Terra Incognita

Today's Question: Miller & Slater have elaborated four cross-cutting, non-exhaustive "dimensions" or "dynamics" that mark the Trinidadian Internet, and perhaps the Internet everywhere. Choose one of the four dynamics introduced in chapter 1 (Objectification, Mediation, Normative Freedom, Positioning) or a sub-concept within one of the dynamics (expansive realization, expansive potential). Analyze how the dynamic manifests in the ethnographic material presented in chapter 3 (Relationships) or chapter 4 (Being Trini). You might consider: What does the dynamic mean? How is the dynamic analytically useful? How is it applied? How is its use related to the method employed here, or the assumptions?

Miller and Slater define the “dynamics of positioning” as the internet placing people “… within network that transcend their immediate location, placing them in wider flows of cultural, political and economic resources.” (p. 18) By closely examining the dynamic of positioning specifically within the context of kinship, I acknowledge that their reporting of the Trinidadian belief that “the internet itself is inherently Trinidadian” (p.2) may have some validity, at least when considering extended family relations.
While Miller and Slater offer the example of how Trinidadians use email as an extension of their “everyday” conversations by attaching photos, jokes, links and web addresses to their emails- this hardly qualifies as definitive evidence the overarching assertion of the inherent “Trini-ness” of the internet. Despite the author’s attention concerning the “ebb and flow” of traditional verbal communication within Trinidad and how their emails inherently mimic this mode of communication, it is hardly unique or specific to Trinidad itself. However, when Miller and Slater turn their focus to the notion of kinship, I start to understand the unique character of Trini culture that is exemplified in this idea.
When one considers the tremendous dispersion of Trinidadians throughout the world (p. 38, p. 71), and the expectation that the best educated citizens will be forced to decide whether they should work overseas or to “sacrifice” one’s career to stay or return, the social diaspora and how the internet collapses distance becomes much more compelling. Miller and Slater provide examples of how extended familiar relationships are based upon a fundamental pragmatism- how an Aunt or Uncle would be expected to house a nephew or niece to allow them to attend a better school, and how in turn, this kind of social expectation flows through their engagement within the internet medium. Miller and Slater chart out how through internet search engines one Trini was able to locate and reconnect with his father whom he had no contact for 28 years, how ICQ relationships have a way of blending in to “real” life and how they fall prey to the same difficulties that “real” relationships do. The degree of cultural reciprocity in “on line” relationships- be it a nagging mother, or a friend that one has never met face to face, these specific examples are the ones that provide the cultural currency to the author's argument. Otherwise it seems that the belief that Trinidad is somehow “unique” in the application of the internet and it’s subsequent forms of communication appears to be an overstatement.
It is the social expectations that the Trinidadians have about the internet that forms it’s unusual characteristics and it’s social importance. While it might be tempting to dismiss Miller and Slater as being an “old” source- their text was published in 2000- did Americans have the social expectation that if they left a comment upon a website they would be starting a dialogue in 2000, or that every email sent would be responded to? No, of course not. It is through the social expectations that Trinis had about the communication technology that framed its use, value and widespread acceptance.

Posted by Martin J. Holland at 08:36 AM | Permalink

My paper proposal can be downloaded here

Posted by Martin J. Holland at 10:09 PM | Permalink

Today's Question: When scholars write about communication technologies, they often focus on successful technologies. Successful technologies, in turn, are usually described as ever-expanding or "diffusing" throughout society until they are widespread. In this context, Fischer's analysis of the decline in rural telephony in Chapter 4 is remarkable and unusual. Please evaluate this argument in chapter 4. You might comment on his evidence for the decline, his analysis, or his explanation of it. Is the explanation convincing? You might compare it to discussions of other technologies we have read. Does this analysis demonstrate a strength or weakness in his method? (Or, Why did he find this decline when other scholars rarely if ever highlight any declines?)

Fischer’s attention concerning the decline in rural telephone usage may be remarkable in the historical scholarship regarding technology, but it also highlights a serious flaw with his methodology and rationale. This flaw may not just solely reside within Fischer, it may indicate a flaw that underlies the entire approach of examining the history of technology and its social impact.

Fischer argues in chapter four of America Calling: A social history of the Telephone to 1940, that “when... the burdens of rural telephony increased after 1920- higher rates, disinterest from commercial companies, tough economic times- many farmers gave it up. They now had alternatives to the often irritating telephone service, the automobile and radio in particular, to meet some of the same ends” (pg. 107). Fischer’s statement seems to provide a neat and tidy summation of the decline in rural telephone service, except that it completely ignores a tremendously significant social and environmental event that affected rural life in the 1930’s- the dustbowl.

Fischer does an admirable job indicating the value of the telephone as a social network (pp. 98-99) with particular care given to the significant benefits and applications that telephone service had for rural dwellers over and above that for urban inhabitants. However, if one considers that 2.5 million people moved from the Plain States west during the dust bowl (the time period that Fischer remarks in declining telephone use on farms), one starts to seriously question Fischer’s concluding statements of higher phone rates and commercial indifference as the rationale for declining rates of telephone user ship in rural areas as still being valid.

Frankly, I am astounded that Fischer fails to notice the effect that the dust bowl, often referred to as “the largest migration in US history” could have had on his data. By focusing solely on statistical data gathered by the US Census Bureau that is concerned with the percentages of households with telephones (farm vs non-farm) the larger story is omitted, or at the very least, disguised. One could call into question the decline of sample size of the farmers who were able to stay on their land, arguing that they had a greater financial stability than those farmers that had to abandon their now fallow land, and thus the rate of telephone decline was actually larger than Fischer notes. However, the larger question that this omission raises for me concerns the very approach of studying the history of technology: how can scholars provide social histories concerning technology when social use and technology seem to be so intrinsically linked, and how do they account for factors that they regard outside their area of expertise? Fischer seems to avoid technological determinism, but has he succumbed to a “lesser offense” of technological centrism?

Posted by Martin J. Holland at 04:41 PM | Permalink

This week’s question: Douglas has written an explanation of the social construction of radio in order to avoid technological determinism. The "constructors" proposed in this book are inventors, the press, amateur operators, the military, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and others. One sure way to avoid "determinism" is to advance a narrative that contains more than one possible outcome. Can you use the materials in this book to propose a plausible alternative way that radio might have developed in the U.S.? If yes, explain the alternative. If not, discuss what information you would need in order to propose an alternative (that is, information that you don't have in this book).

In Susan J. Douglas’ work Inventing American Broadcasting 1899-1922, she reveals in precise detail the influences of a wide range of disparate actors and forces ranging from individual inventors and corporations to social and military institutions to political organizations with the role that they played in shaping the modern practice of radio. Her approach seems exhaustive and thorough, with particular attention being paid to the larger social and cultural climate within the United States during these nascent years for wireless and later, radio technology. Her scholarship is well in line with the German historian Leopold von Ranke who was attempting to bring a new “scientific” level of rigor to the practice, “to essentially tell history as it was”. However by supplying such a well documented approach to the social, technological, cultural, economic, political and the personal histories that formed radio it is exceedingly difficult to imagine the technology emerging or developing in any other way. Inventing American Broadcasting 1899-1922 implies that a multitude of possible tangents that could have affected the development of radio, but I see the true strength of Douglas’ work being a comprehensive survey of all those factors, and clearly indicating that the specific outcome of events in her text is how radio developed.

While Douglas’ approach removes the idea of technological determinism, that is that technology itself forms the very structure of its own development and advancement, it makes the development of radio appear both haphazard and yet completely determined by the previously mentioned forces. Would the course of Radio’s history be different if the Titanic had not struck the iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland? What if Harlod Cottam had performed his “time rush” ten minutes before on board the Carpathia, thus missing the SOS issued by the Titanic? What if the Titanic’s wireless operator, Jack Philips obeyed a direct order and abandoned ship when instructed, thus preventing the plea of assistance from being heard? What if the closest ship to the Titanic, the California still had their wireless operator at his post when the Titanic sent out her distress call? With any single change in the course of the Titanic tragedy be it magnifying or reducing the loss of human lives, one could surmise that it would have an affect on the course of development of wireless and radio technologies and policy.

However, what if the historical change was a relatively minor one, say that a Marconi operator decided to go against company policy and responded to the Deutschland’s wireless message despite it being broadcast using Slaby-Arco set? What if Lee DeForest was not so preoccupied with fame and fortune and refused to enter into the shady business relationship with Abraham White? The impacts of these “possible” minor changes are not so clear, and are fully open to interpretation and speculation. Perhaps the most revealing and surprising account in Douglas’ work is the fact that AT&T (with RCA and GE lurking in the background) was the entity first capable of broadcasting the human voice across the Atlantic. Her account up until that point in the text seemingly downplayed American Telephone and Telegraph to being only concerned with communication over wires, and thus was largely ignored in the development of wireless technology. Douglas’ account of AT&T in the development of wireless technology, in my opinion, was to specifically highlight the rise of power that corporations had in this nascent industry and how feelings of nationalism required that the technology itself reside within American corporate hands rather than the hands of American inventors.

Posted by Martin J. Holland at 02:08 PM | Permalink