Brian, thank you for your comments. The relation between theory and practice is, and especially in the social sciences, is indeed a very interesting and also a very complex one.
>Given that, I'd be really curious to hear more about how the circular or >spiral movement unfolds between your practice and the academic disciplines. The notion of Giddens 'double hermeneutic' pays tribute to this complexity. You rephrase this as a circular or spiral movement, which I doubt it is. As people we attribute, synchronize and adapt ourselves to situations very fast and this process is often a fuzzy one. But this process is not a linear process. When you ask the question about what children learn in schools, often this will appear to be not the subjects that are taught, but to 'adapt to certain rules' in the first place. Also when people design 'change', underlying assumptions and attitudes is often the first thing that is communicated, attributed, synchronized and adapted to. So if we ask ourselves the question what do we learn from certain concepts for change, like Bauhaus, socialism or capitalism, the answers are also not obvious. And those answers will also not be obvious in response to the waves of innovation that we have been part of. As I write in my dissertation, have we all contributed to creating a 'planetary learning tool' or have we contributed to the creation of the 'social atom bomb'? As human beings we try to learn from people before us. I find that I learned most from people who have honestly reflected upon their earlier beliefs and practices. These reflections come to you through friends, novels, non-fiction and critiques. Because we are most of the time so deeply involved and part of this interaction between theory and practice (and I would argue that everyone is, not only academics), it is very hard to see the relation happening while being in interaction. Only rigorous self-reflection as well as profound questioning can unravel this at certain times. Science has specialized in rigorous and logic questioning. But I like to argue that especially in the social sciences, self-reflection is crucial for generating knowledge that will survive. One cannot connect theory and practice without reflection. One cannot generate new knowledge without reflection. One cannot develop new practices without reflection. And self-reflection is a fundamental aspect of such reflection processes. The old Greeks made a distinction between different kinds of knowledge and included self-reflection as a major contributor as well. It was called Paresis, which one can distinct from Episteme (what today's science is mostly focusing on) and Metis (knowledge that evolves from craft and skill). In many professional practices people have found that reflection is more than building up logic arguments. Many managers found out the hard way, that when they want to innovate the practice of their business, giving logic arguments to employees and collaborators will not do the job. People are complex, any social system is complex and one has to use the energy of the system itself for creating sustainable change. Contextual reflexivity (thinking together how to improve a certain practice) always poses the ethical question "what is good to do" and this has to be answered by people with different beliefs, backgrounds and interests to be able to 'collectively author the outcomes', as Garrick Jones (LSE) put it so eloquently. As you will understand, this requires elaborate orchestration. In these new orchestrations in specific situations in education, health care, business, social organizations, art and culture new knowledge is to be found. >I can see two possible reasons or what you identify as a lack of response >from classical sociology. One would be that most of it is dominated by the >outdated categories of mass society, what Ulrich Beck calls "zombie >categories" (see the interview under that title in his book >"Individualization," published jointly with Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim). But >"another, converging reason could be that the new kinds of practice simply >"do not address what most sociologists consider the central mediating >"institution of society, namely the state. Haven't we media-culture types >"mostly treated the state itself as a zombie category? Could that be the >"explanation why only the marketing people and the anthropologists are >"interested? I doubt whether the reason for the absence of an innovative social science, which will be able to deal with the time-space configuration changes we are facing, has to do anything with focusing on the state and power relations as such. I blame mostly an academic class who rules today's universities, who deeply distrusts all non-academics and who is not willing to enter into any conversation with the world other than sending out messages through their own media (and even a thorough analysis of today's new power relations does not come from the social sciences in the first place).Lucky enough, such attitudes and positions also create their own counter forces, the nettime list being one of them..:)... I cannot judge whether 'we media types' have treated the state as a zombie category. I did not personally. Such theories are useful for me in so far they help me act better within certain situations. The work done by for example Gramsci, Foucault, Negri en now Beck unravels dynamics for me that we have to deal with. I do regard others and myself as responsible acting individuals who have to act upon and within the framework of such dynamics. Coming from the Netherlands I am aware of the complex communication and decision making that is part of any democratic process. Indeed burocracy is a problem, and can be very alienating when you have to confront it. Nevertheless till today I regularly take the effort of contributing to such processes, because I think it makes sense. 'Good burocracy? is part of any democracy and can be a tool against nepotism, corruption and oppression. I have learned to expect different things when being part of a cultural process to when I am part of a democratic process. Both make sense for certain things at certain times. >Is there some way to address the state and the common good its supposed to >represent, without getting dragged down into all the bureaucratic crap >that we have struggled so hard to get away from? I think not. Actually I think it is a mistake to struggle to get away from the burocratic crap. I think one should get involved and struggle to make these processes better so they can be a tool for safeguarding human rights. To change the focus of these systems from 'super control and efficiency' to 'fairness and transparency'. Many people should take the effort to get involved in these processes, because the current level of burocracy (with technology involved and ethical and political debates in the design arena's of these tools not being there) is outliving anyone's imagination by now. As an example I take the recent thread about the semantic web to show how new orchestrations can inform new knowledge as well as why we should not refrain from burocratic crap. A discussion like the thread about the semantic web, which I really appreciate, should in the end lead to an understanding of how the 'being, doing and meaning' in the development of this new protocols will safeguard how we as human beings will be able to relate to each other and the environment in which we live. One needs good analysis and theory to be able to create and design new stuff. When making the analysis as well as when designing, one needs a perspective. Utimately an ethical perspective that is related to survival and well-being. What needs does it serve? What dangers does it generate? Garcia's question about whether the semantic web is just a library system for the future, or Byfield?s post pointing we out we are just sold to each other again both refer to this ethical layer in general. But when involved in any larger organization today, the issue of knowledge-management is huge as well as specific for many involved. The understanding that creating a 'local semantic web' demands serious editing and orchestration, which includes the meta- organization of information and communication, is till today hardly described in such terms. Such meta-organization includes metadata and software that facilitates these data, but it includes much more as well: time-lines, production and publication systems, instances of arresting information, systems to get rid of information. When those are in place we have not made the step to knowledge creation and management yet. Therefore we need meta-organization of formal and informal moments of communication, time wraps for creation, for interaction, for change. We need to time for trial and error and methods to evaluate. Time to reflect. And this is just a glimpse. Practices of knowledge management should inform discussions like the semantic web. An educational system, or healthcare system, or financial system, or outsourced electricity-control system should inform these debates as well as the famous web 2.0 examples (which for the most part are not very interesting to me since they have not surpassed the phase of the fancy fair yet). These practices can inform these debates because 'at the ground' people who do 'normal jobs' have to deal with the change in time/space configuration and have to find solutions. In 'real life' those solutions are part of larger social structures in which the real issues around trustworthiness, privacy, liability and more surface and have consequences for people involved. These hard consequences should inform both theory as well as design. I appreciate Florian's critique because the Semantic Web as the ultimate gratifier and legalizer of thought and distinguisher of all the stuff that the 'we in charge' do not like has to be tackled profoundly again and again. But in the critique and the reactions to it one is mainly concerned with its uuniversal claim and validity, while the discussion changes shape when one is designing an online learning-environment, a medical information system or a knowledge management system for a company. In these real life situations people are dependent upon each other?s performance, share a language and culture, and even in such a situation a local Semantic Web is already very hard to make provided one wants it to contribute to the community significantly. In such a ?real life? case also the relation between the local and the global surfaces in way that design requirements of such a service/system/structure emerge. From such a perspective, I argue, we should be involved and not leave the 'burocratic crap' to be developed by others who do not share the concern of creating environments for human beings, and their dignity, to flourish. Caroline # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
