What concept or idea intrigued you most in this week's readings?
How/Does it relate to your thinking about the questions and issues raised in last week's readings?
The concept that intrigued me the most from this week's readings was that of the First, Second, and Third Wave economies from "Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Carta For The Knowledge Age" by Esther Dyson. It was interesting because to me it seemed that one wave could not prosper if the other did not; in a sense they all world off of one another. It was also interesting to read how we are in a Third Wave economy and in a "bioelectronic frontier", as Esther wrote (1996). It was intriguing to know that we are in a knowledge age and one that is on the cusp of many great things.
This concept relates to last weeks readings in the idea of technological determinism. It seems that each economic wave is driven my a soft technological determinism. Each feeds off of the other; the second wave needs the first to prosper, and the third needs the second, and so on. However, this can also be looked at from the view of hard technological determinism. The author of the piece notes that while waves benefit from one another, the third wave economy will redefine certain aspects of knowledge and will need to take more control of society and politics in order to succeed. It was interesting to read this because, as we discussed in class it seems that there will always be a controversy between soft and hard technological determinism. It even seemed this way in this piece. While each economic wave feeds off of one another (soft determinism), there is the aspect that each wave, most importantly to this article the third, must create some sort of dominance (hard determinism) to succeed. I note that this is especially true for the third wave because the third wave is most prevelant to our society today and deals the most with cyberspace and reinvention of different aspects of our society.
It appears that there will never be an agreement on whether society or economies are driven solely by soft or hard technological determinism. Perhaps there is not one true determinism, but instead there are times when there needs to be a soft determinism and times when there needs to be a hard determinism.
References:
Dyson, Esther(1996) 'Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age (Release 1.2, August 22, 1994)', The Information Society, 12: 3, 295 — 308
I completely agree with you. I also felt that each wave was a sequence and in order for one to happen you needed the one before it. To know that this cyberspace brings a whole new dimension into our society was very interesting to read. It also really depends on the persons beliefs whether or not today's society is driven from soft or hard technological determinism.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your sentiments on there not being "one true [technological] determinism." My thoughts on the issue are that both philosophies are partially true because there are supporters on both sides of the issues. Technology has varying degrees of influence on people - to some it is everything, to others, nothing. In my opinion, history is multifaceted - not every aspect is influenced by technology, but others are.
ReplyDeleteChristine, I feel like by your saying that the Third Wave could not have happened without the Second and the Second without the First (as you point out as well) is exactly what Robert Heilbroner was trying to say in the previous week’s reading, Do Machines Make History?, on sequential and predictable development in technology.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think about the government's role that the author points out repeatedly? I definitely agree with the author that there needs to be new laws and policies on intellectual property rights and all and that they should be clear as a whistle, but it also makes me think how that is pragmatically possible. The idea of intellectual property is so vague to begin with...so to make policies on something that is so hard to define to begin with seems almost impossible...
I agree with you about the government's role. It makes sense to put laws and policies on intellectualy property rights, but how can this be done effectively? I think they would need to clearly define what intellectually property is and then make clear cut laws about how they want to go about handling it. However, I think this is and will be extremely difficult to do given that intellectual property is so hard to define, and like you said "vague".
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