The Information Society, the New Economy, and the Hype
Rule, James B.
WE LIVE IN bubble times. The stock market orbits at record highs, apparently bound only by the untested dynamics of the "new economy" Novel industries sprout like mushrooms, purveying goods and...
...But consider just a few settings and issues emerging from the new information order that are bound to demand our attention...
...Such frustrating realities are as essential a part of civic life as its loftier victories...
...For true believers, computing is the business equivalent of Viagra—or perhaps more precisely, it is a twenty-first-century snake oil, something to alleviate any obstacle to productivity...
...But the underlying notion of endlessly broadened choice, of information technology as a social equalizer, commands sympathetic attention...
...But some major innovations are bound to stick...
...But the pervasive mindset echoes that of a generation back: if we've gone this far, who can say what familiar reality will next be upended...
...It is good that institutional performances be held publicly accountable, and that detailed records exist to support such accountability...
...In a provocative Dissent essay on environmental activism ("Environmental Activism and Global Civil Society," Summer 1994), Paul Wapner DISSENT I Fall 2000 n 85 THE INFORMATION SOCIETY foresaw the rise of a new "global civil society" The striking success of nongovernmental organizations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, he held, suggests that national boundaries no longer form any definitive constraint to the coalescence of worldwide pressure groups...
...Main Street—that cliché of local civic life in America—has certainly supported countless deplorable values...
...Mobilized, activist citizens' groups, similarly, need the kind of detailed computerized data that large organizations can keep—and ought to be required to keep—on their own activities...
...We often expect expert systems—that is, sophisticated computer applications—to know better than fleshandblood experts about such everyday matters as what flights to book, what medicines to take, what terms to accept for a loan...
...Both the major candidates have made computerization of public THE INFORMATION SOCIETY schools a theme of their campaigns...
...No one doubts that specific applications of computing to specific activities can be highly cost effective...
...It is hard to imagine, for example, a noncomputerized version of today's system for airline flight scheduling, reservations, and ticketing...
...In contrast to the EuroTHE INFORMATION SOCIETY pean Union, Canada, and Australia, the United States alone lacks a national ombudsman and a comprehensive set of laws protecting personal information from commercial and governmental appropriation...
...Workers unprepared for computerized work will have no one to blame but themselves if they find nothing to do...
...And it's not just money, it's also the texture of life that's changing around us...
...Data generated by everything from Web site visits to the filling of doctors' prescriptions to credit card transactions become grist for computerized trade and exchange...
...Civic associations, from PTAs to bowling leagues, are said to be losing ground to television and other privatized pastimes...
...In many school systems, for example, computerizing the classroom has become virtually a litmus test for educational seriousness...
...But recognizing such advantages hardly warrants the conclusion that computing is bound to provide similar benefits wherever managers invest in it...
...The new technologies, if anything, widen the range of political options...
...Fortunes are made buying and selling companies whose profitability remains speculative...
...But if computerized teaching should yield a bust like that produced by Skinnerian teaching machines in the 1960s, many educators will have egg on their faces...
...So broad are the alleged benefits that 84 n DISSENT / Fall 2000 some observers now predict a long-lasting surge of economic growth, as computing gradually comes to be used for anything and everything...
...Consumers are encouraged to believe that sales via the Internet will better serve all personal and social needs than those accomplished on Main Street...
...Work, Productivity, Education The hype surrounding computing is nowhere more intense than in prophecies of its economic potential...
...But we should hardly neglect what we stand to lose if and when cyber-activism displaces old-fashioned civic association—the kind that involves sitting in meetings, struggling for consensus in committees, and schmoozing with allies and antagonists...
...And for us on the left, all this poses big questions...
...Conversations that appear unrewarding, intractable, or exasperating nevertheless have to be completed, somehow...
...In cyberspace, after all, one can take leave of tedious communications with a mouse click...
...Thus, ordinary businesses sense themselves under pressure (from giants of the comDISSENT / Fall 2000 n 83 THE INFORMATION SOCIETY puter industry) to keep acquiring and upgrading their computing capacities, so as to remain, and be seen to remain, "state of the art...
...we can count on both threats to, and opportunities for, values cherished by the democratic left...
...Citizens are assured that computerized "town meetings" are superior to old-fashioned, facetoface forums for registering opinion...
...From all indications, these new possibilities for organization and information exchange are giving rise to new global norms—with auspicious portents for agitation on human rights, gender issues, and an array of other matters in addition to the environment...
...Had he written his article this year, Wapner would no doubt have pointed to the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization as another case in which new media of communication helped foster civic activism on a global scale...
...Citizens need due process when they feel aggrieved by the handling of their tax liabilities or their American Express accounts...
...Commerce and Community Perhaps the most conspicuous form of disintermediation afforded by cyberspace lies in retail sales...
...Since the 1980s, many analysts have noted that areas of the economy that saw the greatest early investment in computing have in fact shown the slowest productivity growth...
...Thus one has to wonder about the wisdom of notions like permanently exempting Internet transactions from sales taxes—a step seen by many boosters as a fitting accolade for the benefits of the new technologies...
...In these latter, often tedious, pastimes, a certain kind of civic virtue is required—the virtue of staying tuned and staying involved, even when one wishes to be somewhere else...
...Much vital data held by public and private institutions remains locked away from public scrutiny, despite the fact that it would be technologically easy to make it available...
...With a bit of reflection, of course, limitations become apparent: one still wants to be able to squeeze the tomatoes before selecting them for a salad...
...Most of us have grown accustomed to pursuing complex relationships— from paying our taxes to seeking medical advice—through the mediation of machines rather than living human beings...
...Since then, of course, growth has accelerated throughout the American economy—but it is by no means clear, except to those committed a priori to the proposition, that computing is responsible...
...One would hardly want to see them altogether short-circuited by computerized affiliation...
...Which groups, which interests, stand to gain, and which will lose...
...Here the strengths of disintermediation may—repeat, may—empower consumers, en abling them to make critical comparisons of price and other terms across many prospective vendors...
...First, changes triggered by information technology whatever they prove to be—will by no means supersede political realities...
...Nonetheless, local boards of education charge ahead with computerization programs, often with only vague ideas of what educational aim they are to accomplish...
...For a host of products—from drugs to insurance policies to books—e-commerce offers decisive advantages...
...nor on local, state, or national officialdom for information on how government institutions are doing (or failing to do) their jobs...
...The resulting frame of mind bears striking resemblance to that of the late 1960s...
...Other manifestations of the ideology are more obviously shaped by the interests of established institutions—like the demands for compliance with the imperatives of the "information society" which we allegedly ignore at our peril...
...Even this slender contact with one's community stands to be attenuated by a world of consumption via cyberspace...
...Instead of hippies and counterculWith this article, Dissent begins a series on the politics of the new information order...
...Wine tasting, for the foreseeable future, will continue to be practiced in person...
...THE MYTHOLOGY surrounding "the computer revolution" seems to grow more intense all the time...
...New ways of creating, transmitting, and accessing all sorts of information pervade the very protoplasm of our world—creating new relationships and institutions, deflating old ones, offering new opportunities and new threats...
...One trouble with all this is the extremely ambiguous evidence for the much-heralded productivity benefits of computing...
...But as many commentators have pointed out, the investments necessary to computerize instruction crowd out expenditures for teachers, buildings, and instructional materials...
...The new media offer access to vastly expanded arrays of consumer choice and dramatically more convenient ways of providing goods and services...
...Educators face pressure from parents and government agencies to "get computers into the schools," often without much notion of what's supposed to happen once this is accomplished...
...some familiar social realities will, indeed, never be the same...
...But that would be rash...
...Hence the proliferation of "dot.coms," vying for the dollars of citizens intent on maximizing their consumption options without leaving home to exercise them...
...Here, too, the computer record is apt to represent the authoritative focus of controversy and public debate...
...DISSENT / Fall 2000 n 87...
...It is hard to shake the image of increasingly affluent American citizen-consumers leaving home only for work or privatized consumption errands—but not to meet their neighbors or attend local gatherings...
...nor on companies with the largest advertising budgets for information on products and services...
...As MIT economist Robert Solow noted, in an oftenquoted epigram, "You can see the effects of computing everywhere but in the productivity statistics...
...Only active political decision making will determine whether they enhance or erode people's control over data about themselves, for example, or whether large institutions will grow more or less accountable to those whose lives they shape...
...The new media also make it possible for civicminded activists to find new allies, form new associations, chart strategies, and amass new information to support their efforts...
...In the information society as elsewhere, money talks, and the computer-industrial complex has ample scope for its eloquence...
...Comcomitant with these overweening expectations (and here's the catch) is often the insistence that we must all adapt, willy-nilly, to the demands of a computerized world...
...Many of the prophecies that cluster under the "information age" umbrella are clearly ideological...
...It doesn't take a sociologist to tell that such exhortations are anything but disinterested...
...On the downside, let's acknowledge that things do not always work this way...
...The rise of the "information society" will bring winners and losers...
...These noble aspirations must have pleased the deep-pocketed donors in the computer industry, whose interest in seeing government promote their products to the nation's children need hardly be emphasized...
...But the range of consumer opportunities offered via the computerized media is impressive nonetheless...
...If people are indeed decreasing their civic activity close to home, they are also exploiting new possibilities for solidarity with others via the Internet...
...Much of the original enthusiasm of information-society boosters, for example, focuses on visions of radical disintermediation of relations between ordinary citizens and their social worlds—vastly streamlined access to information essential to one's well-being...
...But not all of it...
...Results can range from junk phone calls at dinner to politically motivated tax audits...
...Hierarchy and Privacy Nowadays, all sorts 86 n DISSENT / Fall 2000 of vital relations with large organizations are carried out via computer...
...From the Internal Revenue Service, to our credit card companies, to our medical care providers, we have come to expect interactions mediated by computer, for better and for worse...
...At the root of all these developments, we are authoritatively told, lies the "computer revolution...
...Our job is to hone our sensitivities to what's at stake—and how the changing information environment is altering those stakes...
...0 BVIOUSLY NO full answer to such questions is possible here...
...Today, similar anything-goes perceptions have generated their own momentum of credulity...
...The stock market orbits at record highs, apparently bound only by the untested dynamics of the "new economy" Novel industries sprout like mushrooms, purveying goods and services that most people could hardly imagine a few years ago...
...Thus it is essential that those of us who care about these matters work to ensure that the "information society" remains politicized—in the best sense of being invested with public attention and concern...
...In this heady view, sophisticated uses of computing will ensure that one no longer need depend on local doctors or clinics for advice on how to take care of one's self...
...The lesson has not been lost on politicians, including presidential candidates...
...We have no choice but to try to separate the froth from forces and developments that are bound to matter...
...The lesson here is clear: one can hardly blame technology for problems that need to be solved politically...
...ture pundits, of course, we have twenty-something software magnates and gurus of the "information age...
...But at least communities with a physical focus oblige citizens to confront the realities of their neighbors' lives and concerns...
...Second, technology is not destiny...
...The resulting ubiquity of computing in economic life—and the conviction that the technology deserves to be ubiquitous—in turn creates further opportunities for hucksterism...
...In these respects, computing offers the possibility for strengthening the voice and position of individuals in relation to hierarchies...
...Some elements of some of the ideologies are not unattractive...
...Many of us who teach American public school graduates believe that more information is not what our students most urgently need—in comparison, say, to improved analytical skills and practice in using them...
...Which values crucial to the left will be easier to protect, and which will be at risk...
...Such patterns come at a real cost, from languishing community action to increasing dependence by electoral campaigns on the purchase of expensive television time...
...The fraying of community meeting places is often identified as a symptom of such trends, as "downtowns" wither in favor of megastores and suburban malls...
...Perhaps good things stand to emerge from the use of computers in the classroom, if only through a process of trial and error...
...Activism and Civil Society Of course, cyberspace does not only undermine affiliation...
...On the positive side, we expect exact reckonings of the histories of our dealings with such authoritative bodies, reckonings that would be difficult to maintain and supply except through reliance on the computer...
...In "meatspace" (that is, the world of physical presence), it is harder to drop out...
...By this I don't mean that they are inaccurate, but that they are put forward by people and groups with deep interests in their realization...
...Much of this ideological hype is so blatant that one is tempted simply to brush it aside...
...Many of these optimistic start-ups certainly have half-lives shorter than volatile nuclear elements...
...But do-it-yourself sex therapy software has obvious appeal for patients who prefer not to explain embarrassing difficulties to third parties...
...There is nothing in computer technology that compels organizations to explore its democratic potential...
...JAMES B. RULE, a member of Dissent's editorial board, writes extensively on technological issues...
...Much is made these days of the decline of civil society...
...Much of it, we can be sure, is either free-floating fantasy or blatant, self-serving hype...
...Increasingly, publics also demand the same sort of exactitude in government monitoring of toxic waste sites, or safety records of cars and other products, or even in the performance of physicians and hospitals...
...These problems are most acute in the United States...
...Clearly, Internet retailing can only sharpen such trends—eliminating remaining forms of sociability involved in shopping...
...Once computerization is heralded as a progressive step for any and all organizations, it becomes more difficult both for managers and anyone else to maintain healthy skepticism...
...Having experienced such drastic change thus far, we don't want to underestimate what may come next...
...THE SUCCESS of Internet retailing could also undermine other values...
...This dialectic between accessibility and appropriation of information takes on special urgency when it involves the privacy of personal data...
...In its overtly libertarian versions, this thinking often comes with a tinge of disdain for all sorts of civic institutions...
...Profound changes are afoot in the spreading wake of computerization...
...We stand warned...
...It's well known that data on ordinary citizens are subject to monitoring and misuse by both government and private organizations...
...schools that fail to make computing central to their instruction might as well be training producers of buggy whips or carbon paper...
...Which elements of these widely touted, multifarious social changes should we take seriously, and which should we bracket as industry self-promotion...
...Then, as now, all sorts of old constraints and certainties were falling away—to be replaced by something that no one could quite identify, but which everyone was convinced would be vastly more exhilarating...
...Certainties on these issues are scarce, but I would commit myself to two of them...
Vol. 47 • September 2000 • No. 4
