From: Will Vacher <WVacher-AT-clifton-college.avon.sch.uk>
Subject: RE: society and technology
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 18:12:36 -0000


Me.  Infact if i was to find myself in a position of ' deviancy' then i
would certainly take a ludditial turn.....(!)

The mobile phone allows not only for the imbalance of master/slave
continuum but also a rather more tangeable effect - communication.
Agreed, not such a philosophical line of thought but one which i feel
has much relevance to most (if not all?) parallel lines of philosophy.
Being a psychologist, i can remind/tell you that if it where not
language there would be no explaination of anything - nothing asked,
nothing answered.  Try thinking without language! Old Mr. Id would have
a roaring time with instinctual synapsual activities roaring left right
and centre.  So mobile phones have given us everything, and without them
you and i would no exist.  Now where did that nokia man with the
briefcase and used notes go........

Enjoying your opinions without being able to contribute to most of them!

JdWv






> ----------
> From: 	Muscio, Chris[SMTP:chris.muscio-AT-wcom.co.uk]
> Reply To: 	technology-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Sent: 	Monday, October 16, 2000 8:59 AM
> To: 	'Brad McCormick, Ed.D.'; technology-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Cc: 	Muscio, Chris; lyotard; steve.brockbank-AT-aduronet.com
> Subject: 	RE: society and technology
> 
> Not only the mobile phone but also the laptop and RAS access craete
> the
> environment of 24x7 slavery to a new set of masters. Capital is so
> clever
> that the masters are us. We own shares through pensions funds etc.,
> the
> corporation is dedicated to increasing shareholder value, we are all
> slaves
> to the corporation. The only comfort and light I have at the end of
> the
> tunnel is that I am definitely 'deviant'. Who in their right mind
> would want
> to be a member of this 'non-deviant' society?
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. [mailto:bradmcc-AT-cloud9.net]
> Sent: 15 October 2000 17:58
> To: technology-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Cc: chris.muscio-AT-wcom.co.uk; lyotard; steve.brockbank-AT-aduronet.com
> Subject: Re: society and technology
> 
> 
> sdv wrote:
> > 
> > The societies of confinement, of discipline and the prophecies of
> the
> > society of self-discipline denounced by MICHEL FOUCAULT are being
> > succeeded by the societies of control delineated by GILLES DELEUZE.
> 
> Is there no room here to mention the more "sober" prose
> style and content of Jacques Ellul's works?
> 
> > 
> > They have recently authorized the use of electronic tagging devices
> on
> > prisoners released on parole, or on community sentences. These
> tracking
> > devices enable the state (and shortly after that the transnational
> > corporations) to locate them at any point, consequently avoiding
> further
> > pressure on the already over crowded prison system (into which
> people
> > are put for no apparant reason). These initial practices which will
> > undoubtedly be extended to other categories of deviants, to any who
> do
> > not fit within the normal  are today described as humanitarian.  The
> > step beyond this of course is to tag those who are regarded as
> > extra-valuable, economically valuable of course
> 
> I'm not so sure this is so new, although recent advances in
> reduction of packaging size of computer circuitry and enhanced
> wireless services certainly "help"....
> 
> The main "population" which comes to my mind is *students*,
> and the tailoring of curriculum and testing to "individuals".
> The earliest computerized pedagogy programs (before 1984) boasted
> of their ability -- unlike human and other previous educational
> delivery systems -- to dynamically adapt to each student's
> particular learning needs (e.g., providing extra instruction
> and practice exercises wherever a student got a wrong answer).
> 
> Thoughts such as these lead to an hypothesis: We are approaching
> a society in which *everyone* is a "deviant", or, stated
> the other way around: Each individual is correlated
> with a norm unique to
> him or her self -- a kind of "eidos" to which they can
> at best approximate but never fully
> actualize (but not exactly as Plato, Kant or Hegel et al.
> might have meant this...)....
> 
> These systems teach us that "individualization" is not necessarily
> an improvement in *human[e]ization* -- understood in the
> rich sense of someone like Ellul or Paolo Freire or Hannah Arendt....
> 
> Individual tailorization of education (and probably everything
> else...) can become a newer-and-better Taylorism.
> 
> A very helpful resource in trying to cope with this stuff
> is the sociologist Erving Goffman's work on how persons learn
> to "work" systems they cannot directly make more amenable to
> their needs and aspirations.
> 
> Also, there is Joseph Weizenbaum's still to my knowledge
> unsurpassed book (1976, Freeman): _Computer Power and Human
> Reason: From judgment to calculation_.
> 
> > 
> > And what can we say of the love of the mobile phone that
> post-industrial
> > corporations have, the mobile phone which allows them to abolish the
> > distinction between working hours and private life for their
> employees,
> > consultants and contractors?
> 
> I have a friend who is a computer "genius", and he, at least 20
> years ago, already said that his whole life was a single
> seamless cloth, in which cooking a gourmet meal at home was
> work and writing computer code for his "employer" was re[-]creation.
> 
> But he meant something very different by this: He meant that
> everything he did was an occasion to strive to bring more
> *quality* into the world (as in _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle 
> Maintenance_, e.g.) and also to learn more about who he was.
> 
> Hannah Arendt also had something relevant to say here, again,
> against the "grain" of the way all this is generally understood
> or at least transmitted via "communication channels" theses days:
> She said that, for the classical Greeks, the word "private"
> meant *de*prived -- that what was not part of the public space
> of speech and action ("the polis") was considered by the
> classical Greeks to be less than fully human.  A Greek citizen
> would rather have been strapped for cash but still able to
> spend his time in the agora, than to be a Donald Tr-mp, who
> would surely have been categorized unanimously by the
> citizens of the polis as a "banausos" (one whose concerns
> did not rise above "pragmatic agenda" and economics -- which
> derives from "oikos", i.e., hearth and home, which was the "darkness"
> in which women and slaves carried on their [less than
> fully human, sic] existence).
> 
> > Here in Britain we have recently
> > introduced zero-hour contracts which are supplied with a mobile
> phone.
> > When the company needs you it calls you and you come running.
> [snip]
> 
> When I was looking for a job last year, a headhunter
> told me I was "too rigid", e.g., for not being willing to
> accept 3 hours a day commuting.  He gave me the
> example of his wife, who was working on a project that everyone
> knew would never "ship", but which everyone involved had
> to continue to *pretend* would, so that they worked late
> into the evenings and on weekends to try to make the
> phantasmogorical "deadline" (I take the word "deadline" literally
> to mean: a line that kills...).
> 
> The headhunter told me that, in today's job market, if the
> boss says: "Jump!", you ask: "How high?"  (Of course this
> man was wrong: Even to make the boss ask you to jump, instead of
> anticipating his fantasy so he doesn't even have to ask for it,
> is already to earn a "black mark" on one's record! --Except
> for a few "die hard" bosses, who, like one I had ca. 30 years ago,
> explicitly tell you: "I want to see asses and elbows.")
> 
> Beepers and cell phones?  In my opinion: heart attack triggers.  
> 
> "Yours in discourse...."
> 
> +\brad mccormick
> 
> -- 
>   Let your light so shine before men, 
>               that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
> 
>   Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
> 
> <![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc-AT-cloud9.net
>   914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>   Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
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