Re: sci-->ed for whom?

From: Paul Dillon (dillonph@northcoast.com)
Date: Fri Feb 11 2000 - 10:04:00 PST


mike,

I mean everyday "everyday". Compare the scene with that of 1954 on a street
in Berkeley, California. What would you have found that even remotely
smacked of an information mediated artefact of the kinds that depend on
information science. Most banks didn't use computers in 1954. Today, in
the last three months, the entire world has been beset by crises and issues
that happen exclusively due to problems with the "information
infrastructure": e.g., the y2k bug, the recent attacks on e-businesses, etc.
I mean these crises are the result of written code containing information.
Un thinkable in 1954. Information transforming tools are used everywhere.
I could go on. But this is the sense of everyday.

I was thinking of the comparison with Petty's theorizing the source of value
in abstract labor time. Marx thought that this only became possible when
value itself became the organizing principle of the economy. He did not
think this occurred until approximately the 18th century and then in only
some parts of the world (mainly England). One way to think how that change
might have been everyday in the 18th century would be to look at the
development of workers totally separated from their means of production,
which is basically what Marx did when he showed the historical origins of
capital. Like standing in a 19th century English village and hearing people
say, "I remember when we used to be able to collect wood in those forests.
Our farms depended on the forest. It was enclosed. Now our farm is no
longer sustainable (we can't be peasants anymore, damn it!) Now we have to
buy everything and to get the money we have to work at the factory."

Everyday "everyday"-- the practice coming before the theory.

Paul H. Dillon

----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Cole <mcole@weber.ucsd.edu>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2000 8:39 AM
Subject: sci-->ed for whom?

>
> Paul-- I am hopelessly out of date in the discussion, but one part
> of your remarks hit me, and may also reflect the experience of
> others on the list. F
>
> You write:
> An interesting case of a
> concept moving from "the scientific" to "the everyday".
>
> For whom?
>
> Not yet for me. I have found it interesting, for example, that
> our Scandnavian colleagues us IT and ICT as everyday terms. I can
> sort of translate or "imagine up" what they mean, but it requires
> "re-minding" to try to get at the "everyday terms" that are still
> (for me) not yet everyday.
> mike
>



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