Doug Englebart's Personalization Lab - demo in 1968 showed text editor, video conf, mouse, etc (advocate of complexity in computing, as opposed to Larry Tessler who advocated simplicity)
People's Computer Company gave rise to Homebrew Computer club out of which came the personal computer
all within 5 miles of kepler's
Levy's five principles of MIT AI Lab hackers:
1) computers and anything that might teach you anything about how the world works should be subject to "hands on," accessile
2) information should be free
3) mistrust authority
4) judge hackers solely on merit of technical contribution. not anything having to do with race, gender, etc
5)
6) computers can improve your life
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androgyny in the counterculture - a feminist outgrowth in which diversity ignored because gender doesn't matter? how explicit was this androgyny, as opposed to a denial of the existence of gender by sheer ignorance? when did androgyny break down?
gender at apple computers - the steve jobs years, the lisa, then steve jobs gets kicked out -- i bet there is something there. julie is valorized and rightly so probably...
Base and superstructure -> idea that a fundamental base, such as means of production (technology?) determines superstructure such as social practices, classes, cultural expectations, morality even?
B&S is tricky though. When taken literally as direct impact/reflection/imitation and this trickiness has ben explained away by notions of time lag or complications, or a mediation/translation that gives base a real shaping impact on superstructure but only in ways revealed through analysis.
The Base and the Productive Forces Base is a process, a system, not an input state.
But is base just primary production as Marx has it when analyzing capitalist commodity production? Or, as worker's "most important production is self," is base more braodly definable as society -- material production and repreoduction of real life?
Uses of Totality Totality is proposed as a way of getting around base/superstructure primacy of a determining process and to highlight "variety of miscellaneous and contemporaneous practices," but can become vacuous of Marxist intent of analysing intention/cultural-values. Obscures superstructural elements of many societal institutions and makes resisting them impossible. (So why depend on vertical base superstructure rather than, say "the mangle of structure" haha)
Complexity of Hegemony "In any society, in any particular period there is a central system of practices, meanings and values, which we can propoerly call dominant and effective" (413). History is written with a teleological hindsight ("selective tradition" he calls it) highlighting the narratives that convey central cultural values and silencing non-hegemonic beliefs. Education (as well as media, interactions, institutions -> sociology) transmits hegemonic beliefs. The social and cultural order creates a stable, buttressed hegemonically ordered sooperstructure. How and when does crisis befall the hegemonies? Seems like hegemonic culture constantly has to rewrite itself as it coopts new elements. But Marx, I guess, would argue that the underlying system of production and thus base would remain unaffected in these rewritings so non-trivial destabilization still does not occur. How does non-trivial destabilization ever occur then? Overthrow means of production? Hard to imagine...
Residual and Emergent Cultures Residual - can be left untouched, cultures that still find their base in a previous era/epoch (?) different from the base processes of current dominant culture. But it often overlaps in base with dominant culture and likely to be incorporated. Emergent - New, not yet incorporated
blah blah art and literature and alternative beliefs and class and consumption.
Critical Theory as Consumption Art theory has tradition of busying itself with analysis of the component and interpretation/reception/consumption of work rather than the means of production, the artist, etc. Phu vs me at least sophomore year. A Marxist analysis suggests viewing art as practice, not just object. Clustering cultural works by modes that produced them, rather than object features can suggest new genres -- almost a gestalt reorganization that can bring to light different dynamics of hegemony and resistance and what else??
response:
Seems like this will obviously connect with Closed World in that base of cold war discourse (but really, a production base? a social relation base? a war between modes of production acted out through human self-interest? (geez, why did communism fail?)) had a mediated (how?) impact on technologies and worldviews dominant during the time.
Raymond Williams - Marxist Cultural Theory - Base and Superstructure
doesn't seem to leave much room for the feedback loop does it?
Kuhn's paradigm seems to the base and the period of normal science, the puzzles to solve, the scientific education superstructure. But scientific paradigms aren't the only paradigms. (Well, maybe to Kuhn they are.) But what about metaphysical frameworks, cultural movements, etc? All based on the gestalt switch of a scientist who brainbends a world of scientists? Or scientists can be influenced by these extra-scientific movements? This is where the science<-->culture feedback loops seems to make more sense to me. Base and superstructure turned on its side.
Scientific paradigms not only sources of "base" influence. Technological developments that extend our capabilities in ways not intended by the scientific paradigm can change the fabric of society. For example, the scientific paradigm that contributed to the internal combustion engine may have no mediated connection to the cultural value of mobility or a smaller world, but the implications of the automobile brought it about. However, did the science come before the engineering in the case of the internal combustion engine? What was that in STS101 that claimed that engineering often precedes the science? In which case social values define problems which are solved by engineers which lead to research programmes which normal science seeks to fulfill. Where does the revolution fit in there?
Engines --> cars, trains --> age of industry, modernism, futurism --> colonialism, domination --> clocks --> relativity --> downfall of colonialism?
The Doomsday clock used to be 2 minutes from midnight. Now we have at least 15 minutes!
Corporeality and war
40s/50s - armies - physical domination and exertion by large armies - surveillance by planes
60s/70s/80s - satellites, missile launch, at arms length, war isn't about bodies it's about deploying technology remotely. body doesn't go out with the weapon, body doesn't enter enemy zones. (really, it's the importance of corporeality that makes this a desirable mode of warfare, no?)
90s/00s - terrorist cells, dispersed fighters, underground; no longer wars of nations though we try to project them on nations since we know how to fight that war; psychological warfare, media saturation; information technology; but they are still developing unmanned military drones --> importance of corporeality to other societies. and there is a dramatic power to the loss of human life that testifies to the importance of embodiment as much as we try to convince ourselves that information, ideas, and discourse in bit torrents are what count
"When you sell your soul to the devil for knowledge and undreamed of resources -- huge armies of people and more money than you can spend -- to do nuclear science it was a faustian bargain. You've sold your soul and there is no going back on it."
-- Freeman Dyson
author of "Weapons and Hope"
PS: This is an approximation of the quote. Critique of DARPA DOD style funding.
He seems to be launching pretty obvious critiques of Kuhn, but some of which don't even (imho) respond to actual assertions made by Kuhn. For example, why does Kuhn up-value normal science and down-value extraordinary science? How does he up-value what he calls, in SOSR, "mopping up"? Kuhn is practically mr hero narrative, and his heroes aren't normal science drudges.
And then this: "It seems that a dominant theory may come to be replaced, not because of growing empirical pressure (of which there may be little), but because a new and incompatible theory (inspired perhaps by a different metaphysical outlook) has been freely elaborated: a scientific crisis may have theoretical rather than empirical causes" (31). 1) I always thought Kuhn's take was particularly amenable to metaphysical-scientific parallel paradigm shifts. Maybe he doesn't say this explicitly, but I imagine that the gestalt switches that reconfigure the scientific foreground of an extraordinary scientist can be linked not to psychosis but to cultural or philosophical shifts percolating in that individuals cultural circles, or I suppose it could be the random tree ring that looks like virgin mary inspiring a crazy reforegrounding. Either way, the metaphysical isn't excluded. I don't think Kuhn argues that extraordinary science is a really smart guys response to mounting empirical pressure. The gestalt switch happens either in response to pressure or nothing in particular (all are valid precursors to the shift) but only under mounting empirical pressure in areas regarded as critically important does the new paradigm begin to generate enough discussion and interest to be eligible for adoption by the larger scientific community, ushering in a new paradigmatic era.
Kuhn - Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?
A response to later remind myself of what this article says:
Kuhn critiques Popper's description of science as a teleological march in which theories are successfully replaced by new theories that come closer to the truth. He explains the differences between his and Popper's as results of gestalt differences -- fundamentally different ways of framing the problem. (Having read it, I'm less clear on why that description is true.) In Popper's account, a scientist witnessing an anomaly will necessarily be aware of the anomalous state, and will instantly be compelled to modify the governing theory to account for the anomaly. (Am I on crack?) Kuhn instead argues that the anomaly may not be noted, as people most readily perceive those things which they expect to exist in their universe. If it is noted, it may be regarded as a subject for later investigation as long as the existing theory is still a productive source of puzzles in the normal science phase, or perhaps the reigning theory will be slightly modified to account for the exception. Only when enough anomalies are seen to compel ontological destabilization (am I using terms right?) might the very terms of the theory be questioned and a scientific crisis arise. Out of that scientific crisis might come a new paradigm that actually explains less than the old paradigm but properly predicts the quantitative observations that the old paradigm did. (Though I thought in SOSR, Kuhn said that it might not even properly predict all the observed quantities, but might better predict a set of observations that are deemed of primary importance.)
Kuhn also agrees with Popper that the individual idiosyncracies of scientist motivations are not a fruitful area for study, but that surely the upbringing, acculturation, and common values negotiated and expected among members of the scientific community surely must be as it informs the space of outcomes that are not governed by "logic and experiment alone" (22). Is Kuhn opening the door for a sociology and anthropology of science, or is that door open and Kuhn is rolling with it? He gave me no such satisfying imperative in SOSR, though he set himself up such that it seemed to me the next step.
The consequence of this for Winograd-Flores? Explaining the failure of formal systems to model human cognition as a crisis. Maturana's model is a proposition for an alternate gestalt. How does Maturana's model fundamentally change the very terms of cognition? (I guess Kuhn talks about the fundamental terms and conceptual units, defnitions changing as a paradigm shift, as opposed to the equation describing the interaction changing while its constitutents stay the same, in SOSR 2nd ed postscript.)
"Under special circumstances which induce a crisis in the profession (e.g. gross failure, or repeated failure by the most brilliant professionals) the group's opinion may chance. A failure that had previously been personal may then come to seem the failure of a theory under test."
Implied is that the most brilliant professionals must feel compelled to even turn their attention to the crisis in question. So it's not a matter of tricky execution of difficult technique, but agenda setting and persuasion, as well as status within the scientific community. This is the exciting part of Kuhn for me -- that he opens up the potential for sociology, whether he knows it or not.
Corporeality - computing, pushing technologies into information/knowledge space. Less mechanics, more bits and bytes. Can't be surveilled with sattelites, cameras. Oppenheimer's project -- could they have ever hid it today? I don't think so. That's the value of information warfare.
Ergonomics is a symbol of this in its emphasis of viewing bodily movement as completely extracurricular, rather than essential to the process of problem solving. There are bastions of resistance in the PD program at least -- kinesthetic thinking, brain gym -- but even they are viewed skeptically by the students (at least in CS247A) that I've seen exposed to it. Manu even.
So if our bodies our extraneous, what does it mean that we still live in them? What do we do to them? As bodies become less "functional" in the view of the culture, do we ornament them more, ritualize them more? Or let them atrophy, waste away.
I feel like Marshall McLuhan has something to say about this in the beginning of "How We Became Post-Human." Hayles explains the theory that as we become increasingly hammered with media and information externally, we withdraw from embodiment, but then compensate by using protheses to interact with the world. Have I got it right?
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Other thought. Ethical dillemmas: "My decision won't make a difference. Science marches on."--> From Day After Trinity, the indie-haried looking scientist explained that the machinery was already in place to use the atomic (or H?) bomb. The military branches were mobilized, everyone expected it and nobody had the courage to stand up and actually disagree, so the machine did its work. But he does leave open the hope that intervention was possible. But when you assume its inevitable, who will put their neck out? Are there ways in which people can be counted to? This is the anti-hero myth, cultural determinism (as if culture is something other than what the people who are in it negotiate it to be). (Wouldn't qualify it as technological determinism.)
Alternative narrative: The hero myth of science. If I am J R Oppenheimer and I stand up and refuse to do it, this project won't happen. There are a small number of people capable of lurching science forward and should they object to contributing to the production effort, it won't go anywhere.
As attractive as these simplifications with catchy names are, the real truth is somewhere in the middle. The objection of a New Mexico farmer isn't likely to stop the war machine, unless her/his voice snowballs into something bigger. But JRO's objections once the technology was dispensable to those who had an interest in using it isn't enough either. The hero myth of science is false, but there is something more accelerated about some minds and others. Communities, dialogue, context, values, inspiration, and the right mind all seem to matter.
Is a scientist completely socially constructed? Well, socially constructing a scientist, then, doesn't do you much good since you will socially construct someone who fits the form of "scientist," rather than the alternate perspective. What does it imply to be a scientist. To whom is that image accessible? Does that image include a conformity of values or is there freedom of political engagement in being part of the scientific community? I think it is the case that there is.
Notes on Kuhn's "Logic of Discover or Psychology of Research" (Lakatos/Musgrave, 10):
"The state of astronomy was a scandal in the early 16th century. most astronomers nevertheless felt that normal adjustments of a basically Potlemaic model would set the situation right. In this sense the theory had not failed a test. But a few astronomers, Copernicus among them, felt that the difficulties must lie in the Ptolemaic approach itself rather than in the particular version of the Ptolemaic theory so far developed. The situation is typical. With or without tests, a puzzle-solving tradition can prepare the way for its own displacement."
So the question is whether cognition is in for a Maturana-Flores-Winograd hero narrative-style paradigm shift? (No implications that anyone is trying to be a hero. More a statement about narratives of scientific progress.)
I also would love to see a fleshed out example of Stella lost her puzzle-solving tradition. A newly proposed paradigm starts gathering steam and followers and manages to explain some socially prioritized anomaly better than any old-gestalt variant?
