Communicating Ideas

The Politics of Scholarly Publishing

Irving Louis Horowitz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351313223
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Publishing
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Communicating Ideas is the first attempt to place publishing in America in its political and commercial setting. The book addresses the political implications of scholarly communication in the era of the new computerized technology. Horowitz does so by examining classic problems of political theory in the context of property rights versus the presumed right to know, and the special strains involved in publishing as a business versus information as a public trust Offering a knowledgeable and insightful view of publishing in America and abroad, this book makes an important contribution to the study of mass culture in advanced societies.The discussion ranges considerably beyond scholarly publications into communication as a whole, encompassing a wide range of issues from cable and satelite television control to specialized issues in copyright legislation, the prize system in publishing, and the definition of standards of the industry. This new edition, expanded by fully one third, expands on such themes, and in addition deals with Horowitz's new research on the history of social science publishing.The first edition, published in 1986, was described by WE. Coleman as "a marvelous book which indeed offers a realistic analysis of publishing." John P. Dessauer declared that "no one thinking seriously about the future of scholarly communication can afford to ignore his work, in particular his treatment of basic issues." Joseph Gusfield (Los Angeles Times), in his review, noted that "Horowitz is alive to the possibilities and barriers for academics to reach a wider audience and for lay persons to utilize scholarship. Both groups can learn much from this intelligent book." And Philip G. Altbach (Scholarly Publishing) concluded his review by saying that Communicating Ideas "will be of interest not only to publishers and editors, but also to librarians and to sociologists of science."

1

Valuational Presuppositions of the New Technology

One of the great unquestioned myths about the new technology is that the area is free of ideological presuppositions. Indeed, for some, it is a pure escape from the dirty world of politics; while for others, it is the higher learning itself, offering the ultimate critique of ideological politics. In this sense, the ideology of the new technology differs little from the old engineering ideology.¹ The difficulty with such suppositions is that they are simply untrue. It is more nearly the case that the politics of the new technologists are extraordinarily naive, even primitive, precisely because political and ideological concerns remain so deeply buried under the surface of platitudes which presume the hygienic status of data. This platitudinous style rivals in form the utopianism of earlier rationalist models: they come packaged with a faith in progress rivaling any nineteenth century romantic notions of evolution, or eighteenth century concepts of revolution.

It is therefore not unexpected, or it should not be unexpected, that there is a rebellion within the ranks of practitioners against the new technology. It is a counter-utopianism which rivals the efforts of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell at debunking and anticipating the sort of dilemmas found amongst earlier advocates of industrialization and urbanization. A long-range view establishes clearly enough that the new technology does not so much resolve as enlarge “classical” problems of power and its distribution, wealth and its concentration, or society and its stratification. The people one meets in this world of new technology have been met before: planners, programmers, and forecasters for whom activities outside or beyond the system represent calamities not distinctions. At the other end of the spectrum are those for whom the new technology is little else than a device to carry on exploitative relations.

That opposition to the new technology would come from old humanists is to be expected, if not entirely welcome. But more intriguing is the disenchantment increasingly felt by a segment of inventors and discoverers in the world of computer hardware and software who expected a brave new world, and who received a myopic narrowing down of a classical culture. For these individuals, the new technology has been reduced to Radio Shack merchandising; the personal computer becomes one more artifact to grace the homes of the middle classes in Western societies. Far from being the liberating tool it has been reduced to a libidinal toy. The very totality of the critique tends to make possible an easy dismissal of the disgruntled “fathers” of this new technology. But to do so is to miss an opportunity to expand our common understanding of the problems of no less than prospects for this new technology.

If Joseph Weizenbaum did not exist, his likeness would have to be invented. He is at once an early pioneer in the logic of electronic computers, a theorist of their utilization, and a philosophical critic of their unbridled expansion. In this sense, his philosophical effort Computer Power and Human Reason should be simultaneously understood at three levels: instrumental, theoretical, and ethical.² The trouble, however, is that the worth of Weizenbaum’s position must be differentially measured at each level. One problem which “fathers” have is an inability to appreciate the work of “sons.” And in computer technology this form of denial can prove fatal. Weizenbaum, in his stridency and failure to appreciate the immense changes in this area does little to enhance the reputation of the founder of computer language. The fear that home computers primarily equip the child with a “psychic numbing” that further undermines “whatever little moral authority the schools may have left” only extends the earlier arguments of Weizenbaum without deepening or changing his line of reasoning.

The early chapters of Computer Power and Human Reason remain unrivaled in the popular literature on explaining the heuristic properties of the computer, the logical foundations of computer power, how computers actually work, and the designing of universes through computer programming. Anyone starting out in the world of computers would be advised to start with Weizenbaum. There have been many works covering technical concepts of computers in a popular way, but few with the genuine graciousness and modesty which characterize the early chapters of this work. Weizenbaum’s distinctions, following as they do the earlier work of Norbert Wiener,³ are simply marvelous: the passion for certainty in science, philosophy, and religion in contrast to the operational quest for control in technology; rules of languages in contradistinction to ways of knowing; and theories as texts versus models as performances. In an area where mechanistic thinking abounds, Weizenbaum’s dialectical explanations provide an impressive guide to those in search of larger meaning in the computer age.

Weizenbaum’s work on computer models in psychology, natural language, and artificial intelligence are frequently polemical. Weizenbaum takes on such giants as B. F. Skinner, Jay Forrester, Herbert Simon, with relish. He is frequently on target. The metaphorical rather than empirical definitions of such concepts as artificial intelligence; the arbitrary conversion of artificial intelligence into a general theory of information processing as a whole; the presumption that information processing is identical with the “whole man”; the conversion of machine logic into political and social inevitabilities—each of these, and many more examples, can be adduced in support of Weizenbaum’s assault against the “imperialisms of instrumental reason.” The corruption of the computer revolution by an “artificial intelligentsia” and the mystification of behavior modifiers and systems’ engineers are well taken. In this Weizenbaum is a kind of Dostoevsky-like prototype, an underground man puncturing the myths of those who, by faith rather than research, view the computer age as a relief from uncertainty, and then turn around and mock all traditional models of certitude.

Where the position of Weizenbaum and other interior critics collapses is in its own ideological proclivities. The critique of excess becomes a critique of power as such. The uses of computers by members of the armed forces or by practitioners of psychotherapy are declared to be “simply obscene.” Computer science programmers are declared to be intellectually bankrupt, comparable to people learned in a foreign language but with nothing to say. These interior critics do not claim that specialized uses are technically infeasible, only that they are, in their judgment, immoral. The question of whether all uses by the military of computer simulation is immoral, or solely the work dedicated to certain fields or tasks, is not resolved. Nor are we ever told what constitutes the “inherent message” of things and events. In an era of computer-guided satellite missiles (ASATs) Weizenbaum’s concerns are both entirely justified and yet sadly misplaced.

The offer of pacifism with a computerized face is attractive, but neglectful of an environment in which “one side” does not retain a monopoly on actual power, not to mention real weapons which are computer-directed. Thus, the interior critics are subject to the same sorts of criticism as are earlier advocates of unilateralism.⁴ For what is involved is less an analysis of the efficacy of the uses of the new technology for military ends than a statement about the immorality of such uses. In such circumstances the authority of the computer scientists who argue against further expansion of the military options—i.e., “Star Wars” scenarios—is neither greater nor more compelling than that of those arguing opposite premises.

The “arrogance” of the computer scientist is contrasted to the ambiguous but honest quest by humanists (unarmed) for an (unreachable) moral world. Nothing is said about the failures of humanists to resolve such issues through conventional methods in the past. Indeed, humanism in this ideological milieu is simply equated with pacifism.

The destructive, counter-utopian picture of the world of new technology is not especially unexpected or even innovative. Such a view fails rather thoroughly to show how the human race is worse off with a new technology than with the old one; what mechanisms are available for realizing a better social environment when arbitrary curbs are placed on technology; what types of options exist to achieve economic growth, social stability, and military parity in a world that retreats from computer power. Blaming the machine, like blaming the victim, offers little promise. The technologist turned pacifist is in the typical Luddite position of giving birth to an entity that exceeds expectations, and moves in uncontrolled, unanticipated ways. But there are superior mechanisms of coping rather than standing still or going backward. In short, the better product is still the ultimate critic of the good expectation.

There is another wing to the assault on the new technology—that generated by users rather than inventors, and concerned primarily with the dissemination of the product rather than placing curbs on the usages. The Unesco contributors to The Right To Communicate typify this wing of the disenchanted. But unlike the inventors, the users’ forum is far more interesting for what they collectively and cacophonously imply than for what is actually said.⁵ For what we have is a rather conventional Unesco-type document in which puffery far outweighs substance. Many of the contributions to The Right To Communicate emanate from “working groups” established under the auspices of the International Institute of Communications encouraged by Unesco, presumably in response to its medium-term plans for a “new human right—the right to communicate.”

In some curious way, the users even more than the inventors strike discordant, counter-utopian themes. The trial balloon has burst, so to speak, on “the right to communicate” thesis even before it emerged from its Unesco closet. No sooner does Sean MacBride, the unique recipient of the Nobel and Lenin Peace prizes, summarize “the history of the world as consisting in the history of the ebb and flow of the tide in the incessant endeavours to secure the protections of liberty,” than all sorts of hell break loose. MacBride himself cautiously argues that “governments of socialist and other one-party states should recognize that the right to communicate is a fundamental human right which cannot be denied to their own public without weakening confidence in their own system of government.” However, the Soviet contributor to this symposium throws cold water on such a naive approach by noting, and not without telling effect, that the notion of freedom of information as a human right “finds no objective reflection in international law. The right to inform is counterbalanced by specific obligations, which mean that freedom of information cannot be recognized as a principle of public international law.”⁶ This does not prevent Kolossov of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs from urging juridical recognition of “a new international order,” with what ominous consequences for a free press the innocent victim is left to guess.

Instead of exploring the opportunity provided by such diverse readings of the right to communicate, the users’ groups invariably are reduced to a series of statements, platitudes, quasi-resolutions of mixed levels of quality, and views on the subject/theses from a variety of professional perspectives and national prejudices. Every special plan from making Esperanto a language of equality (it might be added, argued forcefully in English—the language of discrimination, domination, and oppression) to making the distinction between “honest information” and “illegal propaganda” central in this brave new world is argued with a sincerity which in the past was reserved by clerical devotees, not information scientists.

This users’ group is able to offer, in Unesco-like fashion, optimistic readings on the “democratization of communication,” but in its remarkable inability to note any sort of contradictions in the variety or bundle of rights ranging from the right to be informed to the right of privacy, the entire project ultimately becomes an exercise in futility. The counter-utopians soften the very arguments on which a democratic culture is based. And in so doing they serve only to accommodate communist ideological requirements and nationalist developmental efforts to exclude free enquiry in the name of greater parity in information dissemination between the First and Third Worlds.

Underlying much of these right to communicate theses is a philosophical failure of nerve in the communications field. The “right” of every person to a decent meal does not entail a denial of the “right” of the farmer who grows food to be paid for his labors. By extension, communication rights involve a series of obligations, apparently a dirty word except when employed as a defense of socialist legality, that do not so much limit the human race from accessing information as it does ensure the donors (presumably also human) from being paid or otherwise rewarded differentially for their labors based on the quality and worth of their communications. Amazing as it seems, scarcely a single line in the bundle of Unesco proclamations offered pays any attention to the costs involved and hence reimbursement necessary for scholarly or popular communication to have meaning.

This comes about through the denial, by communist nations and Third World followers alike, of the autonomous nature of culture as a fact of life. Indeed, to speak of the autonomy of culture smacks of the very Kantian belief of “art for art’s sake” that is anathema to such individuals and nations. Here again, we see how in the guise of discussions on scholarly communication and the new technology what we actually have is a recourse to a very old neo-Platonic and certainly neo-Marxian argument on the need to place culture at the service of class, or less pleasantly, to make art equivalent to propaganda, and the latter (and by extension the former) defined by the needs of the ruling hierarchy of the state. Such “rights to communicate” offer a barren fruit, since what is to be communicated is nothing other than the proclamations of the totalitarian state.⁷

The contradictory character of the information environment is sharpened by the political demands for making data a free or public resource, or in other words, a public right like air and water. The commercial utilization of information has become a central force in advanced societies, and as a result, a radical view has come to claim that a “silent struggle is being waged between those who wish to appropriate the country’s information resources for private gain and those who favor the fullest availability.” Needless to say, matters of copyright infringement simply do not appear on the horizons of this perspective. Instead dire warnings of “information commercialization” are sounded; with a fear that “proprietary interests take precedence over free scholarly exchanges.” The essence of the argument is that corporations erect a “wall” between discoveries and discussions, and as a result, ideas are being diverted and even perverted (for military ends) in place of full disclosure and distribution of data.⁸ In this view, arguments about the number of radio stations or newspapers in operation are meaningless, since monopolization creates a standardized package, and the trend toward conglomerate ownership further inhibits the free flow of information. In this way, the robust character of democracy is itself destroyed, along with social accountability and public dissemination.

In this nether world, the only admissible allies of democracy are librarians who unabashedly argue the case for free access to information. Behind such pleasantries is the denial that knowledge is a hard-earned value with costs attached to its promulgation no less than its disbursement. The hidden predicate in this line of argument is that information was once “free” and is becoming less so in the information society. To note that such a presumption of original freedom is as groundless as the notion of original goodness does little to disabuse critics of free-market societies. Nonetheless, it is important to establish ground rules to overcome this current dichotomization between those who insist that every piece of data be paid for and those who argue the free use and disbursement of hard-earned information. Obviously, stretched to their respective limits, both positions represent dangerous exaggerations. The struggle for the control of information is multifaceted. The place of government as a disburser of information is being touted by critics of the open society as a desperate effort to open up the system. But this argument takes no heed of the prospects that solutions proferred may be worse than the problem of information distribution. Government as a single source of “free information” is hardly an improvement over competing networks, agencies, and institutions searching for viable information outlets and markets.

While it may be the case that the costs of generating useful information increase along with the complexity of demands and as the needs of professionals become more exacting, it is also the case that sheer quantity of data outlets or numbers of computer programs in service do not resolve the issue of democratic choice or governmental responsibility. The government serves as a balance-wheel between private sector ownership and citizen rights rather than as advocate of either the private or public sector. In this approach the metaphysical assumption that the free operations of the market are a unique path are no more advantaged than those who argue that only government control of the market is viable. An inventory of relative costs, rather than an ideology of abstracted rights or responsibilities is an urgent order of business for those concerned with communicating ideas.

Thus, we are once more back to the land of reality, a spiritual land to be sure, but one in which obligations co-exist with rights, and in which questions of a modest sort, such as copyright protection become part of the warp and woof of author protection. The recent work by Judy Erola and Francis Fox indicate that bureaucratic and administrative reports need not be turgid, tendentious recitations of official party positions. More important, such emphasis on legal frameworks and normative contexts provides the strongest response to empty slogans and generalizations about national rights.

Every nation has the responsibility to rewrite its copyright legislation in light of the new technology: from the revolution in reprography (happily avoiding the more commonly used phrase Xerography) to the efforts to protect new forms of intellectual property such as computer programs. This act is itself a statement of the ideology of authors and publishers. To the credit of the Canadian approach, it does not in any way seek limits to the communication of information and opinion. However, this Canadian document does seek to define the intricate network of costs and benefits that are brought about by the explosion in communication media (press, radio, television, computers, cable, satellites, recordings, film, theater, home entertainment units, etc.) in a way that will not collapse the very plethora and pluralism of information that characterizes democratic societies.

From Gutenberg to Telidon marks an advance upon copyright reforms in the United States by recognizing explicitly the moral no less than legal claims attaching to the ownership of ideas. It does so without weakening the need for dissemination of information. This clear distinction is made as an essential fabric of the Canadian approach. It provides for a bundle of rights attaching to claims of authorship, integrity of product, length of proprietary interest. The Canadian position also develops a clear-headed set of legal guidelines to remed...