From Memory Societies to Knowledge Societies- The Cognitive Dimensions of Digitization by Derrick de...

8/9/2019 From Memory Societies to Knowledge Societies- The Cognitive Dimensions of Digitization by Derrick de Kirckhove

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From memory societ ies to know ledge societ ies:The cognitive dimensions of digitizat ion

Derrick de Kerckhove, Ana Viseu

McLuhan Program in Culture and TechnologyUniversity of Toronto39A Queen's Park Crescent East, Toronto, ON; M5S 2C3 [email protected], [email protected]

Article written for the UNESCO World Report on Building KnowledgeSocieties to be published in 2004.

WORKING PAPER. DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION.FEEDBACK IS MOST WELCOME.

On netw orks: The power blackout

On August 14 th, 2003 around 4 oclock in the afternoon, the pow er suddenly w entoff in one power station in t he United States. A domino eff ect w as felt throughoutthe electricity netw ork, and in 9 seconds 61 billion watts w ere lost (Lovins 2003)and 50 million people were left w ithout elect ricity in w hat constitut ed the largestblackout in North American history. 1

Instantly , machines stopped humming w ith one last sigh; streetcars and subw aysstopped dead on their tracks; lights shut dow n; f inancial netw orks and theirinterface pointsbanks, ATMs, stock marketsbecame inoperat ive; and,information and communication networks, web and email servers, broke down.

Toronto, one of t he cities aff ected by the blackout and home to the authors, cameto a halt. Medium and large businesses were forced to close down becauseindividual products are no longer physically priced but coded, hence requiring abarcode reader/decoder. Companies sent employees home for there was nothingthey could do w ithout their elect ronic ext ensions. Individuals turned to old massmedia, such as bat tery operated radios, in order to gain some understanding of the

situation at hand.

As the hours progressed tw o things became clear: our reliance on this inv isible andinf initely malleable medium, and the mediated and netw orked character of modernlife(s). It is not our intention here to find t he culprits of such massive failure nor

1 On September 28,2003 a similar event occurred in Europe this time leaving 58 millionItalians in the dark after a tree fell down in the Swiss alps!


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discuss its cause. Instead, w e want to reflect on the architecture and design of t heelectricity network, using this as an example to understand the networked,knowledge society .

Netw orks are constit uted by t hree main elements: t echnology, people and places.The technology represents t he infrastruct ure of t he netw ork, t he persons are thosew ho cont rol it , and t he places are def ined by nodes and hubs (Castells 1996 ; seealso Stalder 1998 ). When put in place, how ever, netw orks create a space thatalthough connected to t he physical place, but is not dependent on it. Netw orkstranscend place, transforming it into space.

In the case of t he electricit y grid, each power plant constit utes a node, a physicallocation, w hich is linked to others through t he means of hubs. Hubs are located instrategic points. The various electricity plants are organized within an intelligentnetwork of hubs and nodes that is imbued with self-protection instincts.

The advantages of t his netw orked character are clear. If node X needs more pow er

and node Y is not using its full capacity t hen pow er can be automatically routedto node X. It is this design feature, t he abilit y f or self-regulation, that affords it w ithintelligence.

But each node is also designed with a self-protection instinct. When a node isoverwhelmedby demand or any other causeit shuts itself down, so as toprevent serious inner damage. However, due to the networks self-regulatingfeatures, it s traf fic is immediately re-routed to another node. An endangered nodehas the ability to remove itself from t he netw ork, but it does not control it s linksand hubs. The hubs remain intact, hauling the nodes responsibilities along and, insome cases, bringing other nodes down.

In a sense, the nodes are competing w ith the larger netw ork, but are controlled byit. Their self-preservation feature competes with that of the global network, andtheir autonomy is subjugated to t hat of the larger body.

The domino effect that was felt on August 14 th w as a direct result of this t ensionbetw een nodes and netw orks, autonomy and interconnectiv ity. It is indicative of aglobalized w orld constit uted by mult ifold social and technological netw orks. AsLszl Barabsi (2003) puts it, unless we are willing to cut the connections, theonly way to change the world is to improve all nodes and links.

When the electricit y netw ork fell it brought w ith it t he failure of all the services and

institut ions that depend on it . Except in the infrequent cases w here local pow ergenerators were available, access to financial networks and to information andcommunication networks was no longer possible. Even telephones and wirelesscommunications, usually the last medium to go, worked only sporadically.

1. Electricity, the third language technologyIndeed, the world is one single electronic grid, w hether we consider the pow er grid,the telephone, the audiovisual media or the internet. If the outage brings to mind


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the practical importance of electricity , it should also cause us to reflect on itspsychological, cognitive and social roles. Electricity , t he only medium w ithout amessage (McLuhan 19 64 ), is the third major language technology aft er speech andw riting. It is also the basis of know ledge societies. Thinking itself is partiallydependent upon an electrical activit y. We have electricit y in our bodies to drive ourcentral nervous system. So there is a certain kind of continuity between ourgestures and our tools, something that can be observed in children playingvideogames, or in a person typing at a computer, f or example.

Thus the encounter of electricit y w ith language on the telegraph lines was perhapsthe most powerful technological combination imaginable: maximum complexity,that of language, multiplied by maximum speed, t he speed of light. The fruits ofthis union have produced new technologies at an ever accelerating rate to this day,and there is no sign of it abating.

The conquest of the world by electricity has gone through two major phases,analogue and digital. The analogue phase was entirely committed to the

amplification and/or transportation of signal, whether for power generation, lighting,heating or communication. This sudden surge of power whipped the social bodyinto new associations and configurations, changing production and distribut ionbehaviors in markets and retribalizing nations and societ ies. This suddenacceleration of human act ivit ies w as diff icult t o master giving w ay to global socialupheavals w hich led to t he first and second w orld wars.

The netw orked environment is a secondary elaboration of elect ricity, a more refinedstage characterized by a greater degree of absorption of it s eff ects in t he socialbody. The increase of networks today reveals a new stage of maturation of theestablishment of the electrical realm. We have evolved f rom a broadcast societyto a netw orked society . The grow th of connect ivity has been exponential sincethe invention of the telegraph. It is hard to resist t he temptation t o see ateleological pattern in the accelerating progress of electronic networkingtechnologies. There is a kind of physics of connect ivity , it grows along certainpatterns at differing rates of speed. Two basic kinds of acceleration can, and do,happen particularly with respect to technological development: linear and radialacceleration.

1.1 Linear acceleration (connection and processing speeds)Linear accelerat ion is that w hich regulates the speed of performance of any systembe it a processor or a carrier of signals, a motor or a highway. If a computer runs amillion times faster today than the early Apple II C, that has to do with linear

speed. Just as the speed of processing of computer chips has picked up anexponential rate since 1946, the speed of delivery of networks has never ceased toincrease dramatically since the invention of the telegraph:

1. 1 844 : t elegraph: 5 bauds (1 baud = 1 bit per second)2. 1876: telephone: 2000 bauds3. 1915 : tw isted pair of copper w ires: 30000 bauds4. 1940: co-axial cable circuits: 7.6 million bauds


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5. 1983: early fiber technology: 45 million bauds6. 199 6: early photonic technology: 100 billion bauds

In 1962, Telstar, the f irst commercial communications satellite, delivered 700000bauds over a uniformly received footprint. To the w ired environment, one must addthe w ireless communications which, since the invention of radio in 19 01 haveexpanded the area accessed and covered by the signal distribution. Over-the-airsignals create another condition of connect ivit y bot h one-w ay and tw o-w ay.Personal technologies such as the pager, mobile phone, PDA and RIM makepotentially everybody accessible. At this level of connectivity linear accelerationchanges to radial effects because of increasing interconnection.

1.2 Radial acceleration (interconnection)Radial accelerat ion is t hat w hich measures the rate of increase in the volume ofconnect ions, or the t raff ic. In t erms of configurations and number of connections,each new technology seems to have introduced a quantum leap:

i. The telegraph: cit y-to-city connect ions; people had to w alk to the post off ice andw ait in line for their turn. Cit ies were connected one-to-one and one-on-one. Thatcould be considered as a rather low level of connectivity.

ii. The media - radio, t elevision, and the press: One-to-many connection; have theirow n funneling pattern w hich reduces and condenses the flow of information downto t he compressed sound-bite or the headline. This pattern encourages someinterconnectivit y at t he information-gathering end but edits out much of thepotential originality at the production time. The end result is to be broadcast(whatever the publishing medium) so that precludes interconnectivity.

iii. The telephone: individual locat ion-to-individual location connections; The level ofconnectivity is considerably increased. While, the telephone does not" interconnect " , it simply connects people one-on-one, it does off er at least a one-on-one return avenue for know ledge production.

iv. The internet: one-to-one, one-to-all, all-to-one, all-to-all, many-to-many, etc. Theinternet makes publishing instant and allows it to be selective; it allows any numberof configurations of connections betw een people. It is the prime interconnectorwhich is why it is called the INTERnet.

v. The World Wide Web: the w eb introduces yet another quantum leap because itnot only interconnects t he people as the internet does, but also the things people

say, w rite, edit and display, w ord for w ord, image for image and sound for sound.The web is a single environment of collective and connective memory. It iscollective by content, but connect ive by access, meaning that each individual mustaccess it on his or her ow n terms, w hile the product of that access enters into t hecollective lore. The World Wide Web is already an emergent property of netw orks.

vi. The mobile/cell phone: all the interconnectiv ity modes af forded by the web andint ernet, plus a body-to-body connection, one no longer calls a place, but a person.


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Penetration rates vary enormously among countriesalthough the greatest variationis betw een cont inents. For instance, t he most connected European countries, Italyand Portugal, had penetration rates of 88.9% and 85.6% in 2002 (Jptner 2002);overall Western Europe adoption rate stood at 75.2 % in 2002 (eMarketer 2002).Africa, however, has an estimated 35 million mobile phone users in 2003, withonly t hree countriesMorocco, South Af rica, Egypthaving a penetration rate ofover 10 per cent (Cellular Online staf f 2 003). The development and implementationof new services and t echnologies such as General Packet Radio Service (GPRS)w hich enables cont inuous wireless connect ion to data netw orks, mobile phones canbe used to send and receive data over an internet protocol (IP) based network,facilitate t he interconnection to a mobile internet.

1.3 Focused self-organizationAll information and communicat ion netw orks are brought together as the internet ,the netw ork of netw orks. The internet is based on an open architecture that allowsit t o grow exponent ially. Much of w hat has happened on the internet has emergedin a self -organized fashion w ith the netw orks adjusting f or challenges such as low

bandwidth, crowding, censorship, viruses, spam and other calamities that havepiled up upon it since its inception in 1967 .2 However the focus has always beenprovided by t he rigor of the code. Netw orks funct ion through the means ofsoftw are. It is t he soft w are that standardizes them, allowing f or communicationacross netw orks. It is t his softw are that gives them shape, regulating t he act ions ofthose using them. Thus, networks are decentralized, but they are notuncontrollable. In t he world of netw orks code is law (Lessig 1999). Codeconstit uted by hardw are and sof tw areeffectively defines what can and cannot bedone.

The example of the mobile phone netw ork is illust rative here. The usage behavior ofusers can be regulated in many dif ferent w ays. In Europe, for inst ance, mobilephone carriers charge less for calls w ithin the same netw ork, t hus encouraging theexpansion of their service. Until recently in Brazil text messages (Short MessagingSystem-SMS) could not be sent to netw orks other than the users, effectivelylimiting the communication reach.

In the case of t he internet the netw ork itself is dumb and the terminals that arelocated at the endpoints smart. The network is programmed to carry anything toits endpoint by t he fastest route possible. It does this automatically, re-routing ifone of it s components fails. The intelligence of the netw ork is concentrated at theendpoints, the personal computers and servers at t he terminus (Basel 2001 ).

As t he 1s and 0s, bit s and bytes, circulate on the netw ork they create new spaces.To this new space Castells (1996 ) gives the name of space of f low s . The spaceof f low s is the space created by informat ion exchanges, it is not material, but hasan existence. Think, f or instance, of t he global financial netw orks. Their links andexchanges, their fluctuations, have a definite impact on the places (and peoples)they connect. They are simultaneously immaterial and very real. Networks are not

2 As the ARPANET.


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ethereal. They are physical. They have a physical infrastructure that sustains andsupports them. The disposition of hardware is not random, but rather tactical. Hubsare placed in geographically strategic places, emphasizing their importance w ithinthe netw ork. Netw orks have the pow er to create spaces of visibility w hilerelegating others to invisibility. Those excluded from the network are, to a greatextent, made invisible (c.f. Sassen 1991; Castells 1998; Castells 1999).

2. Knowledge technologiesThere is a close association betw een language, mind and t echnology. Nietzscheobserved that the use of t ypewriter changed both his style and the nature of hisw rit ing. Each time language changes its main support system, so does cognit ion,and so does know ledge. This is because language entertains a close and intimaterelationship with our inmost sensibility and also with both the content and thestructure of our minds. The technologies that support or manage language alsoaffect the mind, of necessity, simply because language is a system for thearticulation of the mind, a kind of operating system writ large. Technologies thattransport language behave as environments that condition both thought and

speech. As Luria, a Soviet psychologist once said language is the tool of tools(Luria 1976; Luria 1979).

The follow ing table att empts to identif y some key differences in the kinds ofknow ledge environments supported by our main language technologies:

MEDIUM SPEECH WRITING ELECTRICITY

DOMINANT

MODE

Oral Literate Digit al

SPATIO-TEMPORAL

PSYCHOLOGY

World as organismLooking to t he pastmodels

Infinite spaceLooking to the future

Instantaneity -time and spaceas one

INFORMATION-PROCESSING

BASE

Context (peopleare bound to andby their context)

Text (writingdetaches text anduser from context)

Hypertext(random accessto any text)

COGNITIVE MODE

MultisensorialMythic/magicCollective

AbstractRationalPrivate

MultimediaIntegralConnective

KNOWLEDGESTRUCTURE

Myths (origins)ProverbsLegendsRecipesPalabra

BureaucracyCode of lawTreatisesLibrariesSchools

NetworksDatabasesSearch enginesLinksBlogs

Figure 1: Comparat ive chart for know ledge practices under oral, lit erate andelectronic conditions


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2.1 Oral societies: Societies of context

There are indeed three main stages of language as we know it, oral, literate andelect ronic. The principal interface betw een self and world in the oral society is thephysical body. The whole body talks, the w hole body remembers, the whole bodyof everybody takes part in the body politic. Oral society is the society of context,not of text , f or obvious reasons. People are alw ays in context , t hey live in a kind ofextended present , even w hen referring to events that occurred in the past. Theyrevere their ancestors who showed them the operating rules of their principalref erence, God(s), the f irst and the fundamental context. These societies are"religious" almost by necessity, not by choice. Their survival depends on sharedexperience. That is the context. To keep that context alive, t hey ritualize it and re-enact it , w hich is a w ay for a collect ive to remember. Oral societ ies, having to relyon verbal memory have been more or less obliged to live in a w orld in w hich thebody has to do the job of remembering, and they have to keep re-enacting the past.They don' t study the past, t hey simply make it present. This makes oral societiesalso conservative by necessity, rather than by choice. It is a society that isperceptually dominant in that it s members rely on their senses (sensory) rather than

on pure sense (meaning) to understand and cope w ith reality. Even its memory isanchored in sensory modalities, statues, monuments, songs, story-telling, play-acting.

2.2 Literate societies: Societies of text

By contrast, the written word allows people to keep records and accumulateknowledge, and to decontextualize it. Literate societies use a tool to storelanguage. This tool helps people to turn context int o text, to detach text f romcontext , hence to detach themselves from it . It fosters fict ion and innovation.Literate societies are societies of text.

In societies of text, knowledge is documented, compartmentalized, categorized,classified in records that are then archived for future retrieval. The archival ofknowledge has brought about an entire infrastructure and science of informationuniformization, classification and retrieval (c.f. Bowker & Leigh Star 1999).Information must be classified and stored in ways that afford its eff ortless retrieval.This emphasis on rat ional and systematic organizat ion of know ledge is a def iningtrait of literate societies mode of social organization, w here control is exercised onthe basis of know ledge (Weber 1947 ). Educational and institutional systems, w iththeir emphasis on specialization and standardization of knowledge and onindividualism are tokens of this organizational mode.

But it must be added that not all societies that use w riting are societies of text . It

all depends on the degree to which their writing system or their social systemallow s them to detach the text from t he context . Many societies that use w ritingretain a dominantly oral cultural base.

2.2.1 The special case of alphabetic literacies

Alphabetic literacy dif fers from all the other w riting systems because it allow s oneto represent faithfully the line of speech as it is read, and does not require thereader to first go back to context merely t o decipher the text , as in Hebrew, Arabic


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or Chinese, to give some examples. The more faithful and simple the tool, theeasier it is to detach t he text from t he context and to re-place it in other contexts(this is the origin of fiction, of course, but also that of most innovations, i.e.,technologies). Alphabetic literacy, by detaching text completely from context, alsodetached the reader, and liberated individual minds f rom the collective one of thetribe. The literary mind, organized by principles of logic and grammar, is not veryreligious, although its f aith in t echnology has been likened to t hat of a religion(Noble 1997). Individuality is a far more important concept than community intextual societies. In fact, readers do not always need others to thrive. Instead, inthis type of social organizat ion people are all more or less " self-made people" .Individualism is a natural consequence of a system that allow s you to appropriateand manage language for our own purposes whether as a reader or a writer.

The printed material is the dominant interface and clearing house of the literatesociety . Not all language is w orth w riting/printing/reading, only carefully craftedselect ions of language, so w hat is printed takes its posit ion in a certain hierarchyand order of priority , at some level, in w hatever genre, and w hatever category.

Books and papers propose to people at large the contents of realit y f ilteredthrough the modality of text. To a reader in alphabetic cultures, language firstappears as an abstract string of easily recognizable signs, then as a mentalconstruction, a kind of assisted memory. In order to read, we have to translatethese abst ract signs int o something meaningful. We do that in our head and we callthat thinking or imagination or mind.

Thinking w ith one' s pen, as Wit tgenstein suggests, is a kind of t echnologicalassistance very much in line w ith " computer-assisted" activities. Writing allows oneto externalize thinking and give it a kind of object ivit y t hat is comparable to hearingthe response of someone else to a question. The diff erence w ith speaking is t hatw riting is both an archived process and a solitary activit y t hat allows completecont rol. Thinking by oneself allow s complete control over t he production ofmeaning. What is lost in t hat condit ion is the dialogue. When speaking to someone,w e benefit from know ledge that is not contained w ithin us, but w e cannot, short ofw riting that know ledge dow n as Plato did for Socrates, retain it f or other, lateruses. When w e write, w e can keep the knowledge longer, but it is less flexible thanw hen speaking.

The printing press made know ledge personally accessible, it democratized learningand educat ion in w ays never seen before. Information could be read and compared.Standardization became a necessity and a modus operandi.


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2.3 Networked societies: Societies of hypertextNetw orks are at the basis of t he hypertext society . By hypertext w e don' t justimply " a text that is linked to other text s" , but a meaning that encompasses all theworld of electronic communication in permanent information and storageprocessing. It implies a netw ork of resources, people and content that is f luid anddynamic. Any one who is online is a de factonode of the world wide network ofhypertext , constit uting and being constit uted by the larger netw ork. Hypertext issimilar to context, albeit not absolutely collect ive, since it operates both in real timeand asynchronously t hrough the means of specific nodes w ithin t he netw ork, t heUniform Resource Locators (URLs). Knowledge production and processing inhypertext societies is a networked process that enrolls human and nonhuman

technical and scientificactors. Human cognition and machine processing arebrought together in novel ways that augment and transform both parties. Ratherthan bui lding self -contained machines, machines and humans are coupled togetherinto new hybrid actors. Real w orld inf ormat ion and computer generated informationare brought together, allow ing individuals to simultaneously affect and be af fectedby bot h realit ies (Viseu 2003a).

Today, language circulates, combines and recombines f rom anyw here in the w orldat the speed of light. Knowledge is available instantaneously, professionallyorganized, intelligently accessible in digital form. The digital is to the electronicw ord what paper is to t he printed one. Digitization is electricit y s w ordsmith but it

is infinitely more malleable than the printed word, reducing and translating allexperiences, including sensory ones into the same very simplified codea code of1s and 0s. It is thus that digitization allow s the senses back int o the technologiesof linguistic exchange.3 That is what is meant by multi or hyper-media (vision,hearing), virtual reality (kinesthesia), interactive systems (touch). What Walter Ong

3 In one of his lectures at the McLuhan Program for Culture and Technology Paul Levinsonremarked that the real digital divide is not between those who have access and those whodo not, but between that which can be digitized and that which cannot.


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(1982) in Orality and Literacynamed secondary orality is the result of theelect rification of language. Whether w e are watching television or surfing the w eb,w e are seeing mult isensorial transpositions of language, w ith a high emphasis oniconicity, on movement and interaction.

Netw orks relate. Connect. Link. They are constituted by that w hich they connect,but they are more than the sum of their parts. Knowledge and meaning emerge outof the relationships betw een nodes. It is in their flow s and constant renegotiationthat knowledge is established (c.f . M assumi 200 2).

3 Cognitive dimensionsThe key issue is what is the shape of knowledge and mind in the society ofhypertext ?

Hypertext is an electronic condition of language aff ecting thinking, w riting andreading. Literate people speak silently in their heads and call that thinking, whileelectric societies paradoxically write orally. This is a kind of treatment of

language where it appears simultaneously in context and is archived at the sametime. It has some of t he fluidity of t hought (and, in the future, w ith t heimprovement of morphing techniques, perhaps even some of the fluidity, if not thespeed, of imagination) and the immediate pertinence of t alk w ith the lasting qualityof w riting.

3. 1 The mind of hypertext

In a literate mind access to memory is private and discreet , but it is an access tothe subject ' s memory only, not to anybody else' s. Access to the text may becommonly available but t he transformation of text into t hought and images isentirely privatized (w hich is the reason w hy, contrary t o popular and academicopinion, new spapers are not mass media). Thinking or deliberating in hypertextualcondit ions is to access everybody else' s memories and to share directly in real t imeinto t he knowledge capital of t he human condition.

Furthermore, hypertextual cognit ion is not limited to t he single individual accessingthe collective memory in a connective way. It is also shared cognition. It is aprocess in an environment of awareness that does not have a single centre, a singleself, but t ravels from person to person. The contents of our screens are availablesimultaneously t o many people at once, synchronously, or over time, diachronously.The contents of screens and databases may not be as flexible or nuanced andcomplex as those of our private minds, but they are oft en more reliable, not only byrepeating faithfully what they originally represented, but also by enriching

themselves with new links and new additions and adducing new partners inthought.

Hypertextual cognition is deeply linked to t he technology that mediates it and vice-versa. The assumptions designed into t he technological mediator w ill determine theactiv it ies it constrains or enhances, and t hese will change over time. The USENETcase is useful t o exemplify w hat w e are discussing here. USENET w as initially aconnection betw een several American universities and later became the home


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system for of the internet' s newsgroups (discussion groups). When they w ereconceived new sgroups w ere asynchronous, text ual conversations. In order to readand participate individuals had to either be online, looking at the screen, or knowexactly where to search. However, with the development of powerful searchengines, and the indexing of this information onto their search algorithms,newsgroups lost their ephemeral character. As they shifted into permanent andsearchable archives, t he experience and expectat ions of those participating w eredrastically transformed.

3.2 Digital versus mental objectsThe mind of hypertext is dominated by icons, logos, links. Its main interface is thescreen. Elect ricity favors iconic relationships. Everything w e see on a screen is akind of "mental object" an icon, an image of memory, but externalized. Whenscreens support the display of digitally constructed objects, one cannot help butnotice the great similarities betw een mental objects (MO) and digital objects (DO).Among t he points DOs have in common w ith MOs:

They depend on connect ionsThey are meant to be networkedThey are recreated on demand, just-in-time , so t o speakThey are reasonably reliable (DOs perhaps more so than MOs)They are vulnerable to syst emic attacks and destruct ion (mental breakdowns,viruses)They are part of a greater - reasonably homogenous wholeThey rely on very low intensity electrical (organic and electronic) energyThey are made of varying doses of perceptual, iconic and conceptual content(wireframes and polygons are typical equivalents to imaging concepts, whilerendering does the job of sensory memory)They are scalable and susceptible to shortcuts and generalizations

Thus many complexities of mind are emulated by informat ion and communicat iontechnologies (ICT). Of course DOs also add the hugely expanded potential of bothbeing provided by someone other than the mind of the user, and by being amenableto co-production in real-time by several participants. In eff ect, technological t rendsshow the relentless drive towards faster and larger connections as well as morepertinent (hypertinent as we call them) connections. The rapid improvement ofsearch engines from the early days of Yahoo! < w w w .yahoo.com> to t he presenttime of Gurunet < w w w .gurunet.com> and Google < w w w .google.com> showscognit ive progress in leaps and bounds.

3.3 Main features of knowledge in hypertextual formatAgain, it is probably easier to distinguish some features of hypertextual cognitionby contrasting them w ith t hose of t he preceding format:

TEXT HYPERTEXT

Frontality /horizontality (page/stage) total surround/immersion (screen, VR)


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Linearity random accessCausality Self -organizat ion / serendipitySequentiality SimultaneityFragmentation IntegrationCentralization Decentralization

Rationality EmergenceAbstraction SimulationAnalysis Pattern recognitionRepresentation participation/interactivityHistoricity All-at-onceness

Netw orks change our conception and percept ion of t ime and space. For instance,as readers, our main relat ionship to spat ial display is f rontal, w hether w e considerthe page, the stage, the perspective or the theory. With the electronicenvironments we are surrounded by information, or we penetrate it as in VirtualReality installations, or, more simply, as when we displace a cursor in a search

space on our screen. Our relationship to texts is sequential and linear (even if w ecan, of course, skip pages) while we have random access to hypertext s andhypermedia, something that w e can appreciate w hen we search for a specific placeon a DVD as opposed to patiently run a videotape to get to the same point.Causality dominates our sense of historical progress. We perceive time as flow ingin one irreversible direction (usually to the right of centre), but with electronicmedia we make all times simultaneous, just an issue of pertinent retrieval. Analysisand synthesis organize and produce the rational mind, w hereas principles of self-organization imply ing the interaction of many independent causes that operate inthe emergence of phenomena such as, precisely, the development of the internetand the web and blogs.

No longer measured in kilometers, space is measured in unit s such as c licks orsignal indicators. How many clicks aw ay is our destination? How much signal doesmy mobile phone have? No longer measured in hours, t ime is immediacy, it is thenow, t he timeless time (Castells 1996). The eff ects on cognition areunquestionable, as it brings out the minds of the users to the screens,interconnects them and accelerates them on networks.

In the next few sections of this paper w e outline some of t he key concepts ofknow ledge societies as we see them developing or emerge. These concepts are notmeant to exhaust t he topic of the cognitive transformations in know ledge societies.Instead, they provide some insight into the different stages of t he life cycle of

information and knowledge, that is, its production, processing, distribut ion, storage,and access or retrieval.

3.4 AugmentationReal t ime, anyw here, anyw hen communication, be it v ia the w eb or the mobilephone, t ext, images or audio, is not only t ransforming but also facilitating thecreation of new social and cognitive dynamics.


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Knowledge production and processing in knowledge societies is an increasinglynetworked process that interconnectshuman and nonhumantechnical andscient if icactors. Human cognition and cognitive technologies are brought togetherin novel w ays that augment and transform both parties. The result is the creation ofnew kinds of hybrids, entit ies that defy categorization, and that can simultaneouslyaffect and be affected by real world information and computer generatedinformation (Viseu 2003a).

A good example of augmentation is the wearable computer. A w earable computeris an intimate, cognitive technology, one that shares an individuals personal spaceand becomes part of his/her embodied, sensorimotor structures, thus having apotential for changing t hat individuals interpretation of t he world and of him/herself(c.f. Varela 1999; Varela & Mulder 2000). Wearable computers are cognitivetechnologies that are proactive in the process of decision making. They aredesigned t o become technological companions or a second skin that besidesproviding sensory and cognit ive augmentation are also involved in the process ofdecision-making. With wearable computers the body becomes an information

conduit and its role changes drastically, becoming, in Lev Manovichs (2002)words, a data space from which data is extracted or inserted (Viseu 2003b;Viseu forthcoming).

3.5 AccelerationThe acceleration of the lifecycle of knowledge is another distinguishingcharacteristic of knowledge societies. Information and communicationtechnologies have facilitated the acceleration of knowledge on all fronts.Knowledge is produced, manipulated, distributed and stored almostinstantaneously, at speeds (and spaces) far beyond anyt hing w e had experiencedbefore. Some of these stages become automated, for instance, information isimmediately archived as it is entered in a w ebsites dynamic database.

In many ways this acceleration is related to the break down of spatial boundaries.The colonizat ion of space has been achieved by landing on the moon, shrinkingthe planet v ia netw orks and duplicating real space by virt ual space. The newchallenge is the conquest of time. As we embrace speed, and accelerate time, weenter the age of timeless time as Castells (1996) puts it.

Several examples are illustrative of this new knowledge speed. Word of mouth,for instance, has become mediated by electronic technologies giving it aninstantaneous and expanded character. Internet gossip is both instant andw orldw ide and in many instances can make or break reputat ions. For a

professional example, f ilm dist ributors report that their revenues are being great lyaffected by technologies that allow the view ers to communicatetext messaging,voice or emailtheir opinions to others as soon as a film is over (or even before).Word of mouth has always been a crucial element in a films success or failure.But, w hile before it t ook about a w eek for the word to spread, it now takes one ortw o days. Studios report t hat [i]n t he U.S. these days, the pace of chat is fastenough, in some cases, to affect a movie's box office results from its Fridayopening to Saturday night. (Muoz 2003). Moreover, the combination of mobile


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phones with the web, allows the establishment of a parallel, independentcommunication channel.

The speed of information diffusion has also enabled the creation of new socialdynamics, such as cyberact ivism . Cyberact ivism refers to the use of ICTs in theorganization of social activism movements, protests and events. If in Westerncountries it is usually associated w ith t he w eb, in other countries cyberact ivit ismrelies mainly on the use of mobile phones and on their capability for text-messaging. Text messaging offers a series of advantages, it relies on cell phonesthat are often more ubiquitous than internet access, texting is cheaper thanmaking a phone call, messages can easily be f orw arded t o groups of people, andsenders can receive a notice that indicates if t he text message has been deliveredor not. For instance, in the Philippines demonstrators used text messaging tocoordinate their protest actions against President Joseph Estrada in real t ime. Onenewspaper quotes an unemployed construct ion w orker saying, The phone is ourweapon now (Rafael 2003). Moreover, text messaging was widely used todistribute information, jokes and rumors during the impeachment hearings of

Joseph Estrada, hence playing an enormous role in eroding w hatever legitimacy hehad left (ibid). New spapers report t hat at t he height of this movement 70 milliontext messages (SMS) w ere being sent daily, in a country w here only about 7 to 8million people own mobile phones (Ayson 2001; Rafael 2003). 4

As speed accelerates all spheres of lif e, it is important to start examining w hat theeff ects of constant accessibilit y associated w ith an obligation for immediacy are.

3.6 UbiquityThe perception of time is also changing profoundly due to t he ubiquity of personaltechnologies. Waiting for someone or something, f or example, has gone through aradical transformation. While waiting in a line-up, one can be on the phone. Ifsomeone is late, one can call or be called to better manage time. Likewise,meeting someone no longer has a fixed character. A meet ing can be set up on thefly, by simply calling someone and finding out where they are.

Mobility , t he ability to navigate seamlessly t hrough place and space, w ithoutlosing the ability to access and distribute informationthat is, without losingconnectivityis certainly one of the marks of knowledge societies. In NorthAmerica this seamless navigation has been primarily achieved through the use ofpersonal technologies, such as the PDA or RIM, that facilitate ubiquitous, oralways-on, internet connection and above all, email connectivity. In most otherparts of the w orld, however, t he technology that has had the greatest impact on

mobility is that of w ireless mobile/cell phones.

Mobile personal technologies have a definite impact on the ability to accessinformat ion anytime, anyw here. As they permeate through all spheres of life, the

4 Ayson (2001) also reports that the internet penetration in the Philipinnes in 2001 wasclose to 2 million less than a third of that of mobile phones. For more on this specific eventsee Rafael 2003.


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w orld that surrounds us becomes more complex and interweaved, creating hybrid,fluid spaces that are defined in interaction by those that compose them (c.f.Castells 1996 ; Sheller & Urry 2003). The interplay of digital and physical spacesis illustrative. A pract ical example is that of mobile game developerssuch asAlive!who take advantage of the implementation of location technologies (suchas GPS) in mobile phones to develop mult iuser games that take advantage of theusers physical location. If two players are in close physical location they willreceive a t ext message (SMS) indicating t heir geographical distance, and w henthey are close enough, they are able to play in virtual space against one another.

3.7 Connective knowledge productionThe interactive feature of ICTs is of crucial importance to understand theknowledge society. Not only can virtually anyone - granted that access to thenetw orks infrastruct ure and digital literacy are available - produce know ledge tobe shared by others, networks also facilitate and enhance the opportunities forcollaboration betw een indiv iduals, be it in real-time or asynchronous. Collaborativesoftw are is being used in a variety of contexts. It supports t eamw ork over time

and space, that is, when those participating are physically distant; and itcomplements real space interact ion, for instance, by being used in the classroomto foment discussion and conceptual development.

It is this capacity for collaborative action and knowledge production that marksone of t he know ledge societies main characteristics: emergence. In a netw orkedknowledge society the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The whole isrelational and under constant renegotiation, its shape and identity continuallybeing redefined.

3.8 InnovationInnovation is a condition of know ledge. It is but t he continuation and exacerbationof a tendency that w as bred into us by the alphabet. By allowing people to extractinformation f rom human situations (history, local lore, rules and proverbs, rituals,etc) and to store them for uses in other context s, the alphabet allow ed permanentrecombination of meaning in technology, science and fic tion. The difference now isthat the delay between conception and production has been reduced to quasiinstantaneous eff ects. This leads to a situation w here we w ill merely t hinksomething up and get it done, much like the old very old days of magic.

Not being biased towards any type of content the internet (in its current shape)fosters, through its wires or waves, endless creativity and sharing. Peer to peernetworks are exemplar of the internets architecture. Networks such as the now

defunct Napster < w w w .napster.com> or Kazaa < w w w .kazaa.com> connectindividual computers to other individual computers allowing for direct exchangesamongst t hem. With every new item, or recombination of an old one, that isuploaded by any of the members of the community, the commons are enriched.

3.9 Obsolescence: In literate societies know ledge was traditionally stored in paper.Paper is biased tow ards space (Innis 1951 ) hence not being too resistant t o t ime.However, paper presents an advantage over digital media: If it survives the passage


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of time it can be accessed w ithout the need for further support. Digital data is notvisible to the naked eye w ithout the help of a machine to t ranslate it. This machinemust not only speak the same language as the data, it must also be compatiblewith its material format. The format of portable media, for example, has changedconsiderably. Old 3.5 floppy disks and newer 5.25 have become irrelevant asdata files become too large to be stored in them. In t his process large amounts ofknow ledge can be rendered inaccessible, and t hus virt ually lost . The issue ofknow ledge storage w ill play a great role in the maintenance of know ledge societies.In the w ords of Roger Fiedler, a high level executive from Knight-Ridder, w e arealways threatened with a case of digit al Alzheimer .

4 Key issues in the knowledge societyWhile the trends that shape the know ledge in hypertext continue to unf old, theyalso raise political and social issues that need to be addressed to prepare societyto reap theirs benefits and avoid their potential downside.

4.1 Democratization of knowledge

Information and communication netw orks facilitate not only individual input(production) but also access to information. Two examples are of particularinterest, the democratization of medical information and MITs OpenCourseWare.

Medical information is perhaps one of t he most elitist kinds of inf ormation in t hesense that first hand access to it is restricted to a limited few : t he healthprofessionals. By the same token, health related information is not only of asensitive but also vit al importance for t he average cit izen. The importance ofsearching for health related informat ion online has been w idely documented. Forinstance, Baker et al. (2003 ) report, in an artic le published in the Journal of t heAmerican Medical Association, t hat Approximately 40 % of respondents w ithinternet access reported using the internet t o look for advice or informat ionabouthealth or health care in 2001 (Baker et al. 2003). Hence, init iatives that placemedical information in the public realm are of major importance. One of suchinitiatives was undertaken in 1997, under the presidency of Bill Clinton, andconsist ed of providing f ree access for all t o MEDLINE. MEDLINE is the NationalLibrary of Medicine reference database. It cont ains more than 11 million articlespublished in 46000 biomedical journals (MEDLINEplus n.d.) constituting the w orld's most extensive collection of published medical information (MEDLINE1997). While access to health informat ion online is not, and should not, be takenas a substit ute f or seeing a doctor, it is helpful in providing individuals w ithknow ledge about t heir condition. (The issue of t he authenticit y of the informationretrieved will be discussed in the next point).

Another example, of another initiative that facilitates access to valuableknow ledge that w as previously limited to a restricted group is the MassachusettsInstitute of Technologys (MIT) OpenCourseWare. MITs OpenCourseWare is aweb-based publishing initiative that allows everyone to access the teachingmaterials lecture notes, v ideo lectures, simulations, lab courses, reading listthat are used in the each of MITs courses. As its website declares, [t]he ideabehind MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is to make MIT course materials that are


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used in the t eaching of almost all undergraduate and graduate subjects availableon the Web, f ree of charge, to any user anyw here in the world (MIT OCW n.d.).

The potentials behind initiatives such as the two described here is immense.However, t hese are increasingly being countered by init iatives that retrieveinformation from t he public commons, placing it w ithin t he realm of privateproperty (see point on legislation for more). It is important in this regard to reachequilibrium betw een the notion that information w ants to be f ree (John PerryBarlow, 1996) and adequate rewards for information creators, distributors andproviders.

4.2 Legislative framework of propertyThe importance of the legal framework of property, intellectual property andcopyright stems not only f rom the fact t hat nowadays knowledge is increasinglybeing converted into digital formats, but f rom the fact that as it does it becomes information , that is, a (usually private) product that can be copyrighted and thatis bound by intellectual property or trademark rights. Since digitization affects all

spheres of lif e, the result is t hat copyright law is entering the realm of disciplinessuch as zoology, botany, and genetics. Hence, t he contents of a cell, or a gene,the constit ution of a plant, can all be subject t o these rules.

The changes made to the current legal framew ork are having, and w ill cont inue tohave, a significant impact on creativity and innovation. As growing numbers ofentities and information are taken from the public realm to be placed under thecontrol of a private ow ners, the commons is depleted. (See Lessig 2001 f or moreon this topic).

4.3 CustomizationIf lit erate societ ies relied on the standardizat ion of language and thought, and onmass news delivery, hypertextual societies open the possibility for customizationand variance; customization of ones access to t he world, variation in t he ways ofexpressing oneself. The internet has imploded the dynamic process of creat ingmeaning w ith language. New terms and practices spread like v iruses amonginternet users. Take googling, for instance: it refers to the practice of usingGoogle, t he search engine < w w w .google.com> , t o look for information aboutsomeone else, usually prior to meeting this person (Swidey 2003 ). With its abilityto make the past present and permanent Google is t ransforming t he socialdynamics of getting to know others.

Furthermore, the internet off ers more opportunities to customize ones access to

reality , because it is a my-w ay medium. It not only off ers a one-way channel(like the radio or t elevision), and a tw o-w ay communication (such as thetelephone) it also offers the possibility of a my-way interface, that is, thepossibility of personalizing the medium itself and what it delivers. For instance,newspapers sites can be customized to deliver only news about sports, or thecontrary, to exclude all news about sports (Negroponte 1995 ). Email filt ers can,for example, be created to automat ically delete incoming information containingthe terms x or y . In its extreme, customization gives users the w orld at the


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measure of their specific needs; Individual comfort is elevated to its maximumexponent.

Several authors (e.g., Shapiro 1999; Sunstein 2001) have w arned of t he risks oftailoring reality to fit individual preferences. Aristot le, in Politics, states that acity is composed of dif ferent kinds of men; similar people cannot bring a city intoexistence (quoted in Sennett 1994). But, w hat would Aristotle say about a w orldwhich is customized to fit each individuals needs, which is experienceddiff erently by every individual. Is it st ill one common space? Is reality merely t hesum of its cit izens or is it a greater entity ? Combined w ith the tendency ofbroadcast media to atomize in narrow casting to reach ever smaller and morespecialized audiences, the bias of customization is threatening commoninformation intake and t he very nature of public information it self.

4.4 Authentification and trust Determining the authent icit y of the information being retrieved is a problem that,we believe, will become pivotal in years to come. The issue of judging the

accurateness, authenticit y and legitimacy of the information being retrieved is notan easy one, especially given the exponential grow th in the number of informationbits t hat are available on the World Wide Web. Misinf ormationbe it in t he formof spam, pyramid schemes or untruthful informationposes serious obstacles tothe creation of t rust in online environments, and has been classified by some asthe more threatening kind of computer viruses (Cannon 2001). Reflecting uponthe example offered above, the democrat izat ion of access to medical know ledgeis helpful t o understanding the ext ent of the implications of inf ormationauthenticity. In literate societies the physicality of the sourcea healthprofessional or a book on t he subject gave it some legitimacy. Errors w ere stillmade, but because access to information w as restricted it w as easier to determinethe credentials of the source. Nowadays, how ever, medical advice is off ered in avariety of websites, email lists, email spam and support groups, among others.The multiplicity of information availableoften contradictorymakes it imperativeto design mechanisms that w ill help individual users judge the authenticit y of t heinformation they are accessing.

The Ebay < w w w .ebay.com> peer-evaluation system, where individuals are ratedby their peers on the basis of their interaction history, is one possible way ofdealing w ith this issue. Similarly t he creation of communities of interest andpractice, such as Slashdot < w w w .slashdot.com> , provide good examples of thecreation of online reputations that are based on the recorded history of onesdigital persona.

4.5 AccountabilityThe sharing of the decision making process with others and with socio-technological entities aggravates the always problematic issue of assigningaccountability. An example is the practice of relaying illicit content from amultiplicity of servers in various countries, or issuing forbidden material in onecountry from one w here the same content is authorized. Where can responsibilitybe assigned in such pract ices? The example of w earable computers illustrates this


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point well. If these cognitive technologies become pro-active, being able to actand react to certain stimuli, where can we place the origin of action? In theindividuals w ho designed the technology? in the technology it self? Or in t heperson w ho is wearing it? This issue is all the more important as new legislat ion isenacted in some Western count ries prevent ing users from reverse engineering thetechnologies they acquire. For instance, in the United States the DigitalMillennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prevents users from tinkering w ith the designfeatures of digital t echnologies.

The increased use of sof tw are agentsmediating actorsis also of importance.Agents are currently being developed mainly in the context of electroniccommerce. The idea behind it is that an sets up t he parameters of his/her agent,w ho then t rails the world w ide web in search of t he best deal. For instance, Patt iMaes, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), isconduct ing research on the development of soft w are agents to assist users dealw ith t he grow ing numbers of incoming information. Her team [has] built the f irstsuccessful (sic) prototypes of agents f or personalized information f iltering, eager

assistant agents, agents that buy and sell on behalf of a user, matchmakingagents and remembrance agents (Maes n.d.)

4.6 IdentityOur conception of self is increasingly being extended through the electronicnetworks. Be it the internet, mobile phones or other networked media, identity isincreasingly f luid and relat ional. As t ime and space are measured in netw orked-terms, so is identit y. Who a person is is intimately connected to the netw orks thathe/she belongs to, and to the nodes and hubs that link him/her to others. Moreover,identit y is dependent not only on physical elements, but also on digitalcharacterist ics, and it is, t o some extent involuntary and/or unconscious. Activities,in the elect ronic realm, leave footprints, t hat are beyond the individuals control andcan then be stored in databases where they can be retrieved. The image that theycreate has been given diff erent names. For instance, Agre (1994) calls it a digit alindividual , Kilger (1994) a virtual self , Poster (1990) an additional self , Clarke(1994) a digital persona and Mark Federman, a digiself (2003).

As Sheller and Urry (2003) suggest ones identit y is no longer neural netw orks butalso by elect ronic ones. Persons are nodes in these netw orks. The body f unct ionsas a hyperlink to gain access to all these fragmented selves, and to connect toother nodes in the personal netw orks that no longer exist only in physical spaces .Legislat ion on digit al identit ies and their relationships to organic and social ones isstill under construct ion.

4.7 Private/publicLikew ise, notions of public and private space blend, giv ing shape to new kinds ofprivatesthe self is extended through electronic netw orks that define it andconstitute it (see googling example above)and new types of publics. HowardRheingolds (2002 ) descript ion of mobile phone use amongst t eenagers in Finlandis exemplar. He observed that t he mobile phone is often used as a social, publ icmedium, when images and messages displayed on the screen are shared with


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others w ho are present or w hen the conversat ion itself is made public. Rheingoldconcludes that a new mode of social communication, enabled by a newtechnology, has already become diffused into the norms of Finnish society(Rheingold 2002, xvi).

React ions against the pervasiveness of communicat ion and the personalavailability that it requires are also becoming apparent. France, for instance, hasbecome the first country to legalize jamming devices for public use (hAnluain2002). In England, a proposal to enable subway stations with signal spectrumw as met w ith protest by part of the passengers (ibid). A rtistic experimentationalso provides an example here. The Grand Prize winner of the 2002 Media ArtsFestival of Japans Agency for Cultural Affairs explored the theme of the f rustration and anger caused by other peoples mobile phones (Jones & IDEO200 2). This project, tit led Social Mobiles,5 and developed by Crispin Jones andIDEO, proposed new functions for the mobile phone. For instance, the electricshock phone, that ensures that people talk w ith a low voice by giving t hemelect ric shocks when they dont . Or the catapult phone that launches sounds into

other peoples phone conversat ions thus effectively jamming them (IDEO & Jones2002).

Personal stories are also emerging. In their investigation of the internet use ineveryday life, Clement et al. (2003) report on the need, f elt by some, to establishclear separations between times of availability and off-times. They ask if it ispossible that w e will w itness an increased reaction against t he often proclaimedideal of t he always-on, alw ays-accessible internet? (Clement et al. 200 3).

4. 8 New divides: One of the biggest challenges today is the grow ing inequalit iesbetw een poor and rich. Alt hough there w as some initial prophesizing about ICTs asthe great equalizer (e.g., Toff ler 1980; Negroponte 199 5), reality has proved themw rong. At t he daw n of the 21 st century the gap between affluent and developingcountries has not been reduced. In fact, some authors argue that netw orked ICTshave been developed and implemented along the lines of this dualismthat is itselfa product of a neo-liberal capitalist policyhence exacerbating it (see for instance,Castells 1999; Sassen 1998; Stiglitz 20 02; Klein 2000 ). In sum, the geography ofinequality existent in the w orld, w as transposed to t he infrastructure and space ofnetworks.6

5 < http://w ww.ideo.com/case_studies/Social_Mobiles/index.html>6 In a somewhat paradoxical fashion, many of the places that are made more invisible by thepower of networks are the ones suffering the most from their remains and disposals. Aseries of recent articles in Mercury News documents the netw orks of the e-waste business.That is, the sale of information technology w aste, oft en constituted by toxic parts, toChina. It exposes the sweatshop work rules that bind those who work in their recycling,and the disregard for environmental regulations (Schoenberger 2002). Likewise, Kleinnarrates her conversation with a 17 year old girl who assembles cd-rom drives for IBM inthe outskirts of Manila: [we make computers [the girl says] but we dont know how tooperate computers" (Klein 2000, xvii).


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[DO YOU HAVE A SOURCE FOR THIS? URL, ETC..]

These divides are not only relative to access. Digital literacy, the ability to makeeffective use (Gurstein 2003) of the capabilities of ICTs, is also an issue. So islanguage, the ability t o read English (the language of t he web). However, the earlierclaims that English would be and remain the overwhelmingly dominant language ofthe Internet need to be measured against t he rapid rise of ot her languages on line,an indicator t hat t he geography of inequality is not destiny.

On the other hand, this divide is, in many ways a process that feed onto itself:because there are few Africans online, there is little African content. The lack ofAf rican content draws less Af ricans tow ards the w eb, and so on.

The hopeful news is that on all fronts the digital divide is being eroded by theadopt ion of cheap, pervasive and easy-to-use (cellular phones, SMS) technologies.The mobile phone penetration is ten times faster and larger then that of theinternet, its adoption being felt across the globe. Mobile phones require a lessburdensome physical infrastructure and this has led some to defend it as a solutionfor the digital div ide. Continents such as Af rica, t raditionally af f lict ed by a depleted

public service infrastructure, are profiting from the appearance of wirelesscommunication technologies. Mobile phones offer the possibility of accessing thew eb, but more important than that, they are fomenting the creation of analternative netw ork w hich, in some w ays, is less rich than the w eb, but by thesame token much more personal. In the mobile phone netw orks, t he creation ofhubs and nodes is more democratic, albeit far from equalitarian.

4.9 Political dividers


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Another aspect of digital divide is that political conditions can increase it byexcessive control. Countries that t rack internet activ ity include not only repressiveor one party systems, such as Saudi Arabia, China and Burma, but also establisheddemocracies, as Britain, Russia and Australia (NYT staff 2001). While it is true thatthere is software that allows users to circumvent these barriers (e.g., the nowdefunct safeweb.com) it is also true that great eff orts are being made to make theinternet a more regulated environment (see Mann 2001; Lessig 2001).

Moreover, a number of innovative init iatives are using the mobile phone to emulateinternet-communication, hence providing a different kind of access. In Portugal, forexample, t he mult imedia branch of the state ow ned t elevision company (RTP) offersa service called TVChat, a television channel where individuals can emulate real-time chat room communication using the text messaging feature (SMS) of theirmobile phones. In 2002 RTP reported having 15 thousand users per day thattranslated into 40 thousand daily messages, adding up to about one millionmessages per month (Telemoveis staf f 2002 ).

Not all political initiatives go in the direction of cont rolling internet access and use.In fact , successful e-government projects, and more importantly, e-governanceinitiat ives, are being developed at global, national and local levels. Moreover,politicians have started using the web to divulge their ideas and positions onmatters of interest f or their constit uents. Weblogs or blogs are the latestinstruments used for this. Blogging is not only a kind of personal diary madepublic, it is also a netw orking device and an instant personality scan all at once. Ithelps to build trust not only by presenting transparently verifiable facts aboutoneself and ones opinions, but also the automated index of ones interest andpreoccupations along with the netw ork of people querying them. Blogging hasbeen available since the late 90s but only reached public and political attention inthe last few months. It is said that Howard Dean, a Democratic Party Candidatefor t he US presidency, ow es his rapid rise from relatively unknow n to f avorite tohaving posted his opinions in Blogging for America , his political platform on line.

A blog is in Winer s terms, a kind of a continual tour, w ith a human guide w hoyou get to know . There are many guides to choose from, each develops anaudience, and there's also comraderie and politics between the people who runw eblogs, t hey point to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc(Winer n.d.). An example of such an initiative is that of Portugal, where thepossibility to ow n a blog has been legislated so that all members of parliamentare able to host their online memory in the Parliaments server (Oliveira 2003).

5 Conclusion

Knowledge is dynamic, flowing, shared, and applied. A knowledge society is onethat shares informat ion at least t o the extent t hat is can help to secure the survivaland the harmony of the social body. Today, globalization makes it clear that thelarger social body is all t he people on the planet. There is much in know ledge thatconcerns and affects them all. Our prime objective then should be to shareknowledge in larger and larger realms.


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The hardest question is how to reconcile mindsets. The shift from religious tosecular that occurred during the transition from oral to literate societies wasaccompanied by a brutal clash betw een irreconcilable mindsets. Greek t ragedy w asinvented to ease the passage from orality to literacy among the Athenians. Thesame kind of traumatizing transition occurred from the Middle Ages to theRenaissance. It was impossible to reconcile the epistemology of the ChristianChurch w ith that of the secular individual. A ft er tw o hundred years of religiouswars, the secular mind took over and established tolerance, supported by thedominant information-processing device of the times, the printed word. Thestrategy of tolerance worked for Europe until the 20 th century during which thew orld suff ered the worst convulsions of it s history. Today, w e are confrontinganother great change of mind, a similar situation, except that it is taking the formof a cont raction of t ime (instantaneity) as well as of space (globalization). We aredealing not w ith a simple transition, but quite literally a juxt aposing, a forcedcohabitation between religious and secular orders. The violence can take extremeforms.

We need to create epistemological condit ions w here people can experience othercultures ways of seeing and being in the world to get a relativized perception oftheir own reality. Indigenous knowledge must be experienced from within to helpsupport t he democratic ideal. However, t his must be done w ithout becomingcondescending or indiff erent . Other know ledges and know ledge of t he other mustnot only be made available but also understood and discussed. The future weshould be aiming to create must ensure that the networks provide different culturesand peoples with equal representation and access to the knowledge flows. It isimportant t o counter the tendency of having the netw orked space become a replicaof the geographical inequalities.

We need to assess where we are now and what we must be careful about as weplan for the future. In our current networked societies, knowledge (and information)has become easier to access and to produce. Know ledge is more dynamic t han everbefore, w ith thoughts immediately becoming part of the Commons (e.g., blogs),and languages are being renew ed and revived through the constant evolut ion ofnew vocabularies and associated practices (such as googling).

Cognition is, by necessity, also undergoing major changes. The ubiquitousavailability of computer chips and devices has accelerated the thought and decisionmaking process, but it has equally increased the demands placed on individuals.Real-time implies constant ability to access but also constant need to reply. The

cognitive impacts of this increased demand are still not known.

Furthermore, the potential for collective and connective knowledge production isnow more enhanced than ever. Groups of indiv iduals can collaborate remotely, w iththe support of a variety of netw orked softw are and hardw are. The hybrid characterof this collective knowledge production is also becoming increasingly explicit. Weare currently experiencing a growing implementation and use of computing devicesthat actively participate in cognitive processes, such as decision making. Cognition,


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then, is manifestly a shared process. Mind and cognition, in t he tw enty-firstcentury, are not bound by the body, instead they are as distributed, decentralizedand interconnected as the networks that surround us. This argument is far fromnew e.g., Bateson 1972; Vygotsky 1962; Vygotsky 1978how ever, now it ismore visible than ever before.

The technological artefacts that participate in the cognitive process, as we haveshown, are not mere neutral tools that individuals use as they w ill. Instead, theseartefacts great ly aff ect (and are affected by) the thought processes that they helpdevelop and sustain.

It is clear that we are standing at the edge of an era with great promise.Knowledge, the staple of knowledge societies, is a unique resource in that itexpands by use and grows by sharing (unless it is subject to copyrights).

Returning to t he argument w e made at the start of this article, w e must realize thatin a world that is so interconnected as ours, there is a risk of a domino fall of

fantastic proportions. To guarantee that this does not happen, we must ensure thatall nodes are represented and all links working. As Lszl Barabsi (2003) puts it, unless we are w illing to cut t he connect ions, t he only w ay to change the w orld isto improve all nodes and links.

6 References

Agre, Philip E. (1994 , June). Understanding the digital individual. The Informat ionSociety, 10, (2), 73-76.

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