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This article provides information about the Views of Techno-cynicism and Techno-zealotry about Internet based Knowledge Transmission:
There are different discourses that relate knowledge and power in a knowledge-based society. Foucault, who demonstrated how knowledge and power are related, argues whenever someone transmits knowledge it involves power. Whenever power is exerted, knowledge is involved.
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The four discourses related to Internet based knowledge transmission, which forms significant basis of knowledge-based society are techno-utopianism, techno-cynicism, techno-zealotry and techno-structuralism. Here, the techno-cynicism and techno-zealotry are focused on. In The concentration or dispersal of knowledge power through the medium of Internet and World Wide Web is the main question in all these four discourses.
Techno-Cynicism:
Techno-cynics have a critical view about the role of Internet and Web in the dispersal of knowledge. They do not believe that the Web is a wired Utopia for learning and education. Instead, they argue, it will lead to a concentration of power. Techno- cynics are realists, distrust corporatism and the commodification of education and regard globalisation as a code for Americanisation.
They argue the Web (i) will not significantly enhance access to education, (ii) will not yield equity, (iii) will aggravate the gap between the ‘have’s’ and ‘have-nots’, (iv) will converge around the orthodoxy of Americana, (v) will help most free- trade on the world and thus lower occupational, health and environmental regulations and (vi) enable global enterprises to monitor markets and make instantaneous adjustments with the click of a mouse and thus reinstall exploitative colonialism.
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Techno-cynics were largely critical of techno-utopian ideas. They argue that technology itself is not bad. The problem is in the way it constructs relationships. They believe being too connected (online) may deprive people of humanity. Interactions through Net give people a chance to ignore the human side of such relationships. A disturbing part of the techno-cynic position is enunciated by Mander who argues that economic globalisation involves the most “fundamental re-design” of socio-political and economic arrangements since the industrial revolution.
Advocates and beneficiaries of the new order (free trade, deregulation, restructuring) use computers, not to empower communities, as techno-utopians would claim, but as a tool of financial exploitation. “Computer technology may actually be the most centralising technology ever invented, at least in terms of economic and political power. This much is certain. The global corporation of today could not exist without computers. The technology makes globalisation possible by conferring a degree of control beyond anything ever seen before”. In the old days this kind of globalisation was called colonisation.
Techno-cynics disagree with the techno Utopians on many grounds. They argue that the virtual universities – a major mode for the dispersal of knowledge in knowledge societies according to the Utopians – in effect will function as a digital diploma mills. Noble is a leading North American exponent of techno- cynicism claims online courses will lead to comercialisation of higher education, the loss of faculty independence, a secondrate “shadow cyber- education” and virtual universities with perhaps no faculty whatsoever. Another argument is on the basis of racial divide.
In the United States access to the Web appears to depend on race. According to a study done by Hoffman and Novak in late 1966 and early 1997, 44.3 per cent of white and only 29 per cent of black Americans own a home computer. In households with incomes $40,000 or less, white people were six times more likely than black people to have used the Web in the week prior to the survey.
Another manifestation of techno-cynicism arises from the Web’s inclination to promote a conservative view of education. They argue that there is much more to education than filling empty vessels or producing “stuffed docks.” The problem with Web learning, according to them, is with the fact the Web and too many other distance technologies deliver information without raising appropriate questions or to make a critical evaluation of the information transferred. The Web causes people to think of education as an information transfer process. “We are building an educational system on the assumption that our minds are a lot of hard drives that can simply be filled up with data”.
Techno-Zealotry:
For Techno-zealots power relations of technology and knowledge are irrelevant because technology has inherent value irrespective of how it used. In significant ways, technology is neutral. Techno-zealots are typically consultants or academics with few theoretical pretensions and a vested interest in cultivating corporate interests or others who control research and development grants. Techno-zealots typically use a Power Point presentation (which greatly minimises the likelihood of critique) to enthuse about “convergences,” “paradigm shifts” and the galaxy of wonders lying at the intersection of telecommunications and computers.
In the techno-zealotry discourse (i) deploying the Web is a “rational-technical” process that knows no bounds. It’s just a “technical” problem, (ii) statements about the benefits of the Web are couched as grand generalisations which have little regard to discrepancies between rich and poor, developed and developing countries or the learning proclivities of different people, (iii) technology and the Web are worth pursuing for their own sake – irrespective of the context or what they might mean for the human condition, (iv) the Web is a technology bristling with potential for profit.
The views of techno-zealots are significantly detached from material realities including rural landscapes, where information technology is nowhere to be seen. They argue that information technology can overpower “cultural barriers, economic inequalities (and) compensate for intellectual disparities. High technology can put unequal human beings on an equal footing and that makes it the most potent democratising tool ever devised”. But the critiques view that in a situation where the number of people without phones is growing faster than the number of people with them, the prospect of bandwidth intensive Web applications seems downright criminal.