Lisa Bu's J676 Blog

Monday, October 23, 2006

Response to Part 5 of the Reader Book

Schiller's article concerns the increasing power of private corporations in the information world. "The expansion of this power has relied heavily on three far-reaching structural changes in the institutional infrstructure: deregulation of economic activity, privatization of functions once public, and commercialization of activities once socials." (p270) And the Internet is not immune from the control of the corporate world despite its open technical infrastructure. There's still huge amount of free data available partially because corporations haven't figured out an effective business model to force people to pay for data in the cyberspace. But Wall Stree Journal is charging for online reading, New York Times launched fee based "Times Select" for some online content. Corporations are trying hard. I wonder for how long the free lunch can continue on the web...

In his article, Norris analyzed the concept of the digital divide from three dimensions: "The global divide refers to the divergence of Internet access between industrialized and developing societies. The social divide concerns the gap between information rich and poor in each nations. And ... the democratic divide signifies the difference between those who do, and do not, use the panoply of digital resources to engage, mobilize and participate in public life." (p273) He also summarized the debate about the role of technology for development among cyber-optimists, cyber-skeptics, and cyber-pessimists. I'm with the skeptics: technology alone will make little difference. To make a change, it always requires active involvement of people via individual effort and society via public policies.

Lasch's article criticized the view that technology is ethically neutral and argues that it is "a mirror of society, not a 'neutral' force that can 'be used for good or evil'." (p295) What does he mean by technology? Does it mean the technological knowledge or the use of technology? If it means the former, then I found many of his arguments and examples unconvincing or even conflicting with his point. For instance, the "job enrichment" and "self-management" experiments he cited lead to realization by both management and workers that automation technology can make manager's function obsolete. Technology is not always on the management's side. Lasch treats the case as an exception. I don't agree. Technology can empower both manager and workers. Why the choice of technology often benefits managers more? Because they have more power, access, etc. It's the choice or use of technology, not the technology itself, that's biased toward managers.

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