Computers in the Human Context: Information Technology, Productivity, and People ed. by Tom Forester

Abstract

1132 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE weaponry, concentrating on military secrecy enforced through ex­ treme fragmentation of labor and self-censorship. Vincent Mosco regards as secondary the debate over whether SDI (“Star Wars”) could ever work. Rather, he insists, we must look at its profound ability to institutionalize further militarism in Western society. Other essays by Tom Athansiou and Paul Edwards explore the fetishization of artifi­ cial intelligence in military paradigms and the confluence of systems engineering and military thinking toward a “closed-world discourse.” Finally, the editors further define their understanding of the “military information society” as well as the notion of a “cyborg self” that seems to contain the postmodern subject’s “contradictory feelings of omnip­ otence and powerlessness, of mastery and dependence” (p. 173) but achieves this by denying the body and fostering an illusion of total control over one’s self and one’s environment. All of these essays stem from a Left, antimilitarist, and often Marxist perspective, taking leads from the criticism of technology/machine culture spearheaded by Lewis Mumford. They solidly support the volume’s thesis—that the goals and practices of information technology are rooted in its military origins, and that those often blissfully imagined cyborg worlds must be inspected for structural flaws—and are informative and thought provoking. The editors and contributors hasten to assure the reader that they are not sketching out a military-information system of perfected control, but one that should be subjected to criticism so that it might be subverted. Here, however, is the central flaw of this work. The contributors, all men and probably all of European ancestry, are simply too homogeneous. Central to the project of challenging the total control they deplore is opening up the dialogue to marginalized voices—those feminists, pagans, Native Americans, and other subversives referred to by Gray. By neglecting this diversity, this volume not only limits its subversive scope but recapitulates one of the dominant culture’s most familiar strategies of “total control.” Jane Caputi Dr. Caputi is associate professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico. She is the author of The Age of Sex Crime (1987) and several articles on the intersections between patriarchy and technology. Currently, she is writing a book, Gossips, Gorgons, and Crones: Female Power and the Nuclear Age. Computers in the Human Context: Information Technology, Productivity, and People. Edited by Tom Forester. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989. Pp. xii + 548; tables, notes, bibliography, index. $37.50 (cloth); $16.95 (paper). Tom Forester, lecturer in the School of Computing and Informa­ tion at Griffith University, Queensland, Australia, is known to tech­ TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1133 nology studies scholars as the author of two widely read anthologies, The Microelectronics Revolution (MIT, 1980) and The Information Tech­ nology Revolution (MIT, 1985). In this anthology, an update of the earlier volumes, Forester assembles an impressive collection of fortythree essays, articles, and research reports on the social impact of information technology (IT), all of which originally appeared during 1984—88. Reflecting the increasing sophistication and skepticism of the literature, this anthology collectively voices a more reasoned and cautious perspective on the question of IT’s social impact than the earlier volumes, with their gushing predictions of a new, computerdriven utopia (or, on the pessimistic side, dire warnings of an equally computer-based dystopia). Perhaps for this reason, the word “revo­ lution” no longer appears in the title; the question of whether IT in fact constitutes a technological revolution is, like all others, held up to scrutiny in several of the essays. The controlling questions of this volume do not depart from those of the earlier ones: Are we witnessing a new industrial revolution? And will our future be patterned by the technical implications of IT? What distinguishes this work from earlier ones is the tendency, general among the authors, to question the assumptions of techno­ logical determinism. Numerous essays show that the design and implementation of computer systems are markedly affected by hu­ man and social choices, which can serve to mute, deflect, delay, or even transform the social implications that would seem to be built into specific information systems. Exemplifying this viewpoint is an im...