Social Media Sociology

Author: Russell Cole - Date: August 16, 2008 - Category: Uncategorized, academe, economics, populism

A new Gilded Age is upon us. The rich are accumulating vaster stores of wealth while those who work and toil to subsist are benefiting little from the current trends of economic growth. Wages for laborers situated in the middle classes have remained stagnant since the inception of the Reagan era, and de- spite assurances from pundits, run-of-the-mill economists, and Third Way neoliberals that the economy is growing and that these positive trends should benefit all sectors - both labor and capital - the middle class is working longer and harder in order to simply maintain its level of material existence. According to the mythology of the free-market, the removal of trade restrictions, opening both consumer and labor markets to American capitalists, will result in outsourcing to less expensive labor markets.

This process will improve productivity; thus, freeing capital for new and innovative ventures in the American economy that promise to generate higher skilled and higher paying jobs for the American la- borers, who might have been displaced from outsourcing, but through education the American worker will acquire the necessary skills to procure these more lucrative occupations. Therefore, according to the dominant socioeconomic narrative, free-trade - as well as unfettered immigration; both legal and illegal – will benefit all members of American society. Despite the intransigency of the quasi-governmental spokesmen - who assume official capacities as corporate sponsored journalists - who reverberate in a relentless chorus the preemptive narration of inter- connected economic events, there are a number of empirically unsubstantiated functions glossed over in this over ly simplistic causal model. First and foremost, the skeptical student will find little in the way of empirical evidence for the proposition that the capital that is freed by virtue of elevated productiveness will, indeed, be reinvested in the American economy. As globalism continues to materialize, the flows of capital are no longer largely contained within national borders. As it currently stands, there is a scarcity of research in transnational financial f lows. This, taken in conjunction with the fact that America no longer possess a monopoly on the creative class of labor, indicates that the displacement of American labor might not necessarily be coupled with the domestic cultivation of new occupational opportunities. Furthermore, the wage stagnation that has affected American labor, stretching back nearly three decades, testifies to the inadequacy of the supply-side model when it comes to predicting economic pa terns in the new global order. The adages and maxims populating the taken-for-granted rendition of th American economy, its processes, as well as its prospects in the context of emerging conditions needs t be reevaluated in order to assess whether these explanations and predictions still hold sway; or, better if they ever provided us with valid understandings of economic affairs with which to begin.

In concurrence with the onset of a new American Gilded Age, we are witness to a new political condition that has been enacted by the very innovations that serve as catalysts, accelerating globalization to its present frenetic pace. The innovations in communications that are stacked upon foundational Inter- net infrastructures consist of transactional conduits provided by broadband and wireless technologies. Through the device of Web facilitated communications, an emergent form of social organization is taking shape that has been characterized as Networked. Or, the Network Society, as Castells would have it, generates relations among social counterparts who occupy positions as nodes in the matrices of relations constituting social networks. The associations between and among the agents positioned in social networks are plastic and adaptable, whereby new social configurations can take form when society finds itself faced with new environmental contingencies, such as when the economy experiences one of its frequent market disruptions due to the introduction of a new technology that undercuts previously preemptive technological stacks. This networked condition is often hailed by neoliberal economists, who perceive it as a prerequisite for a quickly advancing, technologically driven world economy. Although there is certainly a measure of truth to the assessments proffered by neoliberal economists and policy-makers, there is another aspect to the Network Society that I will treat, which – as I will at- tempt to demonstrate – marks political possibilities that have potentially radical consequences. The collapse of geography has certainly accelerated process, but not all of the patterns of social change are contained to the economy. The introduction of Web based communications possesses the possibility – due to the instantaneousness of messages that are transacted among counterparts disparately situated over spans of geography; spaces that have become essentially epiphenomena – of fusing together social nodes that have been, heretofore, prevented from interacting in a modality that reflects immediacy.

The virtual communities that can form – and, indeed, have already formed – can expand their networks in order to leverage resources more prolifically. It is also worthy of mention, that the quality instantiated by social networks, that we might cal l plasticity – which facilitates adaptation, according to accounts put forth by economists who relish the development of the casual labor market – also serves a positive function in the context of the emerging politicized networks that are being cultivated in civil society. Through the interplay of locality with the condensed condition engendered by virtualism – localized enclaves, in a state of isolation from physically distant counterparts who might qualify as peers, only qualify as dumb nodes – can transform into smart nodes by virtue of their extended contacts that have formed by within the expansions of collapsed geography.

These political networks are decentralized in nature with points of high concentrations formed around foci of convergence, such as localization. By this, I mean to point out that the immersion of a node in a network introduces the node to a system of relations where it can intercept vastly more streams of information; thus, in human terms, supplying it with additional knowledge, allowing it to better contextualize its actions. Therefore, in terms of oppositional politics, this process – what has been referred to as glocalism – manufactures an oppositional politic, which can adjust to the contingencies embedded in localities while continuing – via a decentralize modality of social organization – to loosely coordinate the actions among various concentrations in the overall network of resistance.

Author: Russell Cole - Date: August 16, 2008 - Category: Uncategorized

A new Gilded Age is upon us. The rich are accumulating vaster stores of wealth while those who work and toil to subsist are benefiting little from the current trends of economic growth. Wages for laborers situated in the middle classes have remained stagnant since the inception of the Reagan era, and de- spite assurances from pundits, run-of-the-mill economists, and Third Way neoliberals that the economy is growing and that these positive trends should benefit all sectors - both labor and capital - the middle class is working longer and harder in order to simply maintain its level of material existence. According to the mythology of the free-market, the removal of trade restrictions, opening both consumer and labor markets to American capitalists, will result in outsourcing to less expensive labor markets.

This process will improve productivity; thus, freeing capital for new and innovative ventures in the American economy that promise to generate higher skilled and higher paying jobs for the American la- borers, who might have been displaced from outsourcing, but through education the American worker will acquire the necessary skills to procure these more lucrative occupations. Therefore, according to the dominant socioeconomic narrative, free-trade - as well as unfettered immigration; both legal and illegal – will benefit all members of American society. Despite the intransigency of the quasi-governmental spokesmen - who assume official capacities as corporate sponsored journalists - who reverberate in a relentless chorus the preemptive narration of inter- connected economic events, there are a number of empirically unsubstantiated functions glossed over in this over ly simplistic causal model. First and foremost, the skeptical student will find little in the way of empirical evidence for the proposition that the capital that is freed by virtue of elevated productiveness will, indeed, be reinvested in the American economy. As globalism continues to materialize, the flows of capital are no longer largely contained within national borders. As it currently stands, there is a scarcity of research in transnational financial f lows. This, taken in conjunction with the fact that America no longer possess a monopoly on the creative class of labor, indicates that the displacement of American labor might not necessarily be coupled with the domestic cultivation of new occupational opportunities. Furthermore, the wage stagnation that has affected American labor, stretching back nearly three decades, testifies to the inadequacy of the supply-side model when it comes to predicting economic pa terns in the new global order. The adages and maxims populating the taken-for-granted rendition of th American economy, its processes, as well as its prospects in the context of emerging conditions needs t be reevaluated in order to assess whether these explanations and predictions still hold sway; or, better if they ever provided us with valid understandings of economic affairs with which to begin.

In concurrence with the onset of a new American Gilded Age, we are witness to a new political condition that has been enacted by the very innovations that serve as catalysts, accelerating globalization to its present frenetic pace. The innovations in communications that are stacked upon foundational Inter- net infrastructures consist of transactional conduits provided by broadband and wireless technologies. Through the device of Web facilitated communications, an emergent form of social organization is taking shape that has been characterized as Networked. Or, the Network Society, as Castells would have it, generates relations among social counterparts who occupy positions as nodes in the matrices of relations constituting social networks. The associations between and among the agents positioned in social networks are plastic and adaptable, whereby new social configurations can take form when society finds itself faced with new environmental contingencies, such as when the economy experiences one of its frequent market disruptions due to the introduction of a new technology that undercuts previously preemptive technological stacks. This networked condition is often hailed by neoliberal economists, who perceive it as a prerequisite for a quickly advancing, technologically driven world economy. Although there is certainly a measure of truth to the assessments proffered by neoliberal economists and policy-makers, there is another aspect to the Network Society that I will treat, which – as I will at- tempt to demonstrate – marks political possibilities that have potentially radical consequences. The collapse of geography has certainly accelerated process, but not all of the patterns of social change are contained to the economy. The introduction of Web based communications possesses the possibility – due to the instantaneousness of messages that are transacted among counterparts disparately situated over spans of geography; spaces that have become essentially epiphenomena – of fusing together social nodes that have been, heretofore, prevented from interacting in a modality that reflects immediacy.

The virtual communities that can form – and, indeed, have already formed – can expand their networks in order to leverage resources more prolifically. It is also worthy of mention, that the quality instantiated by social networks, that we might cal l plasticity – which facilitates adaptation, according to accounts put forth by economists who relish the development of the casual labor market – also serves a positive function in the context of the emerging politicized networks that are being cultivated in civil society. Through the interplay of locality with the condensed condition engendered by virtualism – localized enclaves, in a state of isolation from physically distant counterparts who might qualify as peers, only qualify as dumb nodes – can transform into smart nodes by virtue of their extended contacts that have formed by within the expansions of collapsed geography.

These political networks are decentralized in nature with points of high concentrations formed around foci of convergence, such as localization. By this, I mean to point out that the immersion of a node in a network introduces the node to a system of relations where it can intercept vastly more streams of information; thus, in human terms, supplying it with additional knowledge, allowing it to better contextualize its actions. Therefore, in terms of oppositional politics, this process – what has been referred to as glocalism – manufactures an oppositional politic, which can adjust to the contingencies embedded in localities while continuing – via a decentralize modality of social organization – to loosely coordinate the actions among various concentrations in the overall network of resistance.

Author: Russell Cole - Date: August 16, 2008 - Category: Uncategorized

A new Gilded Age is upon us. The rich are accumulating vaster stores of wealth while those who work and toil to subsist are benefiting little from the current trends of economic growth. Wages for laborers situated in the middle classes have remained stagnant since the inception of the Reagan era, and de- spite assurances from pundits, run-of-the-mill economists, and Third Way neoliberals that the economy is growing and that these positive trends should benefit all sectors - both labor and capital - the middle class is working longer and harder in order to simply maintain its level of material existence. According to the mythology of the free-market, the removal of trade restrictions, opening both consumer and labor markets to American capitalists, will result in outsourcing to less expensive labor markets.

This process will improve productivity; thus, freeing capital for new and innovative ventures in the American economy that promise to generate higher skilled and higher paying jobs for the American la- borers, who might have been displaced from outsourcing, but through education the American worker will acquire the necessary skills to procure these more lucrative occupations. Therefore, according to the dominant socioeconomic narrative, free-trade - as well as unfettered immigration; both legal and illegal – will benefit all members of American society. Despite the intransigency of the quasi-governmental spokesmen - who assume official capacities as corporate sponsored journalists - who reverberate in a relentless chorus the preemptive narration of inter- connected economic events, there are a number of empirically unsubstantiated functions glossed over in this over ly simplistic causal model. First and foremost, the skeptical student will find little in the way of empirical evidence for the proposition that the capital that is freed by virtue of elevated productiveness will, indeed, be reinvested in the American economy. As globalism continues to materialize, the flows of capital are no longer largely contained within national borders. As it currently stands, there is a scarcity of research in transnational financial f lows. This, taken in conjunction with the fact that America no longer possess a monopoly on the creative class of labor, indicates that the displacement of American labor might not necessarily be coupled with the domestic cultivation of new occupational opportunities. Furthermore, the wage stagnation that has affected American labor, stretching back nearly three decades, testifies to the inadequacy of the supply-side model when it comes to predicting economic pa terns in the new global order. The adages and maxims populating the taken-for-granted rendition of th American economy, its processes, as well as its prospects in the context of emerging conditions needs t be reevaluated in order to assess whether these explanations and predictions still hold sway; or, better if they ever provided us with valid understandings of economic affairs with which to begin.

In concurrence with the onset of a new American Gilded Age, we are witness to a new political condition that has been enacted by the very innovations that serve as catalysts, accelerating globalization to its present frenetic pace. The innovations in communications that are stacked upon foundational Inter- net infrastructures consist of transactional conduits provided by broadband and wireless technologies. Through the device of Web facilitated communications, an emergent form of social organization is taking shape that has been characterized as Networked. Or, the Network Society, as Castells would have it, generates relations among social counterparts who occupy positions as nodes in the matrices of relations constituting social networks. The associations between and among the agents positioned in social networks are plastic and adaptable, whereby new social configurations can take form when society finds itself faced with new environmental contingencies, such as when the economy experiences one of its frequent market disruptions due to the introduction of a new technology that undercuts previously preemptive technological stacks. This networked condition is often hailed by neoliberal economists, who perceive it as a prerequisite for a quickly advancing, technologically driven world economy. Although there is certainly a measure of truth to the assessments proffered by neoliberal economists and policy-makers, there is another aspect to the Network Society that I will treat, which – as I will at- tempt to demonstrate – marks political possibilities that have potentially radical consequences. The collapse of geography has certainly accelerated process, but not all of the patterns of social change are contained to the economy. The introduction of Web based communications possesses the possibility – due to the instantaneousness of messages that are transacted among counterparts disparately situated over spans of geography; spaces that have become essentially epiphenomena – of fusing together social nodes that have been, heretofore, prevented from interacting in a modality that reflects immediacy.

The virtual communities that can form – and, indeed, have already formed – can expand their networks in order to leverage resources more prolifically. It is also worthy of mention, that the quality instantiated by social networks, that we might cal l plasticity – which facilitates adaptation, according to accounts put forth by economists who relish the development of the casual labor market – also serves a positive function in the context of the emerging politicized networks that are being cultivated in civil society. Through the interplay of locality with the condensed condition engendered by virtualism – localized enclaves, in a state of isolation from physically distant counterparts who might qualify as peers, only qualify as dumb nodes – can transform into smart nodes by virtue of their extended contacts that have formed by within the expansions of collapsed geography.

These political networks are decentralized in nature with points of high concentrations formed around foci of convergence, such as localization. By this, I mean to point out that the immersion of a node in a network introduces the node to a system of relations where it can intercept vastly more streams of information; thus, in human terms, supplying it with additional knowledge, allowing it to better contextualize its actions. Therefore, in terms of oppositional politics, this process – what has been referred to as glocalism – manufactures an oppositional politic, which can adjust to the contingencies embedded in localities while continuing – via a decentralize modality of social organization – to loosely coordinate the actions among various concentrations in the overall network of resistance.

Author: Russell Cole - Date: July 8, 2008 - Category: Russell Cole, Uncategorized, critical sociology, disciplinarian knowledge, sociology

Shay’s Home is an organization that devotes its efforts to providing services for women and young males who have been processed through the incarcerate system.

Oftentimes, individuals who exit from these institutions are exposed to conditions, which prove to be circumstances that lead to their re-incarceration. Ostensibly, being introduced into a social condition, where one has no means by which to obtain or restore stature in society, where they would have access to socially legitimate recourses for the procurement of resources, compels behaviors that can result in future convictions and reentry in the penitentiary system.

The inaccessibility of life-opportunities results from the stigmatizing legacy that is entailed by a conviction record, which permanently follows these women and young individuals, who are relegated to a class of sub-citizenry, where their behaviors are channeled into corridors, where the possibilities they possess allow for no exploits that are deemed socially legitimate. They are compelled to make decisions that will only lead to their return to the confines, whose doors are not only open, but situated at the bottom of a slippery slope that proves impossible to ascend.

Imagine the encumbrance - metaphorically comparable to a scarlet letter - resulting from the persistence of a record that never ceases to punish and certainly fails to rehabilitate, for, indeed, the legacy of the sentence imposes limitations that cultivate the very behaviors the sentence is intended to correct.

R Cole

Author: Russell Cole - Date: July 1, 2008 - Category: Russell Cole, Uncategorized, ethnography, sociology

 

 

Abstract

A working paper currently embodying the initial stages of analyses, which were created in reflection to observations gathered during ethnographic research conducted upon third-party sociopolitical movements in American society. The research included participant observation in a Midwestern State Green Party , as well as the Populist Party of America . I layout some of the major themes that have emerged during the research and analysis performed during the execution of this project. Most importantly, I examine the possibilities for radicalized sociopolitical movements in American society that have been engendered through the proliferation of Internet communications. I contend that this new form of representational space offers a potential for publicity that is unprecedented. This is due to the absence of the institutionalized gate-keeping devices that have operated as regulatory mechanisms for a dialogical process, where access to the modes of representation has been a privilege enjoyed by the few and often the elite. Such editorial devices have served as a filter, preventing discursive forms that have fallen outside the normative grids underlying discourse that embodies the interests of standpoints, who have historically controlled representational spaces and, consequently, the publicity of public spheres belonging to American social formations. My participation in radicalized sociopolitical movements came to assume a capacity where I contributed to Internet media campaigns that sought to exploit the insights of the new paradigm in Web based programming, Web 2.0, and its instances of Social Media. I argue that Social Media and the design patterns, according to which Social Media are devised, are extensible to the domain of practical knowledge development - belonging to Public Sociology.

Author: Russell Cole - Date: July 1, 2008 - Category: Uncategorized

There appears to be a slight stir regarding the impending irrelevancy of traditional academic journals and the formalized processes they enact when formulating their contents, which, of course, consist of submissions made by contributors to the field. The specific social process that is followed during the decision making regarding whose work merits publication - referred to as peer review - is conducted by established members of the discipline, who assess the scholarly merit of submissions according to the standards that they adopt, propagate and revision.

The exclusionary properties instantiated by this internal decision making process, only including the input of those who are already recognized as dominant members of the profession, is rapidly becoming obsolescent, due to the publicity that is provided by online venues of representational space. This availability of representational space that is not controlled and distributed by an oligarchy of alleged experts - and we certainly have no reason to suspect that they are anything other than experts, since they are also charged with determining what qualities are consistent with one’s possession of expertise - has already motivated in one case a formidable figure in mathematics, from Russia, to bypass the peer review of the academy, and, instead, publish his work directly on an online journal.

These are important developments for the following reasons:

The products of academic research should be freely available to the people who fund it. In short, if my taxes are responsible for the funding of research - such as my taxes contributing to the budget of state universities - then I should not have to pay Blackwell - or, even worse, Nature - to read the conclusions derived from the research I have, in part, paid for.  Additionally - and this is related to the erosion of the powers traditionally wielded by the oligarchs of disciplinarity - the pursuit of knowledge should not be predicated upon professional membership; rather, it should be founded upon a social condition that is open and inclusive, engendering a positive attitude toward epistemic pluralism, where social identities and individual biographies are not parsed, for purposes of determining who exhibits the semiology of professionalism, when assessing the merits of the work.  Instead, in the tradition of Popperian philosophy, objectivism should be the measure determining the inclusion of contents into the agreed upon knowledge belonging to any particular field of study.

Author: Russell Cole - Date: June 30, 2008 - Category: NAFTA, Russell Cole, Uncategorized, immigration

I apologize because I do not have the URL to the op-ed piece that was written by the liberal economist, Paul Krugman, who is positioned as a full professor at Princeton; however, I can assure you that in his last column he unequivocally stated that the empirical evidence clearly demonstrates that illegal immigration is having a deleterious impact on the classes of unskilled laborers in the country. Furthermore, he mentions that the health care system, which is already a joke, with which to begin, is additionally burdened by this influx of illegal immigrants.

I teach at an inner-city, state college, and I can assure everyone, that the ethnicity that is most affected by this flood of illegal immigration, almost unanimously concurs - based upon their own experiences - with the aforementioned conclusion. Therefore, I must raise the issue of why, exactly, do advocates of illegal immigration desire to maintain the repressed and impoverished conditions of the inner-city, African-American communities? I am so thoroughly disgusted with the PC name-calling that is conducted by these advocates of boarder-crimes and black-market employment practices that I now have trouble maintaining my composure when engaged in discussions concerning this issue.

Russell Cole

To attempt to draw an association between the deception involved in leading this country into war and the current attempt to curtail the flood of illegal immigrants, who are exported from Mexico by the elite classes of that nation, is nothing less than a prodigious act of ideological treachery, which is tantamount to the chicanery involved in propagating the need for invading Iraq. This is not only ironic; it is profoundly hypocritical. Furthermore, it is demonstrative of why the Green Party, which should be a catalyst for grass-roots democracy, fails to achieve any populist support.

For whom do you speak when you advocate saturating the unskilled labor market?

Well, I think that the revelations about the interests that fund the various illegal-immigration activist organizations provides a strong hint as to the answer to the preceding question: It is major corporations, such as Walmart, Nike, and so on, that are funding these organizations. I would conclude,therefore, that you certainly do not speak for the under-privileged classes in this country. Rather, you promote the interests of elites in Mexico and corporate elites in this country. Whenever you find yourself approximately on the same side of an issue as the Bush Administration, you can rest assured that you have completely lost touch with the needs of the working man and woman in this country.

Russell Cole

In response to more platitudes proffered in support of the undemocratic decision-making processes that generated the Green Party’s official position, appealing for an open-boarder with Mexico, I would like to start out by asking who, exactly, is involved in the massive conspiracy to divide the Green Party by raising issue with the exportation of more poverty to an America that is already saturated with poverty?

Russell Cole

Author: Russell Cole - Date: June 30, 2008 - Category: Russell Cole, Uncategorized, critical sociology, disciplinarian knowledge, ethnography, sociology

From perusing the literature there appears to be a tendency to assess the impact upon an organization, resulting from information technological adoption, according to either structural alterations that are engendered by the new resources or by the elevation in the organization’ performance. Although the former of these two considerations seems to be a proper mode of inquiry, the latter lacks clarity and definitive sense, since the criteria, which one would assume to consist of the quantifiable dimensions of the organization’s output, are left undefined and detached from the cultural realities embedded in the social organization that is under examination.

Case in point, in my younger years I would often work in warehouses, typically as a Teamster, during the summer or periods where money was in short supply. From my experiences, the productivity of the organization, which can be delineated as the warehouse, itself, was not a concern of mine or any of the other employees. We only contributed to a level of output that would prevent punitive actions, taken against the union workers. We certainly did not pay notice to improving the efficiency and performance of warehouse to any extent that exceeded the bare necessities, which we calculated as the minimum level of output that would prevent interdiction by management.

Consequently, there were competing interests embedded in the differing practices of the wage-earners as opposed to the management. Therefore, which organization is a sociologist to render in his or her descriptions resulting from his or her observations; the organization as it is understood and interpreted by management, or the organization as it was conceived within the ethos of the laborers? Further, was the warehouse a single organization or was it a network that instantiated relationships between and among its nodes that calls for a far greater level of analytical sophistication than what is conventionally applied within the context of the practice of organizational theory. Of course, one could contend that the organization is certainly to be perceived according to the managerial interpretive pattern, since their interests often coincide with the interests of the capitalists who have legal claim to the property and materials.

This angle of analysis might lead someone to the adoption of a neo-Marxist organizational theory. However, what are we to make of social events, such as the Homestead riots, where the workers most definitely considered the steel plant to be a resource belonging to something akin to the commons. Carnegie’s claim to proprietorship was in conflict with the laborers understanding of the plant, who did not see themselves as alienated from the commodities being manufactured nor the modes of production used to produce the commodities. The plant was theirs. It was a extension of the community, and the zeal demonstrated by the Homestead residents who successfully out shot the Pinkerton assassins, who were hired to by Carnegie to seize the plant from the union members.

As a result of these considerations, we must reevaluate the core of organizational theory, and the accuracy of the concepts and patterns of interpretation that are typically deployed by organizational theorists when endeavoring to come to terms with social interactions that are thought to constitute social organizations.

Russell Cole

Author: Russell Cole - Date: June 30, 2008 - Category: Russell Cole, Uncategorized, disciplinarian knowledge, economics, sociology

Is the Web 2.0 Bubble about to Burst?

After reading your remarks concerning the impending bubble burst of the Web 2.0 Internet sector, I was immediately reminded why people are critical of economists: You have a tenacity for conducting vulgar forms of reductionism that render the phenomenal field you are investigating absent of the preponderance of social dynamics that influence the trajectories and outcomes taken by these forms of human interaction.  The distillation of empirical subject matter is performed so that the considerations for which you do account are compliant within the narrow framework of presuppositions that structure economic research.

There are far more motivations for individuals and collectivities to continue to propagate on the Internet instantiations of Web 2.0 than merely the incentive of wealth.

Speaking for myself, I contribute to the establishment of platforms that engender collaborative social knowledge building because it reflects an interest of mine – not geared toward maximizing profits – but oriented toward the promotion of public spheres that embody the attributes that I evaluate oftentimes over my personal fortune; namely, social democracy. Consequently, to reduce your analysis to the narrowly extended scope of economic variables that enamor the rigid minds of economists, limits your ability to foresee other possible outcomes that are generated by conditions excluded from your analysis. To make my point, I wonder what your prediction would have been for the early open-sourcing projects that arose in opposition to the corporate ownership and privatization of knowledge associated with computer science and computer programming?

GNU, in all likelihood, would have suffered from the same negative forecasts from people who possess a similar business-minded closed worldview. However, economic variables did not eliminate open-sourcing, rather open-sourcing dramatically changed the landscape of the programming industry, creating a robust alternative to IBM and Microsoft, which continues to increase in market share. In short, economics were not the determinant of the path followed by open-sourcing; economics were the consequent, as many open-sourcing projects matured to the point that they were in a position to offer alternative services to businesses, through their ability to tailor their code to the particular needs of a consumer while remaining open-source, which added a layer of security for investors since they could correct faults in the programming. As far as Business 2.0 goes, we will have to wait and see. However, I suspect that it will soon be bombarded with competition emanating from the open-source community that is forming around Web 2.0.

Russell Cole

Author: Russell Cole - Date: June 27, 2008 - Category: Uncategorized, academe, critical sociology, disciplinarian knowledge, education, sociology, sociology of knowledge

The current enthusiasm concerning Public Education - facilitated through online communications - seems charged with a naive optimism, that neglects to perform considerations concerning the altered field in which the agents interact, effecting a condition, where the embodied aspects of dialog are stripped from the affair. The modifications in the form of the educational praxis, in all likelihood, result in somewhat similar; perhaps, improved in some respects; although, in all probability, debilitated in regards to other modes of assessment - all of which constitute dynamics that create an entirely different scenario, culminating into a social event that needs to be evaluated according to its own terms and specifications.

First off, disembodied pedagogy lacks the awareness, engendered through physical intimacy, where participants can gage one another’s understanding the messages sent. The to-and-fro motion of the game is void of the implicitly acknowledged modes of impression management that provide the pretext under which the communications are continued with the persisting intent in which they were incepted. The expression of bafflement or surprise is not immediately visible to the counterpart, so such alienation between the subjectivities cannot be quickly repaired, creating a lapse in the spans of intersubjectivity, which might impair the transfer of knowledge to the point that it is inefficient beyond redemption.

Further, we cannot conclude that the level of understanding is necessarily measurably distinct from embodied pedagogy, but it appears to be assessed according to altered metrics that entail an incommensurability between the evaluative standards use when appraising the respective forms of education. The instructional modes curricula completion cannot be compared effectively, because the entailments imposed by the curricula cannot be assumed consistent.

If I were a doctor who practiced forms of surgery and one was to enter into the office of my practice, only to see a degree presented on the wall referencing Phoenix University as the source of my education and training, I should suspect quite a substantial degree of apprehension instantiated by the potential client. Such a reluctance on the part of the potential patient to undergo the surgery that I have been prepared to perform by virtue of my education over the Internet is motivated by good reason: Without embodied interaction and training, one cannot acquire the implicit knowledge required to recognize the conditions that must not be present in order for a type of technology to be successfully performed. Knowing when always involves knowing what, and such an ability necessitates knowing more than what is referenced in the contents of the descriptions included in the pedagogy. Tacit knowledge has long been acknowledged as a component to education, and one cannot presume tacit knowledge to be cultivated by the student - to the same degree or the same form - during the pedagogical exchange involving communications assuming the format of two-dimensional representations transmitted in electronic discourse.

Pursuant to the above analyzes, the current trends in Higher Education institutions - especially when sociology is concerned - are regrettable due to the lack of understanding of different consequences enacted by the distinctively structured forms of instruction. Further, the people responsible for instituting these organizational transformations are not trained in the qualitative modes of sociology necessary to examine such differences between the forms of intercourse. All to quick are we to adopt Philistine expediencies, while lacking the prudence associated with the diligent execution of informed foresight.

Russell Cole