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Ordering Chaos: The Discourse of Information Technology

Michael Grau (July 1996).

Information Technology (IT) is a new technology and the development - from large cumbersome code-breaking computers of the second world war, to the large scale sale and marketing of personal computers - has come with shifts in the public perception of IT. No longer the sole domain of the military, the computer has moved into diverse areas of society and some claim we are in the midst of an Information Technology revolution. I hope to show how some of these claims are based on the assumption that the newness of IT will result in a revolution heralding a new world. The most problematic feature when confronting this discourse is found when recognising the inherent abstract nature of computer science and the contrast this has with societies, organisations and individuals who are altering the way in which they use and talk about IT. For this reason I will read the discourse of the (said) IT revolution with reference to philosophy and specifically - the notion of literal meaning a! nd how this relates to codes and classification used in all levels of computing. The following may be seen as an investigation into how the abstract relates to discourse and notions of universality. I will demonstrate how many of the theories which find positive results from the (said) IT revolution depend on an adherence to an holistic or universal model of reading the world. It is this common understanding which I will later refer to as the literal process or meaning. In doing so I will demonstrate how unity is not always exciting and holds some fundamental dangers, most of which are not new and not unknown.

As much of my paper explores issues of discourse, rhetoric and language it is important that these issues are contextualised within the IT discipline. Texts used to educate computer science students continue the notion of the computer scientist as a sheltered individual, whose work is of an abstract nature and who must therefore communicate via a model which is also abstract. This in turn deepens the chasm of communication. A text of this type 1 does little more than apply a confidence in the student or professional that they have achieved successful communication, in the same manner as getting a computer programme to run, that is, the result as - a product of a systemic approach - is emphasised.

Mathematics and logic are traditionally used to isolate particulars of experiments to temporarily dispel the hypothetical aspects of science. In this sense mathematics represents an abstract system seemingly based on proof and since computer science is fundamentally mathematical in basis, the industry and its discursive practices operate with goals of completion and unity.

The beginning computer science student is taught that all computing is made up of ones and zeros at the base level. They are told everything in computing is built on this base, whether it be images, text or sound. What was once the representation and the abstract (the ones and zeros) has become the base entity, an image is merely the arrangement and codification of those digits. Programs and tasks are represented by code (which is a systematic agreement on what certain commands will do mathematically or logically). The computer scientist using code does so with the knowledge that if they do it right (they follow the discursive rules) the programme or task will work. In this way they may come to believe that words too have literal meaning, static and irresolute. They may believe meaning lies in the best arrangement of those words via a pre-given model or process.

The use of machine languages has an effect on the way computer scientists view natural languages. Natural languages are used in machine languages as indicators of the functions of processes, words like 'if', 'then' and 'else' denoted specific and literal computational processes when recognised as symbols by the computer. That computer programmers use words from natural languages like 'if' and 'then' is irrelevant to both the computer and the experienced computing professional (who is competent in the machine language) because in this abstract system words exist only as codes. The computer reads them, not as natural language but as an arrangement of ones and zeros and the computer professional, when shown the numbers corresponding to the word 'if', is educated to recognise the word in a similar way. In this way wider social systems are effected by the codification of language (machine) and influence the methods in which natural languages are used. 'Language' in this sense is taken from the term, 'machine language' but as the word 'machine' is dropped and lost, so too is a sense of literal meaning (where literal entails an in-built meaning). In this way the codification process is dependent on use but also (and with a more powerful presence) a literal method or process which serves meaning at the point of use. Words may not appear to have an in-built meaning but like phenomenology, they will come to depend on the understanding of how they are programmed and received. Here we recognise meaning at the point of use but under these sheltered conditions this does not rule out the argument for literal meaning, rather, literal meaning depends on formula. If we agree on the rules of language use then it follows that literal meaning is possible through the 'if ...then...elseif' grammar of the literal process. In such an abstract system we are consenting to construct rules of language use based on the most basic and far-reaching of computer tasks. In the adherence to the rules we work within the abstract system of language which shows itself through the digital choice between the one and the other (zero).

Aspects of machine code existed in societies before the invention of computers (and still do, even in the convention of this argument) including philosophy and linguistics - as seen in the structuralist theories of the 1950's and 1960's. Structuralism of this period was based on notions of data which pre-dated the developments in storage techniques of the past two decades. The implications of machine codes are enormous for the philosopher, especially the logician and they are also obvious to the linguist. Here is an example to test designed languages, which can then free the natural languages from their ambiguity. In contrast, the philosopher is thrown into a state of deja-vu, having seen this codification elsewhere in the pseudo-science of psychoanalysis. Philosophers are forced into a dilemma, should they ignore the issues raised by Information Technology and continue to analyse the developments within philosophy or should they look at suitable models of drawing attention to the power of codification?

A contemporary who has taken this latter approach is Sherry Turkle in her work,The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (1984) 2. In Turkle's early analysis of women's position within the study of computer science, the many inequalities between men and women in teaching, learning and professional positions in computer science are documented.

Whilst Turkle extensively documents gender inequalities, she does so with a mathematical or statistical authoritative discourse which only references reality in order to codify it in symbols. In this, like De Beauvoir, she is introducing additional problems within the scientific model; she is, for want of a readily accessible term, showing the other side.

Turkle's early writings engage in an holistic gaze on the discourse surrounding computer science and in this way her writing becomes another endorsement of the codification process. In doing so Turkle threatens to uphold those very stereotypes which she claims lead to men holding positions of power within the field of computer science. Turkle codifies men's and women's roles in society from a totalitarian perspective.

An illustration of the negative codification of women's relationship to Information Technology and their access to power can be seen through Paul Edwards' referencing of Turkle. Edwards, in turn, defines men's and women's relationships to technology: '[Men] are trained early on for roles as competitors and combatants, and they value victory and power, . . . Women, by contrast, tend to prefer interdependence'3. These aspects of Edwards' paper discredit an otherwise noteworthy portrayal of the history of computers in industrial societies.

Considering Edwards' comments as a construction of feminine and masculine normality, his discussion of the popular film The Terminator is paradoxical. Edwards' maintains the heroine, Sarah Kyle, is claiming an otherwise non-existent power base through military action. Given Edwards' comments this would, by definition, take power away from the feminine because Conner gains power as a 'combative competitor, who values victory and power'. Edwards cites the vision of women in the militant future as 'good soldiers' as an example of women asserting themselves: 'Women, no longer shriek helplessly in the face of violence: they emerge as men's armed allies in the militarized future. The subtext is about arming women for a new role'4. However, Edwards does not analyse the universal power structures represented in the film. Those holding power in the future are men or their creations (the digital, unfeeling machine) and the male (in Edwards' and Turkle's terms is seen as the righteous method of liberation for freedom from a male world gone horribly wrong). That the carrier of this task is female is irrelevant, indeed, Sarah Conner's primary contribution to society is as a carrier of the next generation, her (purely) physical ability to bear children. Edwards and Turkle map (and therefore code) gender to actions and states and contribute to the construction of a literal methodology. Such discourse serves not only to define terms but it also, although less obviously, renders an image of the wider social system as a process (as the word system invokes) and therefore ultimately predictable (even if illusive). This is not a new strategy and its traces can be found in the history of philosophy as well as that of the sciences. Dewey, in How we Think (1910), wrote:

Concepts enable us to generalise, to extend and carry over our understanding from one thing to another. . . . Conceptions standardise our knowledge. They introduce solidity into what would otherwise be formless, and permanence into what would otherwise be shifting. . . . When two persons speak languages that are not mutually understood, they can still communicate to some extent, provided there are gestures which have identical meaning for both parties5.

Dewey's statement is an aspect of (phenomenological) philosophy which, like other forms of power, has been well contextualised by twentieth century philosophers. Michel Foucault plays on the very notion of the definition when he writes:

To think outside [the definition] is, by definition, to be mad, to be beyond comprehension and therefore reason. It is in this way that we can see how discursive rules are linked to the exercise of power; how the forms of discourse are both constituted by, and ensure the reproduction of, the social system, through forms of selection, exclusion and domination.6

In this short extract from Foucault's writings we see many issues relevant to the discourse of the (said) IT revolution. Firstly, we see the opponents to the IT revolution must fit somewhere inside the discusive practices of the whole (as my referencing of Turkle demonstrated). Turkle may be seen as 'selected' for the debate but for many Searle represented a view (anti Artificial Inteligence) which needed to be excluded. Through this initial process of exclusion I will show how Searle has come to be 'selected' by the debate he initiated with Artifical Intelligence researchers.

John R. Searle through the publication of Minds, Brains, and Programs (1980)7, initiated a debate with Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers which continues to draw contributors. Searle uses the Turing model of assessment to argue against researchers and theorists who continue the pursuit of Artificial Intelligence. In Alan Turing's (1950)8 model, AI is pitted against humans, where human subjects are invited to disclose which answer belongs to which group, the machine or the human. Such a competition has rules and Searle's hypothesis is likewise set in abstract codes. Searle sets up his argument as dependent on the test, without raising the strategy of the test or its framework of a hypothetical, abstract system.

Turing's test might seem an ideal for AI since the rules in abstract systems never change but Turing himself observed that the larger issue of language and rhetoric would force the rules to alter. Turing predicted: 'at he end of the century the use of words and educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted'9.

Searle's use of an abstract argument, like Turkle's, creates problems for the IT officer within the abstract system in which they conceptualise their arguments but it does little to challenge the structure of those arguments. Searle's principle critique is his construction of the rule 'the machine understands' which he proves to be false in the following way: '[T]he set of systems that go to make up a person, could have the right combination of input, output, and program and still not understand anything in the relevant literal sense in which I understand English'10. Searle, is attributing the meaning of a statement (its definition) to a literal sense which is pre-given and which does not depend on significant social interaction. His example of the Turing test attempts to confine language to a static realm through his isolation of the subject/receiver and the speaker. Searle's argument, far from criticising the closed world discourse of AI researchers, supplies an invitation for division, that crucial and necessary inspiration for the logical argument composed of truth versus the false, the on versus the off, the in versus the out and the one versus the zero. Searle is effectively stating he understands because he is human, but the computer does not understand because it is not: 'We are asked to accept [that a machine] . . . has beliefs in exactly the same sense that we, our spouses, and our children have beliefs, and that "most" [other machines] . . . have beliefs in this literal sense'11. Searle's appeal to the literal understanding of English renders the rules of the Turing game static and non-negotiable. Searle's hypothesis compares an abstract process with a version of itself, under the guise of reality and 'real life systems'.

Searle's test is like that of David Suzuki's Pebbles to computers: the thread (1986) where, in order to refute the fear of computers taking the place of human activity, Suzuki compares the 'bean counter' with a calculator of the day. Like the Turing game the rules are static, the person operating the bean counter is 'traditional' and the calculator is in development. What he (and others) hide from this test is the operators of each form of machinery and the powers they represent. Instead, Suzuki gives us the reassurance that calculators are not yet up to the speed of the bean counter. This is little consolation in 1996 when it is highly probably that the same test would fall the other way with the advent of faster processing chips. The economic implications of Information Technology lead to consumer confidence being held in such models. The language of the computer entrepreneur makes few references to the past except in order to endorse their particular vision of the future.

The idea of computers as competition is an image which is presented through many media services. The notion of humans against IT has long been tied to the portrayal of computers in society; people playing chess against a computer, hacking, and Sarah Conner's fight against The Terminator are all examples of human battles against Information Technology. They are more than battles but serve as examples of humans mastering Information technology. 'Smart-bombs' and other video arcade games have people fighting representations of people. In effect, this is the popular view of Information Technology being the base unit. Bill Gates, with his entrepreneurial style, is an example of someone celebrating the human battle with technology to achieve the American Dream, where tradition leads to success, the ultimate threat to out of control IT. Paradoxically, Gates is also the owner of the multi-national corporation Microsoft. In popular IT iconography, the corporation is the main threat to the individual and the main reason computers 'go bad' in science-fiction worlds.

Chaos theory, with its determinism, high public profile and links with IT is, through its commentary, very applicable to the discourse of the (said) IT revolution. The discourse serves to further an idealised notion of the future based on divisions and processes which disguise their rhetorical links to history:

How could one reasonably compare the constraint of truth with divisions like those, which are arbitrary to start with or which at least are organised around historical contingencies; which are not only modifiable but in perpetual displacement; which are supported by a whole system of institutions which impose them and renew them; and which act in a constraining and sometimes violent way? . . . the discourse which in prophesying the future not only announced what was going to happen but helped to make it happen, carrying men's minds along with it and thus weaving itself into the fabric of destiny 12.
Chaos theory, when it was introduced to the wider public in the 1980's, was seen to be useful in predicting what was previously believed to be unpredictable. However, Chaos's view into the future disguises its past; the roots of Chaos theory can be found in the 1970's research into complexity theory, a theory which introduced random variables into processes and equations. There is little difference between Chaos theory and complexity theory, apart from their representations. Complexity theory remained a concept for the scientific community, while Chaos theory was represented through the digital medium. Chaos was represented by the superfractals produced by computers at a period in time well before computers were acknoledged for their ability to manipulate conventional images. The claims made for chaos -represented in this accessible way - had a popular appeal beyond the classical scientific community.

Chaos burst onto the world's television sets alongside images of superfractals (an image which continues to be found on the covers of the many books on chaos theory, for example see, Chaos Ed. Arun V. Holden, (1986)). Superfractals are used to digitally represent programs with variables which posit a rough 'theory of everything'. With this use of Chaos theory, the access to 'absolute' knowledge is handed to the computer and the only limiting factor is the amount of data required. In this way Chaos theory can be seen as a form of complex structuralism, dependent on initial conditions and spaces where it can map the created data. In this sense, chaos is infinitely creative but mundanely so.

Another popular myth used to explain Chaos theory was the butterfly in South America whose wing movements could alter weather patterns at another distant point in the world. Images of large computers in meteorological departments (which were seen as the first commercial/practical application of Chaos theory) were also prevalent and gave body to the notion that the world is 'knowable'. The notion of organisation in the natural world was called into being: 'Despite their determinism, the behaviours look extremely random. . . . The discovery of Chaos suggests that the question of whether a given random appearing behaviour is at base probabilistic or deterministic may be undecidable. . . . Some biological systems are so organised that they remain in the game of life. Others go out of existence'13. The discourse of chaos theory attempted to find a metaphoric link between nature and what was happening in the computer but the strong imagery of the computer remained - preventing chaos theory from becoming a true 'theory of everything'. To do so, theorists would have to find a way of including the computer itself in the equation, so that it was not so much the medium of the theory but the media as well. For this they needed to make the following leap: life and matter is composed through equations of data (information), the computer is made from matter, therefore the computer both produces and demonstrates information processing and is a physical product of information processes. The boldest point presented by Chaos and IT revolution theorists is not the computer but the structures which are used by it and produce it, logic, hierarchy and processors: 'In the natural sciences, we find classification at its most precise and systematic'14.

Theorists use chaos to claim information as the base of all life, it then follows that the computer scientist is tracking down those programs which arrange digits into the objects and functions we recognise in life. Searle's crucial error is to believe that the discourse of IT and Artificial Intelligence makes no claims on matter. Searle concludes: 'Of course the brain is a digital computer. Since everything is a digital computer, brains are too. The point is that the brain's causal capacity to produce intentionality cannot consist in its instantiating a computer programme'15. Chaos theorists are able to argue that the brain can probably produce intentionality through its instantiating a computer program because the brain is itself the product of a program. By going back a level of abstraction, the AI researcher can claim the root of the decision tree.

When Searle says the 'brain is a digital computer' he is providing the AI researcher with an effective argument that the brain can be made from an arrangement of ones and zeros. With random variables, a set of processes could create a brain (perhaps also incorporating organic variables) and Searle's admission that the brain is a digital computer makes that inference all the easier to draw. In his attack on Searle's argument, Roger Fellows (1995) 16 concludes with this statement:

By way of parallel, consider the fact that chemical theory conventionally assigns the symbols, 'H'; and 'O' to a particular substance, so that for instance, water is identified as having a certain structure. Never-the-less it would remain true that water would equal H2O even if Humanity disappeared off the map. I think therefore that the issue of the conventional assignment of symbols to physical processes is a red-herring17 .
Fellows' statement takes no account for the construction of the discourse he is using. Under Chaos theory, information and matter are interchangeable. If humanity disappeared off the map, who would interpret H20 to mean water? Are the symbols H2O then no longer symbols as they would have no one to interpret them? Like Searle and Dewey, Fellows is taking no account of the use of language as a constructive agent. For Fellows the base truth is H20 equals water but is this true of all cultures? Is this how water is envisaged by differing cultures, or for that matter, computers? In a sense, Fellows and Chaos theorists are suggesting that it is possible to build matter from data.

In the discourse surrounding computers the spokesperson for the future is given a significant authority. Some, to enforce their brand (and vision) of the future are labelled 'futurists' suggesting that their very sayings are prophetic. One of the significant strategies of the 'futurist' is to disguise the operations of power and capital by appealing to the individual in society. Like Chaos theorists they are positing a localised and specific theory which, none-the-less, has important global implications. One of the ideals put forward by John Naisbitt is that of local, specific instances becoming known world wide and thus ultimately benefiting the oppressed.

a rag-tag band staged an uprising in the poorest province of Mexico in Chiapas...which is on the edge of a rainforest. Within hours, it was on the Internet, and the whole world began to know about it, including the oppressed . . . Stories in the press forced the Mexican government to respond. If these very poor people had not been on the Internet, none of us to this day would know about the uprising in Chiapas18.
I have no other details on this specific instance but my aim is not to argue over detail. Instead, I question Naisbitt's inference that this specific event is proof of the worth and universality of the IT revolution. He goes on to say: 'The answer is probably that there will be fewer hungry people on the planet'19. Elsewhere Naisbitt discusses the implications of IT for democracy (in the U.S.) with the finding that politicians will become obsolete due to people voting on issues via the internet. This view towards the future takes little account of the exclusion of people who are not connected and serves as rhetoric with which to normalise a universal view that all people should be involved in the IT revolution.

Naisbitt is not alone in his patronising approach to South American indigenous cultures. Another prominent IT prophet, Jaron Lanier, had this to say about indigenous cultures:

I think [VR] is the biggest thing since we landed on the Moon, . . . I don't choke on that one. Indeed, I'd take it a bit farther, guessing that Columbus was probably the last person to behold so much useable and unclaimed real estate (or unreal estate) as these cybernauts have discovered20.
Lanier's orientation towards the future means that history is devalued because with Lanier's vision the world is heading in an entirely new direction. However, Lanier's comments incorporate rhetoric of oppression and denial of alternative views of the world and this is considered appropriate because Information Technology is new and therefore open to 'new' idealism in a 'new' world. What is not considered is the degree to which historical artefacts are incorporated into Virtual Reality and the very methods of funding its development. Instead, ethics are dismissed as surmountable by Information Technology's very newness: 'And they try to make it, and if it doesn't work, they try again. And this is the great renaissance of the human spirit'21. One of the crucial issues is whether the production of IT and its discourse, structured as it is in authoritarian terms, can break these bonds as easily as it is prophesied. Lanier and other 'futurists' would have us believe in a universal humanity. Like Naisbitt, Lanier celebrates the individual whilst protecting a structured approach to authority. Lanier says: 'In Virtual Reality there's no question your reality is created by you. You made it...I think being in that mode of realizing how active every moment in life is will break through the stupor'22. Clearly Lanier's discourse attepts to set him outside the bounds of the stupor to establish his intellectual and prophetic authority.

One of the best ways of illustrating some of the problematic issues of the individual within IT discourse is with reference to a major proponent of the IT revolution, Dr. Timothy Leary. In the 1960's and 1970's he was made famous through the phrase, 'Turn on, tune in and drop out,' where Leary was positioned as the embodiment of the drop out. For much of his life Leary was part of established institutions of U.S. society but in the 1960's he achieved fame for his experiments with psychedelic drugs. Shunned by established society, Leary dismissed his roots in the traditionally authoritarian discipline of psychiatry and psychology. However, Leary's actions and statements after these events display rigorous grounding in authoritarian discourse and power structures. Compared with the youth of the time, he appeared to have occupied two realms, the 'system' represented by rigid institutions and then the self-imposed exclusion and allegiance with the youth. This seemingly made Leary an authentic proponent of alternative options but Leary maintained his authority through the notion of the channeller or guide for LSD trips.

According to Leary's The Politics Of Ecstasy(1970),23 drug use necessitated a leader of a group, well trained - where this training was to come from Leary's vision of the future. Likewise, Leary's contemporary idealised state for the IT revolution is grounded in the maintenance of his own channelling. With Leary's vision, other 'futurists' are gifted but not 'true': 'William Gibson is an extremely gifted, intelligent writer of science fiction. He's prophetic about much of where technology will lead us, although with different conclusions than I've come to.'24 The culture he seemingly dismissed in the 1960's has become the colonising vision of Leary's ideology with the disguised links to his personal profits:

America has the basic natural resources of the Information Stage. The tradition of individualism. Innovation. Just like Japan has no oil or metal, their culture just doesn't nurture any individual thinking. It took Jobs and Wozniak to have the vision that computers would be used by everybody. By 2000, every human being over the age of five will be wearing Cybergear and will require a constant flow of info-realities, digital data stored and accessed in hyper-text, open-architected repositories. . . . My company, Futique, is applying the same principle of customizing, personalizing, providing hands-on tools to convert films, videos and books into inter-com programs for the home screen.25
Leary's seemingly radical statements of the 1960's and 1970's also found a growth industry in New Wave philosophies of the time, most being easily accessible through codified referents. Those philosophies have persisted and are finding new ground in the discourse of the IT revolution. Self-improvement books like, James Redfield's, The Celestine Prophecy (1993),26 popularise the IT view that the individual experience leads to a universal truth and humanity. With such a theory, difference cannot be tolerated and is given no voice. Consider the role of the prophet in such statements as Atkisson's interpretation of The Celestine Prophecy:
Technology will do most of our work for us. As we begin to value spiritual insight more and more, we will pay those who bring it to us, and this will eventually replace the market economy and our need for paid employment. We can connect to God's energy in such a way that we will eventually become beings of light, and walk straight into heaven.27
These visions of the future temporarily dispel power operations by making the present only a temporary inconvenience which can be overcome through a holistic vision. Paul Davies also maintains such an involvement through the publication of texts like Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature (1984).28 The cover of the 1995 paperback edition is similar to those Chaos texts which depict superfractals on their covers, but Davies' book takes a more direct approach to nature. The cover displays a representation of bubble chamber particle traces, magnified and rendered digital. In this way the small is made pre-dominant, is real, in a way that Chaos theory could not be. Unlike the superfractal which is seen to have applications for nature, the cover of Superforce is a representation of actual events as processes rather than being confined to the stagnant digital, one or zero. Davies does not represent the original imagery for chaos (the abstract is mirrored in the real or vis versa), rather, he presents the real as the abstract or vis versa. The cover of Superforce (coupled with Davies' theories) would have us believe a small portion of nature (beyond the human eye) can be found in all of nature. However, the bubble particles are shown through a digital lens and two distinct elements greatly magnified may look similar simply because of the digital lens. Instead of considering this the metaphoric 'like' is replaced with the definitive equals sign.

When the world is seen through equations, it is rendered whole, universal in what I have described as sytemic literal meaning. It does not take much to see the dangers of this discourse with its appeal to truth. Davies conveys a theory of integration, where the local is linked to the global through a form of mathematical religion:

[T]here's a compulsive desire to search for a deeper cosmic unity, one which weaves together our own local region with the grand totality in some intimate way. Linking the large and the small, the global and the local, has a strong appeal because it makes us feel at one with all creation, a mystical objective common to most of the world's religions. Many people doubtless feel themselves to be linked spiritually to the totality of things but there is also a parallel tradition in science for forging such links.29
The 1990's has the computer science professional working in markedly different environments than those of their 1970's counterparts. To gain respect from their diverse environments, computer scientists must challenge the discourse which is used to represent them by business and scientific interests. No longer confined to the laboratory, the computer scientist needs to reassess the worth of viewing communication as a process like any of the laboratory. Nor is it sufficient to envisage the world through abstract terms serving to bring the world into the laboratory since the laboratory is not mobile enough for the world. The discourse of science is not of much help in solving this as scientists are themselves becoming more dependent on IT. Instead, the computer scientist must consider the role of communication as a system in flux, where, unlike Chaos theory, systematic rules are not readily found. Indeed I hope this very paper has covered some ground in positioning communication outside abstract systems and systems in general. Yet despite this, it is paramount that through communication we are able to recognise those systems of language codes which dominate alternative narratives.


Footnotes

1. For example, see Hoogstad, V. and Hughes, J. Eds. (1993), Communication for Scientific, Technical and Medical Professionals. Melbourne: MacMillan Education Australia.

2. Turkle, Sherry (1984), The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, New York: Simon and Schuster.

Edwards has this to say regarding Turkle's division of 'hard' and 'soft' masters, where gender is paired with a particular programming technique:

Sherry Turkle observed two basic approaches to computer programming. Students she calls "hard masters" employed a planned, structured, technical style, while "soft masters" relied on a more amorphous system of gradual evolution, interactive play, and intuitive leap. Note the similarity of these two modes with the two cultures I have described. In fact, Turkle found, the majority of hard masters were boys, and the majority of soft masters were girls.

A number of recent books have been devoted to 'soft' mastery, including: Donal James Flynn (1992), Information Systems Requirements: Determination and Analysis. Berkshire: McGraw-Hill. But soft systems still require pre-given processing skills and in the context of my argument still belong to the doctrine of communication which I am criticising. To what extent the terms 'soft' and 'hard' will then influence the codification of gender is not addressed by Turkle or Edwards.

3. Edwards, P. N. (1994), From "Impact" to Social Process: Computers in Societ and Culture. IN Jasanoffet, S. al., eds. Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, http://www-leland.stanford.edu/group/STS/edwards.html.

4. Edwards, P. N.

5. Dewey, J. (1910), How we think. Boston: D.C. Heath & Co., 150.

6. Foucault, M. (1970), The Order of Things, New York: Tavistock/Routledge:48.

7. Searle, J. R. (1980), Minds, Bodies, and Programs. IN The Behavioral Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, vol. 3: 417-24.

8. Turing, A. (1950), "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," Mind, Vol. 59, No. 236, 433-460.

9. Turing in Edwards, (1994)

10. Searle, 395. My italics.

11. Searle, 396.

12. Foucault, M., 54.

13. Conrad in Holden: 3.

14. Langridge in Holden, 1.

15. Searle, 403.

16. Fellows, R. (1995) Welcome to Wales IN Philosophy and technology. ed. Fellows, R. New York : Cambridge University Press. 85-97.

17. Fellows, 96.

18. Naisbitt in conversation (September 28, 1995), Larry Magid Online. http://www.larrysworld.com/articles/

19. Naisbitt in Larry Magid On-Line.

20. Lanier in Edwards, 1994.

21. K. Kelly in conversation, Star Tribune On-line, http://www.startribune.com/digage/kelly.htm.

22. Lanier in Edwards, 1994.

23. Leary, T. F. (1970), The politics of ecstasy. London : Paladin.

24. Leary in conversation, UPSIDE.

25. Leary in UPSIDE.

26. Redfield, J. (1993), The Celestine prophecy : an adventure. Sydney : Bantam.

27. Atkisson A. (1994), New Age Journal, August: http://www.spiritweb.org/spirit/celestine-9-insights.html.

28. Davies, P. (1984), Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature. Revised ed. Penguin Group: London, England.

29. Davies, P. N. 209. My italics


NOTES:

Atkisson, A. (1994), New Age Journal, August: http://www.spiritweb.org/spirit/celestine-9-insights.html.

Beauvoir, Simone de, (1953), The second sex / [by] Simone de Beauvoir , translated [from the

French] and edited by H.M. Parshley.Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1972.

Blohm, H. (1986), Pebbles to computers : the thread / Hans Blohm, Stafford Beer, David Suzuki. Toronto : Oxford University Press.

Conrad in Holden: 3-21.

Davies, P. (1984), Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature. Revised ed. Penguin Group: London, England.

Dewey, J. (1910), How we think. Boston: D.C. Heath & Co.

Edwards, P. N. (1994), From "Impact" to Social Process: Computers in Societ and Culture. IN Jasanoffet, S. al., eds. Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications: http://www-leland.stanford.edu/group/STS/edwards.html.

Fellows, R. (1995) Welcome to Wales IN Philosophy and technology ed. Fellows, R. New York : Cambridge University Press. 85-97.

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