And here's a Wordle visual of my paper.
And here's a working mindmap of the larger topic of children and TC:
12.03.2009
Theory Paper for 5371
Here's a link to the Google doc of my theory paper, and the abstract.
And here's a Wordle visual of my paper.
And here's a working mindmap of the larger topic of children and TC:
And here's a Wordle visual of my paper.
And here's a working mindmap of the larger topic of children and TC:
11.17.2009
Literature Review for 5371: Final Version
The literature review for my project "Technical Communication and
Youth Civic Engagement in a Digital World" can be viewed in Google Docs viewer here.
Youth Civic Engagement in a Digital World" can be viewed in Google Docs viewer here.
11.09.2009
Literature Review for 5371: An Outline
The topic I have selected for my literature review is technical communication and children. I realize not much has been published in the past 5 years on this, and so I am investigating the ways in which the work of technical communicators intersects childhood research.
A rough outline:
Intro
Definition of technical communication
Definition of childhood
Specific areas of interest
Conclusion
Bibliography
A rough outline:
Intro
Definition of technical communication
Definition of childhood
Specific areas of interest
Conclusion
Bibliography
11.02.2009
Philosophy of Technology: Bob Johnson
User-Centered Technology: A Rhetorical Theory for Computers and Other Mundane Artifacts (1998)
Reading Response: Preface-chapter 2:
Preface: Johnson summarizes previous philosophers approaches to technology, including that of Winner (based on limits), Mitcham (taxonomy bridging applied and intellectual), Feenberg (critical theory), and Wacjman (feminisim). Johnson is the first person we’ve read who explicitly addresses TC in the discussion of philosophy and technology. He asks, “where are the technical communicators in this important field of scholarship?” (xiii). He defines the audience for the book as scholarly and workplace technical communicators, researchers and teachers of rhetoric and composition, and scholars of technology studies.
Part I of the book is titled “Situating Technology,” and it consists of two chapters that deal with the “mundane” (or everyday) uses of technology and a user-centered rhetorical model for technology. Johnson suggests that users of technology live in a world of the mundane—technology has become so much a part of our lives, that it is hidden from view, blending into the backdrop of our everyday lives. He believes there has been a value-shift from everyday knowledge, or know-how, to knowledge in the machine or the system. He cites Michel de Certeau (ironically I just downloaded his book onto my Kindle), who says know-how has become folklore, and as such, the appreciation of know-how and use has been lost and is part of our collective unconscious. Johnson suggests that rhetoric can be used to resurrect this lost knowledge and make it visible.
Johnson points out that within our knowledge of the mundane, we often act and “do” as specialists, but we are not allowed such knowledge because we received this knowledge in the practice of our everyday lives, not as part of a formal education. He suggests this is a reversal of “theory then practice” to “practice then theory,” and asks “what would it mean to our educational insitututions … if we made the knowledge of know-how visible within the confines of the academy?” I would argue that the TCR program does exactly this. We study both theory and practice, we apply theory to practice and vice versa. Seems to me to be a question of the chicken or the egg…. Using Aristotle as a historical guide, Johnson suggests that we, as users of technology, are empowered by our role as users and that we will need to theorize the mundane—aka revalue and refigure technological development from a user’s perspective.
In chapter 2, Johnson explains how modern technology has been mostly centered on techne—the technological system or artifact itself, with inventors or developers as those who know best about use. He offers a new model of technological development based on rhetoric with users as the “end,” which he calls a “user-centered rhetorical complex of technology.” He argues for users as an integral, participatory force in the process, and using Beniger and Norman’s user-centered models and Richards and Kinneavy’s rhetorical triangles as building blocks, he places users at the center of his new, more complex, iterative model (p. 39). While he acknowledges the shortcomings of any theoretical construct or metaphor, his “complex” can serve a heuristic for analyzing technological artifacts and processes, and a mode for exploring people--inventors, designers, users, and luddites—who make, design, use, or destroy technologies.
Reading Response: Preface-chapter 2:
Preface: Johnson summarizes previous philosophers approaches to technology, including that of Winner (based on limits), Mitcham (taxonomy bridging applied and intellectual), Feenberg (critical theory), and Wacjman (feminisim). Johnson is the first person we’ve read who explicitly addresses TC in the discussion of philosophy and technology. He asks, “where are the technical communicators in this important field of scholarship?” (xiii). He defines the audience for the book as scholarly and workplace technical communicators, researchers and teachers of rhetoric and composition, and scholars of technology studies.
Part I of the book is titled “Situating Technology,” and it consists of two chapters that deal with the “mundane” (or everyday) uses of technology and a user-centered rhetorical model for technology. Johnson suggests that users of technology live in a world of the mundane—technology has become so much a part of our lives, that it is hidden from view, blending into the backdrop of our everyday lives. He believes there has been a value-shift from everyday knowledge, or know-how, to knowledge in the machine or the system. He cites Michel de Certeau (ironically I just downloaded his book onto my Kindle), who says know-how has become folklore, and as such, the appreciation of know-how and use has been lost and is part of our collective unconscious. Johnson suggests that rhetoric can be used to resurrect this lost knowledge and make it visible.
Johnson points out that within our knowledge of the mundane, we often act and “do” as specialists, but we are not allowed such knowledge because we received this knowledge in the practice of our everyday lives, not as part of a formal education. He suggests this is a reversal of “theory then practice” to “practice then theory,” and asks “what would it mean to our educational insitututions … if we made the knowledge of know-how visible within the confines of the academy?” I would argue that the TCR program does exactly this. We study both theory and practice, we apply theory to practice and vice versa. Seems to me to be a question of the chicken or the egg…. Using Aristotle as a historical guide, Johnson suggests that we, as users of technology, are empowered by our role as users and that we will need to theorize the mundane—aka revalue and refigure technological development from a user’s perspective.
In chapter 2, Johnson explains how modern technology has been mostly centered on techne—the technological system or artifact itself, with inventors or developers as those who know best about use. He offers a new model of technological development based on rhetoric with users as the “end,” which he calls a “user-centered rhetorical complex of technology.” He argues for users as an integral, participatory force in the process, and using Beniger and Norman’s user-centered models and Richards and Kinneavy’s rhetorical triangles as building blocks, he places users at the center of his new, more complex, iterative model (p. 39). While he acknowledges the shortcomings of any theoretical construct or metaphor, his “complex” can serve a heuristic for analyzing technological artifacts and processes, and a mode for exploring people--inventors, designers, users, and luddites—who make, design, use, or destroy technologies.
10.18.2009
Philosophy of Technology: Chapter 55 (Feenberg)
"Democratic Rationalization: Technology, Power, and Freedom" (1992)
Feenberg gracefully discusses and critiques many of the authors we're read this semester, along with other major technology & society thinkers (Marx, Weber, Heidegger, Ellul, McLuhan, Pinch & Binker, Marcuse, Braverman & Noble, Foucault), as well as some of the -isms we have discussed (socialism, determinism, Luddism, constructivism, rationalism, hacktivism).
His main point is to ask why democracy hasn't, after years of struggle, been extended to a technical public sphere? Does technology exclude democracy, or has technology been used to suppress democracy?
He believes this hasn't happened for two reasons: 1) modern technology is incompatible with workplace democracy, and 2) technology is not responsible for the concentration of industrial power. He believes that given a different social context, that it is very likely that modern technology could be operated democratically.
He rejects technological determinism and and neutrality. He argues that modern forms of hegemony are based on the technical mediation of social activities, and he calls for radical technical and political changes for true democratization of our society.
Feenberg makes a point to define hegemony as he will use the term: "a form of domination so deeply rooted in social life that it seems natural to those it dominates" (657). He also uses many useful examples to elucidate his points, such as:
I found many useful passages for my paper/research on mobile devices. Some notes:
"A fuller picture is conveyed ... by studying the social role of the technical object and the lifestyles it makes possible.... It makes technology's contextual causes and consequences visible rather than obscuring them behind an impoverished functionalism" (656)
"differences in the way social groups interpret and use technical objects are not merely extrinsic but make a difference in the nature of the objects themselves. What the object is for the groups that ultimately decide its fate determines what it becomes as it is redesigned and improved over time. If this is true, then we can only understand technological development by studying the sociopolitical situation of various groups involved with it" (657)
I look forward to reading his books.
Feenberg gracefully discusses and critiques many of the authors we're read this semester, along with other major technology & society thinkers (Marx, Weber, Heidegger, Ellul, McLuhan, Pinch & Binker, Marcuse, Braverman & Noble, Foucault), as well as some of the -isms we have discussed (socialism, determinism, Luddism, constructivism, rationalism, hacktivism).
His main point is to ask why democracy hasn't, after years of struggle, been extended to a technical public sphere? Does technology exclude democracy, or has technology been used to suppress democracy?
He believes this hasn't happened for two reasons: 1) modern technology is incompatible with workplace democracy, and 2) technology is not responsible for the concentration of industrial power. He believes that given a different social context, that it is very likely that modern technology could be operated democratically.
He rejects technological determinism and and neutrality. He argues that modern forms of hegemony are based on the technical mediation of social activities, and he calls for radical technical and political changes for true democratization of our society.
Feenberg makes a point to define hegemony as he will use the term: "a form of domination so deeply rooted in social life that it seems natural to those it dominates" (657). He also uses many useful examples to elucidate his points, such as:
- Pinch & Bijker's bicycle example to illustrate constructtivism,
- the Factory Bill of 1844 and indeterminism,
- the Teletel and Minitel to show the complexity of the relationship between the technical function and meaning/unintended uses of the computer,
- Braverman & Nobleman's example of the assembly line/child labor case and production technologies as examples of technological rationality,
- the environmental movement and social relativity of efficiency,
- bursting steamboat boilers to explain the "technical code"/standards that mediate how technology adapts to social change
- hackers (such as the AIDs patient movement that destabilized and exposed the medical system) as innovative public reactions to subvert the technical practices, procedures, and designs structuring social life
I found many useful passages for my paper/research on mobile devices. Some notes:
"A fuller picture is conveyed ... by studying the social role of the technical object and the lifestyles it makes possible.... It makes technology's contextual causes and consequences visible rather than obscuring them behind an impoverished functionalism" (656)
"differences in the way social groups interpret and use technical objects are not merely extrinsic but make a difference in the nature of the objects themselves. What the object is for the groups that ultimately decide its fate determines what it becomes as it is redesigned and improved over time. If this is true, then we can only understand technological development by studying the sociopolitical situation of various groups involved with it" (657)
I look forward to reading his books.
10.14.2009
Foundations of Technical Communication: Technology Presentation Assignment
I am giving a technology presentation on Survey Monkey, which is a tool I've been intending to learn for some time in order to conduct survey-based research. Here is my one-page handout (embedded here) that provides an overview of what I discussed in the F2F class on 15 October.Here are some useful links for the project as well:
Company Background
Company Sold April 2009
Pricing
Terms of Use
User Manual
Best Practices for Survey Design
Usability/Accessibility Guide
10.12.2009
Philosophy of Technology: Haraway Response
"A Cyborg Manifesto" (1991)
Reading Response:
A manifesto is a call to action, a verbal slap, an effort to use language to bring about change, and in Haraway’s case, political change. Haraway's essay is a response to those who (during the 1970s and 1980s) sought to define what woman truly is, believing that if the identity of woman could be defined, then a ground of collective political action might be secured (known as "identity politics"). Haraway finds this problematic and proposes instead that we are all hybrids.
She attempts to create what she calls "an ironic political myth" which combines postmodernism with socialist feminism. First, she introduces and defines the "cyborg." A cyborg is a:
- Cybernetic organism
- Hybrid of machine and organism
- Creature of both fiction and lived social reality
The cyborg for Haraway is a metaphor for the postmodernist interest in identity as well as the reality of living with new technology. The cyborg is a direct result of a world that has begun to live within and alongside machines—the line between the human body and the machine has been blurred. And it is a product of new media convergence (a result of cyberspace, artificial limbs, pacemakers, chat rooms).
Haraway is interested in revealing the ambiguity and irrelevance of nature-culture binarisms in the cyborg age. In fact, she also reveals that "natural" was never even so. She charts the differences between "comfortable old hierarchical dominations" (432) which have the appearance of "naturalness" since they are so embedded in our Western cultural consciousness, and the "scary new networks"(432) which came about after World War II. Haraway’s chart allows her to point out the problems with assumptions of a "natural" past: “the objects on the right-hand side cannot be coded as ‘natural’, a realization which subverts naturalistic coding for the left-hand side as well. We cannot go back ideologically or materially. It’s not just that ‘god’ is dead; so is the ‘goddess’" (433).
The cyborg, according to Haraway, resists what has gone before; it is more than the sum of its parts. In addition, the cyborg "is a creature in a post-gender world; it has no truck with bisexuality, pre-oedipal symbiosis, unalienated labour, or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all the powers of the parts into a higher unity" (430).
Haraway feels that there are three major boundary breakdowns in the formation of the cyborg. The first is between human and animal: "Biology and evolutionary theory over the past two centuries have simultaneously produced modern organisms as objects of knowledge and reduced the line between humans and animals to a faint trace re-etched in ideological struggle or professional disputes between life and social science"(431). The result is human animality or animal human.
The second boundary breakdown is between animal-human (organism) and machine. Not only are our household machines becoming more autonomous and taking on personalities and human features, but humans are coupling with machines for medical purposes (pacemakers, dialysis, artificial limbs and joints, hearing aids) and for research purposes (as is the case with Kevin Warwick, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.02/warwick.html).
The third boundary breakdown is between the physical/organic/animate and nonphysical/inorganic/inanimate. Haraway notes: "Our best machines are made of sunshine; they are all light and clean because they are nothing but signals, electromagnetic waves, a section of a spectrum, and these machines are eminently portable, mobile…. People are nowhere near so fluid, being both material and opaque"(431). Today’s machines are ubiquitous and invisible; they carry huge amounts of data on tiny chips hidden somewhere behind an attractive surface. This ethereal invisibility renders machines potent weapons: "They are as hard to see politically as materially. They are about consciousness—or its simulation"(432).
Haraway attemps to use the cyborg myth as “one important route for reconstructing socialist-femminist politics” (434) by seeing from two perspectives: 1) that “a cyborg world is about the final imposition of a grid of control on the planet,” and 2) that “a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints"(432). The solution, she suggests, is to see from both perspectives at once (double vision); to be aware and critical of both aspects of the cyborg in the development of political identity. “Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves. This is a dream not of a common [feminist] language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia.”
9.28.2009
Philosophy of Technology: Chapter 50 (Chellis Glendinning)
Notes toward a Neo-Luddite Manifesto (1990)
Background notes:
This was a compellingly clear, short, and succinct article. As such, however, it was not totally convincing. I know that it takes the idea to the extreme, in order to make an argument for people troubled by and resistant to modern technology.
Two sections were particularly interesting to me:
Background notes:
- European-American author of creative nonfiction, licensed psychotherapist specializing in recovery from post-traumatic stress , and political activist
- pioneer in the field of ecopsychology, a proponent of land-based culture, and a critic of technological society
- Alexander Graham Bell her ancestor. Her brother is named after him: Alexander Bell Glendinning
This was a compellingly clear, short, and succinct article. As such, however, it was not totally convincing. I know that it takes the idea to the extreme, in order to make an argument for people troubled by and resistant to modern technology.
Two sections were particularly interesting to me:
- Page 604 l-h column, when she states that neo-luddites are not anti-technology but rather that they oppose the kinds of technologies that are destructive to human lives and communities--how can she distinguish in advance that technology will be destructive? We rarely know the potential or unintended uses of some technologies. And what of technologies that have both negative and positive impacts?
- Page 604, "learning to critique technology demands fully examining its sociological context, economic ramifications, and political meanings"--I agree with this. Too often we ignore the negative effects of technology.
Philosophy of Technology: Chapter 49 (Michel Foucault)
Panopticism (1978)
Foucault begins this essay with a discussion of the separation measures taken against people with the plague, and he compares these with those of lepers. Both were separated from society as a result of fear, but plague victims were controlled by segmentation (groupings) and order and discipline and power structures, while lepers were merely separated (individualized). Foucault uses this history to set up how discipline and punishment function in modern society.
Foucault focuses on Jeremy Bentham's panopticon. Plague measures were needed to protect society: the panopticon allows power to operate efficiently. The panopticon offers permanent visibility, ensuring homogeneous effects of power. Bentham believed that power should be visible and unverifiable. The prisoner can always see the tower but he cannot communicate or see other prisoners, and he never knows whether he is being observed. Foucault points out that the panopticon is a machine for "dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen." He calls it a "laboratory of power"--a place where the machine can be used to carry out experiments using observation. The panopticon is a figure of political technology. I love this passage:
"The panoptic mechanism is not simply a hinge, a point of exchange between a mechanism of power and a function; it is a way of making power relations function in a function, of making a function function through these power relations" (594-95).
The most fascinating part of the panopticon is this idea that it is a transparent building--"in which the exercise of power may be supervised by society as a whole." According to Foucault, our society has moved from one of spectacle to one of surveillance--we are in the panoptic machine. In our time, the state controls such methods of coercion and operates them throughout society. The development of a disciplinary society involves socio-economic factors, particularly population increase and economic development.
Foucault assumes that all citizens of modern society are entitled to make demands on the state. However, he also argues that the state cannot be separated or understood without the mechanisms that also control and examine the citizen. Schools, factories, hospitals, and prisons resemble the panopticon in that they examine pupils, workers, patients, and prisoners--they classify them as individuals and try to make them conform to a norm. And the modern citizen spends much of his life in at least some of these institutions--"we are in the panoptic machine!"
Foucault begins this essay with a discussion of the separation measures taken against people with the plague, and he compares these with those of lepers. Both were separated from society as a result of fear, but plague victims were controlled by segmentation (groupings) and order and discipline and power structures, while lepers were merely separated (individualized). Foucault uses this history to set up how discipline and punishment function in modern society. Foucault focuses on Jeremy Bentham's panopticon. Plague measures were needed to protect society: the panopticon allows power to operate efficiently. The panopticon offers permanent visibility, ensuring homogeneous effects of power. Bentham believed that power should be visible and unverifiable. The prisoner can always see the tower but he cannot communicate or see other prisoners, and he never knows whether he is being observed. Foucault points out that the panopticon is a machine for "dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen." He calls it a "laboratory of power"--a place where the machine can be used to carry out experiments using observation. The panopticon is a figure of political technology. I love this passage:
"The panoptic mechanism is not simply a hinge, a point of exchange between a mechanism of power and a function; it is a way of making power relations function in a function, of making a function function through these power relations" (594-95).
The most fascinating part of the panopticon is this idea that it is a transparent building--"in which the exercise of power may be supervised by society as a whole." According to Foucault, our society has moved from one of spectacle to one of surveillance--we are in the panoptic machine. In our time, the state controls such methods of coercion and operates them throughout society. The development of a disciplinary society involves socio-economic factors, particularly population increase and economic development.
Foucault assumes that all citizens of modern society are entitled to make demands on the state. However, he also argues that the state cannot be separated or understood without the mechanisms that also control and examine the citizen. Schools, factories, hospitals, and prisons resemble the panopticon in that they examine pupils, workers, patients, and prisoners--they classify them as individuals and try to make them conform to a norm. And the modern citizen spends much of his life in at least some of these institutions--"we are in the panoptic machine!"
9.23.2009
Philosophy of Technology: Chapter 48 (Hubert L. Dreyfus)
"Anonymity versus Commitment: The Dangers of Education on the Internet" (1999)
Background information:
Dreyfus uses Kierkegaard's notion of the dangers and opportunities of the Press to critiques the Internet. He asks, "What contribution can the World Wide Web make to educators?"
In answering this question, Dreyfus uses Kierkegaard's 3 stages--aesthetic, ethical, and religious--to show that only the aesthetic and ethical are possible with information technology, and that the religious is undermined.
He gives several attributes shared between the Press and the Web:
I was following along with all of the points of the article, until this last. Dreyfus lost me just before his conclusion, when he states, and I paraphrase:
If Kierkegaard is right, for the cyber-world to avoid despair, it would have to find a way to cancel its risk-free attraction by supporting and encouraging unconditional commitments and strong identities in the real world where risk and disappointment are inevitable. (583)
He goes on to insist that "education at its best must be based on apprenticeship" and that "one can only learn by imitation of the style" of a master. While I recognize the value of learning from mentors, I don't agree with this entirely. What about hackers? What about successful distance education? Aren't these risky and unconditional passions? Or are these the very things Dreyfus means?
I doubt it, given his last sentence: "As far as I can see," [which is a telling statement in itself, I think], "learning by apprenticeship can work only in the nearness of the classroom and laboratory; never in cyberspace." I can't wait to hear some of my classmates refute this! And they will be passionate about it!
Background information:
- professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley
- interests include phenomenology, existentialism and the philosophy of both psychology and literature, as well as the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence
- educated at Harvard and considered a leading interpreter of the work of Edmund Husserl, Michel Foucault, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, but especially of Martin Heidegger
- authored the controversial 1972 book What Computers Can't Do, revised first in 1979, and then again in 1992 with a new introduction as What Computers Still Can't Do
- has a reputation as a Luddite, but he doesn't believe that AI is fundamentally impossible; only that the current research is fatally flawed. He argues that to get a device (or devices) with human-like intelligence would require them to have a human-like being-in-the-world, which would require them to have bodies more or less like ours, and social acculturation (i.e. a society) more or less like ours.
Dreyfus uses Kierkegaard's notion of the dangers and opportunities of the Press to critiques the Internet. He asks, "What contribution can the World Wide Web make to educators?"
In answering this question, Dreyfus uses Kierkegaard's 3 stages--aesthetic, ethical, and religious--to show that only the aesthetic and ethical are possible with information technology, and that the religious is undermined.
He gives several attributes shared between the Press and the Web:
- both level all qualitative disctinctions (all text is equal)
- both create the Public and an absence of responsibility
- both provide anonymity and no risks, which is why we are attracted to them
I was following along with all of the points of the article, until this last. Dreyfus lost me just before his conclusion, when he states, and I paraphrase:
If Kierkegaard is right, for the cyber-world to avoid despair, it would have to find a way to cancel its risk-free attraction by supporting and encouraging unconditional commitments and strong identities in the real world where risk and disappointment are inevitable. (583)
He goes on to insist that "education at its best must be based on apprenticeship" and that "one can only learn by imitation of the style" of a master. While I recognize the value of learning from mentors, I don't agree with this entirely. What about hackers? What about successful distance education? Aren't these risky and unconditional passions? Or are these the very things Dreyfus means?
I doubt it, given his last sentence: "As far as I can see," [which is a telling statement in itself, I think], "learning by apprenticeship can work only in the nearness of the classroom and laboratory; never in cyberspace." I can't wait to hear some of my classmates refute this! And they will be passionate about it!
Philosophy of Technology: Chapter 47 (Albert Borgmann)
"Information and Reality at the Turn of the Century" (1995)
Background information:
In this article, Borgmann suggests there are 3 types of information, the first two old, and the third new:
Background information:
- born in Freiburg, Germany, and is a professor of philosophy at the University of Montana
- In Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (1984), he introduced the notion of the device paradigm to explain what constitutes technologies essence as opposed to Heidegger's Gestel (enframing)
- In Crossing the Postmodern Divide (1992), describes as a techno-religious book characterized in terms of hyperreality and hyperactivity, he describes hyperactivity as a pathological syndrome of the child and workaholics. He applies hyperactivity to society as a whole, and defines it as "a state of mobilization where the richness and variety of social and cultural pursuits, and the natural pace of daily life, have been suspended to serve a higher, urgent cause"--in other words, the salvation of mankind is a return to the Christian god
- an interesting interview: www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2901
In this article, Borgmann suggests there are 3 types of information, the first two old, and the third new:
- information about reality (which requires comprehension and makes the work more perspicuous). This information informs us of the faraway, but does not transport it into our midst. It is a part of our background and informs our ways of life. The emblem Borgmann offers of this information is the Internet.
- information for reality (which requires translation and realization and makes the world richer and more prosperous). This information requires discipline and skill/competency, and it engenders community and intimacy. This information combines ideas with tangible ingredients from reality. The emblem Borgmann give for this information is a Boeing 777.
- information as reality (which emerged from our culture of technology, and really includes information as virtual reality--rivaling reality itself). This information serves both utility and consumption and erases the distance between near and far, quantity (signal) and quality (message).
9.21.2009
Philosophy of Technology: Chapter 46 (Andrew Ross)
"Hacking Away at the Counterculture" (1991)
Background notes:
In this article, Ross is concerned with describing and offering a broader view of hacking than the view that has been established via media commentary (historically, hacking has been equated to body invasions--viruses and worms--and hackers have been depicted ironically as both menaces to society--"juvenile technodelinquents"--and as romantic counterculturalists--"maverick though nerdy cowboys"), causing public alarm and fear. Ross suggests that, rather than the exclusively white, masculine, and middle-class profile, there are wider social locations (such as that of the apprentice technical elite, female high-tech office, and shop-floor worker) and activities (what he terms backing, sabotaging, and reskilling) involved in hacking, that is, if we can recognize this counterculture and expressionism. Unfortunately, our fear makes us feel hopeless and passive (which may be a result of the shift from the 1960s "technology of folklore" to the 1990s "folklore of technology"). Ross advocates a "cultural studies" approach to technology, suggesting that cultural critics should embrace a hacker-like knowledge, "capable of reprogramming the social values that make room for new technologies." Ross believes in technoskepticism to move beyond an epistemology of technological determinism. He believes hackers disrupt the system, moving us closer to a technoliteracy.
Background notes:
- chair of the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University
- writing focuses on labor and the work force, from the Western world of business and technology to sweatshop labor in the Third World
- research interests: labor and work; urban and suburban studies; intellectual history; social and political theory; science; ecology and technology; cultural studies
In this article, Ross is concerned with describing and offering a broader view of hacking than the view that has been established via media commentary (historically, hacking has been equated to body invasions--viruses and worms--and hackers have been depicted ironically as both menaces to society--"juvenile technodelinquents"--and as romantic counterculturalists--"maverick though nerdy cowboys"), causing public alarm and fear. Ross suggests that, rather than the exclusively white, masculine, and middle-class profile, there are wider social locations (such as that of the apprentice technical elite, female high-tech office, and shop-floor worker) and activities (what he terms backing, sabotaging, and reskilling) involved in hacking, that is, if we can recognize this counterculture and expressionism. Unfortunately, our fear makes us feel hopeless and passive (which may be a result of the shift from the 1960s "technology of folklore" to the 1990s "folklore of technology"). Ross advocates a "cultural studies" approach to technology, suggesting that cultural critics should embrace a hacker-like knowledge, "capable of reprogramming the social values that make room for new technologies." Ross believes in technoskepticism to move beyond an epistemology of technological determinism. He believes hackers disrupt the system, moving us closer to a technoliteracy.
Philosophy of Technology: Chapter 45 (Michael H. Heim)
"Heidegger and McLuhan and The Essence of Virtual Reality" (1997)
Heim uses Heidegger, Dreyfus, McLuhan, and Ong as "springboards" for understanding the modern technological revolution and "the new situation of the sciences and the humanities" (539). Heim predicts that by 2000 (only 3 years later), nearly every text will exist in electronic format, and he suggest this is what Heidegger feared: that his work would be mediated by a society consumed with technology. Calling this fear "computer as opponent," Heim first focuses on the perceived danger of computers: that is, if computers can replicate thought patterns, do computers have artificial intelligence? Is it possible for computers to think?
Using Dreyfus's book Mind over Machine and the paradigm of the chess match, to focus on the formal patterns that computers use. Dreyfus believed that computers were limited and that we could not create a lucid computer. But Heim believes this confrontational relationship with computers distracts us from the real issue--how our reality changes as we live and work with computers, or "as Heidegger might put it: ...Being with computers?" Heim believes the relationship between humans and computers is collaborative and describes this as "computers as component."
Heim substitutes Heidegger's term for the "language machine" with word processing--a shift in writing technologies. He uses several impressive metaphors to describe the word processor and computer technology--"calculator of the humanist," "mental prosthesis"--suggesting that writing on this new machince produces a new kind of writing and thinking.
Heim compares Heidegger (1889-1976) with McLuhan (1911-1980) and Ong (1912-2003), suggesting that they all saw technology as an essential component in how we define reality, especially because of its intimacy with language (shifting from a print culture to an electronic medium). Because of this collaboration, or ability to interact with technology, and technology's interaction with us, Heim moves into a discussion of the essence of virtual reality, which he states has at least seven divergent concepts guiding its research:
Heim uses Heidegger, Dreyfus, McLuhan, and Ong as "springboards" for understanding the modern technological revolution and "the new situation of the sciences and the humanities" (539). Heim predicts that by 2000 (only 3 years later), nearly every text will exist in electronic format, and he suggest this is what Heidegger feared: that his work would be mediated by a society consumed with technology. Calling this fear "computer as opponent," Heim first focuses on the perceived danger of computers: that is, if computers can replicate thought patterns, do computers have artificial intelligence? Is it possible for computers to think?
Using Dreyfus's book Mind over Machine and the paradigm of the chess match, to focus on the formal patterns that computers use. Dreyfus believed that computers were limited and that we could not create a lucid computer. But Heim believes this confrontational relationship with computers distracts us from the real issue--how our reality changes as we live and work with computers, or "as Heidegger might put it: ...Being with computers?" Heim believes the relationship between humans and computers is collaborative and describes this as "computers as component."
Heim substitutes Heidegger's term for the "language machine" with word processing--a shift in writing technologies. He uses several impressive metaphors to describe the word processor and computer technology--"calculator of the humanist," "mental prosthesis"--suggesting that writing on this new machince produces a new kind of writing and thinking.
Heim compares Heidegger (1889-1976) with McLuhan (1911-1980) and Ong (1912-2003), suggesting that they all saw technology as an essential component in how we define reality, especially because of its intimacy with language (shifting from a print culture to an electronic medium). Because of this collaboration, or ability to interact with technology, and technology's interaction with us, Heim moves into a discussion of the essence of virtual reality, which he states has at least seven divergent concepts guiding its research:
- simulation (VR simulates reality)
- interaction (humans interact with VR)
- artificiality (VR is a human construct)
- immersion (sensory immersion in a virtual environment)
- telepresence (real-time, robotic presence in a location without physical, in-the-flesh presence)
- full-body immersion (VR reads body movements)
- networked communications (full immersion + sharing semaphores)
9.20.2009
Today's Inspiration: Randy Pausch's Last Lecture
I was totally blown away by this video of Randy Pausch, "Achieving your childhood dreams."
9.15.2009
Foundations of Technical Communication: Theory Paper
Assignment: Write a 2500-3000 word paper which should attempt to extend the discussion of a specific topic or theory beyond the scope of class discussions and readings. You may use the same topic researched in your literature review assignment, or select a new topic (with my approval). In addition to including sources from class readings, this paper should incorporate additional research (at least 5-7 sources) to develop its thesis. As a final component of this assignment, you prepare an abstract of the paper (approximately 250 words) as a handout and give a 10-minute presentation of your project on the final day of class. This assignment will take the place of a written final exam. A functional link to this assignment must be posted on the online portfolio by the due date.
Foundations of Technical Communication: Literature Review
Assignment: Selecting a specific research topic or specialization within technical communication, you will write a 2000-word literature review, including a bibliography. Your paper should provide a representative summary of research (books, articles, etc.) published on your topic over the past five years. The paper should identify and discuss significant theories and trends in the selected research area. Additionally, you should also include a few seminal works on your topic outside of the five year range. The paper should include at least 20 sources, excluding book reviews, conference proceedings, and non-refereed Web sites. A functional link to this assignment must be posted on the online portfolio by the due date.
Philosophy of Technology: Chapter 42 (Carl Mitcham)
"Three Ways of Being-With Technology" (1990)
Background notes:
Background notes:
- Born in 1941, Mitcham is currently Professor of Liberal Arts and International Studies at the Colorado School of Mines
- Mitcham was a conscientious objector during Vietnam War
- Mitcham has worked to promote ethical reflection on technology, and "aspires to advance philosophical, ethical, and policy understanding within the relevant and overlapping professional communities in ways that may deepen democratic public intelligence"
- Mitcham has a long history of work in engineering ethics and the theory and practice of interdisciplinary education and research. Mitcham was also one of the founders of New Directions: Science, Humanities, Policy
9.10.2009
Philosophy of Technology: Chapter 29 (Lewis Mumford)
“Tool-Users vs. Homo Sapiens and The Megamachine” (1966)
Background Info:
· American historian and philosopher of technology and science (1895-1990).
· Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, had a broad career as a writer and an influential literary critic.
· influenced by the work of Scottish theorist Sir Patrick Geddes and a contemporary and friend of Frank Lloyd Wright, Frederic J. Osborn, Edmund N. Bacon, and Vannevar Bush.
· In his early writings on urban life, Mumford was optimistic about human abilities and wrote that the human race would use electricity and mass communication to build a better world for all humankind. He would later take a more pessimistic stance. His early architectural criticism also helped to bring wider public recognition to the work of Henry Hobson Richardson, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Reading Response:
Rather than technology, Mumford concentrates on the term technics (from Greek tekhne) and man’s “work.” He sees technology as part of technics. Technics is uniquely human in that it moves beyond the mere hand’s tool-making to the brain, modifying tools with “linguistic symbols, esthetic designs, and socially transmitted knowledge” (345). In other words, man is not a mere tool-making animal, but a social/cultural being with personality, and this includes even primitive man. The mind controls all of man, not just his hands. Mumford goes one step further to suggest that man’s work has always been less about practical needs (such as control over the environment for food supply) and more about aspirations and symbolic culture.
Rather than technology, Mumford concentrates on the term technics (from Greek tekhne) and man’s “work.” He sees technology as part of technics. Technics is uniquely human in that it moves beyond the mere hand’s tool-making to the brain, modifying tools with “linguistic symbols, esthetic designs, and socially transmitted knowledge” (345). In other words, man is not a mere tool-making animal, but a social/cultural being with personality, and this includes even primitive man. The mind controls all of man, not just his hands. Mumford goes one step further to suggest that man’s work has always been less about practical needs (such as control over the environment for food supply) and more about aspirations and symbolic culture.
Mumford believes that the evolution of language was more influential to further human development than any other “tool-making.” To Mumford, overlooking the evolution of language is to “overlook the main chapters of history” (347). Yet in the modern age, Mumford sees technics as disassociating from the larger cultural whole. Technics was “broadly life-centered, not work-centered or power-centered” (347). But once this was established, technics increased the potential for human expression. Spoken language gave man power.
According to Mumford, over 5,000 years ago, “monotechnics” (the real Machine Age) came into existence (348). Monotechnics brought about the first “megamachines”—complex, high-powered, collective machines, and it is a result of their invention that technics became disassociated from “other biological and social activities” (348), engrossing man’s entire lifetime. This idea of “work” became a curse, according to Mumford, until the invention of the clock in the 14th c. He gives examples of engineering feats—the pyramids—as proof of these new technics. And even though these machines were defective and misused (causing destruction—destroyed cities, poisoned soils, and violence), the collective security and abundance they afforded man outweighed this cost (his comparison of a modern space shuttle with an Egyptian pyramid was particularly striking for me—both are means for reaching the cosmos.) But these costs are tolerable in that the megamachine brings benefits to the community by increasing human effort and aspiration. The orderly, ritualized, repetitive work of the megamachine brought with it a means of self-control , and this unconditional commitment to the megamachine is now regarded as the purpose of human existence, as a result of continued scientific and technical advancements.
Yet the megamachine has a weakness: it is pre-scientific, nonrational, an agent of arrest and regression. To Mumford, our ability to see this weakness could move technics back into the service of human development (rather than service to the machine). Mumford believes we must redefine work to include “educative, mind-forming, self-rewarding,” voluntary work in our technology-centered lives.
9.07.2009
Philosophy of Technology: Chapter 23 (Martin Heidegger)
"The Question Concerning Technology" (originally published in 1954)
Background notes:
In this work, Heidegger aims to define the essence of modern technology. He believes everything has essence, but that this essence is hidden to humans. To unconceal it, man must "think through still more primally what was primally thought" (259). We can do this through "bringing-forth"--challenging the unconcealment of the essence, rather than merely accepting the concealed (our "stultified compulsion to push on blindly with technology" [260]). According to Heidegger, it is only through unconcealment that we can access the truth.
In defining modern technology, Heidegger says we have moved away from a notion of modern technology as mere manufacturing, and he asserts that modern technology, as with the Greek techne, is a bringing-forth, a revealing. He calls technology's essence "Ge-stell [enframing]" (258), which is the way it exists in the world, the way it is able to be seen and understood by humans. Furthermore, "man stands within the essential realm of enframing. He can never take up a relationship to it subsequently" (259). In other words, he is always already "framed, claimed, and challenged" by destining: "Always the destining of revealing holds complete sway over men" (260).
However, Heidegger believes we are endangered by the destining of revealing: "man may misconstrue the unconcealed and misinterpret it" (260). In addition, when man becomes "nothing but the orderer of the standing-reserve" (261), he becomes even more endangered (on "the brink of a precipitous fall"), namely that "he himself will have to be taken as standing reserve" (261). In other words, at a time when man believes himself to be the supreme being on earth, he will believe everything on earth is his construct. According to Heidegger, this illusion gives rise to a delusion: that man's essence will seem to be everywhere and in everything. However, Heidegger believes the exact opposite: that man "can never encounter only himself" (261). Yet, in spite of (and in the midst of) this danger, Heidegger also sees a saving power; he states: "in technology's essence roots and thrives the saving power" (262) and "the essential unfolding of technology harbors in itself what we least suspect, the possible rise of the saving power" (263).
Although human activity and achievement can never counter or banish this danger, Heidegger sees our witnessing of the crisis and our potential for reflection (pondering/questioning/thinking about technology) as a means for guarding and preserving essence. In other words, the closer we get to the danger, the more we are able to see the saving power of modern technology.
Background notes:
- German philosopher (1889-1976)
- Heidegger joned the National Socialist party in 1933. After the war, he was banned from university teaching on account of his Nazi connections. He suffered a nervous breakdown in 1946. He continued to write and lecture on philosophy.
- "The Question Concerning Technology" emerges out of a series of talks he delivered from 1949 to 1953.
- Heidegger's work has strongly influenced philosophy, theology and the humanities. Within philosophy it played a crucial role in the development of existentialism, hermeneutics, deconstruction, postmodernism, and continental philosophy in general. Well-known philosophers such as Karl Jaspers, Leo Strauss, Ahmad Fardid, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Lévinas, Hannah Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty, and Jacques Derrida have all analyzed Heidegger's work.
- claimed that Western philosophy has, since Plato, misunderstood what it means for something "to be"
In this work, Heidegger aims to define the essence of modern technology. He believes everything has essence, but that this essence is hidden to humans. To unconceal it, man must "think through still more primally what was primally thought" (259). We can do this through "bringing-forth"--challenging the unconcealment of the essence, rather than merely accepting the concealed (our "stultified compulsion to push on blindly with technology" [260]). According to Heidegger, it is only through unconcealment that we can access the truth.
In defining modern technology, Heidegger says we have moved away from a notion of modern technology as mere manufacturing, and he asserts that modern technology, as with the Greek techne, is a bringing-forth, a revealing. He calls technology's essence "Ge-stell [enframing]" (258), which is the way it exists in the world, the way it is able to be seen and understood by humans. Furthermore, "man stands within the essential realm of enframing. He can never take up a relationship to it subsequently" (259). In other words, he is always already "framed, claimed, and challenged" by destining: "Always the destining of revealing holds complete sway over men" (260).
However, Heidegger believes we are endangered by the destining of revealing: "man may misconstrue the unconcealed and misinterpret it" (260). In addition, when man becomes "nothing but the orderer of the standing-reserve" (261), he becomes even more endangered (on "the brink of a precipitous fall"), namely that "he himself will have to be taken as standing reserve" (261). In other words, at a time when man believes himself to be the supreme being on earth, he will believe everything on earth is his construct. According to Heidegger, this illusion gives rise to a delusion: that man's essence will seem to be everywhere and in everything. However, Heidegger believes the exact opposite: that man "can never encounter only himself" (261). Yet, in spite of (and in the midst of) this danger, Heidegger also sees a saving power; he states: "in technology's essence roots and thrives the saving power" (262) and "the essential unfolding of technology harbors in itself what we least suspect, the possible rise of the saving power" (263).
Although human activity and achievement can never counter or banish this danger, Heidegger sees our witnessing of the crisis and our potential for reflection (pondering/questioning/thinking about technology) as a means for guarding and preserving essence. In other words, the closer we get to the danger, the more we are able to see the saving power of modern technology.
Philosophy of Technology: Chapter 21 (Trevor Pinch & Wiebe Bijker)
"The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts" (1987)
Background notes:
Pinch and Bijker are social constructionists (in fact, they started the movement). In their work, they emphasize invention (that science is essentially a human process, rather than predetermined), and they criticize holistic views of technology. Their interest in successes and failures in innovation interested me. By examining the detailed and heterogeneous structure of specific technologies, and focusing on groups of inventors and users, we may be able to see the social negotiations that produce and determine final and accepted facts and artifacts (through a social consensus). Through their integrated approach, using EPOR and SCOT, they suggest that a social study of science and technology will benefit from each other's independent sociologies. This will lead us to a method for determining how (or even whether) we can distinguish science from technology.
Background notes:
- Pinch = sociologist and former chair of the Science and Technology Studies department at Cornell University
- Pinch = significant contributor to the study of Sound culture, and his books include a major study of Robert Moog
- Bijker = Dutch professor, chair of the Department of Social Science & Technology at the Faculty of Arts & Culture in the Universiteit Maastricht, The Netherlands
- Bijker = fields of research include social and historical studies of science, technology and society; theories of technology development; methodology of science, technology and society studies; democratisation of technological culture; science and technology policies; ICT, multimedia and the social-cultural dimensions of the information society; gender and technology; and meta studies of architecture, planning, and civil engineering.
- They started the movement known as Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) within the sociology of science. Advocates of SCOT--social constructivists--argue that technology does not determine human action, but that human action shapes technology. They also argue that the ways in which a technology is used cannot be understood without understanding how that technology is embedded in its social context.
- SCOT holds that those who seek to understand the reasons for acceptance or rejection of a technology should look to the social world. It is not enough, according to SCOT, to explain a technology's success by saying that it is "the best"--researchers must look at how the criteria of being "the best" is defined and what groups and stakeholders participate in defining it. In particular, they must ask who defines the technical criteria by which success is measured, why technical criteria are defined in this way, and who is included or excluded. SCOT is not only a theory, but also a methodology: it formalizes the steps and principles to follow when one wants to analyze the causes of technological failures or successes.
Pinch and Bijker are social constructionists (in fact, they started the movement). In their work, they emphasize invention (that science is essentially a human process, rather than predetermined), and they criticize holistic views of technology. Their interest in successes and failures in innovation interested me. By examining the detailed and heterogeneous structure of specific technologies, and focusing on groups of inventors and users, we may be able to see the social negotiations that produce and determine final and accepted facts and artifacts (through a social consensus). Through their integrated approach, using EPOR and SCOT, they suggest that a social study of science and technology will benefit from each other's independent sociologies. This will lead us to a method for determining how (or even whether) we can distinguish science from technology.
