Response to Langdon Winner, Who will we be in cyberspace?
From Internet: Knowledge and Community
Prepared by Gene House
Submitted to Douglas Schuler
The Internet: Knowledge and Community
Week 2 Response, Who Will Be in Cyberspace, Saturday, 10/6/2010
Winner is advocating for a different approach to the current model of innovation we employ today. By suggesting a more “egalitarian” approach to product innovation, one that partners computing professionals and the common populace, Winner believes “better systems, one that have a better fit with genuine human needs” can be produced.
The author points to the Scandinavian model as an example where “social and political circumstances” blend with the workers and citizens, a stark contrast to that of the United States. I have heard this argument before. A great injustice to the world perpetuated by the free market system. A system governed by corporate profit mongers engaging in self interested behavior. As many, I am beguiled by the utopian picture painted by social and political justice, a world where basic human values are identified and provide the backdrop to analyze the measure of good a product provides. It is my belief that the human species can find some common ground with respect to basic values such as health, entertainment, and the freedom to prosper. In addition, I can see the benefit to society if this measure was applied. But what Winner is suggesting is that private market enterprise employ the use of some kind of public think-tank. Some partnership between computing professionals and the common populace with the hope that this team of tech heads and common folk will further the values of society. As I look to the Scandinavian countries with an eye towards technology or innovation I come up blank. Where does this model exist outside pages of the latest social values article. I can't remember buying scandinavian technology in the past. Maybe I have and just not aware. We do know one thing for sure, the internet was invented in the United States, funded by tax payers and left to the free market to provide the diffusion of innovation. I must admit I am a bit disappointed to hear yet another individual of sufficient intelligence propose the same rehashed idea of the political and social collaboration in the absence of a market economics or supply and demand. Who pays for these endeavors, the tax payer, do I get to sit on the board of innovation? What makes my vote any more moral when cast by mouth than cast by wallet.
