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From: halcyon!peterm@sumax.seattleu.edu (Peter Marshall)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Keeping the Faith in Technology
Message-ID: <16054@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 13 Jan 91 20:14:07 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 37, Message 5 of 8


To paraphrase Chris Johnson's earlier reply, it is indeed difficult to
sit by and let him remain unanswered.

For example: "straying from the topic of telecommunications, and into
the politics of technology"?  Is Mr. Johnson kidding? Or has he so
thoroughly failed to understand the comments he was responding to with
such energy? An "indictment of technologists"? Here too, I'm afraid
that weren't it either. And what a marvelous job of segregating off
the "business end of such organizations." That arbitrary exercise has
little to do with the phenomena in question here. See, for example,
David Noble's AMERICA BY DESIGN.

So-called "technological innovations" as Mr. Johnson uses the term,
seems to be more a label than anything else. Nor is his use of the
shopworn cliche that "they" are "only tools" worth much as yet another
example of the usual reductionism. Thus the old argument premised on
"use" by no means "makes all the difference."

The comments re: the telecom system go some further distance to beg
the relevant policy/political questions too. And although Mr. Jacobson
is no "luddite," granting Johnson's apparently shallow understanding
of this term, one fails to see how Mr. Johnson is contributing, n/w/s
his alleged intention, to focus the issues on "where the decisions
should be and presently are being made." I don't see as his assumption
that "societal effects are impossible to predict" helps him provide
this focus either.  Seems it goes in the opposite direction. Given his
interest in such "effects," he might find it useful to acquaint
himself with what was once called "Technology Assessment," which did
not share his assumption.


Peter Marshall