A Dream of Access: Not the Tech Comm History I Was Expecting
When I imagined the history of computer development I always pictured a multitude of governmental -war games-loving men in a white walled, dust free, fluorescent lighted, room conspiring to make the world's most "powerful" and dominating machine. I suppose that image was implanted from several films and growing up in a time that featured "powerful" and often mischievous computers.
Unlike my made up history I was pleasantly surprised to find that most computer developers hoped to use the technology for good. Both Wells and Licklider/Taylor wrote directly about the potential benefits to all humankind that computers or access to a central "bank" of information/knowledge could have. When detailing the possibilities created by open access to "knowledge" Wells states, "And its creation is a way to world peace that can be followed without any very grave risk of collision with the warring political forces and the vested institutional interests of today. Quietly and sanely this new encyclopedia, will not so much overcome these archaic discords, as deprive them, steadily but imperceptibly of their present reality" (88). Although I believe this statement to be naive the emphasis on open access and world peace is interesting. It also seems to be in stark contrast to the road tech comm eventually went down (the objective-unemotional-positivist approach).
In addition to Wells, Licklider's text also seems to focus on the positive possibilites afforded by technology. In other words, the attention was definitely on the benefits of new technology that could allow for direct interfacing,"modeling," and collaboration. The possibilty for collaboration is what appeared to be the most effective development in technology. Again ,I find this in contrast to the critiques we read for last weeks class. Although I understand that tech comm's desire for "objectivity" is primarily due to its attachement to science and the need to merely "transmit the facts," however, I imagined a somewhat maniacle figure behind the development of the inital technology. Licklider and Taylor's essay (perhaps idealistic) did make an interesting case for the important role of messaging software and the role of modeling. The authors state, "And through them, all the members of the supercommunity can communicate-with other people, with programs, with data, or with selected combinations of those resources. The message processors, being all alike, introduce an element of uniformity into an otherwise grossly nonuniform situation, for they facilitate both hardware and software compatibility among diverse and poorly compatible computers" (32). The opportunity to connect "communities" offered by technology actually points to a more harmonious existence than that without computers.
What was most striking about these two articles was the sense of "hope" offered by technological advances. I wonder if many of still feel this way or if we are more perplexed and feel more akin to Sullivan (from last week).
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I love your opening paragraph!! I think I worked for that company. Classic.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the "the objective-unemotional-positivist" road that tech comm went down, I think it (tech comm) was already well down that road by the time era of big iron computing. The majority of technical writers of the era were frustrated engineers and scientists doing documentation. We almost can't blame them for carrying forward the positivism of the scientific method into their writing.
I was struggling to describe the thread through the readings this week -- I like how you've presented it as connected communities and harmonious existence. It's that futuristic technology-as-savior story arch that's intriguing and troubling all at the same time.
I am interested in what you made of the readings' repeatition of technology communicating a narrative of "our race", which while they could have intended in their generality to mean all races, I find parallels to the record of history that feminism, critical race, queer and others chip away at.
ReplyDeleteI'm also curious if you found any tension or relif in the play between a "bank" of knowledge and the banking model of education that you mentioned in Lois' class.
I guess what I'm getting at is this: do you find tensions in the readings in terms of their conception of audience? If so, are there particular factors that trouble the conception of audience?