My Contribution to the Local Debate

So my letter to the editor got published in the local weekly.

I argue that commuter rail is a largely irrelevant part of contemporary commuting patterns but that that sad fact doesn't have to remain the case in the future.

Notes on Hughes: Rescuing Prometheus

Rescuing Prometheus Thomas P. Hughes Pantheon, New York (1998) So I've already written a bit on this text. But I picked it up again. And I was particularly interested in reviewing two things:

1) Given my topic, I was pretty interested in looking at the final case study in the book (which deals with four different instances of projects, arguing that the arc of the 20th Century is toward the "postmodern" paradigm. In the final case study, Hughes provides a history of ARPANET, the DoD's network of networks that eventually became the Internet.

What is telling, given that Hughes is stressing the postmodern shift toward flat, open, consensus-reaching (etc., it's a long list and it appears on the last page of the book). What's noteworthy, though, is that the story focuses nonetheless on the system builder perspective.

2) The wrap up of the book (the case studies in which are well worth attention) is brief. But it's the place to look for the relationship of Hughes' welcoming of open, participatory planning into contemporary projects (uh, well, maybe welcoming isn't the right word for it...).

So a couple of the big distinctions between the modern (i.e., pre-WWII) firm and the PoMo:

a) The firm. Pre-WWII were big projects associated with big, stable manufacturing firms. The latter day projects were conducted through joint ventures and projects. (p. 301)

b) Pre-WWII: "The maintenance of a system for mass-producing standardized products" (p. 301) But standardization no longer a top priority. Contemporary managers are open to change and heterogeneity.

c) Before managers tended to view judgment and "problem-solving techniques" were the provenance of experience, masters. Today, constant need to revision, refreshing, relearning the state of the art.

d) Typical pre-War firm a big, integrated, multiunit firm. Big management hierarchy. i.e., Fordism and Taylorism. Today: "The numerous contractors participating in projects like SAGE and Atlas are loosely coupled by information networks and by a coordinating and scheduling systems engineering organization" (p. 302)

e) The modern firm could not achieve its ends without first establishing a "managerial hierarchy". The hierarchy was itself "a source of power, continued growth, and "permanence" (p. 302). New model focuses on R&D and thus the hierarchy gives way to flexibility necessary to encourage innovation. "The result compromise, called "black-boxing," allows local research and development team to choose the technology that will fulfill system specifications" (p.303)

f) Past: value on "highly trained" specialists from disciplines suited to solving problems were viewed through this lens. Today interdisciplinarity reigns.

g) Old projects depended on "technical and economic factors" (p. 304): "such matters as the environment, political-interest group commitments, and public participatory design concerns lay beyond the horizons of 1950s systems engineers". Now projects "take into account the concerns of environmental and interest groups. Through public hearings, the project fosters participatory design. CA/T [viz, the Big Dig] is not an elegantly reductionist endeavor; it is messily complex embracing of contradictions" (p. 304)

Only after the organizers of CA/T made clear that would take into account public concerns about neighborhood integrity and environment was the project funded. CA/T has been socially constructed, not technologically and economically determined (p. 304)

h) ARPANET also suggests role of counterculture: preference for a flat management structure.

And now the list from the final page of the book:

Modern	Postmodern
production system	project
hierarchical/vertical	flat/layered/horizontal
specialization	interdisciplinarity
integration	coordination
rational order	messy complexity
standardization/homogeneity	heterogeneity
centralized control	distributed control
manufacturing firm	joint venture
experts	meritocracy
tightly coupled systems	networked systems
unchanging	continuous change
micromanagement	black-boxing
hierarchical decision-making	consensus-reaching
seamless web	network with nodes
tightly coupled	loosely coupled
programmed control	feedback control
bureaucratic structure	collegial community
Taylorism	systems engineering
mass production	batch production
maintenance	construction
incremental	discontinuous
closed	open

On the Utility of the Urban-Rural Distinction

We note without being prompted that we are in or out of and urban setting. Leveling the distinction between city and country is not normally a controversial thing. That said, as the distinction plays itself out as a matter of policy, the point at which one gives way to the other is crucial. At the margin, what defines a place as one or the other? I would argue that among other sine qua nons of urbanity or rurality is connection to infrastructure. Elsewhere in this blog I have argued that retaining the distinction for the purposes of allocating federal stimulus dollars makes a certain sense. At the same time, channeling funding for broadband through the Rural Utilities Service both prejudices the definition of the broadband challenge and biases our approach to resolving it. Yes, the present approaches to providing access where it doesn't exist and improving service and adoption where it does exist suggest a new understanding and definition of urban and rural. Namely, the service areas for high-speed wired broadband service can be taken as the outer fringe of what is urban and what will be urban in the near future. Areas where wired services don't exist (i.e., in those areas where wireless broadband is the only solution on the horizon) can properly be understood as rural. Of course, there are shades of gray. Places where wired services exist along transportation corridors, but where service is spotty away from highways and pockets of population density are likely to already be considered sub- and exurban. So for those of us who are wasting time with labels, perhaps existing infrastructure can be our defining characteristic (since it likely correlates strongly with other attributes.