rejected. I noted that in some ways his dreams matched their own -- the desire to become a successful designer and artist. "Looking back on it now, it may have been one of the most calamitous turning points in the 20th century. Think of all the destruction, suffering and slaughter that might have been prevented if only young Adolf has been admitted to art school." I then observed that "a little known (very little known) fact is that Hitler applied to a forerunner of the program in which you are studying in at Rensselaer." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Of course, the humor in all of these "Hitler finds out..." clips stems from the fact that most Americans can't understand a word of the German the actors on the screen are speaking and the fact that watching Hitler rant and rave about matters from our own time, ones disconnected from World War II, from the Holocaust and other calamities, produces effects that are sometimes funny.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Here's the clip: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxFjTJctON0" target="_blank">Hitler finds out he's not admitted to the Design, Innovation and Society program</a></span><br />
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<br />Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-80898805311229767612014-04-09T14:06:00.000-04:002014-04-09T14:06:09.982-04:00Stop the corporate coup at Medialab-Prado!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbEnDsolkpKRp51oA2kV4jX2Hds9uAJJxq_3jcWH_Nx91j_Jf7jyYYgprvnY4ctAglYhyKhJPQqTjCmFTgFgi-BOnGppRYw80QLH-92IGROSJq0yWlAhvH3uae0ix-49rz1o1b/s1600/500_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbEnDsolkpKRp51oA2kV4jX2Hds9uAJJxq_3jcWH_Nx91j_Jf7jyYYgprvnY4ctAglYhyKhJPQqTjCmFTgFgi-BOnGppRYw80QLH-92IGROSJq0yWlAhvH3uae0ix-49rz1o1b/s1600/500_0.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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I recently received word that one of the world's most positive and influential centers for the confluence of artistic, technical and political ideas is threatened by a corporate takeover of its building and its very mission. Medialab-Prado in Madrid has long served as a haven for inventors, thinkers, tinkerers, community activists, students, international visitors, and ordinary citizens. Over the years it has offered countless workshops, conferences, planning sessions, displays of public art, free wheeling debates, and all manner of lively, ground-breaking activity. Now the city officials who control the building it occupies have hatched a scheme to turn over its space to a huge telecommunications firm and send the Medialab staff and participants to God knows where.<br />
<br />
I first got to know the Medialab in the summer of 2010 while I was visiting Spain on a Fulbright Fellowship, studying how the Internet was changing Spanish politics. The very best help I received in finding people to interview, documents to read and events to monitor came from key people at Medialab-Prado. A high point was a dialog one evening in which Yochai Benkler, Javier Bustamante and I discussed the substance and significance of Benkler's ideas about the networked economy and networked public life. Since that summer I've returned frequently and watched Medialab-Prado grow and expanded its reach into a great many of the 21st century's most vital and hopeful spheres of exploration.<br />
<br />
At present I'm trying to learn more about what seems to be a diabolical plot to shove Medialab-Prado and its participants into the dark shadows now enveloping much of the global economy. I want to scream: "STOP THIS! STOP THIS FOOLISH SCHEME NOW!" I know it will take much more than that. Will you lend a hand in investigating, protesting and seeking alternatives to these hideous, unfolding plans? Let's get BUSY!<br />
<br />
Below is the best information I have, a long message from Jose Luis de Vicente forward to me by the noted historian, Antonio Lafuente<br />
<br />
- Langdon Winner<br />
<br />
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *<br />
<br />
<div>
<b>HELP US SAVE MEDIALAB PRADO</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Dear Friends, </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Probably
many of you have already heard about the serious problems that Medialab
Prado is undergoing currently that threatens to stop the activity of
the center and maybe, in the mid term, it’s very existence. I know many
of you have in the past years taken part in projects and activities
there, and have good memories of the institution. Even those of you who
have not been there have heard about it and know it’s an interesting,
lively place that has made significant contributions to this community.
Now it needs as much support from the community as possible to go on. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>What it’s going on?</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Less
than one year ago, Medialab Prado opened, after 5 year of renovation
and 6 million Euro of public investment, a brand new building. A new
facility that multiplies the size of the previous space by eight and
creates all kind of new opportunities, with much better resources.
While the previous space kept the organization relatively under the
radar for many in the city council, the new building is really iconic
and has raised the profile of the organization considerably. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Recently
we have learned that major telecommunications multinacional Telefónica
is looking for a building in Madrid to set up its new startup incubator
and has expressed interest in the Medialab Prado building. The City
Council, always eager to please, has considered the request and has
acknowledged in public that they are under negotiations to satisfy this
request. The implications for Medialab Prado are, obviously, quite
serious. While they insist in theory on keeping their support for the
institution, the reality is that:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
- they have
not made a firm offer of a new space that is already available and in
the right conditions to continue the program with no major disruptions</div>
<div>
- they have not committed to invest any resource in allocating the center in a new space</div>
<div>
-
they have not guaranteed that any transfer could be done promptly and
without a long transition that could stop the activity in the center for
many months</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The reality is that Medialab Prado
could be stuck in a limbo for a very long period, and any development
from the possible eviction onwards is at this point very uncertain. The
community of users of Medialab Prado has serious concerns that this
could start a process that could end with the death of the institution.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
To
make things worse, it’s important to notice that the building that
Telefónica wants to take over has been renovated with public money and
with the specific goal of being a cultural facility. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>How can you help? </b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We
need to show the City Council in clear terms that Medialab Prado is an
important institution that is highly respected and valued
internationally. One of the most ironic aspects of this situation is
that given the problems they’ve always had to understand what is
Medialab Prado -not being a museum, a gallery, or an arts production
center- they have never been understood that this is one of the most
influential and valued cultural institutions today in Madrid and Spain. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There’s
no one better than you to help us to make them understand how important
is protecting and preserving the valuable role that Medialab Prado has
played in the last ten years. For this, we are requesting any of this
three things:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
1. <b>A statement or blog post i</b>n
your own website explaining why you appreciate and value the role of
MLP and showing your concern for how the current situation could
threaten it. We will link to it and translate it from the website of
support we are currently setting up, that should go live in the next
hours.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
2. For those of you with affiliations with universities, museums or companies, <b>a signed letter of support </b>with
the logo of your organization. If you can send it to me I will get it
into the website and also printed to send them all together to the City
Council.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
3. <b>A short video </b>that we can
embed in the website, offering your support. Here are some videos from 1
year ago -before the crisis started- that can be used as a model:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="http://medialab-prado.es/article/medialabinternacional" target="_blank">http://medialab-prado.es/<wbr></wbr>article/medialabinternacional</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That
is all. If you have other suggestions or contributions, please let us
know. Thanks for helping us keep Medialab Prado alive.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Best,</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Jose Luis de Vicente</div>
<div>
</div>
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</div>
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Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-60783638336243571832014-02-15T10:52:00.000-05:002014-02-15T10:52:03.482-05:00Radio interview on Progressive Radio Network <br />
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<br />
I recently did a radio interview with author/teacher/activist Charlene Sprenak on the Progressive Radio Network. We talked about technology in everyday life, MOOCs and their historical (or is it hysterical?) precursors, the veneration of "innovation" and such topics. <br />
<br />
Thinking outside the box ... IS the new box. <br />
<br />
<br />Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-25252182456287769882014-01-28T11:28:00.000-05:002014-01-28T11:30:23.050-05:00New unanswered questions about Benghazi<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Still shrouded in mystery</span></b><br />
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Unanswered questions about Benghazi:</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">1. When there’s air
pollution in the city, does the weatherman say “Benghazi today, but clear
tomorrow”?</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">2. Wasn’t the
original name of the place “Bengay,” later changed so as not to offend Muslim
conservatives? </span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">3. Rumor has it that
there was a 1950s comedian named Jack Benghazi with a sidekick named
Rochester. Is this true? </span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">4. Did Neil Diamond
ever do a concert in Benghazi? If so,
did he sing “Sweet Caroline”?</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">5. What’s the best
deep dish pizza in Benghazi? </span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">If you have information about any of these matters, please
send them to your local Republican Party officials and/or Fox News.</span><br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-63598730676166798582014-01-13T12:02:00.001-05:002014-01-13T12:08:07.769-05:00Hot new gadget -- The Smart Cup <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZJQ26C0X5AS_cAMuE8iY6IEngHoXMHNfD_inv6v9Cd_UXv62H7qT_X1leq1yH8RUjI-yhLkarb178gWvMPtDV7sj41i4fVfv8m8Vh4wQMEIKigtB-ICV_Ghk3IitTv3Qmf3Ya/s1600/coffee+cup.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZJQ26C0X5AS_cAMuE8iY6IEngHoXMHNfD_inv6v9Cd_UXv62H7qT_X1leq1yH8RUjI-yhLkarb178gWvMPtDV7sj41i4fVfv8m8Vh4wQMEIKigtB-ICV_Ghk3IitTv3Qmf3Ya/s1600/coffee+cup.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>The Smart Cup </b></span><br />
<br />
Although little noticed in the trade papers, this gadget was one of the hot new products introduced at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. Here's the company's press release:<br />
<br />
For countless decades people have used conventional coffee cups and tea cups for drinking warm beverages. But seldom has anyone explored ways of improving the cups by integrating digital technology and state-of-the-art communications into their structures. Recently the X Project research team at Gaggle, Inc. under the direction of entrepreneur L.C. Winner (formerly CEO of EDUSHAM) has discovered ways to unleash the power of the latest microchips, Big Data and Cloud Computing to produce the first truly innovative coffee cup in generations. <br />
<br />
<b>Product specifications: </b><br />
<br />
— powerful microchip integrated seamlessly into the cup’s ceramic base;<br />
<br />
— electronic sensors in the bowl and handle of the cup to detect relevant temperatures, hand and arm motions of the drinker and rate of consumption;<br />
<br />
— mini wireless connection to the Cloud provides instantaneous access to massive amounts of data on the drinking habits of billions of consumers worldwide, adapting the cup’s temperature to the drinker’s personal profile; <br />
<br />
— rechargeable battery powers all electronic components.<br />
<br />
<b>Performance: </b><br />
<br />
The Smart Cup responds gracefully to the presence of hot liquids, keeping them warm for several minutes by carefully calculating the rate at which the drinker is likely to consume the product, allowing slow cool down as the person finishes.<br />
<br />
Following a drinking session, the Smart Cup powers down automatically, sitting quietly on a table or kitchen shelf, awaiting the next introduction of hot liquid. <br />
<br />
The Smart Cup is fully washable and dishwasher ready. <br />
<br />
Smart Cups are available in a variety of attractive colors and decorative patterns matched to each consumer’s personal taste.<br />
<br />
<b>Estimated cost: $399</b><br />
<br />
<br />Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-27347514316443917052013-12-30T12:47:00.000-05:002013-12-30T12:50:50.609-05:00My top ten predictions for the New Year<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFzrikj9LuRBkAAFv7yforq-Wgix2o_Q-C4DAHTy4sLA4vGwK7VMKKFg9AHC-9S3Ar_mqEuBCQ48cTjkirj-n8xI0I9C1exRn63Iat3fniWV78FWakj4pYMUnO-zZKjCpUH-UM/s1600/New-Years-Eve-Fireworks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFzrikj9LuRBkAAFv7yforq-Wgix2o_Q-C4DAHTy4sLA4vGwK7VMKKFg9AHC-9S3Ar_mqEuBCQ48cTjkirj-n8xI0I9C1exRn63Iat3fniWV78FWakj4pYMUnO-zZKjCpUH-UM/s400/New-Years-Eve-Fireworks.jpg" width="400" /></a> <br />
<br />
<b>My top ten predictions for 2014</b><br />
<br />
1. The success of Republican obstructionism in prolonging the Great Recession will produce a voter backlash, but one aimed at the Democrats and Obama. <br />
<br />
2. Lack of serious attention to global warming as the world’s central policy crisis will persist. Carbon emissions will continue their steady, dangerous rise. <br />
<br />
3. Faced with mounting college debts and paltry job prospects after graduation, students will begin to question the value of higher education with fierce intensity. <br />
<br />
4. Leaks of information about unlimited government powers to monitor people’s phone calls, emails and Internet browsing will continue apace. Court cases on the issue will proliferate, generating a Supreme Court decision, probably in 2015.<br />
<br />
5. The precipitous decline of American journalism will be recognized as a national embarrassment as serious reporting on factual matters is replaced by incessant chatter of poorly informed opinions.<br />
<br />
6. The growing gap of inequality in wealth and income will widen further, while those with the power to do anything about it relish the fabulous benefits it brings them. Blaming the poor and unemployed for their own misery will skyrocket as a popular political meme. <br />
<br />
7. Celebrations of a new fossil fuel boom from widespread fracking will fade as its underling economics and environmental consequences become more widely known. <br />
<br />
8. The future of American football as the national game will fall under a shadow as the facts about long term brain damage to players gain public recognition. Parents will pull their children out of Pop Warner and high school football programs. <br />
<br />
9. The spread of online shopping and long distance shipping will rapidly erode the vitality of local businesses, causing concerns about a new, hyper version of the Wal-Mart effect, devastating jobs, communities and families across the country. <br />
<br />
10. The vitality of popular music in its many national and international genres will continue to shine and surprise, even as the quest to make a living in the music business becomes increasingly difficult.<br />
<br />
Bonus forecast: The gnawing question -- What are conservatives conserving? -- will remain embarrassingly unanswered. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5232450.post-29465317772398310042013-12-20T14:26:00.000-05:002013-12-20T14:26:55.682-05:00MOOCs meet the Automatic Professor Machine <b> </b><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<b><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PTkHXDFXaek/UrSUbgVECWI/AAAAAAAAA1s/ol9XQuKtMOs/s1600/APM2-2001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="271" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PTkHXDFXaek/UrSUbgVECWI/AAAAAAAAA1s/ol9XQuKtMOs/s400/APM2-2001.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></div>
<br />
<br />
<b>Here are some excerpts from a new book by Jeffrey R. Young, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&field-keywords=Beyond%20the%20MOOC%20Hype&index=blended&link_code=qs&sourceid=Mozilla-search&tag=mozilla-20" target="_blank">Beyond the MOOC Hype</a>, </i> an excellent, brief discussion of a variety of programs and projects in MOOC development currently underway. Young takes note of my send up of technology in education from the skit, "Introducing The Automatic Professor Machine," first done in several in-person performances in the late 1990s. (It now exists in a two part, low production value video on YouTube: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYOZVdpdmws" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHnE5oknGfg" target="_blank">here</a>. ) When I first presented the talk at a conference at Penn State (with Ivan Illich in the audience) I observed that while people there probably knew me as a long time technology critic, "I've now had a change of heart." An audible gasp arose from the audience ....</b><br />
<br />
<b>Young also quotes a recent interview with me and my and alter ego, L.C. Winner, CEO of Educational Smart Hardware Alma Matter, Inc. (EDUSHAM). </b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>From Chapter 5: WHY DO SOME EDUCATORS OBJECT TO FREE COURSES?</b><br />
<br />
In 1998, when an earlier boom in “interactive education” was just getting started, a political theorist and technology critic named Langdon Winner staged a performance-art piece meant to expose what he saw as the true motives of online-education proponents.<br />
<br />Wearing a suit with a red power tie, he held a mock news conference where he unveiled a product called the Automatic Professor Machine, or APM, which looked like a bank ATM but could dispense educational products “from preschool to postdocs.” Students would put cash—about $300 per class—into a slot, get a CD-ROM packed with knowledge and homework assignments, then upload their completed work into the machine for automatic grading. It could eventually print out your college degree.<br />
<br />“Beginning this spring, thousands of these attractive consoles will appears in schools, colleges, fast-food restaurants, shopping malls, prisons, and other places where people gather these days,” Mr. Winner said, posing as CEO of EduSham, the fictional company offering this spoof product (the company name was an acronym for Educational Smart Hardware Alma Mater). “Our lectures and seminars will be given only by the top 10 stars in any given scholarly field. After all, why mess around with the small fry?”<br />
<br />
Mr. Winner, a political-science professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is known for his irreverent style. While he was in graduate school, at the University of California at Berkeley, in the 1960s, he wrote reviews for Rolling Stone, hosted a radio program on an “underground” station, and played in a spoof rock band called the Masked Marauders. In several books over his long academic career, he has critiqued what he sees as the American love affair with technology, which he says blinds people to some of the implications of high-tech inventions.<br />
<br />At the mock press conference, the professor struck the pose of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. In character, he made light of the implications of his invention, arguing that the Automatic Professor Machine would make traditional professors obsolete. “Today’s educators may think that they are crucial to education, that their presence is required. But, my friends, they are simply mistaken,” he deadpanned. “By comparison, think of the elevator operators decades ago, who probably rejoiced when automatic controls came into elevators. They said, ‘Oh, wonderful, now our jobs will be more interesting and more fun. We’ll be able to talk to the people on the elevators. We’ll have less physical to work to, and so forth.’ Well, we know what happened to the elevator operators. At EduSham, we view the elimination of the old practices, the old structures, and particularly the old personnel as good news!”<br />
<br />Like a good Saturday Night Live skit, the satire dragged on past the easiest parts of the joke, taking the product idea to its extreme. The EduSham president announced plans to use wearable computing technology to somehow transfer knowledge to students through clothing, and he showed a picture of a prototype: a T-shirt with a computer mouse draped over the shoulder. “In a future,” he proclaimed, “the T-shirt will simply be your alma mater.”<br />
<br />“On all sides,” he concluded, “we see a frantic but halfhearted scramble by those at old-fashioned institutions to catch up to the dynamism of this extraordinary historical situation. At EduSham, we look upon all of this with amusement, watching as teachers and administrators scramble to sacrifice their long-held principles and practices in a frantic quest to catch up and survive in the era of digital communications.”<br />
<br />I was still a relatively new reporter at The Chronicle when that ed-tech boom was going, and I covered what seemed like a loud and widespread backlash against online education. Many professors pushed back against the ideas that parts of teaching could be replaced<br />with computers and that degrees were products that could be digitized like so many other goods and services.<br />
<br />
. . . . <br />
<br />
[Mr. Young goes on to summarize some of the key controversies and criticisms of MOOCs and eventually moves on to a telephone interview done early last fall.]<br />
<br />
If a big advantage of MOOCs is the large data sets of student behavior, who will get to see that information to learn from it? And will the privacy of students be protected? Curtis J. Bonk, a professor of education at Indiana University at Bloomington, said he worried that MOOC providers could end up selling student data to companies that are “soliciting things you didn’t mean to be getting.”<br />
<br />As all of these issues have begun to get attention, satire has inevitably made its way into discussions of MOOCs.<br />
<br />Laurie Essig, an associate professor of sociology and women’s and gender studies at Middlebury College, put forth her own proposal for the future of high-tech education on The Chronicle blog The Conversation. Her vision: massive open online administrations, or MOOAs.<br />“Think about it: MOOAs are the perfect solution to the rising cost of higher education,” she wrote. “We take superstar administrators and let them administer tens, maybe even hundreds, of thousands of faculty at a time. The Ivy League and Nescac colleges could pool their upper management as could, say, Midwestern state colleges that start with “I” or “O.”<br />
<br />And so I called Mr. Winner, the technology critic who had staged the Automatic Professor Machine skit more than a decade ago, and I asked him what he thought of MOOCs.<br />
<br />He consulted his alter ego, the president of EduSham, which had made the APM. “His model now is that of hydrofracturing, or fracking, education,” Mr. Winner said. “What you do is you pump in course materials and lots of volatile rhetoric, and once you’ve broken up the substrata of the educational institutions, then you pump out whatever value you can.” EduSham apparently offers MOOCs but calls them massive obnoxious online commodities.<br />
<br />Why hasn’t Mr. Winner been more vocal in his concern? “I really see MOOCs as just the latest version of a very old story,” he said. “It’s very interesting that there’s no museum of the history of technology in education. I think the reason is that nobody wants to remember what happened five years ago or 15 years ago, because these things have always been failures.”<br />
<br />“We package this stuff as if you go through a set of courses and that’s what matters,” he said of traditional colleges. “But I always tell my students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, I say if you leave this place without a network of friends and colleagues, people your age with interest in the fields of knowledge and practice that you have mastered, and you leave this place without three or four faculty who would respond to a letter-of-recommendation request saying whether this person is any good, then you’ve wasted your money. Because education is not just about what you have in your head, but some precious things that are not very well understood.”<br />
<br />Those not-very-well understood qualities can’t be translated to a MOOC, he argued. “They create this one-size-fits all model—the idea that education is basically a matter of information transfer from point A to point B. That fundamentally misunderstands what education is about, which is human relationships.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Langdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17645931273504013906noreply@blogger.com0