Date: 03 Jul 98 22:28:58
From: Roberto Verzola <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: (ICT-JOBS): ICT and corporations
I'd like to take this final opportunity to raise three points on the ICT
and jobs issue:
1. New technology or intermediate technology? It was E.F.Schumacher who
raised powerful arguments in favor of intermediate -- what are now called
appropriate -- technologies, those which improved on current ways of doing
things, but which created more jobs per unit investment than the latest
technologies. I believe Schumacher's arguments continue to carry powerful
force, although his message has been eclipsed by the current hype over
ICT, mostly by those who will earn a lot of money from it.
Schumacher noted the "law of the disappearing middle", in which
middle-level technologies tended to disappear, leaving one with no choice
but the very old, or the very new. When I went to out to buy a black&white
monitor last week (which I preferred because they were more comfortable to
my eyes -- not to mention cheaper), I couldn't find any. They sell only
color monitors now. Today, I asked around for 30-pin memory chips to
upgrade my 386, and I couldn't find any either. Neither do they sell the
older non-PCI video cards anymore. So, I can't upgrade my old computer; I
have to buy the latest Pentium (and new software, presumably -- no 486s on
the market either). When my trusty 386 goes (no spare parts anymore...) I
either have to buy a Pentium or go back to the typewriter.
The whole technology, it seems, was designed so you have to replace all
your hardware every several years or so. Very wasteful for us users, but
very profitable for the seller.
Which leads me to my second point.
2. Should corporations control ICT? The moderators' summaries as well as
many of the panellists have hardly touched on the issue whether the
responsibility for ICT direction, design and deployment should be left to
corporations. This has been assumed -- to use Michael Gursteins' analogy
-- as "default" by some, and as "hardwired" by others.
This is a major omission. Our analytical lenses should focus on
corporations, particularly those huge enough that their decisions and
actions impact on millions of people and on whole populations. Considering
that corporations have come under increasing scrutiny for their role in
ecological problems as well as in the current Asian financial crisis, and
considering that they have accumulated over the decades vast powers that
now exceed those of many states, their hold on ICT should not be taken for
granted.
Other groups have raised more fundamental and possibly valid issues
against the corporation itself as a social institution. While it is
theoretically accountable to its stockholders, who are themselves members
of the public, the practice has become very different, as the development
of the stock market has further diluted stockholder interest in corporate
decision-making, and as institutional investors have become major
corporate stockholders themselves.
Thus the global corporations of today have become increasingly detached
from human concerns and accountability, responsible only to themselves and
to the single measure of corporate fitness: how well they maximize
profits. While human beings can respond to emotions like love, pity,
guilt, fear, etc., corporations only respond to the profit-maximizing
motive (or what in human terms is called greed). I can neither upgrade nor
repair my PC because it is more profitable for corporations that I buy
myself a new Pentium instead. Thousands lose work because it is more
profitable to replace them with machines.
I am raising this issue on this list: have corporations grown too large
and too powerful for the good of humanity? Shouldn't we take steps to
curtail their size and power -- particularly their control over very
powerful technologies including ICT -- and to subsume them under
human-scale, national- and community-determined goals. I question not only
"hardwiring" corporate control over ICT and other aspects of our lives,
but also accepting such control as the "default" mode of society.
3. My second point questioned the suitability of the corporation as the
dominant institution in setting ICT (among other things) direction, design
and deployment. This third point questions the idea of gain maximization
as a social (or for that matter global) strategy.
Should we maximize gains or minimize risk? The emergence of the
corporation as a dominant social institution can perhaps be traced to Adam
Smith's dictum, that maximizing individual gain tends to maximize the
gains for society as a whole. Once this idea was accepted, the idea of
implanting the singular goal of gain maximization in a legal personality
couldn't be far behind.
Since Adam Smith, this strategy has become not only the "default" but a
"hardwired" strategy. More than that, other societies who are not
otherwise inclined to follow such strategy are forced by global rules,
corporate intrusion, or externally-imposed competition to adopt the same
strategy.
Practices of traditional societies and more ecologically-adopted
communities suggest that they tended to adopt a somewhat different
strategy, in which risk minimization played a bigger role than gain
maximization.
Risk minimization recognizes limits (zero risk) and encourages cooperation
(to spread the risk). The strategy is therefore more consistent with
principles of ecology and social justice. Applied to ICT, it means that
ICT direction, design and deployment has to answer such questions as: "Do
they pose risks to some sectors? What kind of risks? How can these risks
be reduced or minimized?" It means that these issues will be given more
priority than issues about additional gains, and the voice of those who
face greater risks from the introduction of ICT must be given greater
weight in the decision-making. Among the Greens, we have raised this
strategy to a level of principle, the Precautionary Principle.
One specific proposal that many Green groups have raised is a minimum
basic income -- a minimum income that the State will guarantee to each
citizen, whether he/she has a job or not, whether he/she is engaged in the
corporate sector, the voluntary sector, or in household work. Perhaps,
this is one among many possible responses to unemployment -- a
risk-minimizing strategy that takes the edge off the profit-maximizing
strategies of corporations.
I will leave it to the economists to prove the hypothesis that risk
minimization by individuals will also lead towards optimizing
socio-economic security (ie, low risk) for society as a whole.
Roberto Verzola
