Session Two #INM380
Despite the fact that I was ill for this week session, I have looked at the slides provided on moodle, read the suggested reading and conducted my own reading to support my learning concerning this week's lecture.
From the slides which were uploaded there were a few concepts that particularly caught my attention: the effect of media subjectivity on a reader's perspective and the knowledge economy which I had already come across in Lyn and David's chapter "Information Society" in which it is used as one definition of what the information society might be.
What is clear straight away is that this was an extremely packed session; spanning the invention of paper, introduction to McLuhan, further thoughts on the theories of Walter Benjamin and disruptive technologies.
I must confess that I have prior interest in all of these, however in writing this blog it is extremely difficult to knit them all together - as I'm sure Ernesto did seamlessly during the lecture. Obviously, publishing in every sense runs through all of them. I'm sure if I was there I would have got it.
It seems that we are stepping away from our basis as 'LIS professionals' into uncharted territory as readers, writers, social commentators, philosophers and producers.
The essay on the history of paper in china was interesting to me as it reminded me that a) as writers and as readers we have a cultural bias which informs our understanding of history and b) technology has a disruptive affect on society (in this case paper) even when it is not acknowledged as a disruptive technology.
The information concerning Marshall McLuhan was also welcome. I wonder if a discussion was had about the later 1960's reprinting of his chapter 'medium is the message' as 'medium is the massage' in which graphics and text are explored to express the reprint-authors' interpretation of McLuhan's ideas.
I wonder whether Ernesto (or anyone else in the class) has read 'The Alphabet versus the Goddess' in which McLuhan's notion that the way by which information is carried can have a bigger affect on society than the contents, is expanded and fused with neurosurgery to create the thought-provoking hypnosis that - due to our brain's separate and specialised hemispheres the technology of the alphabet has had a damaging and lasting influence on the development of our brains. Shlain suggests that the world's shift from goddess and image worship to male gods and patriarchy have come about because of an emphasis on right-brain specialised skills such as writing which causes linear thinking, conceptualisation and violent pursuits to become rife within a society. Whether or not you believe or argee with Shlain, this notion is appealing - that disruptive technology have a significant affect on a collection of people as it inform how they live their lives. In 'The Alphabet versus the Godess' Shlain devotes a chapter to china and its technology, as such I would very much endorse you read it.
The Knowledge Economy
I have to admit that every time I have read about the 'information society' every definition I have ever come across has left me uncomfortable. 'Knowledge Economy' is no different. In the writing taken from Credo, the authors describe an information economy in which western countries control their population through information technologies which dictate industry as well as workers' skills (as information workers, wooly definition...). I find the 'triple helix' (Leydesdorf, 2010) notion particularly frustrating. Also the idea that the information society is 'soft capitalism' is really scary.
Personally I think that all societies are dependent on the transmission of information. Any society with a language of any sort is an information society. As Ernesto put it last lesson society is "a series of relationships" which depend on knowledge and the sharing of information. The idea that the control of resources or (I hate myself for saying it) 'intangible good' elevates a (usually western) society to that of an information society is just stupid.
