Old Hecklers

Sweet Je**s

2009-07-04T15:48:00.000-07:00

Is it sign of recession?
Check out new IE8 advert

This is a copy of the video. The official version disappeared from the Net sometime Wednesday.

I still can't believe that was genuine marketing move.
Cheers.

Wolfram Alpha Just Started

2009-05-16T04:14:00.000-07:00

Wolfram Alpha - The First Computational Knowledge Engine.
Quite limited at the moment but provides number of fascinating features for data mining and statistical analysis.
You can use it to check how Bulmers manufacturer is coping on London Stock Exchange.

Star of Tomorrow

2009-05-08T05:20:00.000-07:00

In our changing world where nothing is cast in stone anymore even stars and celebrities are going to be replaced by... lets see...

Innovation as a Core Virtue

2009-05-07T15:00:00.000-07:00

"The rich adopt novelties and become accustomed to their use. This sets a fashion which others imitate. Once the richer classes have adopted a certain way of living, producers have an incentive to improve the methods of manufacture so that soon it is possible for the poorer classes to follow suit. Thus luxury furthers progress. Innovation "is the whim of an elite before it becomes a need of the public. The luxury today is the necessity of tomorrow." Luxury is the roadmaker of progress: it develops latent needs and makes people discontented. In so far as they think consistently, moralists who condemn luxury must recommend the comparatively desireless existence of the wild life roaming in the woods as the ultimate ideal of civilized life." Ludwig von Mises

If technology does not emerge from the unfolding of a predetermined logic or a single determinant, then innovation is a 'garden of forking paths'. Different routes are available, potentially leading to different technological outcomes. Significantly, these choices could have differing implications for society and for particular social groups.

“Scholars interested in the relationship between cultural and media change invariably become embroiled in a debate that polarises into two camps: those accused of technological determinism, often linked with the work of McLuhan (1962; 1994); and advocates of the Social Shaping of Technology who emphasise that technologies are always invented and adapted by real people in particular socio-historical circumstances (MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1999). Socio-cultural theory provides an alternative way to think about the implications of media change that stems from the centrality of the idea of the dialectic in post-Vygotskian thought. Wertsch (1998, pp. 23-72; 1995a, pp. 65-68) develops this line of thinking using an analogy that makes reference to the history of pole-vaulting following the invention of fibreglass poles that young athletes exploited to gain an advantage in a competitive Olympic sport.

The technique allows vaulters to exploit the elastic properties of glass fibre to slingshot themselves over the bar. Historically, it allowed vaulters to surpass the records set by Cornelius Warmerdam in 1957 who used a rigid bamboo pole. Interesting, Wertsch tells us that, while young athletes around the world started to appropriate the elastic properties of glass fibre poles, old timers, whose technique depended on the relative rigidity of bamboo poles claimed that the rules of the game had fundamentally changed. Indeed, some claimed it wasn’t the same sport and retired.

This provides a model for thinking about the changing culture of university learning in the new media age. Significantly, the invention of new mediational means (i.e. glass fibre poles) didn’t cause change. Change was driven from the bottom up by young vaulters as they exploited its affordances to gain an edge in a competitive Olympic sport. Similarly, access to digital tools and resources does not cause change in itself; rather change is driven from the bottom-up as advanced learners start to appropriate, experiment and innovate new strategies that depend on the affordances [of] the available cultural tool-kit.” Moonbat Francis “The Predicament of the Learner in the New Media Age”

It looks like Thomas Jefferson was right. Every society develops it's own aristocracy. Natural aristocracy of virtues and talents. People who are driving force of innovation are natural part of it. It's interesting how little trust in people and their natural pursuit for innovation had people associated with theory of technological determinism.

"What counts alone is the innovator, the dissenter, the harbinger of things unheard of, the man who rejects the traditional standards and aims at substituting new values and ideas for old ones." Ludwig von Mises

One Laptop per Child

2009-05-06T17:00:00.000-07:00

I was going to write couple hundred words what I think about OLPC initiative but let's reduce my carbon footprint. One picture is worth 1000s words so here it is.

I don't reckon that it'll hinder your health

2009-05-06T16:38:00.000-07:00

“Little evidence of a link between video games and aggressive youth: Here's an interesting statistic: While the video game industry was exploding between 1994 and 2000, juvenile (ages 15-17) violent crime arrests dropped by 44% and young adult (ages 18-24) arrests dropped by 24% according to the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. While that does not necessarily rule out any relationship between video games and youth violence, it certainly should make policymakers pause before rushing to legislate.“

TV Block Console 10 of the Ugliest Game Consoles of All Time

It's interesting how quickly computer games became part of main steam media. Some may argue that time span between first video game console widely available to the public and state of the art Sony's Playstation 3 Home Entertainment hub is more than three decades. Computer games and game consoles are great example how technological advancements are adopted by society. It's double edge sword really. As long as video games consoles were expensive gizmos nobody pay any attention to it.
Now even hollywood is adopting best selling computer games into (B type at the most) movies. At least they can monetize game success again.

Computer games and game consoles are no longer associated with computer geeks and nerds but with home and family entertainment. Nintendo Wii had done something that was unimaginable up to now. They manage to attract 30+ female audience into computer games. Computer games industry crossed another barrier that decade ago was an paradigm.
Society finale recognized this type of entertainment as almost integral and fully legitimate way of socializing and spending time.

The most interesting thing is the way how the whole relationship between society and computer games evolved to it's current status.
There is one sentences that perfectly describes the whole process...

"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.” Mohandas K. Gandhi

Long live the Entrepreneur

2009-05-06T13:07:00.000-07:00

“Class Theory upholds that class structure is ultimately determined by the structure of the production process. An individual’s class position is then determined by his role in the production process, while his political and ideological consciousness is shaped by this structurally determined class position” Marx.

Florida argues that cities that attract gays, bohemians, and ethnic minorities are the new economic powerhouses because they are also the places where creative workers—the kind who start and staff innovative, fast-growing companies—want to live. To lure this workforce, Florida argues, cities must dispense with stuffy old theories of economic development—like the notion that low taxes are what draw in companies and workers—and instead must spend heavily on cultural amenities and pursue progressive social legislation.

Comic book guy - Another member of creative class?

Florida seems to be making Faux Pas in the field of logic. What's important he assumed that there was some causal connection linking all of his indexes with economic growth. Then he decided he could infer just what it was about these cities that helped power this growth. He concluded that in the new economic order, the engine of growth wasn’t individual companies but, rather, creative workers - creative class, who came to live in cities they admired and then started their own firms or attracted businesses seeking educated workers. What enticed these workers, the professor concluded with very little evidence, was that the cities were “tolerant, diverse and open to creativity.”

“In new analyses of nationally representative data from the United States, Sweden, Germany, and Japan, the authors show that (a) occupations are an important conduit for social reproduction, (b) the most extreme rigidities in the mobility regime are only revealed when analyses are carried out at the occupational level, and (c) much of what shows up as big‐class reproduction in conventional mobility analyses is in fact occupational reproduction in disguise.”

It’s a nifty article, and it’s essentially a series of cross tabulations and log-linear models showing that much of inter-generational mobility is better described as occupation-occupation mobility. They call it “disguised” - if you look at only big classes, you miss important stuff, but if you break it down by small categories of people (occupations) you see “pockets” of non-mobility that dominate big class analyses. A more quant jock way to say is “mixture model” - there seem to be multiple processes happening to different populations, a direct refutation of the classical Marxist view.
orgtheory.net class theory is dead: season 6, episode 4

But most important, to a generation of liberal urban policymakers and politicians who favor big government, Florida’s ideas offer a way to talk economic-development talk while walking the familiar big-spending walk. In the old rhetorical paradigm, left-wing politicians often paid little heed to what mainstream businesses—those that create the bulk of jobs—wanted or needed, except when individual firms threatened to leave town, at which point municipal officials might grudgingly offer tax incentives. The business community was otherwise a giant cash register to be tapped for public revenues—an approach that sparked a steady drain of businesses and jobs out of the big cities once technology freed them from the necessity of staying there.

“American capitalism is derided for its superficial banality, yet it has unleashed profound, convulsive social change. Condemned as mindless materialism, it has burst loose a flood tide of spiritual yearning. The civil rights movement and the sexual revolution, environmentalism and feminism, the fitness and health care boom and the opening of the gay closet, the withering of censorship and the rise of a “creative class” of “knowledge workers”—all are the progeny of widespread prosperity.
"How Prosperity Made Us More Libertarian" By Brink Lindsey

Now comes Florida with the equivalent of an eat-all-you-want-and-still-lose-weight diet. Yes, you can create needed revenue-generating jobs without having to take the unpalatable measures—shrinking government and cutting taxes—that appeal to old-economy businessmen, the kind with starched shirts and lodge pins in their lapels. You can bypass all that and go straight to the new economy, where the future is happening now. You can draw in Florida’s creative-class capitalists—ponytails, jeans, rock music, and all—by liberal, big-government means: diversity celebrations, “progressive” social legislation, and government spending on cultural amenities. Put another way, Florida’s ideas are breathing new life into an old argument: that taxes, incentives, and business-friendly policies are less important in attracting jobs than social legislation and government-provided amenities. After all, if New York can flourish with its high tax rates, and Austin can boom with its heavy regulatory environment and limits on development, any city can thrive in the new economy.

“In 2001, a National Commission on Entrepreneurship study entitled Mapping America’s Entrepreneurial Landscape ranked U.S. cities on how well they hatch high-growth companies. Unlike Florida, the commission developed a precise method of measuring high-growth centers: it calculated the percentage of companies in a local economy that grew by 15 percent a year for five consecutive years in the mid-1990s. Unlike Florida’s anecdotal observations of places where he assumes that plenty of entrepreneurial activity is taking place, the commission’s numbers-oriented approach precisely charts America’s entrepreneurial topography. Unexpectedly, the study concludes that “most fast-growing, entrepreneurial companies are not in high tech industries,” but rather “widely distributed across all industries.”
The Curse of the Creative Class by Steven Malanga

Even Florida himself seems to be quite ambiguous when it comes to aftereffects of his theory applied in the real life and everyday business environment. In one of his interviews he comes from quite interesting angle while describing future prospects as workforce as a whole. He recognizes constant need of change and up killing as driving force of market. Surprisingly he gives quite good insight into ow economy works and how complex it is. It quite contrary to his original approach to creative class idea. This time it's more "there's no simple solutions" approach.

“The task facing economic leaders of the 21st century is not simply how to spur technology and innovation, but how to recreate the large pool of high-paying but relatively low-skill jobs that were once the hallmark of our broad middle-class society.

Since not everyone can be a scientist, artist, or professional, and since a large number of manufacturing jobs simply will not be coming back, the best strategy may be to elevate the millions of new service-sector jobs our economy is generating into secure, respectable, high-paying jobs. When I asked a group of my students whether they would prefer to work in good, high-paying jobs in a machine tool factory or lower-paying temporary jobs in a hair salon, they overwhelmingly chose the latter, for its more psychologically rewarding, creative work. Indeed, while vocational training programs for machinists go begging for students, cosmetology classes are overfilled.

The point is not that hair-cutting jobs are somehow inherently better than factory jobs, but that our only choice for avoiding a two-class society is to make these sorts of service economy jobs better, higher-paying middle class jobs. And these personal service jobs—manicuring, landscaping, massaging, and so on—are the ones least likely to be vulnerable to outsourcing.”
RICHARD FLORIDA and his creative class website

Cult of the Amateur

2009-05-06T12:04:00.000-07:00

For someone who earns a living through consideration of outbreaks of The Future, it’s all useful information, but that’s all it is. For the parsing and condensation of that information into knowledge, it seems we still need the structure of print publishing, a form that insists on time to think, digest and present. While I will write about things that relate to Wired UK’s fields of interest in the coming months, for this first issue it’s worth standing outside in the cold away from the internet and consider why print and newspaper/magazine structures still exist. Because reporting and editing are honest-to-God actual fucking jobs that don’t get taught at the Huffington Post and the Daily Beast, and because all those faceless blog-networks infesting the Bay Area like tongue herpes have no interest in their minimum-wage blogmonkeys thinking about anything bigger than their hitcount. These things are fun and great for finding out about paedo-paramedics and Ukrainian porn, but they shouldn’t be confused with informed reportage and actual thinking.

"We're living in the last days of the Roman Empire" By Warren Ellis|14 April 2009 Wired UK 05.09

My favourite examples of relentless struggle with Cult of amateur is company that has origin it internet itself – Cnet Networks.
CNet started as a web-only play in pre .com era times. It’s business model developed alongside development of Internet. Those two entities were closely associated for almost two decades. As a result CNet managed to become one of the most recognizable and of the most trusted brands on the internet.
As a company with origins within internet/virtual area it’s not facing a painful transition to all-digital distribution. This gives CNet huge advantage over mainstream media sites such as the New York Times.

Unfortunately over the last two years Cnet’s biggest strength became Achilles’ heel.Rapid development of web 2.0 social network sites and stronger then ever culture of blogging pushes CNet out of mainstream of information technology websites.
Revenues are down, number of page views per month as well as number of unique users is decreasing. Doest it mean that CNet’s business model had it’s own five minutes and now became obsolete? Maybe it’s general reflection of the state of the whole internet based advertising business model?

Overlooked web 2.0 competition;
Born of Blogospehere and web 2.0 internet / social network has huge impact on CNet's value role in the content value chain. Particularly in area of content aggregation sites, CNet’s position been severely weakened. Creating must-read content and community is a do-or-die issue at the Internet firm.
To some extent bloggers are increasingly respected (by users) as quality journalists and analysts who in some cases have more expertise than the technology journalists that are covering the same story, product, or events.
CNet has never found a way to build an effective community around any of their brands. New Social media of web 2.0 are becoming increasingly important. New mega-aggravation-sites like Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us are claiming larger shares of the time spent online. Static libraries of "expert" content may become less of an asset in the years ahead.

Rise of new web 2.0 quality blogs
Another threat is the rise of leaner competitors like Ars Technica. It’s much smaller, has decentralized operations, keeps even core stuff to absolute minimun and as a recult depends heavily on freelancers. As a result overall overhead is extremely low. What makes the biggest difference is really efficient, web focused, editing and publishing process. Contributors, journalists and writers in general communicate with their editors on internet chats and through emails. All stories are posted directly on the website.
Key factor is not even strength of particular CNet’s competitors but it’s number.
Many of those competitors managed to attract huge number of users and followers much more loyal then CNet’s users.

Shift of readers preferences
Majority of the people would like to see balanced, objective and quality reporting but they will spend more time reading blog s containing snippets of information delivered in no time in comparison to CNet’slengthy publishing proceed. Web analytics identified growing trend of shifting readers prefernces. Average user expect snippets of information delivered on time instead of lengthy blocks of text.

CNet Networks is a great example of company which has origins in digital age, managed to remain on the top of the league for a decade and then clearly run of ideas how compete in new business environment. Reinvention of internet with web 2.0 puts question mark even over companies like CNet. Social Networking, blogospere(s), introduction of YouTube not only attracted millions of users but also what’s more important reshaped the way how users interact with information.
For more than decade CNet seems to developed perfect recipe how to blend high quality journalism into profitable on-line content. Highly acclaimed CNet’s business model was copied by many but none of the competitors managed to get close or even achieve similar success.

Introduction of blogs brought content creation and article turnover into different level, not necessary in the terms of quality. Instant news alerts, news coverage and on line discussions became part of users expectations. Pendulum swung towards speed.
CNet given it’s current position has great opportunities to become technological forerunner again. The biggest challenge is to reinvent themselves. Bring high quality information into web 2.0 and be really innovative again.

How to save €19.95

2009-05-03T14:49:00.000-07:00

It's quote simple. Instead of going to your local bookstore and spending €19.95 on Penguine's edition of "On War" you can go online and visit Guttenberg project "On War". If you search well you can can find all Metternich's works as well.

Domain Names Waffle

2009-05-03T12:55:00.000-07:00

Wants some regular waffle? I read this article couple of times already. The Effective Strategy For Choosing Right Domain Names in Smashing Magazine. It gives couple of inspirational ideas and some really useful links like Instant Domain Search and Domains Bot but the rest is regular waffle. It reminds me books titled "How to be successful in life", "Who stole my cheese" and so on.
Did google win search engine war with hotbot, altavista, excite solely because of it's name or because of service it provided? It's quite funny well, to some extent, that all "web guys" are trying to rediscover principles of marketing again and again.They already tried to rediscover principles of business... We all know how it ended in dot com crash. Instead of looking for some magic bullet solution try to talk to old fashioned high street marketing people. All those name problems and dilemmas were researched zillion times in the last century.

Back to the Future: Afghanistan 27 years ago

2009-05-03T11:27:00.000-07:00

War is nothing but continuation of politics by other means

Carl von Clausewitz

You've seen all this pictures before. But this time good guys became back guys.You don't have to agree with old Prussian general, but Shirley Bassey captured this brilliantly in one of her songs... it's all just a little bit of history repeating.
Nice collection of russian war photos , everyday life under russian occupation and last but not least genuine Afghani War Carpets. All thanks to englishrussia.com

Go Tweet Yourself

2009-04-30T07:06:00.001-07:00

Why waste valuable social networking hours getting yourself "Facebook fired," when Twitter allows you to humiliate yourself quickly, and in 140 characters or less?

Maybe you will find inspiration reading two articles,
one from NY Times by Maureen Dowd "To Tweet or Not to Tweet" and local one from Irish Times "Tiresome tweets as heavy hitters turn to Twitter" by Lucy Kellaway.

Geek's Orchestra

2009-04-19T23:57:00.000-07:00

Bohemian Rapsody performed by Atari 800XL, HP Scanjet, Commodore C64 & C128 and 5.25"floppy disk drives . Enjoy...

New Heights in Googlephobia: “A Delinquent, Sociopathic Parasite”?

2009-04-07T01:48:00.000-07:00

Really interesting article from the Technology Liberation Front in response to the Porter's attack on google published recently in The Guardian.

Porter says not a word about Google’s role as an economic fountainhead of online innovation and creativity. He simply dismisses Google as “delinquent and sociopathic.” One might dismiss Porter as just another crank in the “Long Tail of Googlephobia,” but his 188-year-old newspaper, The Guardian, is among the world’s most respected. With a circulation 1/3 that of the New York Times and 1/2 that of The Washington Post (in a nation five times smaller than the U.S.), The Guardian is serious when it claims to be “the world’s leading liberal voice.” For those unimpressed by any newspaper, note that Porter’s rant topped Techmeme today. So rants like Porter’s are being heard—no matter how unfounded they are....
Will anyone be surprised when papers like The Guardian give space to a modern-day Chambers to rant about how Google is the Third Reich reborn—or how Google is The Matrix made real? Every rant like Porter’s makes it just a little harder to have a serious, rational conversation about Google and its impact on society—both good and ill. If that’s the kind of “journalism” Porter thinks Google is killing, it’s not worth saving. The only thing more ironic than Porter’s attack on Google for undermining serious journalism—something of which he himself seems incapable—is the juxtaposition of Google’s ads with Porter’s official profile on The Guardian:

Innovate viral services

2009-04-05T11:46:00.000-07:00

Thinking about setting up new digital business?
Having meeting in relation to company's website?
Love the sound of "innovate viral services" and similar meaningless sentences?
This website is definitely for you:
World's first and only Web Economy Bull***t Generator.

What some users said:

Using the Bull**it Generator, we were able to replace our entire marketing staff. Thanks!—Jay B.

A great resource for IT executives and their speechwriters.—Stuart S.

Just to think I spent 25K with the SMU Executive MBA program when all I needed to do was log on.—Mike W.

Web 2.0 Bubble Bursts?

2009-04-05T11:19:00.000-07:00

I heard once joke about mental difference between average American and European:
Ask European what's the purpose of opening new school? " to educate people" will be the answer.
What's the purpose of building railway network? "to move goods".
What's the purpose of building new hospital? "to heal people".
Well, average American would say driven force behind building schools, hospitals and rail networks is to make profit.

What does it has in common with web 2.0?
Well, it's quite horrifying that more and more on-line business runs out of ideas how to monetize their existence. Did they have any idea in the first place?
You Tube didn't manage to make any profit before google took it over. CNet was on the verge of collapse before CBS bailed it out. Is Twitter making any money at all?

Web 2.0 social websites managed to attract zillions of users. That's great.
At the moment number of registered users & visitors are the only measures of success. That's quite scary. Does it remind you something? Dot-com boom was largely based on the same way of thinking "we will find the way how to make profit later on". They didn't.
This time the biggest "success" of new digital entrepreneur is to attract as many people as possible and sale business to google.

That doesn't sound like good-old entrepreneurship at all. Would you hand over your hard earn cash to somebody who says "I don't have any idea how to make this profitable but hopefully one day somebody will buy it out and shower us with cash"?

I can tell you it reminds me one day. Thursday. The 24th of October to be exact.

Blog Smlog

2009-04-02T01:49:00.000-07:00

No value in blogging say 33pc of tech execs.

A recent survey of senior technology executives – 12pc of whom were based in Ireland – was carried out by global PR network Eurocom Worldwide to ascertain the attitude of these high level individuals towards blogging. The results were interesting....

With such a small number of these companies maintaining a corporate blog it was critical to find out what attitudes they held towards blogging and the blogosphere: 36pc just put their hands and admitted that it was too time consuming while a further 33pc did not see any value in blogging whatsoever.

Full article on Silicon Republic.

Ye Olde Dixies

2009-03-28T16:23:00.000-07:00

It wasn't supposed to be about the South.
Let me tell you how did it start.
Did you hear about Earth Hour before? Well, according to discredited Wikipedia:

"it's held on the last Saturday of March each year, which asks households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change".

I don't believe in climate change (caused by humans anyway), so after turning all lights on at home I jumped into my gas guzzler and drove away for two hours.
On my cruise I bought brilliant CD (yes it's environmentally unfriendly 1.2mm thick polycarbonate piece of plastic) called "Country Roots". What a pleasure ;)
What remained me to ask all this question again...
What trigger Civil War? Why Dixie people opposed good cause?
Why United States didn't follow Britain and just bought up and freed all slaves? Was it about slavery at all? Maybe it was about Republic and how that idea was executed?
Couple of articles to think about...
The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate
The Economics of the Civil War
Reasons for the Civil War

You've Been Helvetized!

2009-03-27T13:50:00.000-07:00

Apparently love for Helvetica goes beyond computers screen.
Maybe one day I'll take a walk on the san-serif side of life too...

Paddy Whackery?

2009-03-26T00:52:00.000-07:00

How many times you felt you're surrounded by utter imbeciles at your workplace? How many times you had to explain dozen of times why using "free" images from google search isn't completely legal? Working with Marketing staff who could hardly use a computer?
Well, at least you're not alone.
Interesting discussion on Irish work Ethic is held on Creative Ireland.

London Calling

2009-03-22T13:03:00.000-07:00

Another interesting article from Irish Times.
Young Irish people who have never known bad times are heading to London in search of work – and finding things are not much better there.

"It is, a major wake-up call for younger people, particularly those leaving college or who lived it up during the boom years. For people my age and younger, we never experienced anything like this. We weren’t prepared for it and were probably living the high life for too long. Lads who used to be able to miss a Monday because of drink and walk into another job – those days are gone.”

London calling, yes, I was there, too...

Dai Nipponjin

2009-03-22T11:30:00.000-07:00

Something special for all those who were disappointed with Watchman movie.
Big Man Japan is mockumentary about giant Japanese superhero.

World's smallest and... cheapest HD Camcorder

2009-03-19T13:03:00.000-07:00

Pure Digital Technologies just announced the smallest and what's more important the cheapest HD Camcorder Flip Mino HD Price tag below $230. Some technical info: 4Gb internal memory, H.264 compression, fixed focal lens, size... much smaller then pack of cigarettes (10s).

Prince (this time Designer) of Persia

2009-03-02T05:32:00.001-08:00

SRA Design website is down again... That's a pity. It offered different perspective as a independent hub for graphic artist from Arabic speaking / Persian provenience.
That's correct there are designers in Iran too. Sometimes it's clash of cultures something absolutely different perspective of seeing things. But always creative.
So, watch this space; SRA Design.

Back to the good old days

2009-03-02T00:58:00.000-08:00

It seems pendulum has swung again.
This time it's all about being kind on the capital letter and the semicolon.
We may still photoshop photographs and google for information but at least style, punctuation and formality are back.
"When people are losing their jobs, correct dress and correct usage of words seem like a good insurance policy" writes Lucy Kellaway.

Full article Irish Times

You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet

2009-02-24T02:14:00.000-08:00

Does the Technological Determinism vs. Social Shaping

debate accurately describe the relationship between

Technology and Society?

Before I answer this question let me put Technologial

Determinism theory into perspective. As you know one of the

earliest Technological Determinist was Karl Marx.

Let me quote one of the greatest leaders of 20th century on

this matter “What I am describing now is a plan and a hope

for the long term -- the march of freedom and democracy

which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history

as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and

muzzle the self-expression of the people.” - President

Ronald Reagan in speech to members of the British

Parliament (1982).

I believe above quote answers any questions about

legitimacy of any ideas proposed by Karl Marx. As a side

note you can ask yourself why Marx’s writings (not mention

ideas) are still in circulation while one single book wrote

by another German socialist is widely forbidden across the

continent. Yes, that’s true. It’s Europe in 21 century

not middle ages but there are still books you can’t

publish or buy.

But that leaves main question unanswered… Really?

This question implicates that any debate of Technological

Determinism vs Social Shaping would more or less accurately

describe relationship between technology and society.

What if this is false?

Instead of trying to predict and describe any relation (if

there is any) I would focus on main driving force of

innovation. Nobel Prize-winning economist

Milton Friedman said:

“There is no alternative way so far discovered of

improving the lot of ordinary people that can hold a candle

to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free

enterprise system”.

From this perspective technology would be an outcome of

operation of free market not detached standalone entity.

Name the first technology that comes to your mind.

I can bet thousands of people cooperated to make it work.

People who don’t speak the same language, people who practice different

religion, people who would hate each another if they met.

What brought them together? What made them to cooperate?

Is it greed and self interest?

When reading academic papers about society & technology

they resemble prediction for 50’s and 60’s. It has at

least one thing in common.

Both were very trendy at the time when published and both

became quickly outdate within the decades. Do you remember

those cartoons how people imagined living in the year 2000?

Robots all around, nuclear powered planes… you name it.

Are futurist the only people who predict future wrong?

Take a look at the moguls within industry.

Back in the early 80’s, Ken Olsen, then CEO of Digital

Equipment Corp. (DEC – one of the biggest computer

manufacturers at the time), gave an interview about future

of computers : ”There is no reason for any individual to

have a computer in his home.”
Can we blame sociologist for getting their predictions
wrong if people within industry can't see what’s going to
happen in the next 5 years?
At least one thing is certain… You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet

We're finally where we belong...

2009-02-22T10:24:00.000-08:00