Re: a small note on Praxis

[Mike Friedman <mikedf@xxxxxxxx>]

According to technological determinist arguments, a long line of
technological advances including the printing press, the television, the
personal computer and now the internet would all "transform how scientific and
academic research is done, creating at least the potential for a
democratization of scholarship." Bullshit. Only changing class relations in
society will do this. I still have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for
a Ph.D., subscribe to journals, electronic or otherwise, and join
professional societies, at about $100 - $350 a pop and compete for grants
from the NSF, etc., stc. In the proper social context, these technologies
will be effective means of diffusion of knowledge, but by themselves they
don't "create the potential" for anything.

Mike

At 01:17 AM 12/22/2002 -0500, you wrote:
> Jim Farmelant wrote:
>
> It would seem that the growth and development of
> the Internet will transform how scientific and
> academic research is done, creating at least
> the potential for a democratization of scholarship.
> This development should be of special interest
> to Marxists who believe in the unity of theory and praxis.


~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.