10.0396 Cyber-problems & cyber-enthusiasms
John Unsworth (jmu2m@virginia.edu)
Thu, 7 Nov 1996 07:08:04 -0500
>Date: Wed, 6 Nov 1996 19:28:31 +0000 (GMT)
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>From: WILLARD MCCARTY <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
>To: Humanist Discussion Group <humanist@lists.Princeton.EDU>
>Subject: 10.0396 Cyber-problems & cyber-enthusiasms
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> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 10, No. 396.
> Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities (Princeton/Rutgers)
> Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
> Information at http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/
>
> [1] From: Willard McCarty <Willard.McCarty@kcl.ac.uk> (66)
> Subject: dark side of the Force?
>
>
>Two short articles in the latest <cite>Utne Reader</cite> (Nov-Dec
>96) supply antidotes to cyber-enthusiasms, and some thoughts about
>reasons to celebrate.
>
>Craig Cox, in "The Nerd Barons: Cyberbillionaires are building a
>dysfunctional economy" (15-16) notes that "despite all the hype about
>how a newly wired world will create a global village and provide the
>means for people in developing countries to empower themselves with
>information, the so-called digital revolution has only helped widen the
>gap between the super-rich and the poor." It's not only a question of
>the super-rich who have made their money from the new medium -- the
>likes of Bill Gates, companies such as Netscape -- nor how fast they have
>done it, but how. Not by producing products the manufacture of which
>is in some kind of linear relationship to the labour required.
>"The losers in this weird equation," Cox writes, "are the workers", at
>least in the first instance. The fact that standard economic principles
>are no longer a reliable means of constructing the new economy means that
>everything is threatened. One proposal, reported by Mark Ward in
><cite>New Scientist</cite> (20 July 1996) is "that the FCC [Federal
>Communications Commission, U.S.] and the European Union are considering
>taxing the flow of information on the Internet...." Such a move, Cox
>writes approvingly, "could send a signal that the government is at least
>thinking about the rest of us."
>
>This is where I say, "No comment"! But is it that simple?
>
>In "Inter-Not: Why cyberspace is an empty place", John Brockman reports
>the comments of David Gelernter (CS, Yale) on the Internet. (Gelernter was
>severely wounded in an attack by the Unibomber; see the text of the
>Unibomber's letter at http://pages.prodigy.com/gvmm68e/letter1.html.)
>
>At the moment, Gelernter comments, the Net doesn't matter much to
>ordinary people. "Technologies that matter make daily life less obnoxious,
>and you can leverage them all the time," he says. "The Net is going to
>start mattering in a significant way when it relieves people of the burden
>of dealing with the garbage inherent in the information flow of everyday
>life." What he wants to see is a Net that will maintain all his own
>information so that any particular computer ceases to matter. The
>analogue he has in mind is the utility company, or closer to home, one's
>central heating system (the typical N. American house as a model for
>the world served by the Internet). Sounds homey at first, but what are
>the implications? There are all sorts of technical ones, of course, with
>economic and geopolitical aspects. Who among us would willingly surrender
>all our data to some central service in exchange for the convenience
>of getting to it anywhere (a word that always must be heavily qualified)?
>
>Getting serious about the Internet means, it seems, getting away from the
>world of "boys and their toys". Gelernter, to his credit, is bothered by
>the relative absence of women. "They're not attracted to this world,
>certainly not to the extent that men are, and that's one of the reasons
>why it's such a spiritually impoverished world. Most reasonably
>sophisticated men are happier in an environment that includes women."
>Although I agree with the last sentence wholeheartedly, the ecstasy of
>assent is curiously inhibited by the rest. Is it true that women aren't
>attracted to the world of computing, or is he really (? unconsciously)
>referring to the world of computer science? I wouldn't think that
>humanities computing could be included under that sentence. What stirs me
>up particularly is the condemnation of computing as "spiritually
>impoverished". Not being a computer scientist I have little basis on
>which to judge Gelernter's world, but in my experience humanities computing
>is anything but spiritually impoverished. Financially to be sure, but I
>find that the commons where the paths of computing meet the byways of
>the arts and humanities has as rich a soil as any field you'd care to
>get your boots stuck in.
>
>Comments?
>
>WM
>
>
>------------------------------------------------
>Dr. Willard McCarty, Senior Lecturer
>King's College London / Strand / London WC2R 2LS
>+44 0171 873-2784 / Willard.McCarty@kcl.ac.uk
>http://www.kcl.ac.uk/kis/schools/hums/ruhc/wlm/
>
>
>
>
>
John Unsworth / Director, IATH / Dept. of English
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~jmu2m/