<nettime> [COMMENTARY] re: technorealism

[Carmen Hermosillo <humdog@well.com>]

[We interrupt this message to bring you a moderate comment. In general,
 I'll follow the prior moderators' lead by globbing dialog into single
 messages with authors' names in the subject. However, since there has
 been very little traffic lately, there seemed no reason to do that in
 this case. IMO. TIA. HAND. HTH. --TB Now back to our regular program.]

as  a statement of the obvious,
technorealism works for me.

regarding digital technologies  in
education: i  experienced education in the
usa as both a student and a teacher.  i know
that education is primarily a factory farm
dedicated to turning out drones to fill the
employment requirements of the corporate lords.
furthermore, in some cases, tenured teaching
can be a sweet deal for people who don't like work
and/or challenges.  (i've seen some cases where
people haven't changed their tests or notes
for ten years.)   the educational establishment
is always groping for new ways to explain
their continuing inability to create thinking
persons.  they like magic bullets.

educators leaped upon the "digital revolution"
energetically and "digital revolution" has
become the newest explanation for their inability
to educate.  it is their favorite magic bullet
solution of the moment. the technorealist manifesto
suggests that digital technologies are not a
magic bullet.  i don't have a problem with that.

digital democracy doesn't work for me either, and
it won't work so long as cyberspace remains
an american colony ruled by yuppie libertarians
who appear to be engaged in an attempt to bring
back the social and labor practices of the
nineteenth century.

as for the involvement of the government in the
internet, guess what?  the government is already
involved.  there's internet2, there the next generation
internet project, there's the various manifestos
coming out of the office of technology development
or whatever they're calling it this week, there's
hightech government funding, there's the touching
concern of the above mentioned yuppie libertarian
corporate manor-lords mentioned above who scurry
about trying to entrench themselves by making
sure that they appear before congress, media,
and anybody who'll hear them, there's gates going
east to tell clinton how he wants it done.  for
our sakes, while everyonce in a while you get
a whiff of the idea that maybe they don't have
telephones, or they don't use email because
it makes them too available.  the govt
involvement is not inevitable.  it's a done
deal.  noblesse oblige. etc.


--humdog

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