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Some
Reference Points for Discussion
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Preliminary Class Business
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7. Advanced capitalism is integral with information
technology
A. Information Tech Facilitates Postindustrialism
-
Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn,
Workplace 2000 (1992):
In part, the downsizing
that occurred in the 1980s was made possible by a new generation
of technology that is less expensive, more flexible, and enables
employees at the lowest level of an organization to make critical
decisions. (p. 2)
. . . success in the organization will flow
to those who can effectively use the data. . . .
Americans who want to succeed will need the ability to analyze
data, draw conclusions, and present recommendations. Computer
literacy and at least a rudimentary knowledge of statistics
for business will be critical for advancement or even to survive!
(p. 5)
The ability of large American
companies to reconfigure themselves to look and act like small
businesses can, at least in part, by attributed to the development
of new technology that makes whole layers of managers and
their staffs unnecessary. Those layers (such as group executives,
corporate directors, and assistant vice presidents) whose
primary function is to either filter information and, in some
cases, manipulate data being passed up from lower levels or
make routine decisions will be particularly vulnerable to
technology. . . . In Workplace 2000,
upper management in practically every company will have the
technological tools not only to review company-wide performance
on a personal computer but to tap directly into performance
at the lowest level. (p. 23)
Entire layers of management
and supervision will be erased from the organization chart.
Traditional ideas about a "span of control" where
a manager or supervisor was needed for every four, five,or
six employees are being discarded. Instead of a narrow span
of control, companies are now beginning to look at a much
broader span of communication or span of information as the
basis for establishing the number and levels of management.
(p. 28)
-
Manuel Castells, The Rise of the
Network Community (1996):
Thus, informationalism was linked to the expansion and rejuvenation
of capitalism, as industrialism was linked to its constitution
as a mode of production. (p. 19)
Information coming from
specific time and space is the crucial factor. Information
technology allows simultaneously for the decentralized retrieval
of such information and for its integration into a flexible
system of strategy-making. This cross-border structure allows
small and medium businesses to link up with major corporations,
forming networks that are able to innovate and adapt relentlessly.
(p. 165)
Networks are the fundamental stuff of which new organizations
are and will be made. And they are able to form and expand
all over the main streets and back alleys of the global economy
because of their reliance on the information power provided
by the new technological paradigm. (p. 168)
B. Information Tech Represents Postindustrialism
- The early "Productivity Paradox" of IT (information
technology)
- Thomas K. Landauer, The Trouble with Computers:
Usefulness, Usability, and Productivity (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1995)
- Stephen S. Roach, Technology Imperatives
(New York: Morgan Stanley, 1992)
- Paul A. Strassman, Information Payoff:
The Transformation of Work in the Electronic Age
(New York: Free Press / Macmillan, 1985)
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IT capital and productivity
in the service sector. Data from Stephen S.
Roach, Technology Imperatives; chart
from Thomas K. Landauer, The Trouble with
Computers, p. 31 |
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- IT as symbolism, myth, and "spirit"
- J. Feldman and J. March, "Information in Organizations
as Signal and Symbol" (1981):
"Using information, asking for information, and justifying
decisions in terms of information have all come to be significant
ways in which we symbolize that [a] process is legitimate,
that we are good decision makers, and that our organizations
are well managed" (p. 178)
- Andrew J. Flanagin
- "Internet Use in the Contemporary Media Environment,"
Human Communication Research, 27 (2001): 153-81
- "Social Pressures on Organizational Website
Adoption," Human Communication Research
26 (2000): 618-646
- Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and
Practice of the Learning Organization (1990): (pp. 13,
11)
- Manuel Castells, The Rise of Network Society,
vol. 1 of The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture
(Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996-97):
"The 'spirit of informationalism' is the culture of
'creative destruction' accelerated to the speed of the optoelectronic
circuits that process its signals. Schumpeter meets Weber
in the cyberspace of the network enterprise" (p. 199)
- John Seely Brown & Paul Duguid, The Social
Life of Information (Boston: Harvard Business School
Press, 2000):
"Today, it's the myth of information that is overpowering
richer explanations. . . . In particular,
the myth tends to wage a continual war against aspects of
society that play a critical role in shaping not only society,
but information itself, making information useful and giving
it value and meaning." (pp. 32-33)
- Information Tech as an imagination of postindustrialism:
"Network = Business = Society"
- Visualizations of the Internet: 1
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- Visualizations of Social Networks: 1
Neuromancer,
p. 51:
"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily
by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children
being taught mathematical concepts. . . . A
graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of
every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity.
Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters
and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding. . . ." |
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8. Business is culture
- Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman,
In Search of Excellence (1982):
Perhaps culture was taboo as a topic following William H.
Whyte, Jr.'s The Organization Man and the conformist,
gray flannel suit image that he put forward. But what seems
to have been overlooked by Whyte, and management theorists
until recently, is what . . . we call the "loose-tight"
properties of excellent companies. In the very same institutions
in which culture is so dominant, the highest levels of true
autonomy occur. The culture regulates rigorously the few variables
that do count, and it provides meaning. But within those qualitative
values (and in almost all other dimensions), people
are encouraged to stick out, to innovate. (p. 105, from the
section on "The Importance of Culture")
-
Manuel Castells, The Rise
of the Network Community (1996):
But there is indeed a common cultural code in the diverse
workings of the network enterprise. It is made of many cultures,
many values, many projects, that cross through the minds and
inform the strategies of the various participants in the networks,
changing at the same pace as the network's members, and following
the organizational and cultural transformation of the units
of the network. It is a culture, indeed, but a culture of
the ephemeral, a culture of each strategic decision, a patchwork
of experiences and interests, rather than a charter of rights
and obligations. It is a multifaceted, virtual culture,
as in the visual experiences created by computers in cyberspace
by rearranging reality. It is not a fantasy, it is a material
force because it informs, and enforces, powerful economic
decisions at every moment in the life of the network. But
it does not stay long: it goes into the computer's memory
as raw material of past successes and failures. The network
enterprise learns to live within this virtual culture. Any
attempt at crystallizing the position in the network as a
cultural code in a particular time and space sentences the
network to obsolescence, since it becomes too rigid for the
variable geometry required by informationalism. The "spirit
of informationalism" is the culture of "creative
destruction" accelerated to the speed of the optoelectronic
circuits that process its signals. Schumpeter meets Weber
in the cyberspace of the network enterprise. (p. 199)
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9. Job insecurity and stress are systemic
Downsizing
-
Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P.
Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):
Downsizing has made this flatter workplace a reality . . .
and this trend toward flattening the corporation will continue.
The layers of management, supervision, and support that were
eliminated during the 1980s will not return. . . .
Continued rapid advancement in technology will make further
belt-tightening possible. In short, Americans who process
information, analyze information, and/or make routine decisions
are likely to find their positions in danger within the next
decade. (p. 2)
Some types of jobs are becoming what Robert Tomasko, author
of Downsizing, calls an "endangered species."
Who is endangered? Planners, economists, corporate marketing
and public relations staffs, analysts of all types—anyone
who sits around "thinking" and "advising."
(p. 27)
-
Manuel Castells, The Rise of the
Network Community ( 1996):
It should not be surprising that information technologies . . .
replace work that can be encoded in a programmable sequence
and enhance work that requires analysis, decision, and reprogramming
capabilities in real time at a level that only the human brain
can master. Every other activity . . . is potentially
susceptible of automation, and thus the labor engaged in it
is expendable. . . . (p. 242)
Job insecurity, lateral
movement, and flextiming
-
Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P.
Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):
In the next decade, no job will be entirely secure, whether
inside or outside of a large company. . . .
It is very unlikely that most Americans will be able to join
one company and stay with it throughout their working life.
In fact, the average American will most likely work in ten
or more different types of jobs and at least five different
companies before he or she retires. (p. 3)
In Workplace 2000, traditional paths of career advancement
will be closed for most people. They won't be promoted because
there simply won't be a job to promote them into. . . .
At best, the typical employee can expect a few promotions
and a number of lateral moves. (p. 29)
-
Manuel Castells, The Rise
of the Network Community (1996):
The prevailing model for labor in the new, information-based
economy is that of a core labor force, formed by information-based
managers and by those whom [Robert] Reich calls "symbolic
analysts," and a disposable labor force that can
be automated and/or hired/fired/offshored, depending upon
market demand and labor costs. (p. 272)
Stress
-
Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P.
Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):
With these changes, tremendous responsibilities will be shifted
to workers and their peers for planning, scheduling, organizing,
directing, and controlling their own work process.
This new and expanded role for
employees will exert enormous pressures on employees and companies
alike to invest in education and retraining. (p. 7)
-
William H. Davidow and Michael
S. Malone, The Virtual Corporation (1992):
But the greatest daily challenge to the workers and the management
that supports them will be dealing with the unpredictability
of life in the virtual corporation, where perpetual flux will
be the rule. If every revolution brings with it the potential
for tragedy, then here is where it is most likely to occur.
. . . even in
the United States, there is a sizable percentage of people
who are change aversive. . . . What happens
to these people, many of them highly successful in the traditional
firm? . . . those who once thrived may discover
themselves disoriented, alienated, and overwhelmed by the
new work style. (pp. 215-16)
The Critique of Postindustrial
Business
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Cyberpunk Fiction
The first note from Fredric Jameson's
Postmodernism, or The Culture Logic of Late Capitalism
(1991):
"This is the place to regret the absence from this book
of a chapter on cyberpunk, henceforth,for many of us, the
supreme literary expression if not of postmodernism,
then of late capitalism itself." |
Selected Bibliography
(see also online supplementary resources listed for this class
on the Materials page)
- Literary and cultural influences on cyberpunk
- Thomas Pynchon, J.G. Ballard, "New Wave" Science
Fiction, media, counterculture
- "Canonical" authors
- William Gibson
- Neuromancer (NY: Berkley, 1984) (a Japanese
translation by Hisashi Kuroma appeared in 1985)
- Count Zero (NY: Arbor House, 1986)
- Burning Chrome (NY: Arbor House, 1986)
- Mona Lisa Overdrive (NY: Bantam, 1988)
- Screenplay for Aliens III
- (with Bruce Sterling) The Difference Engine
(NY: Bantam, 1990)
- Virtual Light (NY: Bantam, 1993)
- Idoru (NY: Berkley, 1996)
- All Tomorrow's Parties (NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons,
1999)
- Agrippa (A Book of the Dead), engravings by
Dennis Ashbaugh (NY: Kevin Begos Publishing, 1992)
- Bruce Sterling
- The Artificial Kid (NY: Ace, 1980)
- Schismatrix (NY: Arbor House, 1985)
- ed., Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology
(NY: Arbor House, 1986)
- Islands in the Net (NY: Morrow, 1988)
- Crystal Express (Sauk City, Wisc.: Arkham House,
1989)
- Holy Fire (NY: Bantam, 1996)
- The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic
Frontier (New York: Bantam, 1992); also available
online as freeware from numerous sources, including
versions with a Preface and Epilogue added in 1994 (e.g.,
<http://www.lysator.liu.se/etexts/hacker/>)
- Neal Stephenson
- Snow Crash (NY: Bantam, 1992)
- The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady's Illustrated
Primer (NY: Bantam, 1995)
- Cryptonomicon (NY: Avon, 1999)
- In the Beginning Was the Command Line (New
York: Avon, 1999); also downloadable as a zipped text
file from <http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html>
- Some authors sharing a similar "cyber" and/or
"punk" universe:
- Greg Bear, Blood Music
(NY: Arbor House, 1985)
- Pat Cadigan
- Mindplayers (NY: Bantam, 1987)
- Synners ((NY: Bantam, 1991)
- Greg Egan, Diaspora
(NY: Harper, 1998)
- Jeff Noon, Nymphomation
(Trafalgar, 2000)
- Rudy Rucker
- Software (NY: Ace, 1982)
- Wetware (NY: Avon, 1988)
- Affiliates in Postmodern Literature
- Kathy Acker, Empire of
the Senseless (NY: Grove, 1988)
[includes piratical/parodic rewrite of the Panther Moderns
episode from Neuromancer)
[Acker's work belongs among many works of mainstream,
postmodern fiction that have contributed and/or borrowed
motifs from SF: e.g., Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, Don
DeLillo, Robert Stone, William T. Vollmann]
- Selected Secondary Works
- Larry McCaffery,
ed., Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk
and Postmodern Science Fiction (Durham: Duke Univ. Press,
1991); contains a nice selection of essays and interviews
on cyberpunk. Esp. useful:
- Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.,
"Cyberpunk and Neuromanticism"
- Veronica Hollinger, "Cybernetic
Deconstructions: Cyberpunk and Postmodernism"
- Brooks Landon, "Bet
On It: Cyber/video/punk performance"
- Timothy Leary, "The
Cyberpunk: The Individual as Reality Pilot"
- Larry McCaffery
- "An Interview with William Gibson"
- "Cutting Up: Cyberpunk, Punk Music, and Urban
Decontextualizations"
- Brian McHale, "POSTcyberMODERNpunkISM"
- Bruce Sterling, "Preface"
from Mirrorshades
- Darko Suvin, "On
Gibson and Cyberpunk SF"
- Takayuki Tatsumi, "The
Japanese Reflection of Mirrorshades"
- Andrew Ross, "Cyberpunk
in Boystown," in his Strange Weather: Culture, Science,
and Technology in the Age of Limits (London: Verso,
1991) [an acid critique of cyberpunk in the mode of British
Retro-Marxist meets North American Cyber-Macho-Boys from
Suburbia]
- Scott Bukatman
- Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern
Science Fiction (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1993)
- "Gibson's Typewriter," South Atlantic
Quarterly 92 (1994): 627-45
- Michael Benedict, ed., Cyberspace:
First Steps (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992) [on
the construction of computer "cyberspace"]
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Neuromancer: A Counter-Imagination of
Postindustrialism
Written in the 1980s-90s during the same period as the encounter
of American corporations with the new Japanese business model,
global competition, restructuring, knowledge work, and IT, cyberpunk
is the literary equivalent of books like Workplace 2000
or The Virtual Corporation or The Road Ahead.
It is a "near-future" prophecy or imagination of postindustrialism:
- An imagination of postindustrial mass consumerism
- The world as "Biz" (p. 145): Freeside station
as giant mall or Hotel Bonaventure
- The world as Media:
- old media (TV, film, books and magazines, Ashpool's
dead-media collection) and new media (simstim)
- Gibson's characters as media pastiches ("cowboy,"
"gangster," "moll," "samurai")
(p. 213)
- the Panthern Moderns as terrorist media artists
- Wintermute's avatars
from Larry McCaffery's
interview
with William Gibson (Aug. 1986), p. 265:
LM: There are so many references to rock
music and television in your work that it sometimes
seems your writing is as much influenced by MTV
as by literature. What impact have other media
had on your sensibility?
WG: Probably more than fiction. . . .
I've been influenced by Lou Reed, for instance,
as much as I've been by any "fiction"
writer. I was going to use a quote from an old
Velvet Underground song—"Watch out for
worlds behind you" (from "Sunday Morning")—as
an epigraph for Neuromancer. |
- An imagination of postindustrial corporatism
- Life in the "arcology" (pp. 37, 203); cf. Neal
Stephenson
- Global competition (fusion culture: Americas, Europe,
East) (pp. 9, 19)
- Creative destruction with a vengeance
- Knowledge work ("Johnny Mnemonic") [extrapolated
into a future of "smart" bodywork, or biotech:
cyborg implants, medical tech; cf., Bruce Sterling's Holy
Fire]
- Restructuring: Gibson's meditation on the corporate organizational
form (to be discussed later)
- Teamwork: Case's multidisciplinary work "team"
- facilitator: Armitage
- IT specialist: Case
- Security: Molly
- Electronic countermeasures: Finn
- Con man/salesman: Riviera
- Transportation: Maelcum (of Zion)
- Consultant: Pauly McCoy (aka Dixie, Flatline)
- Outsourced media specialists: Panthern Moderns
- Information Technology ("cyberspace," "the
matrix")
- But also a counter-imagination of postindustrialism
- Countercultural perspective (Beat/Hippie culture as manifested
in drugs and hacking; silicon the ultimate drug, pp. 4-5)
- Subcultural perspective (youth subcultures, p. 58; reggae
subculture)
- Life on the "Street": the perspective of the
permanently downsized, temped, flex-timed, and stressed
- IT as subversive: street tech (p. 11; Gibson, "the
street finds its own uses for things; quoted in Sterling,
Mirrorshades, p. xiii)
- All reflected in the "special effects" or "style"
of the novel
- Postmodern media collage (the Panther Moderns, p. 62)
(Gibson's hypertextual narrative style: jumping, cutting,
"flipping")
- A "patchwork" world underlying the media collage
(pp. 103, 176, 48; "dub," p. 104), cf. "the
bridge" in Gibson's Virtual Light (p. 70)
- The synaesthetic impact on the body (pp. 31, 154, 241/244)
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