This is a two-part article on the power relationships and distribution in the Information Society. It first presents, in Empowerment and Governance in the Information Society (I): the hourglass of information power, some concepts as power, empowerment and governance, and how they have been distributed amongst citizens and institutions along ages. The second one, Empowerment and Governance in the Information Society (II): digerati, goverati and the role of ICT4D, reflects on how the quality of democracy is decreasing precisely because of an increase of citizen empowerment.
This image aims at visualizing how power is distributed along all the strata of nowadays structure of society.
The lower part is a hat tip to cyberutopianism, at least on what concerns individual empowerment: I believe there is enough evidence to strongly state that Information and Communication Technologies (the Internet and mobile phones and all the applications and appliances were unimaginable without them) have radically changed the degree up to which a human being can (potentially) manage their own life. Getting their own information (much more information, and on a very wide array of quality sources) and communicating with others at lowest costs and with no barriers of time and space have changed the way we can socialize and become more empowered citizens; and being able to access very low cost production tools and being able to create from scratch is an empowerment leap compared to an industrial society where capital (as a production factor) was out of reach for most people.
The upper part, though, is a frontal opposition to the “now people rule the world” thesis. While people are absolutely more free/empowered to act within the system, the strings that manage and can actually change that system are way beyond the control of the e-empowered crowds. Indeed — and as recent economic and political events have proven — the ability to manage and change the system of the world is even beyond the control of the representatives of those crowds, that is, national governments and parliaments.
I believe that there is a deep democratic gap between the increasingly empowered citizens and the increasingly independent, non-transparent and non-accountable forces that rule the economic and political systems from the top. Traditional institutions — parties, governments, elected representatives — fail both in upwards transmitting the citizens’ claims to shape a system according to their needs and wills, and both in top-down transmitting the need for some transformations that this system requires after the world has been made totally global, spaceless, timeless.
The good goverati, the bad digerati and the ugly outcome
Taking the place of those weakened democratic institutions, two new agents arise.
On the one hand we have bad digerati (bad not necessarily meaning evil, though their actions — consciously or unconsciously — do harm democracy as it is now designed), digitally literate elites that leverage their knowledge and the power provided by ICTs to reshape the state of things in their own benefit. These bad digerati understand the changes in society due to ICTs, the huge lag in Law to catch up with the pace of change, the digital illiteracy of governments, politicians and citizens, and succeed in circumventing democratic institutions. Incumbent telecom operators, digital media corporations, news conglomerates, a-legal or plainly i(l)-legal businesses operating in the very verge of written law (some P2P network facilitators, some piracy-related firms, etc.), banks and financial services, etc. Many of them are but the local/national branch of supra-national institutions and organizations that fully scape the reach of governments jurisdictions and, thus, act totally out of control.
Good goverati aim just precisely at the opposite of bad digerati: correct and fix the democratic misadjustments that the Information Society brought with it. Knowledgeable and savvy both in digital and political matters, they leverage the power ICTs granted the citizenry to promote a more direct and committed involvement in public affairs: e-democracy and direct democracy, open government and open data, e-government and government 2.0, e-participation and hacktivism, etc. are some of the many initiatives that non-governmental organizations, government institutions, citizen collectives and individuals are fostering. In my opinion, though, they are quite often too helping to circumvent democratic institutions and contributing in their weakening. But the upper levels of power may actually be far too high.
Thus, the ugly outcome is a complete wreckage of the democratic transmission chain, a democratic gap that both (bad) digerati and (good) goverati are but widening. Hence, the distance between the freely empowered citizen is also increasing, resulting in a democratic paradox: empowerment is not accompanied with better governance, but just the opposite. And in absence of a legitimate transmission chain, representative, plurally elected, we find different individuals and organizations (sometimes anonymous) that no one chose and that many times no one deeply knows their interests or their backing powers.
The role Goverati and the role of Information and Communication Technologies for (democratic) Development (ICT4D)
When talking about the intersection of Information and Communication Technologies and Development (see, for instance ICTs, Development, disciplines and acronyms) it is very common to focus on empowerment or the empowering factor of ICTs.
But if our approach proves to be right, empowerment is nowadays becoming but the XXIst century version of bread and circus: let the hamster spin the wheel at will, but don’t it dare to open the cage.
ICTs focused only in empowerment are beginning to look like development policies focused only in humanitarian aid and relief, but with no sight on the far horizon: effective in the short term, a vicious spiral towards black hole in the long run.
In my opinion, ICT4D have also and always include a governance factor in their design, as development policies have to focus on sustainable development.
At their turn, goverati should refrain from weakening or even attacking their democratic institutions. We have seen some of these, and this does not mean that institutions and their people should not be totally transformed, but I think the only way to leverage empowerment for governance is, precisely, through democratic institutions, because I think they are, most times, the only legitimate bridge towards real change, towards real power.
This is a two-part article on the power relationships and distribution in the Information Society. It first presents, in Empowerment and Governance in the Information Society (I): the hourglass of information power, some concepts as power, empowerment and governance, and how they have been distributed amongst citizens and institutions along ages. The second one, Empowerment and Governance in the Information Society (II): digerati, goverati and the role of ICT4D, reflects on how the quality of democracy is decreasing precisely because of an increase of citizen empowerment.
Recently — in the most recent years, but especially in recent months — the debate whether Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) empower or disempower, democratize a society or increase control over the citizen has been fuelled, both in the literature after appropriate research, and on newspapers, due to several events that have been read as turning points or milestones in the road towards the Information Society.
As it is usual in almost any debate around the impact of ICTs on the society, equidistant opinions are rare and extremes are much more abundant. In this case, it is my personal opinion that both extremes apply, that is, that there seem to be two divergent but simultaneous trends towards empowerment and towards a decrease in the quality of democracy or, as I will be putting it, a decrease in the quality of democracy (understood as a loss of control over governance by the citizen).
In the (sometimes difficult to avoid) trade-off between rigour and pedagogy, I have consciously chosen the latter in what follows. Many definitions are not very orthodox and most labels (and charts) are absolutely made up. I ask the reader for benevolence, forgiveness and, why not, the references that back (or refute) my arguments and that I was too lazy to look for.
Let us (re)define power as: Power = Empowerment + Governance
Where:
Empowerment: the capability to freely act and develop oneself within the system (very much in the line of Amartya Sen, 1980).
Governance: the capability to rule and especially change the system itself (the institutional dimension of human development that, when in hands of the citizen, leads to effective democracy as described by Welzel, Inglehart & Klingemann; 2003).
According to these definitions, we can describe, even in a very rough manner, how power distribution has been like during history. The image below pictures an approximation of this power distribution.
We can consider than in very primitive societies, the individual held all the power. As social organizations became more complex, the need for a minimal coordination comes evident: tribes got their chieftains to guide the collective. An organized procedure to choose the chieftain is what ended up in Greek Democracy. So far, the idea is that both empowerment and governance remain in the individuals’ hands.
The growth of communities and the need to strengthen coordination — especially against the “threat” of other communities — imply (amongst other factors) the militarization of a society and, sooner or later, the seizure of power by the military chaste. Warlords and absolute kings (and also Pharaohs, etc.) do not only rule but also reduce the degree of freedom of their subjects: governance shifts upwards while empowerment is drastically reduced. It is the ideas behind the Enlightenment and of modern democracy that pretend to give some power back to the citizen while keeping governance (increasingly important) in the hands of nation-wide institutions.
It is within this framework that capital becomes more important as industrialization deploys over all aspects of life. Gradually, economic elites gain more power with two parallel effects: on the one hand, what Marx called the alienation of the working class, now reduced to a mere production factor; on the other hand, the possibility to directly or indirectly affect all matters related to politics and the public sphere so to shape it for their own purposes. Again, the pendulum swung back and the Welfare State came to correct both the loss of freedom (and protection) of the citizen and to take some control of the public arena by keeping for itself the management of the Economy (Communist states pretend to be doing that too). New at this stage, supranational governmental organizations are created to coordinate what goes beyond the national powers: a new layer of power is born.
The strengthening of trend towards internationalization — ending up in sheer globalization — of the Economy has brought us in the past decades to a re-edition of industrialization, with the predominance of Neoliberalism setting the path of the Economy. Like industrialization, power shifts towards economic elites, but now split in two stages: the local and the global levels.
Many claim that the Information Society is empowering back individuals, and it well may definitely be true: never before as now can people or people have the potential to freely act, create, speak, reach out… within the given system. But it may also true that, never before as now is governance — as the power to change the system — so far from the citizens’ reach… even of their direct representatives, which are controlled by higher powers, most of them out of anyone’s jurisdiction. Like in an hourglass, the distribution of power is shifted to the (upper and lower) edges, the question being: who is playing the role of the transmission chain between these two edges?
Perennial dilemmas policymakers and practitioners face in the adoption and classroom use of ICT: the U.S. experience Larry Cuban
In recent years we’ve witnessed the wiring and the introduction of Information and Communication Technologies in schools. Notwithstanding, we’ve yet to see a shift in teaching practices or an impact in learning achievement. Puzzlingly, teachers do use their own computers for their personal use, even to prepare their own classes. Why is it so?
The big picture:
In a market-based, politically driven democracy, policy elites and interest groups with access to major media identify problems (e.g. poverty, slow economic growth, national defence) that need to be solved.
Sometimes the severity of these economic, social and political problems lead to popular movements to correct the ills.
In the US, historically, in these social movements to solve national problems, reformers often looked to schools for solutions. Schools were used to solve all the problems of society: provide doctors, engineers, etc. Human capital became the unit of measure of progress.
In “educationalizing” national problems, reformes have sought to alter one or more of the basic structures of US schooling established in the past two centuries. People expect schools to socialize, train, literate students, etc.
These historical patterns, contexts and basic structures of schooling clearly influence but not determine classroom teaching and learning. The school is filled with competing demands from teachers and parents, that push educational goals towards their own goals. Achievement becomes norm and the only final goal, in a way that it fits everyone’s needs of own goal measurement.
Yet, amid these historical patterns, contexts and structures that frame what practitioners do in schools, individual teachers and groups have stretched these constraints to create schools and classrooms tahs make a differences in the lives of children and youth.
That said, why is it there so few evidence in the academic use of computers, both in teaching and learning?
What is the difference between using and not using computers to perform a specific task in the classroom? As it is almost impossible to measure that (because of complexity and cost), serious research is rare to be found. Nevertheless, the existing research have found correlation (not causality) between gaming, or ICT usage and specific skills.
The reason of not having access to computers is no longer a big issue for most families, as a broad majority have both access to computers and connectivity.
Again, usage of ICTs by teachers and students is also regular, that is, at least one or more times during a week. And they use several devices (mobiles, laptops, desktops) and for several tasks (taking notes, searching for information on the Internet, etc.).
But teachers still do not teach what has to be taught to students by using computers. So, despite the fact that computers are such powerful machines to manage and transmit information, they are not effectively used for teaching. And it is not a fact, in general, of resistance to new technology, of lack of skills or of lack or interest.
There is a dilemma in teaching: the academic role demands that teachers keep a distance between them and students, so that they have a sense of authority; on the other hand, their emotional/social role demands that teachers be close to the students, to encourage them, to empathise with them. Here’s the dilemma, because these are competing roles.
Some teachers put the academic role on top (“I’m not my students’ friends, I’m here to educate them”), while some others put the emotional role on top.
The introduction of computers necessarily turns upside-down the difficult balance between these two roles, especially the academic role, that shifts the teacher from an authority to a guide, a mentor. Indeed, not only the balance changes, but also the academic role is undermined in its roots, as knowledge is not only scarce and impersonated in the teacher, but abundant and to be found everywhere.
Discussion
Q: We should change the curriculum and teach our students skills and not content, and find new ways to assess their achievement. A: Yes, of course. The problem is that the social beliefs of the policy makers and the tax payers is that syllabuses have to be the way they are and that assessment has to be done the way it is. There will not be change inside the school before there is a social movement outside of the school.
Q: How can one deal between the two roles: academic and emotional? A: This is very difficult and it depends on the context. Most of the times, it is the obligation to give grades the one that leads one’s behaviour.
Miquel Àngel Prats: how well are teachers trained in the US and how well do they perform when teaching? What is the role of technology in the training of teachers? A: Nowadays, the bias of teacher training is towards student centred teaching (e.g. use projects to teach, etc.). The problem is that this approach is not realistic in practice, as applying it is most difficult with 5 classes with 25 students each. So, even if teachers are digitally literate and want to apply e.g. wikis in their classrooms, they just cannot.
Q: How can older teachers keep up with all the recent educational and technological changes? How to cope with finding, all of a sudden, that everyone is bringing their laptop to the classroom? A: One of the biggest problems in the US is finding teachers that master their disciplines, their subjects, but know little about pedagogy. In this framework, professional development states that we have to keep teachers learning all the time. But when budgets shrink, guess what gets cut. But, though I personally support professional development, concerning technology development the problem is not that teachers do not follow the courses, but that they do not apply what they learn in their classrooms.
Q: How long will it take to witness a change? A: There have been three waves of computing in schools (a) teaching will be faster and better; (b) learning will be faster and better; (c) there will be a global revolution and we all need digital skills. The three waves still apply, they have different approaches, they require different solutions, so it is not only a matter of speed, but of model.
Q: Can you elaborate on the “educationalization” of problems? A: Policy elites have in their heads their own idea of what and how schools should be, and they use them to solve several problems (e.g. unemployment) without taking into consideration how schools really are and function.
Q: What has the history been like of policy making in adapting curricula? A: Actually, in the US, changing the curriculum is quite easy. But teachers still have some degrees of freedom, so officially changing the curriculum is not the same thing as actually changing it. This is both a good and a bad thing, depending on the sign of the change, the need for consensus, etc.
There is a difference between networks where content is generated and is what binds the network together, and networks where the social component is what provides sense to that network. Wikipedia is an example of the first one; Linkedin is arguably an example of the second one. Probably the former ones are more engaging.
To create valuable content, a goal is needed, and thus comes a need for focusing. This goal, notwithstanding, may not be included in the original design, but come with the use that the users do of the social networking site.
Chris Csikszentmihályi points to the decreasing (and almost non-existent) transaction and coordination costs of bringing people togheter and build things collaborativelly that Yochai Blenkler explains in The Wealth of Networks: ICTs have made collaboration so cheap that centralization may not make a lot of sense or, in other words, decentralization of production is now feasible in many more ways than it was before.
Indeed, most people need specific cases or even direct commands so to start up using an online service. I f you’re told you can do “anything” on a web site, that’s what you’ll do: nothing. A good example to kick-start a service was Twitter: “what are you doing?”. With time, it evolved to much more than what one was doing. But for starters, the idea worked.
Discussion
Llorenç Valverde: so, translated to the education arena, problem based communities, addressed to specific topics and with clear rules is what would work. That would contribute in building a community. But, why don’t online students usually gather around virtual communities and/or specific “social learning networking sites”?
Chris C.: And how do you make people engage if 2% will be creators and 98% will be lurkers?
Eduardo Manchón: there actually are two really separate communities (creators and lurkers) and the one that really matters is creators. You have to develop your site for the creators, for the content generators, for the active ones.
Lev Gonick: We have situational communities and we have intentional communities. Sustainable communities are more on the intentional side of communities, strongly motivated and are normally well moderated/led. And we should try and find, in the educational field, what is the difference we are making, what is the advantage we are providing our students.
Eduardo Manchón: (some) noise and (some) trouble helps the community to raise, and to mature. Online communities are small societies and so they need some controversies to grow in all senses. Of course a minimum amount of moderation is needed, especially to avoid the destruction of the community as a whole, but tension is generally good, is a sign of health.
Eduardo Manchón: we may know what does not work in a virtual community, we most probably do not know what does work, but we can only find out by creating the online community and bring it to live. So, the best advice when designing and building an online community is to build it and see whether people “comes”.
NOTE: As usual, this kind of events are much richer than what these humble notes may suggest :)
Gemma Urgell and Ricard Espelt are the thinking minds behind #talkingabout, a tapestry of experiences, stories and projects with the Web 2.0 as a background.
They attended the PLE Conference and took some time to interview and tape some footage of Jordi Adell and I on the crossroads of Personal Learning Environments and institutions.
The video is in Catalan, one of Jordi and I’s mother tongues:
