Defense logic and urban development

This week's reading 'From Warfare to Welfare' is a historical tour through the process of how defense logics and the professionals behind it functioned as the foundations for modern urban development in US cities. She examines various layers ranging from City management and GIS to the 'wired city' concepts. She argues that the defense logics were the backbone of it, but also limits that they have not been the all-deciding force behind everything because a lot of them did not actually leave the planning stage and materialized. She continues that in the post 9/11 era (or even more so) this relationship has become once again evident.

It reminds me of the famous urban legend that the Internet itself was developed to maintain a military C4I system and win the World War even in case one of the major cities is blown away by Soviet nukes. Though nobody actually confirmed of proved it, it sounded so plausible because the ARPANET was funded by NASA and people easily tend to think that if the defense people are doing it, it must have some military purposes. However, as Light found out in many other aspects, it is not defense per se but the logic of defense mechanism, its money and above all the actual professionals that actually propelled them into that direction. In that sense, it is clearly another layer of hidden information labor.

A question that comes into my mind is, what other paths of urban development could have been taken if it were not the defense professionals who were in the planning roles? Or simply, what difference did they really make? I wish if there was a section that compared the modern urban developments influenced by defense mechanism and its professionals to the pre-WW developments that did not rely on those logics, which would have made the findings of this book clearer.

Another question is how the Information flow structure that the planners have been emphasizing has actually affected the work and life in those areas and how those phenomena have fed back to the planners on subsequent plans. Was the defense logic still persistent in all the subsequent corrections as well, or did they mix up with other logics (such as market needs) to become something hybrid and new? I haven't followed the literature on this field, and maybe somebody already answered those questions...

Thoughts on digital, sublime myths

(As posted in the main course blog)

This week's reading 'The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power and Cyberspace' by Vincent Mosco centers on the question of how and why the 'digital age' has been hailed. And unlike the readings of the previous weeks that emphasized the production and market functions, it sheds light on the cultural mindset as the major motivator. Especially the notion of 'myth' as the meaning-making mechanism through which people try to put value on the information and communication technologies(ICT) is discussed in great detail, ultimately incorporating the political-economical dimensions as well.

A short (and clearly oversimplified) recap of the chapters:

Chapter 1: The need to look into the cyberspace with 'both eyes' is discussed. Not only the material conditions but the cultural dimension - the 'myth' - is required to understand how our society accepts the cyberspace.
Chapter 2: The key dimensions of the myth-making process of cyberspace is discussed. The 'mythmakers' include the academic, political, and business worlds and powerful supporting institutions via means of metaphors (most prominent examples: the digital library, information highway, electronic commerce, virtual community, digital ecology, and narrative stream).
Chapter 3, 4, 5 (the main body): Here, he provides invaluable critical summaries of the literature on the so-called 'post-industirial' information society theories. The myths of the cyberspace as being something sublime and completely world-changing are discussed in three major clusters - the end of history, geography and politics. he looks into the vast body of existing literature and explains how the mythmakers constructed discourses to make the society believe that digital communication will ultimately bring fundamental changes in time, space/place and power relationships. Especially in Chapter 5 he looks into the past historical moments of new communication technologies such as radio and television, and finds out that the principal pattern of the myth stayed similar.
Chapter 6: Here he uses the metaphor of 'Ground Zero' to emphasize that "history, geography and politics returned with a vengeance". The significance of political economical ('material') dimensions are revisited, and again the importance of incorporating cultural analysis (such as foregrounding the local, and taking historical contexts of discourse struggle into account) is emphasized.

Some questions worth thinking about:
- Why do sublime utopian myths of new technology seem to almost always win against the other possible form of myth - the dystopian one? Is it somehow inherent in mythical subliminality to neige to the bright and shiny ideal?
- According to Chapter 5, the principal pattern of the myth is repeated with new emerging communication technologies. Then, how do the outdated technologies lose their subliminality? Are there any myth-breakers at work, or is it simply that people forget their initial awe?
- On p.6, Mosco argues that the technologies become important forces for social and economic change after they have lost their role as source for utopian visions. Is it the case of the technology itself, or rather the utilization of it? For example, the recent utopian vision of the 'Web2.0' concept is mostly the same Internet technology as pre-dotcom burst, but the utilization pattern of that technology has changed so that many believe it is something new...
- What role have the 'sublime myths' played in the changes in labor relationships of the Information age we have discussed all along this semester? (For example, could it be the case that they have been covering up the fundamental exploitative labor structures by fostering a sense of being horizontally networked and decentralized?)
- To take it one step further... how does the concept of myths as the cultural meaning making process fit in the case of information labors? We have already discussed how programmers perceived themselves as active creators and how Video gurus became non-paid experts of the field. Are information laborers themselves myth-makers? Or even, do they need to be demystified to be part of the important forces for social and economic change?

------
PS. There is also a review on this book by G. Bowker whom we met earlier in our course. I think it provides a interesting link on how his research interests connect to this theme... Here's the link.

On Neff... the specturm and the grey area

In her papers, Neff talks about the social lives of the information labor, which is a unstable, high- stake, only-the-few-take-the-fame (and food) job. In Entrepreneurial Labor among Cultural Producers: “Cool” Jobs in “Hot” Industries, she and her collegues even compare the new media jobs to fashion models. The portfolio-centered nature of the jobs (which is made possible by communication networks as we have learned earlier in the semester with discussions on Castells) make the individual workers as the nodes, rather than placing them into a stable work organization. Also in the The Changing Place of Cultural Production: Locating Social Networks in a Digital Media Industry piece, the importance on social networks is further emphasized. Even the physical/local concentration are considered to be important to strengthen the network.

But one thing that keeps coming back to me is, whether this model can be applied to a wide array of information and new media labor rather than a small portion of elite(?) programmers dedicated to 'creative tasks'. Sure, there are the top portion geek heroes who can actually jump from here to there by each project they pursue. But for many others who are not on the creator but only on the 'administrative' level or below, it isn't the case. For them, the whole idea of the 'cool' job only threatens the job security they need. I think more focus should be shed on the fine spectrum of jobs and their interests inside the scope of new media jobs.

In a similar vein, I also couldn't agree with the dichotomy between 'participant' permanent beta model and 'consumer' traditional model in the Permanently Beta: Responsive Organization in the Internet Era article. Because I see everyday a vast grey area between them. For example, the product itself may be in a permanently beta status, but for the average user it is simply the 'most current version' (moreover, Microsoft has already proven that even an "end product" intended solely to be consumed can be in a permanent beta stage by releasing crappy OS' and making you download endless patches). I think the spectrum of the various jobs, and the loss they would suffer if the discursive focus was fixed on only one side should be explored more in detail.