Humanities and Telecommunication :: Technology Marx Heidegger Papers

Humanities and Telecommunication Contemporary technology in the form of electronically managed interactive telecommunications is compatible with the goals and values of the humanities. For Marx, machine-work tended toward being mechanically routine, repetitive, deskilled, and trivialized. In the case of discourse, the same criticism has been made of computerized communication. Immediacy is not authorial presence, but the experience of textuality that is maximized by participation in interactive communication. Bulletin board technology inverts the relationship between the degree of communicative interaction and the number of communicants. It is both mass communication and individualized participation. From the point of view of a theory of discourse, the bulletin board system is unique in that the ratio between the number of participants and the individualized nature of the interaction is directly proportional. One person's voice does not inhibit or repress the voice of another. It is the technological embodiment of t he ideal speech situation of Habermas which allows for the maximum of democratic participation and which, by allowing everyone to have a voice, allows for the greatest amount of dissensus and dialectic. The thesis of this paper is that contemporary technology in the form of digital information, natural language processing, cybernetics, and particularly interactive telecommunications is compatible with the goals and values of the humanities. There has been, however, the criticism that technology is dehumanizing. We will consider and respond to this criticism in light of the thought of Marx, Marcuse, Lyotard and Heidegger. Only a few years ago the connotations surrounding the terms 'philosophy' and 'computers' were incongruous. One reason for this was the association of computer technology with mathematical computation and the manipulation of symbols in formal programming languages. Since most of us do not use computers for number crunching or programming, but for word processing, text processing, and communication, this incongruity has diminished. The concrete instance of this technology that the paper considers is the electronic bulletin board. A user calling into an electronic bulletin board can read and enter messages, upload and download files. The messages are usually divided into conferences or discussion groups where messages are listed according to subject matter, date, sender and receiver. The message log is also a searchable database through which multiple discussion threads can be followed. One major technological advantage of the bulletin board is the liberation from the constraints of time and space. Parties to a communication do not need to be at the same location or present at the same time.