Interesting discussion... It rather parallels some thoughts I've been having following a great interactiom with staff and students at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT here in Accra, Ghana. I was giving them my capsulized "Intro to Community Informatics" presentation which in this context was focussed rather on how ICTs can support Economic and Social Development and particularly from the grassroots (which I guess for the purposes here argues that the the technology doesn't itself "have an ideology" but rather is a means for the implementation of whatever ideology is brought to it from the outside... At that point the conversation rather turned direction and we began to talk more specifically about mobiles and how they are impacting in Ghana--95%(coverage), 90% utilization vs. 5% or so fixed line, less for stationary access to the Internet and so on. What became clear (to me at least) as we were talking was that all of the mobile applications that we were discussing--access to market information, access to weather information, health notices to pregnant women--that sort of thing were all one to one (or in a pinch many to one) applications; but in fact, as came out in the discussion, rural villages (Ghana is still roughly 50% rural) don't function in this kind of individualized (one to one) information mode. (An example, in a recent excursion here I happened to notice that the local artisanal in-shore fishery consists largely of boats with up to a dozen fishermen and when it comes time to haul in the nets up to 30 or so villagers may be involved. These folks don't need to know as individuals what the local price of fish might be in a particular market, or what the prospect is of a storm and thus the need to haul in the nets, or even how to handle pre-natal information (since birthing is a village activity not solely a family one). What is needed are means for the most rapid and effective form of one-to-many communcation i.e. how to get the information to all those in the community who need to be able to use it as part of their collaborative activities. But one-to-many communicatiom for mobiles requires a fairly significant degree of financial and planning overhead -- certainly something beyond the interest of most commercial mobile operators. In this context the conventional(even technologically prescribed) mobile communications mode i.e. one to one (or many to one) is non-functional or even potentially destructive. So the message that I came away with and that I would contribute to this discussion is less that technology is (or is not) ideologically neutral (that depends I guess on how you define "ideology"). But rather that at least in some particular contexts, for some particular purposes, technology is deeply value laden concerning the nature of one's being in the world (e.g. individualistic or communal as one example) and that the forces of technology design combined with the forces of commerce, ideology and inertia (and in the absence of popular resistance and/or public policy) can be deeply (and ultimately irresponsibly) reconstitutive of the nature of our lived world and how we experience and act in this. (But I guess we, who have read our Harold Innis, and here we should include Marshall McLuhan, would already know that). And finally to observe that it seems to me that this form of technology imposed socio-cultural rerendering is perhaps the deepest "ideological" cut of all. Best to all, Mike Michael Gurstein, Ph.D. Executive Director: Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development and Training (CCIRDT) Vancouver, BC CANADA tel/fax: +1-604-602-0624 email: gurstein@gmail.com web: http://communityinformatics.net blog: http://gurstein.wordpress.com twitter: #michaelgurstein -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Herman Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2012 10:24 AM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org; jhuns@vt.edu Subject: Re: [Air-L] Technology as ideologically neutral? This is indeed a fascinating discussion and I like the way that Jeremy has turned the question here. J: can you explain a bit more what you mean when you hold that objects themselves have politics in themselves but necessarily ideologies in themselves? Charles: at the end of the day, would you please post all the readings that people have suggested? And let us not forget Slack and Wise, Culture and Technology: A Primer. Andrew Herman, Ph. D. Associate Professor Department of Communication Studies Director, Graduate Program in Cultural Analysis and Social Theory Wilfrid Laurier University Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5 CANADA 519 884-1970 x3693
jeremy hunsinger <jhuns@vt.edu> 07/07/12 3:28 AM >>> I find this to be an interesting debate, though mostly the question is where the ideology actually exists. Does it exist in the object itself? relations to the object from other objects? relations to the object to semiotic systems around it? relations to socius or culture? or in the systems alone, cultures alone, socius, alone, etc.
basically there is a matrix here of ideologies, contexts, objects and their axiologies operating both ontologically ala mereological constructions and epistemologies. With many blurry middle grounds. I hold that artifacts have politics in themselves, but i'm not sure that all artefacts have ideologies in themselves. The question i tend to raise and ask people to write about is... what is the politics of the toaster, because the toaster has a whole political economics and a politics, but does it have an implied ideology. Now the design of a toaster can certainly have ideological components, but the idea of a toaster may perhaps not, though granted whether the idea exists outside of the set of objects is another debate for the Platonists to take up. however... I wonder about the neutrality of the internet because as I've argued here before, that while there is no real internet beyond reference to a conceptual idea that encompasses many technologies and systems that lack what i'd all think of as a unity beyond the concept. So does it as a whole have a neutrality or an ideology? there is a certain technocratic rationality to it, and that rationality certainly has a traditionally critiqued ideology, but is that in it, or in the design of it, or in the relations of it within historic contexts? and isn't neutrality and the claim to it, an ideological claim? I've always tended to argue that the claim toward neutrality and objectivity is almost always ideological. one of my favorite authors on this technology as ideology is Paul Virilio and my second favorite is Walter Benjamin in Arcades Project. _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/ _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/