Book Review Essay for On the Internet
SOC 469.04 Fall 2003
Mark Lindner
“… a pixel too far.”[1]
As soon as I got the syllabus from you this summer I checked out Milner’s copy of Dreyfus’ On the Internet to decide if I wanted to review it. After reading the Introduction I was hooked. I immediately ordered a copy and read the rest of the book while I waited for it to arrive. I read it again before the semester started, this time with highlighter and pen in hand so that I could have a dialogue with the author. This book got me really excited about reading library literature in a comparative sense. I had been weaning myself onto library literature but had found most of the mainstream stuff to be chiefly fluff. Much of it is also implicitly, if not explicitly, technologically utopian.
Many studies seem to show that full-text databases and other on-line sources are having a negative impact on students’ use of scholarly citations in their academic writings.[2] Even if librarians bemoan the negative impact on learning, they treat it as a, and possibly the, reason for the continuance of the profession.[3] They console themselves with the thought that, at least, “We are needed to educate knowledge searchers, and to point them to the better quality electronic sources.” I find this offensive! Librarians of all sorts should be questioning the effects of technology on pedagogy, and on learning. They should not just be trying to save their profession, willing to accept whatever role is left for them after technology has had its’ effect.
I have, though, managed to stumble over some ‘alternative’ library literature thanks to the Internet in one of its better functions. These sources have pointed me to further print and electronic sources. Many of these are of far better quality and depth compared to their nobler, or at least privileged, brethren. Many are highly questionable of, and some downright critical of, the technological utopian idea. Empirical case studies and theoretical discussions all point to cracks in the walls of utopia. If I had not found this literature recently then I most certainly would have given up all hope and desire to become a librarian, and in particular, an academic librarian.
In this paper I will address various aspects of Dreyfus’ On the Internet. I will provide a selective summary of the book and then compare it with some of the course material to try to see how this book fits as a statement within the discourse of technology and modern society. Finally, I will offer a short, opinionated, evaluation of the book.
1 Selective summary
This compact book is an excellent introduction as to why the Internet will not solve our educational problems, deliver just the information we want, deliver all of reality to us, nor add meaning to our lives, as many claim. (Dreyfus, 2) In a little over one hundred pages, Dreyfus shows us why: (1) the Internet’s size and structure preclude the finding of relevant information; (2) as an educational tool it can at best give us competency, but not proficiency or expertise; (3) telepresence fails as it presumes presence; and (4) the Internet destroys meaning in our lives. This is clearly not an anti-Internet book though. While Dreyfus believes that moving our lives to cyberspace (to whatever limits are possible) would be most destructive to us as human beings, he also believes that the Internet does have some benefits to provide in the areas discussed, and that we should strive
“…to foster a symbiosis in which we use our bodies and their positive powers, to find what is relevant, learn skills through involvement, get a grip on reality, and make the risky commitments that give life meaning, while letting the Web contribute its amazing capacity to store and access astronomical amounts of information, to connect us to others, to enable us to be observers of far-away places, and to experiment without risk with other worlds and selves.” (Dreyfus, 94)
In this summary I will address some of the ideas in Dreyfus’ Introduction, chapters Three Disembodied Telepresence and the Remoteness of the Real and Four Nihilism on the Information Highway, and his Conclusion. I will focus primarily on chapters one and two in the comparison/contrast section. All chapters of this wonderful little book deserve full attention. But, in the interest of space, I will concentrate my analysis on two areas of great concern and commitment to me.
Dreyfus begins the book with an opening salvo. He claims that “[t]he Internet is not just a new technological innovation; it is a new type of technological innovation; one that brings out the very essence of technology.” (Dreyfus, 1) The reason he claims that the Internet is a new type of technology is his claim that historically technological innovations have addressed recognized needs while bringing along unintended side effects. The type of innovation that Dreyfus claims is new for the Internet is that the reason for its development is now only a relegated side effect. I am unsure as to how much of an innovation this really amounts to; surely there are other technologies whose raisons d’être are now only side effects. His assumption about the essence of technology, “to make everything easily accessible and optimizable,” is also suspect in my mind. (Dreyfus, 2) I much prefer Ellul’s view that efficiency is the essence of technology, but ‘efficiency’ in this sense has a wide conceptual space from which to draw its’ definition and is not necessarily related to “easily accessible and optimizable.” But these are minor quibbles. These claims serve more as a shot across the bow of the technological utopians; the purpose is to draw them and others into the conversation. Nothing in Dreyfus’ further analysis hangs on these ideas. If we were to assume an Ellulian view of the relationship of technology and society we would probably still come close to Dreyfus’ view that “the Internet is the perfect technological device.” (Dreyfus, 2)
According to Ellul, prior to the Industrial Revolution, technology was fundamentally different than more recent technologies for the following four reasons: (1) It was applied only in certain narrow areas of life; (2) Limitations of technique meant that the skill of the worker was crucial, and thus, that there were great variations in technique; (3) Technology was embedded in a culture and thus there was little or no geographic transmission; that is, technique was local, also it spread and evolved very slowly; and (4) There was the capacity for human choice as to use technique or not. (Ellul, 64-77) The Internet, as a modern technology, clearly does not follow these characteristics. Re-reading Ellul’s thoughts on “Characteristics of Modern Technique,” it seems that even if the Internet is not the “the perfect technological device,” it most certainly is an exemplar, if not the epitome, of Ellul’s characteristics of modern technology. The Internet is based on rationality, while creating an artificiality. Expositing on this, along with how the Internet epitomizes automatism, self-augmentation, monism, universalism, and autonomy as described by Ellul in comparison to Dreyfus would be an extremely illuminating educational exercise, but then, it would be an entirely different paper. Actually, it would make an excellent final exam question.
In the Introduction, Dreyfus gives us a succinct statement of technological utopianism as regards the Internet:
“We are told that, given its new way of linking and accessing information, the Internet will bring a new era of economic prosperity, lead to the development of intelligent search engines that will deliver to us just the information we desire, solve the problems of mass education, put us in touch with all of reality, allow us to have even more flexible identities than we already have and thereby add new dimensions of meaning to our lives.” (Dreyfus, 2)
This though is not Dreyfus’ view and he immediately gives us a couple examples to show that much of the utopian rhetoric has been hype. He cites research that shows that the Internet leaves people “feeling isolated and depressed,” and that the conclusion drawn is that on-line relationships are lacking compared to day-to-day, embodied, contextualized relations. (Dreyfus, 2-3) The researchers assert that “[e]ven strong ties maintained at a distance through electronic communication are likely to be different in kind and perhaps diminished in strength compared with strong ties supported by physical proximity.” (Dreyfus, 3) I agree with this finding completely. I rarely maintain any sort of on-line relationship, even including email as ‘on-line.’ I despise that form of communication and much prefer to talk on the phone. Yet, even the phone clearly pales in comparison to embodied communication. If I can only stay in touch with someone by email, then I will lose contact very quickly. There are a few people, mostly those that I am trying to maintain a strong relationship with, whom I will communicate with by phone. But these relationships, with my mother and sister say, are in no way as strong as my local relationships with those with whom I share an embedded, contextualized, physically embodied relationship. My mom telling me to give myself a big hug from her is in no sense the equivalent of actually receiving a hug from one of my friends.
The next important concept Dreyfus’ sets out is the concept of ‘body.’ He wants to construe it broadly to include our physical body and its parts which allow us to navigate our world, and “…also our moods that make things matter to us, our location in a particular context where we have to cope with things and people, and the many ways we are exposed to disappointment and failure as well as to injury and death.” (Dreyfus, 4) There are at least two great reasons to use this concept of body. First, this seems to me to be a proper construal of what it is to be physically embodied in relation to our world. Anyone who has experiences the least bit like mine and has paid attention to the phenomenology of those experiences and their meaning in their life would need to accept this use of the concept. Second, the best reason for adopting it is rhetorical in that it is what explicitly seems to be the concept of body that the “most extreme Net enthusiasts” use when they describe how the Internet will allow us “to transcend the limits imposed on us by our body.” (Dreyfus, 4)
The issues Dreyfus has set out to address in the book then are such that he will be asking questions like, “[C]an we get along without our bodies?”, “What if the Net became central in our lives?”, and “To the extent that we came to live a large part of our lives in cyberspace, would we become super- or infra-human?” (Dreyfus, 6) His “hope [is] to show that, if our body goes, so does relevance, skill, reality, and meaning.” (Dreyfus, 7)
In chapter one, Dreyfus shows that the current and projected structure of the Internet is not conducive to finding relevant information, and that if we were to forgo our embodiment we would lose our ability to recognize relevance. Chapter two outlines Dreyfus’ concept of learning, and how presence is required for skill acquisition. These issues I will address more fully in my comparison and contrast section.
Chapter three, Disembodied Telepresence and the Remoteness of the Real, clearly shows that it is our bodies getting a grip on the world that provides us with our sense of presence. Many would claim that we can never escape the subjectivity of our own minds, and thus, that the Internet as telepresence would be just as present as anything else. But, as the pragmatists point out, the crucial question should be “whether our relation to the world is that of a disembodied detached spectator or an involved embodied agent.” (Dreyfus, 54) Addressing this and subsequent questions along the way, Dreyfus shows that distance undermines our sense of direct presence, as does a lack of risk or sense of vulnerability.
Telepresence in distance, vocational, and postgraduate education fails for many reasons related to the sense of being able to get a grip on the world. Even in an interactive, telepresent environment, risk, for both students and teachers alike, is much reduced, as is involvement. Both of these are necessary if one is to acquire anything approaching expertise though. Thus, the capability to progress beyond proficiency is greatly reduced, if not entirely absent, with telepresence. Even if one were somehow to be fed multiple sensory streams as a recreation of the ‘local’ environment one would still not be ‘present.’ In such an environment, one is unable to control the view of the camera, either where it looks, or its depth or width of field. This prevents one from finding the most comfortable point of view within the context. One cannot make eye contact either as the quote from David Blair explains, “You can look into the camera or look at the screen, but you can’t do both.” (Dreyfus, 60) Thus, the possibility of controlling your movements to get a better grip on the world is lost. (Dreyfus, 60)
Dreyfus considers some further conditions which might save telepresence, but goes on to show that these all fail to save the idea. He concludes “that expertise cannot be acquired in disembodied cyberspace. … Distance-apprenticeship is an oxymoron.” (Dreyfus, 68-9) Our body and its perceptual capacities do many things exquisitely well for us, all of which are lost, or at least greatly diminished, by telepresence. So, what might telepresence actually be useful for?
Dreyfus addresses this question in the conclusion. He has shown that where a sense of trust already exists, there is a place for teleconferencing. Telepresence is particularly useful in areas that are too dangerous or too remote (size or distance) for humans to be physically present. Examples include inspections of the inside of a nuclear reactor and unmanned planetary explorers. These useful ideas can also be pushed too far, and he shows that, in fact, they sometimes are.