Warner, J.: Humanizing information technology (2004)
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- Footnote
- Like Daniel Bell, the author of The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973), who used aspects of Marx's thinking as the basis for his social forecasting models, Warner uses Marxist thought as a tool for social and historical analysis. Unlike Bell, Warner's approach to Marx tends to be doctrinaire. As a result, "An Information View of History" and "Origins of the Human Brain," two of the essays in which Warner sets out to establish the connections between information science and information technology, are less successful. Warner argues, "the classic source for an understanding of technology as a human construction is Marx," and that "a Marxian perspective an information technology could be of high marginal Utility," noting additionally that with the exception of Norbert Wiener and John Desmond Bernal, "there has only been a limited penetration of Marxism into information science" (p. 9). But Warner's efforts to persuade the reader that these views are cogent never go beyond academic protocol. Nor does his support for the assertion that the second half of the 19th century was the critical period for innovation and diffusion of modern information technologies. The closing essay, "Whither Information Science?" is particularly disappointing, in part, because the preface and opening chapters of the book promised more than was delivered at the end. Warner asserts that the theoretical framework supporting information science is negligible, and that the discipline is limited even further by the fact that many of its members do not recognize or understand the effects of such a limitation. However cogent the charges may be, none of this is news. But the essay fails most notably because Warner does not have any new directions to offer, save that information scientists should pay closer artention to what is going an in allied disciplines. Moreover, he does not seem to understand that at its heart the "information revolution" is not about the machines, but about the growing legions of men and women who can and do write programming code to exert control over and find new uses for these devices. Nor does he seem to understand that information science, in the grip of what he terms a "quasi-global crisis," suffers grievously because it is a community situated not at the center but rather an the periphery of this revolution."
