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.

One To Watch: Google Antitrust Case

Keep your eyes on this one:

Justice Dept. Opens Antitrust Inquiry Into Google Books Deal (By Miguel Helft, NYTimes)

The skinny:

The settlement agreement stems from a class action filed in 2005 by the Author’s Guild and the Association of American Publishers against Google. The suit claimed that Google’s practice of scanning copyrighted books from libraries for use in its Book Search service was a violation of copyrights.

The settlement, which was announced in October, gives Google the rights to display the books online and to profit from them by selling access to individual text and selling subscriptions to its entire digital collections to libraries and other institutions. Revenues would be shared between Google, authors and publishers.

But critics say that Google alone will have a license over millions of so-called “orphan books,” whose authors and right holders are unknown or cannot be found. Some experts believe the orphan works account for the bulk of the collections of some of the major university libraries, that have allowed Google to scan books.

Some librarians fear that with no competition, Google will be free to raise prices. Some scholars have also said that the system for pricing books could raise antitrust concerns.

Martin Interview

An interesting interview with Kevin Martin, former FCC Chair.

On Flyvbjerg and Phronēsis

Some notes on Bent Flyvbjerg's Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and What Can Make It Succeed Again (Cambridge University Press, 2001)

Flyvbjerg begins with the fundamental problem of the social sciences vs. the natural sciences. I.e., is a true science of society possible given the variability and slipperiness of the human condition? Of course, this fundamental question goes way, way back. Flyvbjerg himself reminds us that this basic question plagues the social sciences from their origin. For example, Weber recognized the distinction between instrumental rationality (Zweckrationalität) and value rationality (Wertrationalität), a distinction that Foucault and Habermas in different ways recognized as central to their own programs.

Consider, for example, the high-modernist apotheosis of urban renewal projects. The engineering model at the core of this effort recognized a host of pathologies endemic to cities (crime, poverty, disease, etc). Since these problems seemed to reside at a large scale, the solution during the 50s and 60s was large-scale demolition of large swaths of inner cities without regard to the preferences of individual dwellers of those places. In other words, instrumental rationality viewed urban decay as a problem and presented a solution (viz., destruction and reconstruction) as the proper solution. But this perspective failed to view the particular circumstances of the particular denizens whose homes and lives were turned upside down by the process. Planners point to this period as a moment of reckoning, an occasion to reflect on if not reject in whole cloth their approach. Rather than proffering solutions from the outside, planners shifted to accommodate the perspectives of those whose lives might be touched by such projects (i.e., to accommodate value rationality).

But, as Flyvbjerg describes, this recognition of the limits of human knowledge is nothing new. Indeed, Aristotle understood that scientific knowledge (episteme) is bracketed by specific contexts; there are certain domains where this sort of understanding (and action based on it) do not obtain.

"Episteme thus concerns universals and the production of knowledge" (p. 56)

"Whereas episteme resembles our modern scientific project, techne and phronesis denote two contrasting roles of intellectual work." (p. 57)

"Episteme    Scientific knowledge. Universal, invariable, context-independent. Based on general analytical rationality. The original concept is know today from the terms "epistemology" and "epistemic"

Techne        Craft/art. Pragmatic, variable, context-dependent. Oriented toward production. Based on practical instrumental rationality governed by a conscious goal. The original concept appears today in terms such as "technique," "technical," and "technology."

Phronesis    Ethics. Deliberation about values with reference to praxis. Pragmatics, variable, context-dependent. Oriented toward action. Based on practical value-rationality. The original concept has no analogous contemporary term." (p. 57)

Flyvbjerg explains episteme as "know why" and techne as "know how," but doesn't proffer a similar schtick for phronesis. I would suggest that it is "know when". It's also important to note that phronesis is embodied (i.e., it doesn't exist without the phronimos, or the person of practical knowledge). Phronesis is thus best thought of as the judgment about what can be done given specific circumstances rather than what is physically possible. Perhaps it is best understood as the skill of knowing what is feasible rather than possible. As an example, when is the best time to call for a vote on a bill?

Phronesis "focuses on what is variable, on that which cannot be encapsulated by universal rules, on specific cases….requires an interaction between the general and the concrete; it requires consideration, judgment, and choice." (p. 57).

Flyvbjerg's basic argument, similar to that made by other previous advocates of phronesis, is that the social sciences encounter questions such as "What should be done?" and "What is desirable?" and perhaps "Who gains and who loses?". There is no universal, scientific answer to such questions, because they are rooted in particularity both temporally and spatially.

Most importantly, Flyvbjerg offers a set of "Methodological guidelines for a reformed social science" in Chapter 9:

1. Focusing on values (p. 130-1): three questions animate the effort at steering toward value- rather than instrumental-rationality. (Where are we going? Is it desirable? What should be done?).
2. Placing power at the core of analysis (p. 131-2): Not just "who governs?" but "what "governmental rationalities" are at work by those who govern? Power is productive and positive (even though it can be restrictive and negative).
3. Getting close to reality (p. 132-3): "Phronetic researchers seek to transcend this problem of relevance by anchoring their research in the context studied and thereby ensuring a hermeneutic "fusion of horizons". This means being close to the ground (the group or phenomenon) at all stages of research.
4. Emphasizing little things (p. 133-134): focus on minutiae, work phenomenologically. "thick description".
5. Looking at practice before discourse (p. 134-5): focuses on practical activity and practical knowledge in everyday situations.
6. Studying cases and contexts (p. 135-6): cases exist in context. And the essence of those particularities is only possible in attending to those cases.
7. Asking "How?" Doing narrative (p. 136-7): quotes MacIntyre, "I can only answer the question, "What am I to do?" if I can answer the prior question "Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?"
8. Joining agency and structure (p. 137-8):
9. Dialoguing with a polyphony of voices (p. 139-140):

And Now For a Sample of What is To Come...

So I've written before about the rather clunky (if not anachronistic) set of agencies that will be driving the Broadband Stimulus $$. My claim in the past is that the relative slowness off the blocks of this initiative is attributable at least in part to the unwieldy set of agency interactions that the program calls for. Take, as a mere example, the ambiguity at the core of the Broadband Stimulus: is this an effort to address a rural problem or an "underserved" problem (since they're not one and the same, especially as our definition of what meets a basic level of service evolves).

Now we see that this fundamental problem of definition exists within a single agency. A report released on Monday (4/13/2009) by the Department of Agriculture's inspector general finds that the Rural Utility Service has been making too many loans in non-rural areas (tsk! tsk!):

In 2007, Congress requested that we determine if RUS had taken sufficient corrective actions in response to the issues disclosed in our report. In particular, members of the Appropriations Committee expressed concerns that RUS, “instead of focusing on rural areas that have no broadband service,” continues, “to grant loans to areas where broadband service is already being offered by private providers. Such practices penalize private providers that have already built broadband systems in the area. Such practices also do nothing to further the goal of bringing broadband to unserved areas.”

Take note of the distinction between rural/urban and served/unserved. And ask yourself whether a 200 k.b.s. standard is sufficient to claim that service is being provided. And while you’re at it, ask yourself if having a single location in a given zip code operate at this anemic standard is sufficient to claim that service is being provided. In both cases, the FCC claims it is. Hopefully, in the coming months (or years), we’ll have better data on present and planned deployments and have federal policy pushing a higher standard. But not yet.

Back to the report, since Congress raised this concern, the inspector general’s office issued a report to RUS, outlining several steps the agency should take. Alas,the IG report

found that RUS has not fully implemented corrective action in response to 8 of the 14 recommendations from our September 2005 audit report.

And the real kicker:

We remain concerned with RUS’ current direction of the Broadband program, particularly as they receive greater funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2008 (Recovery Act), including its provisions for transparency and accountability.

In my estimation, the essence of the broadband challenge isn't in some arcane internecine pissing match over how we're applying the definition of urban and rural. The problem is one of standards of service (where service exists) and providing service where it doesn't.