Category: politics

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exam readings politics science communication

Exam reading: “Towards an analytical framework”

In this chapter, Brian Trench comments on various models for science communication. “Towards an Analytical Framework of Science Communication Models” from Communicating Science in Social Contexts: New Models, New Practices.

Summary: Trench posits that the deficit to dialogue model transition has been overstated in sci. comm. circles (it’s more a normative recommendation than a descriptive assessment.) He puts science comm. into the broader context of communications theory (e.g., active audience, risk comm. composed of hazard (probability) + outrage (subjective elements)) and education (e.g., inquiry- and project-based learning). The process of dialogue is not free of power relations, and in practice “dialogue” is often like marketing/message tailoring research. While there is evidence of trends toward more open dialogue (open public debate, scientists active in NGOs), the converse is also true, esp. because of the knowledge economy (commodification of knowledge, the cultural/social values of science are obscured). Overall, the deficit model is still used for much of sci comm (appropriately, in some cases); there’s really a continuum of “dialogue.” His framework goes from deficit to dialogue to participation models. More specifically, deficit includes defense of science and marketing; dialogue includes context, consultation, engagement of public; and participation includes deliberation and critique. He briefly discusses the philosophical/ideological implications of this spectrum.

Comments: Provides a counterpoint to idea of thorough deficit-dialogue shift. In contrast to Shamos, states that scientism is wide trend among scientists, and related to assumption of deficit; their definitions of scientism are different.

Links to: Bucchi (similar discussion of lack of deficit-dialogue binary); Shamos (characterizes scientism as anti-science, not a majority scientific view)

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exam readings knowledge work politics science communication science studies

Exam readings: Science in the knowledge economy

These are both chapters from Communicating Science in Social Contexts: New Models, New Practices that put science communication into a very wide context of societal changes.

In “Representation and Deliberation: New Perspectives on Communication Among Actors in Science and Technology Innovation,” Giuseppe Pellegrini wants to reform the way democracy operates:

Summary: Pellegrini takes on the relationships between scientific experts, business, political institutions, and the public, and suggests that new governance models are needed for developing technical-scientific fields (e.g., nano, biotech, communications). He contrasts representative democracy (public delegates decision-making to political class, they delegate it to scientific & business experts) to deliberative democracy (participation of all interested parties.) In recent years, doubt has been cast on both scientific experts as a community of objective decision makers (e.g., scientists going into business), and on political institutions’ ability to regulate business or even remain functional (e.g., globalization, collapse of the social contract). This has been facilitated by: greater communication, the speed of scientific and technological changes in recent years, the end of consequence-free perception of progress, and a new appreciation of the uncertainty inherent in science (facilitated by a conflict-driven media.) Pellegrini suggests a new view of rights of citizens, which would include access to opportunities to participate in scientific social decision-making, and access to information about government workings (and ability to communicate directly with decision-makers). This would expand the deliberative aspects of democracy past traditional voting, or delegation of decision-making powers to elites.

Comments: Pellegrini is not clear about who will guarantee or fund these new communication rights of citizens, or guarantee that vested interests will not attempt to manipulate the system via traditional advertising, etc., (but acknowledges these are valid criticisms), and it’s also unclear how decisions will actually be made (he’s explicitly advocating more open discussion about science-tech-society issues, not decision-making.) He does mention that not all participants’ views should be equal (so still a role for experts). Mention of “powerful and authoritative scientists” making society’s decisions is ironic, given the recent state of political discourse in the U.S.

With somewhat related themes, Bernard Schiele’s “On and About the Deficit Model in an Age of Free Flow” redefines scientific literacy in the “knowledge economy.”

Summary: Schiele’s view is that science has become integrated into the “information society” to such an extent that the deficit model of communication is no longer useful. Science began by openly communicating in the vernacular, but increasing specialization and the rise of professional science communicating media separated science “producers” from “consumers.” The deficit model assumed that both science literacy and political literacy were necessary for citizens to participate in sci-tech decision-making processes. Shiele believes that the boundary between science and non-science is becoming blurred (e.g., psychology), and that the communication process is now about fostering multiple connections between science and society. He connects these changes to the knowledge economy: universities collaborating with industry (and communicating results to public), research is becoming more applied (problem-solving and products), and scientists are also becoming replaceable knowledge workers. The public now feels able to comment on the directions research takes; non anti-science, but feels that “progress” is not the answer.

Comments: I’m not sure to what extent Schiele’s characterization of scientists as replaceable knowledge workers is accurate. He seems to equate expertise with the ability to marshal (publicly available) knowledge at need and adapt to different contexts (so everyone could potentially succeed in any field); I don’t think this knowledge flexibility necessarily maps to understanding how knowledge is created & interpreted within different domains. He also seems to be defining science literacy as a way of thinking about science and scientific culture, and assuming that the public is educated about science/scientific institutions (as cultural actors; not about how the scientific process works.)

Links to: Shamos (very different definition of scientific literacy)

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exam readings information representation politics research methods/philosophy

Exam reading: “Intermediation and its malcontents”

My last core reading- and an appropriate one to end on. Robert Jensen’s “Intermediation and its Malcontents” is about the importance of (not-for-profit) publishers in the academic publication ecosystem. It’s appropriate because it provides me a segue into the material on my next reading list, which is about the public communication of science. One of the big PUoS issues is: how much intermediation should there be between scientists and the public about scientific issues? And one of the key services that Jensen claims that publishers provide is intermediation.

Now, Jensen’s paper is about humanities publishing, but some of the ideas are the same in scientific fields. And while he’s obviously trying to argue the case that publishing houses (like his) provide essential services as intermediaries, there’s a wide range of opinion on the proper place of intermediation in science communication. But more on that later…

Summary: Jensen focuses on the value that’s added to academic publishing by publishers (small-run non-profit presses), mainly: validation, coordination, authority, and promotion. When adding e-publishing to a press, things to consider are cost-sharing (for editing & staff to be cost-effective, he claims you need to be running at least 6-8 journals), the need to choose an appropriate platform, and planning to track electronic copies and paper inventories. Jensen feels that traditional print-based models of writing are best for many scholarly works, and this is unlikely to change. He discusses several cost-recovery models: subscription, print on demand, timed access, free archives/pay for new issues, and free new issues/pay for archive access. He advocates a “sustainable” scholarly publication infrastructure it intermediate between scholars and the public. As support, he outlines several ways in which publishers add value in a less-intermediated world: specialists are efficient, they can tailor works for specific audiences, and vetted material is better than non-vetted. He suggests that close interaction between academic groups interested in e-publishing is vital. These include librarians, techies, publishers, departments, and individual scholars.

Comments: Claims that volunteerism for e-journals is reaching its limit- not sure how this claim has held up. Gives long anecdote about the effects of the fall of Communism on Czech presses as a cautionary tale to compare to the e-publishing “revolution”- this is more of a metaphor than a direct parallel, but many of his concerns are probably justified re: radical changes without a plan. Almost as an aside, he ends with a discussion of the stifling nature of current copyright law, and urges non-profit publishers to stop siding with for-profits in lobbying efforts.

Links to: Bolter (decline of authority in online publishing); Liu (similar tone of justification for humanities disciplines in a digital world); Lessig (copyright wars)

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exam readings knowledge work politics

Exam reading: “Social life of information”

Do ideas meet, flirt, and spawn off cute little baby ideas? Is Google a speed dating service between your computer and the object of your search? Is your credit card having an affair with that sexy Brazilian computer it met while you were on vacation?

Sadly, this book answers none of these questions. “The Social Life of Information,” by John Brown & Paul Duguid, is about the perils of techno-cheerleading in the knowledge economy. “Social life” refers to the fact that there is a strong social context to information; we are not really floating in a sea of decontextualized data.

Summary: Brown & Duguid lay out some considerations that should be made in order to avoid “tunnel design” (a focus on information & ignoring social/material context) for businesses & technologies. They believe that social interaction is crucial for businesses to function & technologies to be used effectively. They take several myths of the information age to task: “endisms” (end of politics, the press, etc.), reframing everything in an information-processing perspective (e.g., universities as information-transmitting centers), all businesses will be “flattened” & disaggregated, etc. They address the trend toward decentralized & work-at-home offices, emphasizing that social interaction is needed and we need more in our work environment than just a computer (desk, tech support, post-its, etc.) They discuss the network structure of business: both stepwise processes and the lateral links that let workers share practices are important; links within companies (e.g., between specializations) and between companies (in professional/discipline networks) are also crucial. They make a distinction between knowledge (contextual, requires a knower, needs assimilation for meaning) and information; there are also two dimensions of knowledge: explicit (knowing that) and tacit (knowing how). A big part of their discussion is communities of practice and how members learn through day-to-day interactions with more experienced members; distributed businesses had better have really good communication networks in order to facilitate even an approximation at this type of interaction.

Comments: Skipping discussion of bots & what they can & can’t do (technical capabilities, legal/ethical issues), the future of paper (yep, we’ll still need it). While their discussion of how universities will change (distributed systems with a mix of online components and physical centers) mentions that physical interactions in traditional universities are important, I think they downplay the importance of these interactions. For example, you can’t get a thorough education in a technical field or science without lab or field work; I don’t think their suggestion of internships or brief stints at research centers would work here.

Links to: Liu (knowledge work); Spinuzzi (info networks); Johnson-Eilola (knowledge work envt.)

Categories
exam readings politics tech design

Exam reading: “Questioning technology”

Moving on to the next book, so no extra commentary… Andrew Feenberg’s “Questioning Technology”:

Summary: Feenberg proposes a middle ground between technological determinism and the belief that technology is a neutral force: the idea that technology does influence society, but that society can also influence technological development. Tech. development can either reinforce or be used to change existing power structures; design is itself a political act, because the choice between design alternatives takes place against an implicit background of social norms and codes. In order to counter tendencies toward technocracy, Feenberg proposes a “micropolitics of technology:” localized citizen or user involvement in making decisions about development choices. He calls this “democratic rationalization.” Key elements are communication channels (between user networks), dialogue between experts and the public, and attention to industry-externalized costs/tradeoffs. Finally outlines two poles or trends for technology: concretization (elegant design, combining multiple functions in one part) and differentiation (local adaptation of flexible(?) technologies into social systems). Concretization tends to occur in objects that have “primary instrumentalization” (decontextualization, reductionism, autonomization, positioning); differentiation occurs with “secondary instrumentalization” (systematization, mediation, vocation, initiative).

Comments: Politics: differentiates between “thin” (personal freedoms, mass-media driven) and “strong/deep” (emphasis on local collective action) democracy. Options to increase public participation are townhall meetings (limited use), influencing professional societies, and public participation in planning in areas with loose government control (utilities, hospitals, land use). Philosophy: skipping over philosophical basis of his model (big q: does controlling objects violate their integrity & make them “less”?).

Links to: Johnson (user involvement with tech.); Norman (tech. design); Liu (politics of tech.); Tomlinson (envt. & development)

Categories
exam readings identity knowledge work politics research methods/philosophy

Exam reading: “Cyborgs, simians, and women”

This book, by Donna Haraway, has some very influential ideas about identity and politics in an increasingly technologically-mediated world. Unfortunately, there’s a lot in here that I really can’t agree with- namely, her attack on science from a feminist/Marxist perspective. While I agree with her thesis that science often has been used to justify oppression of various sorts, my perspective is that this is a misappropriation of science for political purposes, rather than an unavoidable outcome of objective rationality.

I’m not arguing that scientists are pure, with no hidden biases and motivations for their research. Everyone has biases, but it seems that most scientists, when confronted with evidence of their biases, are willing to rethink their views. Are there systemic barriers to such change? In some cases, yes. But I feel that these are things that can be attacked without effectively throwing away our best system of tools for proving that bias exists, and that it’s inappropriate.

Summary: Three main sections: 1) exploration of the oppressive nature of objective science; 2) exploration of the impossibility of describing a single “women’s” or “women of color’s experience”; and 3) description of an emerging cyborg identity in which nature, culture, and technology intertwine to shape us. Subject/object distancing in science is implicated in oppression and patriarchal dominance politics (primate & human health research in particular are used to perpetuate repressive ideologies); what we need is a new situated objectivity that recognizes the limitations of our partial perspective and regards objects of knowledge as “material-semiotic actors” (constantly generating their own meanings). The cyborg concept can be seen either as the ultimate domination of nature by technology or as the fusion of nature, the human, and technology. Biological metaphors become cultural metaphors; for example, the postmodern view of no unitary identity has parallels in biology (different cell lines in immune system, women sometimes as fetus containers). She describes the information society as an “informatics of domination:” workers are becoming feminized- low job security, replaceable, shredding of the social safety net, cultural impoverishment.

Comments: After reading this book, and a few other papers on the subject, I’m still unsure what “feminist science” would entail. I see a possible continuum in Haraway’s book ranging from using standard scientific methods to investigate consistent bias within a field (e.g., asking questions about female kinship patterns in apes, rather than the traditional focus on male aggression), to a separate set of standards of evidence (and a new epistemology) for feminist science vs. mainstream science (e.g., admission of folk medicine as science because it’s a deeply-held belief), to the idea that all science is just rhetoric, used to construct social reality. While Haraway explicitly rejects that third view, she is vague about the specifics of what she wants to see. So, she does provide specific examples of the 1st view, so maybe this type of criticism is sufficient for her, but also places a lot of weight on redefining objectivity, which would seem to indicate that she wants a new epistemology. I absolutely agree with the first view, and absolutely disagree with the latter two.

Links to: Liu (politics of info economy); Hayles (top-down vs. emergent systems theory-H. book is older, so perhaps she addresses this in later work?)

Categories
exam readings politics tech design

Exam reading: “Free culture”

In “Free culture,” Lawrence Lessig looks at how copyright law intersects with new media, and the freedom of experimentation with information afforded by electronic technologies. Some timely connections to recent news events in this book.

Summary: After outlining the history of copyright in the U.S., Lessig describes recent movements by content distributors to expand scope of copyright law. Online content includes traditionally non-commercial culture and can easily be monitored, leading to a trend for copyright holders to encroach upon traditionally free/fair use of intellectual property. Lessig discusses the tremendous possibilities for cultural creativity using electronic media, as well as industry (MPAA, RIAA) attempts to quash creative efforts. He outlines four ways that intellectual property is regulated: laws, cultural norms, market forces, and by the distribution architecture itself. His thesis is that the law should change to balance public interest with the interests of copyright holders. Currently, law, the market, and distribution architecture are all being used to restrict fair use of copyrighted materials (e.g., extending copyright terms, software permissions for use, software making everything regulatable, media consolidation), while cultural norms are becoming more accepting of piracy and illegal activity. For Lessig, the ideal is limited-term intellectual property copyright, followed by either release into the public domain or extended copyright under a system that makes it easy for later users to get permission to use works. He also discusses positive developments, including open-source development and Creative Commons licensing.

Comments: Lessig offers several examples of historic and current conflict between content producers and later users (e.g., radio, p2p file sharing, documentary filmmaking, news archiving), which provide a good historical grounding. He likens the current situation to Prohibition (stifling laws with little public support leading to widespread illegality).

Links to: Liu (discusses uses of “free” info); Feenberg (politics/philosophy of material technology)

Categories
exam readings knowledge work politics tech design

Exam reading: “Laws of cool”

Again, another book that went in a direction I didn’t expect. Alan Liu’s “Laws of Cool” raises some important questions about the relationship between corporatism and knowledge work:

Summary: In this book, Liu takes a somewhat pessimistic view of knowledge work and the information economy. He contends that knowledge work, and the culture of “free information,” is the continuation of a developmental trajectory that minimizes history and subordinates individuals (and the humanities, as a field) to corporatist, profit- and efficiency-motivated thinking. In the new corporatist economy, personal identity and social class are subsumed into the team; workers are expected to constantly improve productivity, be lifelong learners, and effectively become “nomads” across the employment landscape. The producer culture dominates life and work to the extent that counterculture is an alternative “workstyle;” “cool” is the “shadow ethos” of knowledge work- the only way to resist while not being able to escape the system. “Cool” is characterized by a fusion of ironic snark, mockery, design that delivers unimportant or information-poor content in typically information-dense formats, and a politics (or non-politics) of the “bad attitude.” Liu especially criticizes “cyberlibertarianism,” which presses for some individual freedoms (e.g., access to Internet, free speech) while ignoring others (worker health, workplace privacy), and completely ignores class issues like social justice. According to Liu, students mistakenly associate school with the dominant culture and turn to (corporate-sponsored) pop culture; in order for educators to break this association, they must help students become grounded in historically-informed critical thinking.

Comments: Some of his description of the online aesthetic was dated (the book came out in 2005). Liu’s conclusion is that the fusion of avant-garde & electronic arts with the historical perspective afforded by the humanities is the most likely site of resistance to the new corporatism (though he also discusses historical critical thinking). I think there are two reasons why this isn’t necessarily an effective approach: 1) (shallow) not everyone can relate to this sort of art; and, 2) (deeper) perhaps the social justice and labor movements, which he does discuss, are more effective approaches to resistance (as well as appealing to a wider audience). Though, in the latter case, perhaps an argument can be made that we need conditions of scarcity for people to empathize with these materially- and collectively-oriented movements; Liu’s book was written from an affluent American perspective during fairly flush times, and maybe these movements could be more effective nowadays…

Overall, this book was more thought-provoking than I expected it to be. It got me thinking about social/environmental justice issues and how these interact with new media in a very different way than the dominant culture that Liu describes. His suggestion that what the humanities should offer “cool” culture is a historical grounding was also a useful thought, and is something that has added to my thinking about dissertation projects in the last few days.

Re: libertarianism and knowledge work, this book articulates some things that I’ve thought about but not from an employment-based perspective. For example, the lack of individual responsibility for the common good and the environmental consequences of non-regulation espoused by libertarianism are things I’ve really disagreed with before. The historical lack of attention to worker rights among libertarians (when they often define themselves as knowledge workers who you’d think would need these protections) was a new thing to think about for me.

Links to: Brown & Duguid (corporatism, knowledge work, changing education culture); Feenberg (philosophy of technological development); Lessig (“free” information); Norman (user-friendly design)