Time for installment-3, apologies for it is a little long.
Ah Nate . . . the optimism of youth:
>In reading some of the past messages I question if at times our
>pessimism with technology may in some ways be the best promoter
>of its imperialism. T.V. is an example that comes to mind in
>that we are flooded with messages about its danger, but do not
>embrace it in the sense of becoming critical consumers of the
>medium.
Your comments are quite appropriate when we actually isolate an object
"say TV" and then try to dictate our action via some critical analysis of
what that object may be projecting. However, my disagreement is much
deeper than that, because you cannot separate the TV from media industry,
nor the media industry from the producers of optics and digital signal
processing, nor those folks from the production of RAM in Japan. My
concern is that there is no single thing that can singled out. As a
butterfly in Brazil effects the weather in New York, everything
influences everything else. This is the theme of James Burke in his
_Connections_ book and documentary series. None of the inventions that
Burke describes gave us the slightest warning of the effects they might
have - we didn't even have a clue in some cases that an invention had
occurred. The creation of polymer molecules needed for plastic was
patented by a German scientist. The patent ran out before Dupont
rediscovered the stuff and figured out how to make nylon with it.
My writings may have the ring of a conspiracy theory, but alas, quite the
opposite is true. It is the technological dependency that the modern
human requires for basic survival that is the trap. That dependency has
no rhyme or reason, nor is it good or evil - but it is like an octopus
wrapping around its prey until it cannot escape.
Which takes me to Jay's rather unconcerned comments about English:
>I regret English imperialism insofar as one of its associated agendas is
>the hegemony of a particular subculture (which is not all that totally
>English-specific, though it is in some respects), and the benign neglect of
>potential competitors (or potential hybridity partners). On the other hand,
>I don't think we can do without one common second language for the world,
I'd like to turn that problem right around and ask: "why do we need this
common language?" Exactly who is served by this common language? There
have been civilizations on the Earth for at least 6 maybe as much as 12
thousand years. Trade has been occurring for almost as long. People
were able to live without a common language all that time - why do we
need a common language now?
I think the answer lies not in an Imperialism of language but an
Imperialism of social ontology. I.e. all the stuff out of which our
lives are made come from a common source. The problem hits me most
clearly when I try to get together with my parents to speak French -
basically we can't. Why? because the "referents" that we wish to speak
about are labeled with English names. There is no French word for
"AppleTalk connector" or "Toilet-to-tap water recycling." When your
attempts to speak in French end up using English words a good 30% of the
time, you get discouraged very easily. It is the concepts, technology,
and practices of the U.S. that are driving the English language into the
rest of the world. Moreover, the emergence of multinational corporations
modeled on U.S. Economic power has resulted in even nations like Japan
spreading the "U.S. Scientific/Technological complex." In effect, U.S.
business practices and norms have become a social and economic virus that
can infect any corporation from Sony to AirBus. Perfectly consistent
with practice-based theories of language, to adopt English as a language
is to compromise the culture in which you live. Yet to defy English is
not to deprive yourself of simply words, but to deprive yourself access
to that part of social reality manufactured in our multinational
corporate and alas governmental world.
Jay, ever the linguist, adds:
>Bilingualism is feasible in the world, in degrees, perhaps with
>some diglossia of functions between home and local languages vs. the global
>common second language. In that guise it doesn't have to spell the end of
>language-based cultural diversity (there are also other bases, of course).
However, this supposes that "inferior languages" like French can manage
to come with their own referents for all the new *concepts* that are
being introduced into their culture. The French attempt to do exactly
that is a running joke around the world, but the joke is truly on us. We
are losing precious vistas on the human experience, and like the
treasures of knowledge left by the Aztecs and Mayas, we may sorely miss
them once they have been obliterated in the name of progress.
Yet, the spread of the virus is virtually impossible to control.
Consider, for example, the modern freight container. Hardly high-tech or
language-loaded, it is nevertheless a marvel of simplicity and
international cooperation. Yet it effects everything from our energy
consumption to way native trades are managed. Containerized cargo wastes
a great deal of fossil fuels because it is a truck-paradigm. Attempt to
move cargo directly from rail to ship lost out, even if rail based
transport in hundreds of times more energy efficient than trucks. On the
other end of the spectrum, any merchant dealing in international trade
"thinks" in cargo containers. Shipments that do not break down into an
integral number of containers are a horrible hassle. Now why should
furniture makers in Peru care about cargo containers? - well they do if
they want to export. It isn't simply the language of cargo containers
(an American idea) but the practices of cargo containers that utterly
changes the practices of other cultures.
Jay then concludes with some optimism hidden in some linguistic jargon:
> Given the present dominance of hyperstandardized hegemonic English,
> we have plenty of freedom to experiment with ComSeL without having
> to actually worry (yet) about wrecking its usefulness as an LWC
> (applied linguistics jargon: language of wider communication).
To me this sounds like the "ethnic food theory" of cultural preservation.
America, like no other society that I know of, relishes in the diversity
of restaurant types we frequent. Yet we foolishly believe that such
institutions really do preserve the cultures they represent. I've got
news for you, the part of France I want to preserve isn't crepes and
french fries. I think every oppressed culture would agree in its own way.
I think it is extremely naive to think that any one language can be
stretched to encompass all the cultural diversity of the world, and this
is another one of those great myths of Post-Modernism. On the contrary,
we are insisting that other cultures be squeezed through tenets or our
modern societies. The ethnic food restaurant is a perfect example of
that. They serve a real need in our modern culture: a need for variety
in our otherwise "tasteless" world. Yet the existence of such a class of
restaurants is the exception that proves the rule. If as Americans we
had "taste" (See Bourdieu,) we could be able to orient ourselves with
respect to the myriad of choices that technology allows capitalism to
provide for us. Pathetically, technology would much better served
earlier generations which had strong cultural roots going back
generations. Yet, the process creating our technological world has had
the undesirable side-effect of ripping virtually everyone away from the
cultural foundations that once defined everything from work to aesthetics.
Again, I want to point out how "accidental" our predicament is. Ethnic
food restaurant came into being so that immigrants could make a living in
our capitalist society. Their popularity is I think largely a result of
the "melting pot" nature of all modern societies. We don't have family
roots going back a thousand years and grandma living in the house to pass
treasured recipes and cultural practices that were every bit a part of
the meal. Technology made mobility possible. Mobility made
organizations for efficient by allowing them to move skilled workers
where they would have the most effect. James Watt didn't intend to break
up the family unit when he invented the steam engine - he was trying to
save the lives of miners literally drowning because of water seepage.
Yet, his good intentions don't mitigate the end effect.
I very much want to agree with Nate when he writes:
>I guess I see Internet itself as being the best tool to
>combat its destructive use.
Alas, I feel strangely in the footsteps of the French Existentialists,
who trying to make sense of the French experience after World War II.
France was, and still is, an enigma. It was at once: utterly destroyed
and yet stuffed back together by the allies. Perhaps in a way that is
uniquely French, there is a sense of living outside of one's self - a
sense of detachment from the material things that ultimately support and
drive your very being.
My struggles with my French identity I think speak to many battles: all
being lost at the same time. Ironically, even if I abandoned the United
States, returned to France, and tried to defy that English Imperialism,
my expertise would still be American made, as would be my computer (at
least the design of it.) Worse, the expertise of even the best of
France's Software Engineers is just as much American made. Mike's very
revealing report on the lack of communications infrastructure says a lot
about what the world is really like and how our "Western perceptions"
distort what might be construed as progress.
Yet, Modernity has brought progress that virtually no one can resist.
The end of mass illnesses, the ability to foretell and escape from a wide
number of natural disasters, the ability to share ideas with hundreds of
people from the comfort of my trusty powerbook. We have not been seduced
by some evil snake and eaten the forbidden fruit. We are, as James Watt,
Edison, Edward Teller, Werner Von Braun, and a cast of billions,
sincerely trying to make our lives better. The central enigma that truly
haunts us all is simply this: with all the progress we truly have made,
why can't we make people more truly happy?
Peace, Edouard
============================================
Edouard Lagache, PhD
Webmaster - Lecturer
Information Technologies
U.C. San Diego, Division of Extended Studies
Voice: (619) 622-5758, FAX: (619) 622-5742
email: elagache who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
:...................................................................:
: We have just religion enough to make us hate, but not enough :
: to make us love one another :
: Jonathan Swift, _Thoughts on various subjects_, (1711) :
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