After presenting notes to class, revise within the next couple of days and send to Richard for posting; we’ll have running archive and basis for virtual course;

Some seminar material will be posted as well for virtual audio streaming;

See

Final paper; go to website and see "Message Boards" button on left; click to= Communities, Education, Technology and Society Read= Post, read & ask questions concerning education, technology and the societal relationship unfolding between the two.

Course requirement is to write a five-seven page essay based on what you’ve gotten out of the course, turn in a week before end of class; I’ll edit and return final class and we can discuss, you’ll return edited text to me within a week and I’ll send to Richard for final posting; so we’ll have a full virtual course archive of notes, streaming, discussion, and papers.

OK?

Gates, C8 A Friction-free capitalism? there cannot be a friction-free capitalism or anything else capital: class struggle: capital and labor profit through exploitation corporations struggle for market shares countries struggle for dominance or survival capitalism is friction-full and generates ever more friction human relations are friction-full man/woman, races and ethnicities, peoples and nations, etc. there will always be conflict, struggle, friction, it is a question of how to manage and how to deal with it....

180 Gates claims for friction-free capitalism revolve around claims that perfect information will make for a perfect capitalism:

consumer will know best price and best quality goods because of instant information

businesses will know exactly what customers want and produce accordingly

Adam Smith's dream has come true thanks to Bill Gates, Microsoft, and the Internet; i.e. harmony between supply and demand, no overproduction, capitalist utopia

181 The Internet will extend the electronic marketplace and become the ultimate go-between, the universal middleman

best prices, goods and service (for those who can pay) to consumer;

later Bill Gates becomes nervous right below and says the middleman too will thrive because he can sell to everyone and later in the chapter Gates says he wants to keep the retailer and customer service, so everyone will benefit...

On the other hand, a couple of times he admits that change will be radical and that there will be people who embrace and resist the change and winners and losers, but his message is ideological: a utopia of information, goods, and services for the consumers and opportunities for business....

[at least for those who embrace an internet life-style and effective use new technologies—topic of his next 1998 book

actually there will be and has been an increase in friction as companies reorganize and downsize, as the rules of the game change, and as Gates and his minions constantly revolutionize production and distribution; a lot of workers have lost jobs, middlemen have gone out of business and entire corporations have gone down and out—and will continue to do so!

drama of e-commerce and stock market gyrations

Stoll against e-commerce

DK: positives and negatives

Yet Bill Gates provides a useful, albeit ideological, guide to some of the changes in this chapter and other parts of the book...

1) he's a major player in infotech revolution thus reveals a lot about its development; 2) BUT he's one of the major ideologues and boosters of infotech, esp Microsoft!, so he must be read critically. A critical reading can provide insight into dominant intellectual discourses of the time. But he also forces us to engage the Great Transformation we are undergoing and to critically evaluate the ways that infotech are transforming the economy, politics, social life, culture, education, the home, and even our consciousness and identities.

shopping; on-line catalogues; websites with all sorts of information, dramatic revolution in advertising -- website, e-mail, also environment, see L.A. with environmenal advertising, high-tech billboards...

p. 182 For Gates, this adds up to a better tomorrow

new sources of consumer information: web, discussions, but dangers of misinformation, flaming and slander....

one of the few things Bill Gates gets excited about and one of the few times he mentions downside, perhaps because he and Microsoft have been flamed so much!

186 vague suggestions for self-regulation; hesitates to invite government to do anything.... and of course got slapped around himself by government

[has reportedly become withdrawn and paranoid…]

187 new forms of advertising and buying;

TV: home shopping networks

TV and films; product placements; amazing suggestion to buy on the stop clothes, products or services shown in films!!! total advertising and entertainment implosion!

customized products and information

ditto journalism

agents/ profiles

programs to send you information you want; superfilters, etc

push never really happened…

Gates doesn't worry about government or corporate surveillance or privacy; will be cool to get products and ads one is interested in... "Needless to say, there will be lots of controversy and negotiation about who can get access to your profile information. It will be crucial, of course, that you have such access" (191).

benefits for consumers: more and better products accessible at better prices

benefits for business: more and better targeting of customers;

companies may pay you to watch their ads!

p. 197 recognizes value of time, advertisers will pay for time; give-aways and contests, was next thing on the web, but now receding...

see Jeremey Rifkin, The Age of Access: we'll pay for whatever we want to access rather than own: books and information; entertainment like films or TV; music; whatever....

Bill Gates ignores big danger: totally metered Internet... the highway becomes a tollroad... so sinister schemes for the future hide between Gates' seemingly harmless and innocent speculations

201 big issues in copyright law and intellectual property; Gates more driven by this issue than privacy, dangers of metering, etc.

202 extremely efficient marketplace driven by perfect information and the heat of increased competition.... but, Bill, competition=friction, winners and losers so more pain than you let on...

newspapers, banking, stock brokers... all these will change... and indeed are...

but push technology and information hasn't caught on... hyped, but flopped....

vulnerabilities of Internet economy: stock market gyrations?

crisis?

BIll of course is pleased and optimistic; he concludes the chapter on pp. 206-07: "industry after industry will be changed, and change is unsettling.... There will be dislocations, but overall, society will benefit from changes.

utopia of friction-free capitalism: self-satisfied, optimistic, and ideological, dominant ideology for technocapitalism....

Robins and Webster, the other side of the story....

onto education but first:

important concluding point: distinction between markets and capitalism; markets predated capitalism; capital can destroy markets; e.g. monopoly; there is market socialism....

mistake to equate markets and capitalism....

The anti-Gates, the other side of the story, the downside;

Neo-Luddites: strongly anti-new technology

Grounded in critical social theory: implication of technology in capitalist development and political domination

Rich text, full of insights, even if we don’t agree with the basic position…

distinction we might want to make as we discuss information, education, and so on

information //knowledge

processed // produced

readymade // created

abstracted // contextualized and interpreted

fragmented //mediated