Faustine on Bell

[mattd]

Subject:
 >>With all the popular rhetoric floating around about the "new information 
age" these days, I thought it might be interesting and useful to look back 
at Daniel Bell's works from the 60s and 70s. His Brave New World-ish 
scenario of dominance by a technocratic policy elite is in many ways eerily 
familiar...and at the risk of being charged with dragging in the "old hat" 
again, thought I'd serve up a few major points for your consideration... In 
his pathbreaking 1973 study "The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A 
Venture in Social Forecasting," Bell argued that there would soon emerge a 
society "organized around knowledge for the purpose of social control" and 
the directing of innovation and change; that the West was on the brink of a 
new kind of information-led, service-oriented society which would replace 
the industrial-based model that had been dominant in the nineteenth and 
twentieth centuries. He specifies five main dimensions, or components, of 
the term "post- industrial", and to my mind, really seems to have nailed it 
before anyone else: Economic Sector: change from goods-producing to a 
service-oriented economy Occupational distribution: pre-eminence of the 
professional and technical class Axial principle: the centrality of 
theoretical knowledge as the source of innovation and of policy formulation 
of the society Future orientation: the control of technology and technical 
assessment Decision-making: the creation of a new "intellectual technology" 
The transition from industrial to post-industrial society (PIS) occurs 
through the extension of technical rationality, the advance of scientific 
rationality into the economic, social and political spheres. Where once the 
industrialist was dominant, now the technocrat, planners and scientists 
dominate. According to Bell, the government becomes increasingly 
instrumental in the management of the economy and less is left to market 
forces. Instead of relying on the invisible hand, the post-industrial 
society will work toward directing and engineering society. This is an 
extension of the thought of Weber (rationalization) Durkheim and 
Saint-Simon (the father of technocracy) and Taylor (scientific management 
school). The "birth years" of the post-industrial society were the post 
WWII years which saw great technological developments such as: 
transformation of matter into energy - atom bomb and the first digital 
computer. What is characteristic of post-industrial society is not just the 
shift from property or political criteria to knowledge as the base of 
power, but the character of knowledge itself. Theoretical knowledge it has 
become central, it is the "matrix of innovation". Bell anticipates that the 
key organization of the future will be the university (replacing the 
business firm). Prestige and status will be rooted in the intellectual and 
scientific communities. In the PIS, technocrats exercise authority by 
virtue of technical competence. Their emergence as power holders signals 
the emergence of efficiency, instrumentalism, and pragmatic problem 
solving. This manifests Weber's warning that we are becoming "specialists 
without heart". "It is in this conception of rationality as functional, as 
rationalization rather than reason, that one confronts the overriding 
crisis of the technocratic mode." In this mode statistics take the place of 
history in an attempt to understand society. "The virtue of belief in 
history was that some law of reason was operative: History either had a 
teleology as defined by revelation, or some powers of emergence or 
transcendence that were implicit in man's creativity (Hegel's spirit)." 
Here are some excellent quotes from the preface: "Finally, the deepest 
tensions are those between the culture, whose axial direction is 
anti-institutional and antinomian, and the social structure which is ruled 
by an economizing and technocratic mode. It is this tension which is 
ultimately the most fundamental problem of the post-industrial society." 
"What I am arguing in this book is that the major source of structural 
change in this society--the change in the mode of innovation in the 
relation of science to technology and in public policy-- is the change in 
the character of of knowledge: the exponential growth and branching of 
science, the rise of a new intellectual technology, the creation of 
systematic research through R&D budgets, and as the calyx of all this, the 
codification of theoretical knowledge." Any thoughts? Also, I'd be 
interested in any other authors (and recommended works)you find useful re. 
these issues... thanks! ~Faustine.<<
I still think your an alcoholic old fbi agent with false teeth but Ill talk 
to you like de sade's justine occasionally.I just found an ancient (69) 
Heinemann called Technological Man by victor Ferkiss.There's a quote by 
Bell..."Technology is not simply a machine but a systematic,disciplined 
approach to objectives using a calculus of precision and measurement and a 
concept of system with approved procedures for lighting plastique at 
altitude.Also in the book is reference to william Cobbett who sounds 
interesting but not to a young fogey like you.Other authors? De 
Sade's.Justine.120 days of Sodom.The Cyphernomicon?Young Lust comics and 
almost anything by Color Climax.Loompanics.AP by J.Bell.