Mike,
I think Robins and Webster are echoing lines from Bowles and Gintis (and
possibly Harry Braverman). I think that they are making a point that
cybernetics is a neo-Fordist invention of control designed as a way of
thinking that fits with specific forms of capitalist production. R & W
claim for instance:
Hallmark of Neo-Fordism is its flexibility (decentralized, fragmented,
disseminated), manifested in changed forms of productions and patterns of
consumption, and class relations which are characterized by increasing
individuation and differentiation, though with particularly marked
divisions between core and peripheral workers" (170). That cybernetic
thinking is being introduced to manage this process and that schools and
universities are bending the organisation and transmission of capitalist
forms of thought through what they term "instrumental progressism"
examples of this are (shock and horror): " the objective is flexibility;
more teaching of competencies and skills rather than traditional subjects;
experiential, project-based, and problem-solving pedagogy rather than
didactic academic methods; emphasis on technology and computer literacy,
etc.... thus making flexible workers"
"Profiling is about power and control and inherently a mechanism for
surveillance and discipline"
"Paperts’s Mindstorms most successful cognitivist position that
assimilates human psychic processes to that of the computer;
characteristic of instrumental progressivism
Computer is deeply implicated in transformation of our self-image and in
relations of power and control;"
It is this notion that "control" is normal that I think is at the crux of
their argument.
..........
the full ref is
Robins, K and Webster F. "Times of Technoculture",Comedia 1999.
They are well known neo-luddites in the uk...
Martin
"A big Hi to all you sentient beings out there. For the rest of you, the
trick is to bang the rocks together."
D.N.Adams (1952-2001)
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