How the computer revolution can ease polarization and help calm the culture wars.
2007 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
In this highly original book, anthropologist F. Allan Hanson reveals an entirely unanticipated but vital link between two of the most widely discussed features of contemporary American society: the computer revolution and the culture wars. Hanson argues that the culture wars stem from a divergence in the evolutionary paths of society and culture. Societies have evolved significantly over the last few millennia from small bands of farmers or hunter-gatherers into huge, internally diverse nation-states, while cultures-the closed systems of meanings and symbols that kept small, face-to-face societies together-have failed to keep pace. If cultures became more open, Hanson contends, then the maladaptive rupture between society and culture would be healed and the clashes that currently beset us would be greatly diminished. Interweaving lucid analysis with concrete case studies of common law, education, and other areas of contemporary life, Hanson demonstrates how the widespread use of computers is, in fact, encouraging more originality and open-mindedness, with the potential to ease polarization and calm the culture wars.
Tabla de materias
Acknowledgments
1. Culture Gone Bad
Culture
Social and Cultural Evolution
Open and Closed Culture
Automation: A Preview
An Overview
2. Cultural Contradiction and Compartmentalization
Culture Wars
Poverty: From Making a Difference to Indifference
The Divisive Effects of Automation
3. Fixing the Trouble with Culture: Relativism, Postmodernism, and Automation
Cultural Relativism
Postmodernism
Automation
4. The Human Rage to Classify
Classifying
Classification by Correspondence
Taxonomic Classification
The Contrasting Logics of Correspondence and Taxonomy
5. Classification and the Common Law
Legal Information
‘Common-placing’
Supply-Side Control versus an ‘Appalling Glut’
Key Numbers
Implications
Conclusion
6. Automated Classification and Indexing
Classifying and Indexing
How Automated Indexing Works
Can Artificial Intelligence Classify?
Can Artificial Intelligence Create Classificatory Schemes?
7. The Automated Mode in Principle
Internet Communication, Hypertext, and Automated Searching
Focused Searching
Open-Ended Searching
8. The Automated Mode in Practice
Automation and the Law
Scholarly Research and Education
Business and Manufacturing
9. The New Superorganic
Decentering the Individual
The New Superorganic
10. Opening Culture, Expanding Individuals
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Sobre el autor
F. Allan Hanson is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas and the author of several books, including Testing Testing: Social Consequences of the Examined Life.
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