Message-ID: <19991213200507.AAA29088@jubilee.ns.sympatico.ca@LOCALNAME> Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 16:05:17 -04 From: Kerry Miller <mailto:kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca> Subject: Re: Perspective on Devel-L (20k To: mailto:DEVEL-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
Donald,<color><param>7F00,0000,0000</param>> Perhaps it might help if Kerry gives a brief summary
> of or reference for what I'm guessing is some academic work
> on electronic communications (?) to help give some of us (or is
> it just me?) a better understanding of what the underlying
> idea [is.]
<color><param>0100,0100,0100</param> Only when one looks back, does a 'sensible' shape emerge from the
series of events that led one forward. Although this is the experiential
basis for the adage that one only learns from mistakes, it is
</color>understandable that at the organizational end of the spectrum, 'funding agencies' want reproducible results. The idea behind all my participation online these days is packed into those two sentences, as solid a bit of conceptual DNA as can be.
Circumstances warrant my unpacking it, and I am always pleased to go through the exercise, as each opportunity not only improves my fluency in expressing the idea thus far, but throws new light on its further ... development.
Here, I offer it in easy stages (separated by ===== ), but I emphasise (usually by an asterisk) the point that it comes apart much easier in dialogical form. If, at any point, this bare outline begs your questions, then may I humbly say, it is your responsibility to ask them?
=====
On the one hand, as anyone doing the real work knows -- whether they are benchtop prototyping (to a production deadline) or learning a (school) subject or damming a river (within budget) or raising a child (when the parents are at work), in short, developing -- trying to bring something new into being by rules of accountability can only distort the process. Ultimately it forces *description to be *prescriptive.
In particular, those in the 'development field' are constrained to do only what they have done before; to reproduce what they know -- even when that knowledge is secondhand ('book-learning'), rather than from the school of hard knocks.
On the other hand, one must be careful with ones terminology when venturing onto cross-disciplinary turf. For instance, 'accountability' at one end of the spectrum of human relations is *not synonymous with 'responsibility' at the other. Still well within a nutshell -- if that's not too loaded a word ;-) -- one may say that the idea is to make the difference between these two terms - literally, points of reference - clear, because their conflation obscures the entire spectrum.
===== <color><param>0100,0100,0100</param>
</color>As the handful of messages between Douglas and me demonstrated, *ones terminology is useless if it is not shared by the other. The contact point between two people or two perspectives or two cultures -- the 'interface' of benefactor/ beneficiary or subjective/ objective or you/ me --- is language (Do we agree?), and language is a real-time, continuously ongoing... development, not a phrasebook or a Rosetta stone.
Using fairly neutral perspectives as an illustration, between fellow Researchers (both 'going down' let's say, as in *under*standing) *as between fellow Executors* (both 'going up,' as with a building or investment), all kinds of 'shorthand' circulates -- but Heaven help the researcher who tries to talk to the executor!
I'm not saying merely that they have specialized terminology, but that the states of mind reflected by the *relation between terms* are diametrically opposed. All the jargon in the world will not help; they have to acquire some ground of shared, time-consuming, lived experience, in which to find a common perspective, in order to build a language they can trust. They have to acquire, I suggest, a new head which is neither Research or Execution, but something *newly grown between them.
<color><param>0100,0100,0100</param>
</color>What happened on Devel-L was that my researching this idea, trivial as it appears, met Doug's hardheaded executorial stance in which (if I can sum it up) one either *already knows or doesnt know what one is doing. <color><param>0100,0100,0100</param>
</color> ===== <color><param>0100,0100,0100</param>
Of course, it is a complex situation when 'language' is both the content
and the container, the medium and the object of understanding, and the
two parties are not able to stay consistently on one 'level,' or to follow
which 'level' the other is on -- because they have no (what?) language in
which to express the need for such consistency or following.
On this level, when Doug perceived that I was not 'respecting' the
correctness of his position, that was enough for him to conclude that I
must be stoned, or sick, or deliberately mischievous.
For my part</color>, I failed to make clear that I was not criticising his abilities or experience or his performance *anywhere else*. I was not able to establish that my interest is *only in the dialogue he and I might have, and (after the first blush of complementarity) that failure coloured everything else. (For instance, the 'light touch' I tried to maintain was read as sarcasm -- but if one doesnt ask, how can the other's *saying it's not make any difference? All there is between us is words, pixelated text.)
=====
And yet, on another level, is this not precisely the situation in any 'cross- cultural encounter'? Is there no correlation between non-recognition of new ideas and culture shock? Things may well have changed since I was in the field -- but is the ground any firmer under an untested assumption than it used to be? If 'agents of change' still use their skills of recognition and interpretation to *build on existing knowledge in order to do something new
-- and if doing *this job in *this place at *this time under *these
conditions and above all, with enough input from *these people
so that they at least understand (perhaps to accept) the results,
indeed something new, then what on earth is? --
why do they turn them off when it comes to computer-mediated communication (maybe to save the batteries...)? If everything developmental is now cut and dried, where are the glowing results of this unquestionable Progress? Can you tell me please? (Is it Seattle?)
Perhaps, I thought, after 50+ years of international technological failure (if truth be told), the assumptions of development should be examined for relevance. If the basic issues of population and resource maldistribution can only be 'solved' by the billions of ordinary people who are themselves the 'problem,' it is faintly plausible that *communicating this responsibility -- this belief, let me say -- to them is a relevant matter. Why, then, shouldnt some of us ordinary people start to look at the problem of communication? (Otherwise, if we wait patiently until our global masters tell us its okay to communicate *their way, we'll all be sterile and there wont be enough food anyhow, and ...)
===== <color><param>0100,0100,0100</param>
</color>On *this level, then, is the spirit of Socratic (or Vygotskian, if youre a constructivist, or Korzybskian, if youre a general semanticist) dialogue. The point of departure for Alfred Korzybski (_Science and Sanity_, c. 1930, and whose concept of 'levels of abstraction' I am using here) is that there is a difference between what *is and what one *thinks is ('The map is not the territory.') Imho, CMC is a 'natural' site for perfect clarity on the distinction, but it seems that the same state of confusion AK perceived is still with us. For instance, when Douglas said (3/12/99), that the 'developed' world may have lost a tradition or two, I slighted the point, because I read it as a statement of what Is the case.
(Looking back, I agree I might have gone on with that rather than making the 'terminological' suggestion:
<color><param>0100,0100,0100</param><FontFamily><param>Times New Roman</param>> Isnt it is this disjunction between 'far er' and 'businessman'
> (more than 'lost traditions') which needs to be understood? In
> other words, why isnt 'development' more nearly an equal trade in
> psycho- social -- not to mention economic -- terms?
and then </color><FontFamily><param>ARIAL</param>reading <FontFamily><param>Times New Roman</param>Douglas's reply <colo ><param>0100,0100,0100</param>:
> It seems to me that we *do* have a disjunction here between the
> players involved. The traditions lost were traded off for something
> that may well be valuable in itself (although that doesn't obviate the
> loss), but it also may well be incomplete or poorly adapted to the
> farmers own needs and/or perceived goals.
</color><FontFamily><param>ARIAL</param>as agreement on the point<FontFamily><param>Times New Roman</param> <FontFamily> param>ARIAL</param>rather than as an expression or image of agreeability -- and again, in responding to his next sentence:
<FontFamily><param>Times New Roman</param>> However, let's say for discussions sake that in this case the product
> really *is* capable of providing a real benefit for the farmers <FontFamily><param>ARIAL</param>
I missed the opportunity to *be in agreement 'for discussion's sake.' )
But yes (I could have said then), a strong native tradition of dialog has been exchanged for a mess of atomistic, objectivist, reductionist, absolutist (cf. <color><param>0100,0100,0100</param><FontFamily><param>MS SERIF</param>Richard Norgaard, _Development Be rayed_, pp 71-73</color><FontFamily><param>ARIAL</param>) *terms. In fact, it is jargon, even tho no one can say who the 'ingroup' is, how one joins or withdraws, or whether it is going 'up' or 'down' relative to anyone else. In these terms, the map *is the reality, everything is accounting, everything is executed with efficiency, and everything is progress *because we believe it to be* -- except, of course, human tradition, which is simply old and in the way.
<color><param>0100,0100,0100</param>
And I would agree that</color> (if one *is such an absolutist), one might therefore 'campaign,' 'protest,' 'organize' a 'movement' against such a 'hegemonic discourse.' One might sneak into a nice quiet forum like this one to launch a polemic, a tirade, an indictment, a call to revolution. That is most certainly not what I did, or do, or plan to do (and if anyone can produce any evidence to the contrary, I'll turn in my gold Devel-L card immediately) -- because in my case the assumption is false: I am not an absolutist ;-)
The alternative, relativistic p.o.v. is that one must (sorry, I forgot to change heads: *can only*) use the tools one has to deal with the problem (and there is always only one problem) that one faces *at the moment* -- and in this case, the problem is not getting the masses to revolt, its getting each person to understand the need to be responsible for hyr own revolution
-- and the tool for that is language,
-- and the ground for that is shared experience
-- and the direction we go is together, as equals --
just as if (I suggest) one is in a foreign land, sitting with the neighbours, looking out over the deforested hills and depleted paddies, learning to 'get along' *constructively towards a solution they could call theirs as much as one might call it one's own.
<color><param>0100,0100,0100</param>=====
It is complex, but doesnt 'complexity' just mean one is looking at
*multiple problems? What does one do then? One finds an additional
dimension to spread them out: in fact, one Takes One's Time.
</color>(The inalienable advantage of dialog is that one has time to share -- and the touchstone of the autocrat is that if one needs more time, one buys it: from the past (via _a priori, 'prepared' status) or from the future ('on the never-never'). So there is another level, the downright personal --
<color><param>0100,0100,0100</param> If *your time is not your own, then I'm sorry for you, because you're
stuck. There is no rational solution, dialog or no. You're under the gun,
nose to the grindstone, shoulder to the wheel, and getting deeper in
debt to somebody who couldnt care less what language you speak,
cause you for sure aint speaking to him.
</color> =====
-- but as you can see (from here), there is not much to be said or done 'down there,' (although there is evidence that making noises *palliates the tension for one in that position.)
Rather than end on that... note, I'll bring this note back to a higher plane, in anticipation of my reply to Mike Mychajlonka. (Doesn't his note deserve a reply from *someone?)
Recalling Korzy's description of man as the 'time-binding animal', if language is a tool for understanding, and shared experience is the _ground on which that tool acts, what is the (first? only?) 'product' of that understanding? I think it is time -- subjective, relational time, not that objective, 'hard-wired' clock-stuff.
Specifically, what can one most easily discern from an email response? Isnt it whether one party has taken more or less time to write (and presumably, to think about) her message than the other? 'Is she going the same speed as oneself?' (not, 'How long did she take?') is the question which, I suspect, arises in any correspondent's mind. Furthermore, the Q depends on no 'instant' other than that which is its A: the 'internal evidence' of the message in hand, not the sender's 'track record' or her vocabulary or her so-lamentably-lost RL attributes of gender, colour, or orientation, and most certainly not the hours logged by the machinery used to produce say, a 20k text, nor the time it takes another to scroll blandly through it, looking for 'relevant' answers to questions that are never asked.
(Cant one use the interval between receipt and response as an objective 'first approximation' if one needed to *talk about* subjective time? Of course -- but what is there to say, and to whom, and for what purpose? Isnt it sad, tho that *those questions lead us off topic -- to power, organization, and control?)
In this light, here's another fragment of the recent 120k data-capture (8/12/99; for anyone who doesnt know, it's all in the archives at http://library.wustl.edu/~listmgr/devel-l ).
-----------
KM:
<color><param>7F00,0000,0000</param>> Certainly,if a common language exists, then your assumption is quite
> safe: you're "home and hosed," as they say. On the other hand, what
> if it is not quite as common as you assumed -- suppose, for instance,
> that one party 'takes one's time' and the other is 'in a hurry'?
</color>Douglas replied, (having earlier said, 'I think you're playing games I frankly don't have time for.' and quoting the line, '...suppose, for instance, that one party... ')
DH:
> Suppose what you like. I'm done playing games.
<color><param>0100,0100,0100</param>and, in conclusion,
</color>> ... do everyone a favor and either take it off list, or
> contribute something positive
<color><param>0100,0100,0100</param>------------
Despite being done, less than 24 hours later he begins again,
<color><param>7F00,0000,0000</param>> ... I have also asked you to refrain from addressing yourself to me
> publicly on this list, since the content of your messages of of a
> strictly a personal nature....
</color>>
> However, once again, I am going to engage in what I hope is not more
> that 15 minutes of irrelevant chit chat with you below, just to keep
> in shape...
<color><param>0100,0100,0100</param>and concludes,
<color><param>7F00,0000,0000</param>> What counts however, is the preparation of the people you'll be dealing
> with, and what they lack you'll have to give, in order to reach the
> goals you and they share. (I'm using a generic you here, directed to
> the list as a whole, if anyone has actually bothered to wade through
> this needlessly constructed maze. - Unless it was just an exercise -
> which it was - and all it was, for me).
</color>-----------
(At the time, I was pleased that he continued to reply, because it is essential to language-building to have something to talk *about. - <color><param>0000,0000,0000</param>Are you surprised that *it does not matter what*? Of course, one tries to play the 'topicality' game, *as if* both parties are (al)ready to share the same tools and dig the same ground.)
</color> In terms of time-binding, a) deciding *for me* (instead of asking) what my intentions and motivations were (and therefore what I should do), aborted the discovery process by which he might have drawn a defensible conclusion. B) overlooking the possibility that his own 'not addressing publicly' would address the proprieties of the list (as well as 'yours' would) led him into the 'strictly personal' morass he attributed to me (and on which 'the wrath of the house' came down). But discovery and consistency take time -- as does development -- unpredictable, unaccountable *but not irresponsible* amounts of it, and as I read the week's traffic, Douglas is in the position of the scientist who has "given away rights to the fruits of [his] own intellect and labor in return for the opportunity and the resources to do the jobs for which [he was] trained." He wants to go down, but is 'forced' to go up.
I may be wrong, but I call that a stressful situation. There's the data; here's my interpretation:
Denying (repeatedly) another's right to speak for hyrself; demanding (at least twice) that the other choose refrain from speaking, contradicting both his own statement that 'actions speak louder than words' and his nominal agreement that 'everybody here speaks for themselves,' are, imho, signs of that stress. One who is 'out of touch' with ones present, unable to hear one's own words (and thus to *speak for oneself) is, at that end of the spectrum, schizoid -- although it is nicer to say 'in a hurry' -- in contrast to being in tune, going with the flow, _sanchhai, as you like; I call it taking time (as 'taking tea,' 'taking the air').
-- and here's its relevance:
In the middle, social range, as on a mailing list, when there *is nothing else to use, time is always there to be a basis for the necessary common language. Participants may then *discover other things to use, but only *in time*. If they havent got that, they (and the list) are 'sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.'
-- and it's topicality:
At the far technological end of the spectrum, one who purports to develop by the clock or by the budget ought not be surprised when the locals read the tension in his face and hands, words and actions, and decide they have better things to do than live like that.
<color><param>0100,0100,0100</param>Cheers,
kerry
</color>
=======
In due course, and with due emendments and corrections, this 'helping' will be served up as
http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/kerryo/dev/keepingtrack.htm
There is plenty of web space; all responses are likely to be put in the same directory, 'anonymified' or otherwise, in the same way as in any other 'archive.' I will understand, if my having *said that <color><param>0000,0000,0000</param>now</color> changes your sense of the 'reality' of a response -- that's the Godelian uncertainty of this virtual world. I *hope there's enough meat on these bones to make quite a hypertextual feast!
<nofill>