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From: cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Keeping the Faith in Technology
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Date: 12 Jan 91 23:47:50 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 31, Message 3 of 10


Chris Johnson's discrimination between "business" decisions and
"political" decisions is naive, though commonly held.  There are few
business decisions which do not have a political component, whether it
is a trivial battle between divisions within a corporation or more
serious attempts to alter the balance of benefits and/or power within
society.  For example, whether we have the "best" telephone system in
the world -- something which could easily be challenged by references
to other systems, if Chris knew more about them -- is perhaps of
secondary importance to the question of who pays for the high level of
services available (of which only a few are useful to the bulk of the
population).  The decision to lower long distance rates and raise
local rates (via an access charge) has shifted the burden of paying
for the public telecommunications network from large users to
residential/small business users, to the tune of about four billion
dollars a year or more.
 
But the issue of technological policy is a larger one than the mere
redistribution of monetary benefits and costs.  It's a question of who
gets to make policy.  Perhaps I don't have Chris' broad knowledge of
technology policy, but as a student of the history of technology for
about twenty years, I certainly don't share his sunny optimism
regarding the current system; history is not on the side of Chris'
argument.

Finally, I wouldn't throw around the label of "Luddite" so carelessly.
In fact, as Montgomery has pointed out in TECHNOLOGY AND CIVIC LIFE
(MIT Press, 1974), the Luddites, who protested the automation of many
craft activities, were ultimately successful not in forestalling
technology but in mitigating its worst social effects.  British
working life, for awhile, became the most progressive and advanced in
the world, with decent wages and relatively safe conditions, as a
result of the Luddites' effect on British law.  And this was while
Britain was literally taking the world by storm.


Bob Jacobson