Towards Holistic Technologies for Libraries
A Talk Inspired by Ursula Franklin
Alan Harnum
code4lib North
May 11, 2018
Ursula Franklin, 1921-2016
https://www.utoronto.ca/news/memoriam-university-professor-emerita-ursula-franklin
The Real World of Technology (1999 Edition)
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-1989-cbc-massey-lectures-the-real-world-of-technology-1.2946845
Ursula K. Le Guin, 1929-2018
"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art - the art of words."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin#/media/File:Ursula_K_Le_Guin.JPG
What Is Technology?
Technology is not the sum of the artifacts, of the wheels and gears, of the rails and electronic transmitters. Technology is a system. It entails far more than its individualized material components. Technology involves organizations, procedures, symbols, new words, equations, and, most of all, a mindset.
The Real World of Technology, p. 2-3
Holistic and Prescriptive Technologies
Holistic Technologies are practices associated with ideas of craft and individual work. They are product-oriented and leave the person doing the work in control of major aspects of the work.
Prescriptive Technologies are associated with mass-scale production and control. They are process-oriented and attempt to break down work into discrete, repeatable steps.
Broad Historical Trends in Technology Adoption
The Real World of Technology, p. 93
What Is To Be Done?
What needs to be done cannot be done as a dictate from on high but will come as an inescapable consequence of movements from below… I have long subscribed to what I call Franklin’s earthworm theory of social change. Social change will not come to us like an avalanche down the mountain. Social change will come through seeds growing in well prepared soil -- and it is we, like the earthworms, who prepare the soil. We also seed thoughts and knowledge and concern. We realize there are no guarantees as to what will come up. Yet we do know that without the seeds and the prepared soil nothing will grow at all.
The Real World of Technology, p. 121
Pressing for Systemic Changes
One precondition for pressing for systemic changes is an understanding of the ongoing dynamics of technology and power. This is why I always stress the need for clarity and understanding of the realities of the world of technology. However complex they may appear. We can help each other to see things that are commonly not placed in the political foreground. For instance, over the unending din of economic rhetoric, we need to speak of what happens to people. What happens to people is not a mere footnote to an economic report, but should be the central focus of action of governments and communities.
The Real World of Technology, p. 177
...the human reality of our transposed communication activities is probably more pointedly expressed in one of my favourite cartoons. In it a receptionist is sitting in a library. Behind her are rows of readers, each in front of a computer screen. She is answering a patron’s inquiry with “Sir, this is a library. If you want a book, go to a bookstore.” As the artist succinctly questions the traditional assumption that libraries are full of books, we are stimulated to be mindful of the many ways in which new technologies change established patterns, not all of them easily expressed in words.
The Real World of Technology, p. 147
http://www.cartoonistgroup.com/subject/The-Reference+Library-Comics-and-Cartoons-by-Speed+Bump.php
Thank You!