Information Technology and Social Change
The social, economic, political and educational consequences of the expanding role of information technologies
Abstract
This document will look at information technology and how the revolutionary nature of its introduction into the economic system is linked to social changes. This technological introduction has been accompanied by an evolutionary economic rhetoric which makes these historically specific social changes seem a natural consequence of human progress.
The social, economic, political and educational consequences of the expanding role of information technologies will be briefly addressed. Furthermore this research will attempt to establish if the technological impact on society(s) is asseore diffuse boundaries of analysis.
Contents
IntroductionThe Information Revolution The Ethic of Economic Evolution Social Change: a Postmodern / Modern Hybrid Control and / or Chaos: An Assessment of Technological Determinism / Possibilities References
Introduction
The social nexus between the 'information revolution' and 'economic evolution'.
"Our civilisation has cleverly found a magic formula for setting both industrial and academic brooms and pails of water to work by themselves, in ever increasing quantities at ever increasing speed. but we have lost the Master Magicians spell for altering the tempo of this process. Or halting it when it ceases to serve human functions and purposes"( Mumford's 'Sorcerer's Apprentice' in Martin, 1987, p.46 )
The Melville quote implies the current state of change is a technologically determined process. The implication is that while human economic and intellectual relationships, motor and feed these processes, the rate and quality of change is somehow beyond our control. To investigate the validity of this proposition, this document seeks to outline and analyse the connections between:
(a) the proliferation of micro-electronic communication technologies, conceptualised in terms of the information revolution and (b) the current socio-evolutionary rhetoric driving popular economic theory and policy, commonly termed, 'economic rationalism' ( Pusey 1991 ).
It is believed that the political entwining of these terms ( phenomena ) is impacting nationally and internationally to redefine socio-economic relations. This impact is not only in advanced capitalist economies, which are arguably at the forefront of change, but is a world wide effect, as 'developing' and 'third world' national resources ( material and labour ) become caught up in the globalised economic web.
The economic imperative apparently embedded in technological advancement would seem to be closing the possibilities for 'human agency', through a world wide 'grid of control' ( Haraway 1992, p.154 ), ( machine dependency, individual, social and political surveillance etc.). However, the last section of this paper will seek out some subversive and emancipatory possibilities for social relationships also through the deployment of technology.
The Information Revolution
Revolution pertains to a "fundamental transformation of some kind" ( Toffler 1994 ). The current era, termed by some as 'postmodern' or 'post-industrial', is being characterised by a fundamental transformation in socio-economic relations, incited by the introduction, deployment and proliferation of information-communication technologies. Toffler (1994) states:
"...we are going from a brute-force economy to a brain-force economy, and it is clear that skill and knowledge are becoming the central resource for economic activity. ... If I had been taught economics I would have been taught that the factors of production are land, labour and capital. "Knowledge" doesn't appear. Today, knowledge not only must appear in that list, it dominates the others. If you have the right knowledge at the right place at the right time, that means less labour, less energy, less capital, less raw material and less time. All the other inputs of economic production for the conversion of natural elements into what we call wealth can be done far more effectively and far more efficiently through the application of knowledge"( cited in New Scientist 19/3/94, "Alvin Toffler: still hocking after all these years")
However in the process of transforming from industrial to information based economies, traditional boundaries of commerce/industry, culture/morality and politics are collapsing. The abstract nature of information and the non physical character of its transfer, gives economic activity an efficiency and fluidity unprecedented in history. The socio-economic consequences of this electronically transformed system are broadly defined under the concept of globalisation: Some specific instances are:
(a) The global market: the international deployment of capital, a transnational a-morality.
(b) Hyper-consumption: over-production and underemployment.
(c) Globalised production: dispersion of control and intensified global exploitation.
(d) The dispersion of the labour market: the international division of labour and the 'bimodal' distinction of privilege. Who is privileged in this system ( Class, Race, sex/gender )?
(e) A shrinking labour market and restructuring of the work place.
(f) A global culture: Cultural imperialism, facilitated through the mass-media. Commodification of experience and leisure.
(g) The dissolution of nation-state sovereignty (autonomy): international and national tensions and responsibilities.
Perhaps the most pertinent boundary dissolution connecting dimensions of socio-economic change to particular societies, is the diffusion of national control. It can be said that the fluidity facilitated by new technologies and accompanying forms of organisation are implementing a new 'anatomy of power' which is characteristically international. As Hables Grey & Mentor (1995) state:
"The age of the hegemony of the nation state is ending. For Hobbes, the world was ideally a community of Leviathans, autonomous nation states with clear borders and stable sovereigns. Today, the world map is certainly less clear. There is a proliferation of politcal forms that overlap and even contradict each other, as postmodern states struggle against devolution from below and empire from above, their bodies are drained of sovereignty by transnational corporations on one side and non-governmental organisations and international subcultures sustained by world-wide mass telecomunications on the other"( cited in Hables Grey & Mentor (1995) "The Cyborg Body Politic" in the Cyborg Handbook ).
The Ethic of 'Economic Evolution'
This diffusion of national power in global economic terms has lead to tensions in the way that 'nation states' are organising their internal affairs. Arguably state organisation is still predicated on modernist assumptions of internal coherence ( both in terms of the individual and the 'state' ), with an increasingly prominent orientation towards a laisse faire notion of economic competition.Together these belief systems constitute an 'economic rationalist' ethic which assumes that under the right conditions/methods the self/economy will regulate to a state of equilibrium, a natural state of optimum function. As Stilwell ( 1993 ) states, this ethic, 'embodies "a social darwinist" notion of progress through competition and adaption, based on "survival of the fittest" ( p.34 )'.
In this context, the current expedition of productive function under the auspices of 'new' technologies is seen as part of this 'natural selection process'. Social change is conceived as social evolution, part of a 'progressive' unfolding of activity towards increasingly advanced forms of economic organisation and function.
Underlying this ethic is the belief that the final outcomes are seminal in the origin and that to allow progress toward these 'inherent outcomes' a deregulative approach to the economy is necessary. The bottom-line balance on financial 'ledgers' is increasingly being used as the indices of successful societal functioning. This myopic standard of judging national functioning, has lead to two key social outcomes:
(a) economic endeavour ( both individual and group wise ) has been 'privatised', with success and failure a indication of personal 'adaption' or 'maladaption' to the 'economic ecology'; and (b) the 'state' is increasingly feeling justified in adopting a 'hands off' approach to economic regulation.
Thus the 'economic rationalist' ethic has worked to legitimise the 'states' progressive abdication from responsibilities to regulate in favour of social factors, such as welfare, employment, industrial relations, education. Rather social factors are viewed as 'externalities' ( Wheelwright 1993, p.19 ) which will benefit in terms of a "trickle down effect" ( Raskall 1993 ) from the bounty of a robust economy.
This is a salient point, exemplified in the current justifications for budgetary cuts by the Howard liberal government ( 1996 ), which are predicated on the procurement of national efficiency toward internationally 'successful' competitive outcomes. But as Wheelwright (1993) points out:
"Todays world is one of demographic explosion, ecological stress, and a very high level of mobility of capital internationally, in which nation states, though losing power to capital, are unwilling to cede any sovereignty to a world government. ....The difference is the international mobility of capital, very much accentuated by the deregulation of financial systems in the last two decades. For a long time big capitalists were members of a national community. But today they are cosmopolitan money managers and transnational corporations who have transcended the national governments that gave them identity and corporate status" ( p.20 )The Resolution of the Workers league, Sept. 1993, states,
"although 'nation-states' are still fundamental realities to be reckoned with in thinking about economic structures and processes the significant feature is that the unit of economic accounting as well as the frame of reference can no longer be the national economy. Competition is played out globally...National economies work as a unit on an international level" ( p.4-5 ).It is against this competitive global imperative that national affairs are subordinated. Some examples are:
(a) Welfare in a 'user pay' system.
(b) The changing face of employment and the expansion of unemployment.
(c) Industrial relations and the privatisation of labour.
(d) Education: production of the human infra-structure for a changing world ( example ).
Social Change: a Postmodern / Modern Hybrid
This paper argues that the current state of social change is a hybridisation, of postmodern possibility facilitated through the networked fluidity and efficiency of information/communication technology and modernist assumptions that this efficiency can be economically controlled ( managed ) towards positive and coherent individual and corporate economic outcomes.In this context, the mechanistic metaphors of 'control', 'cause and effect' of an industrial age are being integrated with the diffuse discourse of "network connectivity" ( Hables Grey & Mentor 1995, p. 456 ), which brings about the what Haraway ( 1992 ) terms the "informatics of domination" ( p.154 ). Richard Barbrook questions the tension/irony of this hybridisation in terms of deregulation or regulation.
This tension is conveyed as, on the one hand having the open ended possibilities of hyper-efficient network technologies which are globally constituted and are constantly disassembling traditional boundaries. While on the other hand, we have an ethic seeking to utilise these capabilities as a 'cause and effect' mechanism for advancing national interests in a global competition.
Downey (1995 ) interprets this nexus, with regard to American technological development, as a specific nationalist rhetoric deemed crucial to resolving a national identity crisis. He states:
"During the 1980s, efforts to save America through technological development frequently built upon a rhetorical strategy that asserts:(1) the American "nation" is threatened by economic defeats at the hands of international competitors, especially Japan;
(2) The key problem is declining 'productivity' in industry, understood as output of product per unit of labour; and
(3) technological development is the best means for increasing productivity
...Productivity gained national, rather than purely economic, significance, and gained a new form of technological salvation" (p. 366).
It is believed that the connection between technological hyper-efficiency and an ethic mobilised as the 'survival of the fittest', works to legitimise the obviation of social factors both nationally and internationally.
Control and / or Chaos: An Assessment of Technological Determinism / Possibilities
However these determining aspects of technology on social change may not be as controlling as the mentioned consequences would imply. A number of social theorists are focusing on the ambiguity and excessive character of these technologies as tools which can be utilised by the powerful as well the oppressed and marginalised. Toffler ( 1994 ) believes that there is a chaotic factor involved with the 'third wave technologies' because they cannot be monopolised and are proliferating around the world. He states,
"ideas are going to be very hard to bottle up and your lead time in controlling that information is very short" ( p.24 ).The virtuality of cyberspace makes judicial control difficult to articulate. this is highlighted in the current debate over censorship on the net. Furthermore a system predicated on connectivity and communication is 'vulnerable to the sabotage of its links (eg. electronic terrorism, viruses and superhackers ).
This vulnerability is heightened by the growing dependency of social organisations on this network organisation (eg. banking systems, ATM machines, hospitals, transport systems etc.)
For theorists such as Donna Haraway ( 1991 ) the controlling properties of technology are not inherent but are a product of social organisation and a specific social consciousness.
In this context Haraway promotes the 'cyborg myth', ( a volatile assemblage, a hybrid identity, human-machine-animal ), as implicated politically both in practices of domination ( eg. military cyborgs, the computer assisted performance of UN. pilots in the Gulf War etc. ), but also as a "possibly" subversive ally in politics of those marginalised or oppressed by those structures ( the networked nature of these technologies make it very difficult for them to be monopolised by super powers ). Are you a Cyborg?
Science and technology should be thought of not in determinist terms but as a site of social relationships and also as tools in building "postmodern identities (myths) born out of otherness, difference and specificity" ( p.161) . She states, "this chapter is an argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction" (p.150).
The politics of the Cyborg Myth are bound in issues of 'transgressing boundaries', through coalitions and couplings, and in open minded awareness of science and technology as both foe and ally. Haraway ( 1992 ) states:
"Another of my premises is that the need for unity of people trying to resist world wide domination has never been more acute. But a slightly perverse shift of perspective might better enable us to contest for meanings, as well for other forms of power and pleasure in technologically mediated societies.....From one perspective, a cyborg world is about the final imposition of a grid of control on the planet, about the final abstraction embodied in a Star Wars apocalypse waged in the name of defence .....
From another perspective, a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship to animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints. The political struggle is to see from both perspectives at once because each reveals domination and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point. Single visions produce worse illusions than double visions or many headed monsters" (p.154)
In a similar vein Toffler ( 1994 ) believes that information technologies have actually encouraged cultural diversity. He states,
"we are moving into a multi-logic culture, .... we are going from a culture dominated by literal logic to a culture in which there are clashing logics" (p.25).The salient point for Toffler is that while technologies are changing culture, it is not homogenising culture, it will be a new configuration of Australia of the future culture, Chinese of the future culture etc..... He states, "you can define your own unique culture, but it isn't going to be the culture of the past, it going to be configured out of elements that come to your culture from the outside. .....people do not simply relive the past" ( p.25 ).
The point is that technological determinism is a limited view of social change because it doesn't acknowledge the way machines 'acquire social agency and function as actor in society'. This acquisition Downey (1995) attributes directly to the transcription of human agency into the machine, by its users and developers. ( p.366 )
However, on a closing note a recent interview with Alvin Toffler reverts to a more pessimistic view of the information revolution, here he advocates a form of information closure. He states,
"For the last 300 years we have had a scientific ethos that says 'information is good' - and the more we know the better. I believe we are heading for an era when their is going to be enourmous pressure to block to prevent further development of certain types of knowledge."In other words technology and society are far from a 'fete accompli', a history still unfolding or revolving.
References
Alvin Toffler: still shocking after all these years; New Scientist meets the controversial futuriologist, New Scientist, 19 March 1994 No. 1917Downey, G., (1995), Human Agency in CAD/CAM Technology, in Hables Gray, C. (ed), The Cyborg Handbook, Routledge, New York
Gabilondo, J., (1995), Post-colonial Cyborgs: Subjectivity in the Age of Cybernetic Reproduction, in Hables Gray, C. (ed), The Cyborg Handbook, Routledge, New York
Hables Gray, C & Mentor, S., (1995), The Cyborg Body Politic: Version 1.2, in Hables Gray, C., (ed), The Cyborg Handbook, Routledge, New York
Haraway, D., (1991), A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism, In D. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women, London Free Association Press
Marginson, S., (1993), Education and Public Policy in Australia, Cambridge University Press.
Martin, E., (1987), The Woman in the Body, Milton Keynes, OUP
Pusey, M., (1991), Economic Rationalism in Canberra, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne
Raskall, P., (1993), Widening Income Disparities in Australia in (eds.) Rees, S. Rodley, G. Stilwell, F. Beyond the Market: Alternatives to Economic Rationalism, Pluto Press, Sydney
Stilwell, F., (1993), Economic Rationalism: Sound Foundation for Policy? in (eds.) Rees, S. Rodley, G. Stilwell, F. Beyond the Market: Alternatives to Economic Rationalism, Pluto Press, Sydney
Weber, S., The future campus: Virtual or reality?. The Australian, 18 September 1996
Weiner, E., Virtual internet degrees get real, The Australian, 18 September 1996
Wheelwright, T. (1993), Economic Controls for Social Ends in (eds.) Rees, S. Rodley, G. Stilwell, F. Beyond the Market: Alternatives to Economic Rationalism, Pluto Press, Sydney
The Globalization of production & the International Tasks of the Working Class: Perspectives Resolution of the Workers league, Sept., (1993)
Source: http://walkerr.edfac.usyd.edu.au/henreb2/WG8/files/Socialchange.html
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