[Marxism] What?s the matter with high-tech West Virginia?

["acpollack2@xxxxxxxx" <acpollack2@xxxxxxxx>]

(sorry if this is a repost but the page showed a time expired error as I was 
hitting the send button)

Put this today on my restarted blog on computers and socialism:
What?s the matter with high-tech West Virginia?

A recent article in Le Monde Diplomatique entitled ?What?s the matter with West 
Virginia??, http://mondediplo.com/2004/10/02usa (picking up on themes in Thomas 
Frank?s recent book, ?What?s the Matter with Kansas??) wonders why so many 
voters so hard up economically would still back Bush.  The author?s answer is 
their attachment to right-wing positions on social issues combined with the 
contempt of liberal elites for the downtrodden.

Around the same time (and while debates over this thesis were raging on some 
progressive email lists), the state of West Virginia announced it would sponsor 
a public computing grid accessible to researchers and businesses through the 
Global Grid Exchange.

The project, ?which will function as a supercomputer at a fraction of the cost, 
is a joint effort of the state, the West Virginia High Technology Consortium, 
Verizon and Hewlett Packard.? ?this grid in the hands of West Virginia 
companies and researchers will give them the capacity for innovation and 
greater potential for new products in the state of West Virginia as well as an 
influx of research dollars into the state,? Amy Beaudry, a spokeswoman for the 
high tech consortium, said Wednesday?. The grid will link computers in academic 
institutions, government offices and home personal computers that have excess 
capacity to advance work in such fields as biometrics and cancer research.  
Officials believe the grid will spark economic development initiatives within 
the state.  Although universities and organizations like NASA have had computer 
clusters for years, researchers and businesses not connected with those 
institutions have had to go through an extensive process to gain access. ?A 
West Virginia engineer or researcher will be able from their desk top to get 
access to math computing power on demand? The potential is staggering.?" 
(Associated Press report.)

So two pictures are simultaneously painted of the state in the media: a 
benighted, ignorant voting base, and a state government brilliantly taking 
advantage of the latest in supercomputing innovations.

What?s wrong with this picture?

On the one hand, it ignores the complexity of political views among West 
Virginia?s workers.  For one thing it?s not clear why miners losing jobs and 
benefits, WalMart workers with low wages and no benefits, and aspiring teachers 
who can only pay for their college degree by going to Iraq (think Jessica 
Lynch), should be expected to be gung-ho for a Democratic candidate who has 
studiously avoided promising any change in their economic fortunes.  Nor is it 
clear why such indifference is a sign of ignorance, as opposed to informed 
self-interest.  (The author of the ?What?s Wrong? article notes: ?Before John 
Kerry starts taking advice from President Bill Clinton he should recall that it 
was Clinton?s mix of free market economics with pseudo-progressive social 
measures that made the Democrats into a minority party.?)

On the other hand we have a state elite whose response to these workers? woes 
is to ignore it, to write them off as relic of the state?s past, and instead to 
spend state development money on a computing grid which will produce a tiny 
handful of jobs requiring education far beyond that achieved by any of the 
workers just mentioned.  (Well, OK, perhaps some of them can work as janitors 
in the small companies the grid spins off).

How?s this relevant to a page about computers and socialism?  Here?s how:

The state government?s preference for this form of development, and for 
investing in this form and use of technology, comes first and foremost from its 
belief that profit solves all problems (in the short term for itself and in the 
sweet bye-and-bye for workers).  But this preference results in a technological 
idiocy on a greater scale, and more damaging socially, than the alleged 
stupidities of the state?s voters.

This is another example of the combined and uneven development of information 
technology: that is, the most advanced data gathering and analysis techniques 
in a region with some of the worst social and economic conditions in the 
country.  And the social crime, displaying the idiocy of the state?s elite, is 
that the advanced techniques won?t be used to address that backwardness.

No doubt the public grid will lead to some very worthwhile scientific research 
(as well as some totally pointless research geared to boosting profits for 
pharmaceutical companies and other vultures).  But why not take a step back and 
use this grid to do the math the state has skipped over: that is, matching 
resources to people?s needs.  Describing the new grid, the state spokesperson 
said ?the potential is staggering.?" You got that right ? but not for the 
reasons she thinks.

It?s no secret, and it doesn?t take even a pocket calculator to do the math, 
that for over a century the number of dollars flowing out of the state in value 
produced by miners (and more recently by retail workers), and into the pockets 
of mining and other companies, far exceeded what would have been necessary to 
provide decent jobs, education, health care, housing, etc. for all the state?s 
residents.

The state spokesperson praises the grid because with it ?a West Virginia 
engineer or researcher will be able from their desk top to get access to math 
computing power on demand??  Even without the supercomputing power of the new 
grid, a far more socially useful grid is already feasible which could do the 
math so studiously avoided for so long:

Let?s say the state?s unions and community groups created a website on the 
state?s economy and promoted its use by members at union and group headquarters 
as well from their home computers.  On it would be links to the public annual 
reports of any corporation doing business in the state.  On it would also be 
links to state and Federal websites with figures on the state?s population, 
employment, housing, schools, etc.

Then taking data from these already available, already public websites, some 
simple calculations are run showing the resources needed to meet residents? 
needs, and the results are matched with the products and profits of the 
above-mentioned corporations (I would add a historical component to this 
calculation, showing the reparations due the state for the profits exported 
from it over the years).

Not a particularly daunting project.  The real problem is not technical, but 
social: getting access to the resources which the calculations show are 
required.  That of course presumes stronger unions fighting for better 
contracts, for legislation boosting benefits and creating public works jobs, 
etc.

And to take it the last mile: such calculations, performed on a daily basis, 
would be the basis for socialist planning (although at that point the grid 
would have to be extended nationwide (or further)).

Which brings us back to the problem of combined and uneven development of 
information, i.e. the fact that we let the social idiots of the ruling class 
run our economy and society, creating this kind of criminal mismatch of 
technology and social need.

Andrew Pollack is the author of ?Information Technology and Socialist 
Self-Management? in Capitalism and the Information Age, Monthly Review, and has 
started a weblog on Computers and Socialism at http://socialcomp.blogspot.com


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