Safe from Vexation of Thinking
Originally entitled
Technocratic Despotism: Incognito and Safe from the Vexation of Thinking by Paul Trummel.
Licensed to The National Council of Teachers of English
Assembly for Computers in English (ACE) Newsletter, 10(1): (Summer 1996) 10-15
for publication in print and on the NCTE web site.
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Prior restraint and censorship described here have recently occurred at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), University of Washington (UW), Seattle Jewish Mafia (SJM) and other universities and institutions. The author has updated and revised the content to describe current events sanctioned by Big Mamas and implemented by their mischievous, intellectually challenged leprechauns. The article still has relevance when one considers the negative attitude changes toward democracy that have occurred since the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York and the current increase in prior restraint, censorship and propaganda. "A sect or a party is an elegant incognito, devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking." NCTE has apparently removed the original article from its web site; therefore, the author has linked a PDF of the full text. [ACE Newsletter]
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Technocracy, a Modern form of Despotism
The provisions of the US Bill of Rights contain the obligations of the state and define individual rights to protection from interference by the state. They neither give the state power over the individual nor define individual obligations. First Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees freedom of expression that applies to all communication and these same guarantees now apply in cyberspace. “Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism”; therefore, new law must evolve from policies created with public awareness and responsible institutional behavior.
Justice William O. Douglas argued that the protection of fundamental values does not self-execute: “As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness. The cyberspace twilight has arrived”.
The new laws that will protect individual freedom of expression can only emanate from equitable practice, not from despotic decrees and censorship. Communication in cyberspace should profit all people, not just the technocrats who administer it. Increasingly, technocratic peons interfere with university computer resources that scholars need for their officially sanctioned research. They often do not have the modicum of intellect or literacy needed to indulge in any form of censorship.
Technocrats continue to use their own values to decide who should have access to information in both computer databases and libraries. They believe that pragmatism and efficiency should automatically overrule equitable values. They think that ethics do not apply to them, hold themselves above the law, and follow low moral standards. The time has come for a reversal of policies that allow technocrats to control information flow absolutely. The tail must stop wagging the dog. Oversight and supervision through traditional, ethical, information science procedures need to replace the extant anarchy.
Technocratic Ethics and Morals
Cyberspace has had a profound impact upon many aspects of human endeavor. The electronic age has generally altered the way that humans think, write, gather, store, and distribute information. It has also changed the ethical and moral standards that associate with communication. Intellectually challenged scholars, like their technocratic counterparts, now push ethical and moral standards to the limit. Orwell’s “so is the jungle” response to an assertion on the neutrality of technology succinctly addresses this moral turpitude. Techno-Valkyries confuse adversaries in a cyberspace Valhalla where they preside over real and imagined complaints. They arbitrarily choose those computer users who must die and appease their technocratic gods with the careers of censored heroes.
They completely ignore the synthesis of communication and ethics. However, they correctly acknowledge that technological advances change the underlying laws and rights of individuals and then promptly usurp the right to dictate what laws and rights will apply. They assume the powers of supreme court judges then block any dissent through totalitarian absolutism and denial of due process.
Moreover, they ignore communication protocols that have become broad and flexible enough adapt to any type of medium. Scholars must address the negative impact of denying a new generation the right to know, and the counter productiveness of setting electronic media apart from other means of communication. It has again become necessary to repeat the values of the First Amendment concerning information distribution. It has again become imperative to remind communities and schools that free access and critical inquiry represent traditional values as the foundation of innovation and progress.
Political Correctness means Technocratic Censorship
Making totalitarianism systems expend ever more resources in their abrogation of fundamental human rights has always provided a deterrent to absolutism and made the injustices manifest. Totalitarian systems depend upon petty bureaucrats to administer their ideologies. Therefore, activists may practically focus their energies upon these sycophants by preventing them from using the Nazi death camp defense that they “only followed orders.”
Recently, judges have begun to mete both individual and institutional punishment for illegal activities and denial of due process at universities. Perhaps these decisions will deter some technocrats from continuing to deny fundamental human rights and freedom of speech. However, the public and the press must remain vigilant and vociferously expose these practices; otherwise they will remain incognito and defy prosecution.
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Political Silence Ironically, the next generation will not have to deal with officials who advocate censorship. If technocrats continue the present way, and academic apologists continue to maintain political silence, then nobody will know that any form of censorship ever existed. These questions need answering when it comes to any kind of censorship: Who accredits censors and vouches for their ethics? By what criteria do censors determine systems use? Who decides what content needs censoring? How do censors decide about exclusion of political views? What do systems administrators remove? These questions remain rhetorical; however, they show good reason for the existence of the First Amendment to the Constitution. [Political Silence]
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Technocrats probably have neither the education nor the aptitude to understand the content of scholarly communication. Very few have a liberal arts education and understand communication theory, yet they hold unlimited power over those who do. Conversely, the widespread technological ignorance inherent in academic departments has allowed systems administrators to gain control of educational technology and library databases besides computers and media equipment.
Systems administrators believe that technology must rule preeminently and that content and freedom of expression represent secondary concerns. They sanctify and establish their own ideas of political correctness and expediency. Furthermore, they make frivolous claims of rules infraction to deny Internet access and curb freedom of speech. They then arrogantly use their administrative powers to deny due process of law.
Fortunately, they can neither gain absolute control of the Internet nor empower themselves as absolute censors. They prove that democracy becomes a sham when controlled by any form of technocratic elite, especially when that elite works for a state university. This reminds one of the way that an elite force acted in the name of the proletariat in the former Soviet Union: totalitarian control without accountability.
A democratic society can practice a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression. It leaves fewer means of escape and penetrates much more deeply into academic life. Protection against despotism results from challenging political correctness, a form of censorship that allows technocrats to impose their own ideology upon dissenters by means other than civil law.
The inexhaustible capacity of technocrats to find ways to censor information ironically contrasts with efforts to advance global communication and prevents the development of a universal intellectual freedom. Moreover, technocratic political correctness (cyberspace censorship) has resulted in a new form of apolitical totalitarianism (or technological cultism). It has become a religion without a theology. Consequently, pseudo-theocratic dogmas now complement the pernicious academic totalitarianism that already exists in both public and private universities.
Unfortunately, attempts to control information will probably increase as the new technologies advance just as censorship laws proliferated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If this absolutism continues, then censorship will curtail information transfer and suppress truth to the detriment of intellectual advancement. Auspiciously, three federal judges recently found for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in a civil action against the Attorney General of the US, and for the American Libraries Association (ALA) in a civil action against the US Department of Justice.
Three federal judges struck down The Communications Decency Act. They found that the legislature had gone too far in restricting the First Amendment rights of all computer users in its effort to protect children from gaining access to pornography. The decision set aside the Internet censorship provisions which made it illegal to transmit certain types of information on the Internet or other computer networks.
Judge Stewart R. Dalzell wrote in his opinion: The Internet may fairly be regarded as a never-ending conversation. . . the Government may not, through CDA, interrupt that conversation. The publicity emanating from this finding has already made the public realize that trying to control Internet information has become anachronistic because of the universality of the medium.
Legal counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation has said that: Cyberspace may give freedom of speech more muscle than the First Amendment does. . . . It may have become literally impossible for a government to shut people up. However, despite the eventual futility, many systems administrators continue to censor information. Generally, technocrats argue that they must answer complaints from recipients of messages and have a responsibility to take action against the originators. They then take unilateral action without due process and impose their own values upon others.
Moreover, they exercise prior restraint without any legal right to do so. Technocrats typically have a wide range of latitude in interpreting policies because they have for many years created and maintained a technocratic mystique. They give the appearance of technologic correctness (a component of political correctness) and then pass the buck to their subordinates when legally challenged. This can only construe as evasion of responsibility. Prior restraint applies particularly to the denial of a journalist’s constitutional right to gather and publish information or opinions without institutional control or fear of reprisal.
The danger lies in the insidious technocratic encroachment upon civil rights that very few people notice. For example, the latest (1996) revision of the Listserv Owner’s Manual provides information on new technology and openly describes how to censor Listserv communications. Although the universities who employ these people proclaim “Seek ye knowledge and the truth”, they eliminate controversy by condoning censorship. The irony of electronic advances in information transfer shows that broadened access offers new and more efficient ways to violate First Amendment rights.
Academic Despotism and Cultism
Censorship and prior restraint place exclusive conditions on freedom of expression and, consequently, academic freedom. Any type of censorship restricts, to narrowly defined criteria decided by oligarchic clones, what both students and faculty members may say. Oligarchic clones indulge in similar practices to those that preceded the Holocaust.
Politically correct ideologies force everyone to learn the same way, to teach the same way, to research the same way, to discourse the same way, and to write the same way. Subsequently, the conformity destroys any vestige of individuality still left in the academe. The exclusivity forces everyone to become a clone of someone else. It enables those in power to deny academic freedom to dissenters. It also allows them to destroy the careers of nonconformists.
Despots arbitrarily outlaw any behavior that they, either collectively or individually, find inappropriate. The war cries “inappropriate” and “politically correct” then define synonymously in these totalitarian environments. Moreover, academicians can only blame themselves for their loss of academic freedom and compliant academic lifestyle that compares with the apathy and compliance rampant among apologists in Nazi Germany. A parody on Martin Niemüller’s statement during that era applies today.
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Modus Vivendi of Academic Apologists Officials first deprived undergraduates of their freedom of expression. That did not concern me because I strictly conformed to a politically correct ideology. Then they deprived graduate students. That did not concern me because I held a faculty position. Then they deprived untenured professors. That did not concern me because I held tenure. Then they deprived tenured professors. That did not concern me because I held a department chair. Then they deprived me and that concerned me. I soon discovered that the politically correct ideology to which I had given my academic life had paid only lip service to academic freedom. I cried out to my colleagues for help but they had all adopted politically silent attitudes. I desperately turned toward my former students but they also remained silent in the way that they had learned from their mentors. They had all lost their freedom of expression and, consequently, could not speak out for me.
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In Academe, Nothing Succeeds like Excess
Academic freedom, an absolute right and not an abstract philosophy, should not subserve economic considerations. Information technology exists as a right and not a privilege, despite technocratic claims to the contrary. Legislative and judicial decisions have determined the right of individuals to distribute information freely and the Bill of Rights documents the protection individuals may expect from the state.
However, constitutional laws do not now provide much protection against denial of academic freedom and due process of law by despotic university officials. These officials constantly frustrate both faculty members and their students by arbitrarily withholding access to information and computer resources because they disagree with the content of messages: a disagreement probably based upon disclosure of their own malfeasance.
University administrators fear dissent. This fear motivates an aversion to controversy and an addiction to political correctness that frequently allows censorship of Internet activities. Consequently, they empower technocrats who refuse to address properly the email complaints and telephone calls that demand the removal of computer access. Instead, they use their delegated administrative power to “persuade” the alleged offender (politically incorrect deviant) to cease and desist posting controversial material. [Nothing Succeeds Like Excess]
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BIG MAMA. I hope I shall remember that. It sounds an admirable maxim. But I'm beginning to forget everything. It's a great misfortune. LEPRECHAUN. It is one of your most fascinating qualities, Big Mama. No woman should have a memory. Memory in a woman is the beginning of dowdiness. One can always tell from a woman's bonnet whether she has got a memory or not. BIG MAMA. How charming you are, dear Leprechaun. You always find out that one's most glaring fault is one's most important virtue. You have the most comforting views of life. With Apologies to Oscar Wilde. A Woman of No Importance, Act 3. |
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When the dissenter claims First Amendment rights, they succumb to the demands of conformity, political correctness, and an Emily Post type of “netiquette”. They assume the role of absolute censors. Others, unable to take any personal initiative, shrug their shoulders and pass all requests to equally indecisive policy makers who take the easy way out and either condone or approve censorship. They disengage themselves by insisting that politicians must decide these “political problems.”
Then their totalitarian masters adopt political silence because otherwise they must defend extrajudicial activity. The public needs to become aware and to address both the administrative excesses and the double-dipping remuneration of technocrats that exists in both public and private universities. University officials frequently create close financial ties with commercial concerns and now use them to evade their moral, ethical, and legal responsibilities to their constituents.
A close examination of payroll records at the University of Washington shows evidence of quid pro quo. The Vice President and Vice Provost for Computing and Communications receives emoluments as a clinical professor. Apparently, this individual has virtually no academic qualifications. Universities normally give clinical appointments to individuals who hold a primary appointment with an outside agency or non-academic unit. If the primary appointment relates to another University, then clinical professors must hold professorial rank at that institution.
A former professor described him as “the most evil man I have ever met.” He and his Valkyrie arbitrarily remove computer access and expropriate research and journalistic databases. This classifies as illegal censorship and prior restraint. For their taxpayer funded “services” they receive grossly inflated salaries and increases. [Salary Tables]
An American Civil Liberties Union cooperating attorney spent nine months investigating the actions of these individuals. The investigation relates to denial of due process. It predicated upon arbitrary removal of computer access and expropriation of both editorial and research databases. Consequently, one may ask whether these extraordinary salary increases bought political silence and immunity from investigation for other involved, high-ranking university officials: officials who also received extraordinarily high salary increases during the same period.
Conclusion
Economic considerations do not apply to freedom of expression in cyberspace; consequently, exclusionist actions can only derive from political expediency. Free expression, the traditional lifeblood of universities, has now become an economic and political pawn. For all the hyperbole about freedom of expression, university presidents and their administrators generally do not contribute to the tenets of true academic freedom.
When one examines their overall record, one comprehends the magnitude of their hypocrisy. They concern themselves more with liaison between their institutions, government, and industry than the accumulation of knowledge. They have become institutional pickpockets.
If one wishes to expose their corruption, then one quite simply follows the money trail. The time has come for a reversal of policies that allow technocrats to control information flow absolutely. The tail must stop wagging the dog. Oversight and supervision, through traditional, ethical, information science procedures, need to replace the extant anarchy.
See Portable Document File (PDF) for citations.
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Paul Trummel PhD (RPI ABD), PhD (UW ABD), MS (RPI), MSc (UK), BSc (UK) Associate Professor, Communication and Rhetoric (Retired) International Federation of Journalists, Brussels (International Press Card)
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© Copyright 1996 by Paul Trummel |
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