Technology+and+Social+Action

(Return to **Polythemus** page)

=Technology and social action=

1. Introduction
The logic for this page is that there is an overemphasis on the role of the corporate, consumer capitalist, competitive environment elsewhere in much wikispace orientation, and we need to point to a different tradition, that of social activism, motivated by the practical design with technology, of routes to pathways to engineering social change.

This implies a lot of matters of knowledge, information, data, and the knew emerging matters of folksonomies, tagclouds, for structuring concepts of social good, worth, value, beauty, and the issues of the public and private, the personal and the social.

The PRaDSA activity, organised recently around these matters, now maintains a site to which participants may contribute, an email discussion list, and a parallel thread design activism exists on Facebook. (Link to PRaDSA site: [])

To catalogue these activiities and the literature might be too big a task? It might be better simply to point to the next activity in order to see how it develops, its significance for wikispaces, and for KIDMM?

2. Social agents and actors
It might be useful to recognise that each of us plays many parts? We engage here because we are professionals, in membership of organisations which mantle us with obligations. We might also be educators with contracts that mantle further obligations. Contracts means we are workers, managers, not owners? But in the context of this page we are also social activists. This might mean politicians, professional or amateur, or voluntary. We might be engaged with non-governmental organisations, sometimes called charities. We might be officials, in a governmental department of some sort, and deny anything? We will combine any number of these roles, which makes it a Polytheme. Our concern is how wikispaces and KIDMM changes our opportunities?

Am I first a social activist and secondly an educator, so that my social activism uses education as its opportunity? Is this ethical within the mantle of obligations to the public good?

Am I an educator who happens to also be a social activist? What then does this say about the quality of education? That must depend on the subject, which is a matter to which we will return, but why we need Polythemus.


 * 2.1 Organis/Zations**

Within the world of work, most people work in or for organisations. I presume this statement is true. When they use a computer, the world of work changes. This statement is I presume true.

There are some words for the world of work, alienation, reification. These might be well known. Others may be added.

This gets us to #LyotardPostModern, #VeblenLeisureclass, #MarcuseOnedimesion.

{Note of method — I'm using a notation developed for hashtagging twitter; the string contains an author and a significant eloement of title, enough for #librarything. #findinalibrary, or #JSTOR, #ulrls. Anyone may go and work out opinion. Wordpress being used slowly for elaborating essential readings and then hashtagged. How well this works I don't know, but it is innovative, a #knove. and a #Polythemus.}

It seems the case that organisations develop forms. Forms as the chief regulator, but I'm leaving out hashtags for now, that is Hegel.

This might be the basis for KIDMM — finance, humanresources, research, inboundlogistics, outboundlogistics, marketing, is the core from #Porterstrategy. It is probably true that no matter what anyone does, the centripetal forces are more powerful than the centrifugal in all organisations.

3. Transport
This is the first suitcase. A suitcase is a group of cases. The Future Transport 2050 activity of the European Commission was my most recent engagement, the conclusions of which these cases in part are aimed at. This is also a matter of www.greenandsmart.org to which a history case will point.

JL adds 17.08.09 that he has put some transport seminar materials which he has done onto scribd. http://www.scribd.com/group/79184-futuretransport

Chavelin
twice, so it stands out. {now I have a meta method matter, I think my own cases, which are not directly KIDMM activities, I should simply point to here, and not develop within wikispaces?}

So, Wordpress: http://infopolecon.wordpress.com/chavelin/

{and there is another meta method matter, but of a Polytheme — when I click on a link, do I want to open a new window or navigate away from this window? And these behaviours differ when I am reading and editing.}

Corby
They have spent somewhere between seven and seventeen million building a railway station in Corby.

perhaps I should wait for the opinion of the * invent role?

OK here so far.

The train from St.Pancras stops at Kettering for half an hour. No one will tell you anything? Though you can force change to this behaviour. There is a bus, X1, outside, two an hour, which takes half an hour to get to Corby. There is another, some distance away, X4, which will do the same thing. All this you have to work out for yourself. This is KIDM. We use Twitter, Facebook, Wikispaces to make notes about these things. This is Wikispaces.

Can we find out what sort of organisation does things like this?

Then can we find out why one individual, knowing this, says nothing on the train?

This is the point at which being a human being, and being a worker, hits matter and method.

The train then takes 10 minutes to get to Corby.

It is a huge train.

Once an hour, a train leaves Corby, to sit for half an hour in Kettering. According to ticket type, you may take a faster train. No one will tell you any of this beforehand.

I counted four people. A guard, conductor said he had had twelve.

This is a huge train.

Once a day a train goes forward from Corby to Lincoln via Melton Mowbray. Once a day, I am told, a train does the opposite, the former in the evening, the latter in the morning.

What sort of matter is this? Who, whom?

If you go to St,Pancras to buy a ticket for today, it will cost more than twenty pounds. If you buy at West Hampstead a ticket to Bedford, then a ticket from Bedford to Kettering, it will cost little more than ten.

This ticket you may use only to and from Kettering, and you will probably not be allowed to return through St.Pancras. The X4 runs from Northampton to Kettering to Corby to Peterborough. There are many places along the route where the functionality of the network would double could you take the bus in either direction. But a Kettering ticket will not be valid from Peterborough. Recently Modern Railways showed all the possible return routes with a return ticket from Leeds. The intellectual property rights managers probably will not allow me to put up a photograph of this which I have colour coded with what you now may do.

What sort of matter is this? Who whom?

**3.2.n**
Now we plunge down to the lowest level of KIDMM detail which is possible.

{Methods note, what follows isn't really a Corby matter, but we don't yet have the capacity we have in wordpress for changing the places or order of knew material.}

The bus 24 arriving at Oundle at 13.20 continues as the 23 to Apethorpe.

There is NO way one could have KNOWN this beforehand. There is NOTHING telling you this.

All it would require is a line on the timetable with a little arrow.

If it hadn't, and there hadn't been an interchange, that would have wasted a day, and everything invovled in it.

The problem with transport as a matter, is that it is this level of trivial detail on which everything hangs.

No one is interested in this level of detail.

But nothing works without it.

**3.2.n+1**
Now an interesting matter. I'm told that Corby, the local authority, will withdraw its share of the funding in November, which will make the whole enterprise of the train unfeasible. What will happen?


 * 3.3 Case three – Heritage**


 * Heritage**

This case is not as serious as some of the others for at one level it doesn't matter, except as a matter. The question is why heritage railways appear to be so difficult to attach to the national rail network, and why the organisations running them use motorism. These two are connected.

Heritage rail — strange names, but then so too do I. The first Zoho I built was simply the names and the best connection points, so I could sort.

Take Spa Valley Railway, Tunbridge Wells, still not Eridge.

There is a matter of energy oil security here to which we will return, but we now raise a knew matter.


 * Canal**

Now another matter, which needs ordering or numbering, but I was at Stoke Breurne the day they were celebrating the 25th anniversary of the re-opening of the Blisworth tunnel and that reminded me that canals are not only heritage but one of the matters of future transport. It also reminded me the strange matter of heristage which is volunteer, business, hobby, job, enthusiasts, tourism, and more to go here which makes it Polythemus on many Polythemes.

I'm thinking size change in font for these headers so they stand out a bit more. Could use colour.

In Modern Railways and in the new Statesman there have been interviews with the man interested in high speed railways, who is for a short time perhaps the Minister of Motorism.

There seem to the author two things immediately, running a high speed rail into a city centre is pointless unless the high speed rail is met with a high speed tram. The second, to place the interchanges in Ebbsfleet Chavelin manner, is to encourage gated estates and wealthaparthied, which we are against. These points were of course not made in either Modern Railways or Statesman.

Traveline
This is the best knew case of the use of technology to make a difference to public transport information. It has been more than ten years in the making.

When I look at it from the perspective of either a victim, or an information systems designer, it seems to me to make very clear the difference of approach someone who regards computers, and someone who regards information.

3.6 Case six - barriers

 * Barriers**

A while ago (JL adds, 24 Aug) I heard that 1 hundred million was spent on the installation of the barriers at Waterloo Sation. I noticed on Friday that there are new barriers at Salisbury which are so placed that you cannot see the departure screens, which menas if the point of being there is to make an interchange, you can't see what platform or what time. They are also so placed that you cannot enter the tourism information centre, nor the integrated transport centre, but as that has been destroyed, it doesn't matter any more.

For those interested in integrated transport, the train from Bristol arrives two minutes after the train for London leaves, which means, on Sundays, you have a 58 minute wait.

The matters of integrated transport, the sort of question transport is, who takes the decisions on which these matters depend, who decides, who, whom, is something to which we endlessly return, but each one in itself is so tiny, that knowledge organisation becomes problematical.

4. Infopolecon
This is the second suitcase for social activism. However if anyone else were to add their material, we would now have a management matter. These cases might be better developed elsewhere and simply pointed? Infopolecon however with google is already a matter since 1996.

The manner of dealing with this matter has now changed, for the idea occurred yesterday while in the library of the RSA that building a block on access to resources within the openRSA ning would make a usable object as well as deal with matters. That is always one of my design principles.

4.1 JSTOR
This we will make the first wikispaces case, and then do history elsewhere and point.

We return again to the matter of method.

I have invented a concept, //knove//, which seems a good grep, then begun a case, //ardebat//, which seems a good case. Test these on JSTOR.

4.2 ulrls
And this the second case.

I don't expect to make any progress with //ardebat// on urlrls, but will test never the less.

Instead for this one, I'm going to return to Polythemus, though //ardebat// is a case within Polythemus.

{We, that means me, must remember that we are doing wikispaces and KIDMM here, not the case/}

**4.k #rktm**
I'm not sure whether to put this here or make a knew case entirely? #rktm is hashtage. It embraces a much larger activity over a long time called Repton Recovered, sometimes recovering Repton, it will be a part of Leverhulme Beauty now.

Gayhurst and Tyringham were reawoken by Hanslope while at Stoke Pavilions. All this will need e-very-thing.

**4.S Shaftesbury**
This case might not be in the right place. It will show also the connection with JSTOR and ulrls, which #rktm will not, which is itself a matter. This will be a connection with #formosempastor, which #rktm will not.

It starts with a KIDMM matter, which Shaftesbury called fact, Subject::Reason, Argument, though the punctuation notation is mine.

What puzzled me is that Trotsky quotes Shaftesbury in "Their morals and ours", about which quite a lot more has to be known.