Erich Fromm and the Critical Theory of Communication

Erich Fromm (1900-1980) was a Marxist psychoanalyst, philosopher and socialist humanist. This paper asks: How can Fromm’s critical theory of communication be used and updated to provide a critical perspective in the age of digital and communicative capitalism? In order to provide an answer, the article discusses elements from Fromm’s work that allow us to better understand the human communication process. The focus is on communication (section 2), ideology (section 3), and technology (section 4). Fromm’s approach can inform a critical theory of communication in multiple respects: His notion of the social character allows to underpin such a theory with foundations from critical psychology. Fromm’s distinction between the authoritarian and the humanistic character can be used for discerning among authoritarian and humanistic communication. Fromm’s work can also inform ideology critique: The ideology of having shapes life, thought, language and social action in capitalism. In capitalism, technology (including computing) is fetishized and the logic of quantification shapes social relations. Fromm’s quest for humanist technology and participatory computing can inform contemporary debates about digital capitalism and its alternatives

Intelligent flight control systems

The capabilities of flight control systems can be enhanced by designing them to emulate functions of natural intelligence. Intelligent control functions fall in three categories. Declarative actions involve decision-making, providing models for system monitoring, goal planning, and system/scenario identification. Procedural actions concern skilled behavior and have parallels in guidance, navigation, and adaptation. Reflexive actions are spontaneous, inner-loop responses for control and estimation. Intelligent flight control systems learn knowledge of the aircraft and its mission and adapt to changes in the flight environment. Cognitive models form an efficient basis for integrating 'outer-loop/inner-loop' control functions and for developing robust parallel-processing algorithms

Critique of Architectures for Long-Term Digital Preservation

Evolving technology and fading human memory threaten the long-term intelligibility of many kinds of documents. Furthermore, some records are susceptible to improper alterations that make them untrustworthy. Trusted Digital Repositories (TDRs) and Trustworthy Digital Objects (TDOs) seem to be the only broadly applicable digital preservation methodologies proposed. We argue that the TDR approach has shortfalls as a method for long-term digital preservation of sensitive information. Comparison of TDR and TDO methodologies suggests differentiating near-term preservation measures from what is needed for the long term. TDO methodology addresses these needs, providing for making digital documents durably intelligible. It uses EDP standards for a few file formats and XML structures for text documents. For other information formats, intelligibility is assured by using a virtual computer. To protect sensitive information—content whose inappropriate alteration might mislead its readers, the integrity and authenticity of each TDO is made testable by embedded public-key cryptographic message digests and signatures. Key authenticity is protected recursively in a social hierarchy. The proper focus for long-term preservation technology is signed packages that each combine a record collection with its metadata and that also bind context—Trustworthy Digital Objects.

Herbert Marcuse and social media

This article reflects on the relevance of Herbert Marcuse’s philosophy of technology in the age social media. Although Marcuse did not experience the rise of the Internet, the World Wide Web, and “social media” as major means of communication, his insights about technological rationality, technology, and the role of technology in the context of labor allow us today to reflect on the relevance of Marcuse’s philosophy of technology for a critical theory of digital and social media

High Automation, Fascism, and Our Social Revolution

The United States in the present day has experienced a rise of both incredibly productive automated technologies, approaching self-perpetuation, and fascism, entering and affecting significant social institutions. This paper aims to explain these phenomenon with the Marxist mechanics of the historical dialectic, conceptions of abstraction and material, and the behavior of capital – among other modes of production – and predict the broader development that is oncoming. It has been found that the rise of advanced and self-perpetuating automating technologies is indicative of an oncoming mode of production, ‘high automation’, and that fascism itself is a character, or subdialectical stage, of capitalism, which periodically appear during transitions under capitalism. Therein a social revolution, or reconstruction, to high automation is oncoming

Work and totality: A dialectical approach to the future of work narrative

Our current confluence of global crises points to the very real possibility of systems collapse. These crises will continue to accelerate under capitalism due to its inherent structural contradictions. Capitalism’s profit motive creates its insatiable need for perpetual growth, a growth only achieved through the exploitation of man and nature. Radical systems change is therefore required and only a collective agent can affect this change. While the working class has so far failed to live up to its potential as that collective agent, the human drive to work—to contribute to society and to express itself creatively—will continue to play a primary role in bringing about the required change. Drawing from the philosophical tradition of German Idealism and its progenitors, this thesis positions the future of work in a way that breaks with the current alienated and reified experience of capitalist labour and replaces it with a vision of work that is autonomous, democratic, and part of a collective praxis. It draws upon the thinking of G.W.F. Hegel to show the mediating role that work plays in both subjective recognition and the progress of consciousness. It also draws upon insights from Friedrich Schiller, Herbert Marcuse and Karl Marx to show how work is key to our very being—a form of being that expresses its essence through work. This thesis contrasts labour under capitalism with a normative, post-capitalist vision of work. In doing so it utilizes the critical insights of Georg Lukács and his interlocutors Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Lukács’ concept of reification and his bourgeois antimonies, as well as Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s critique of the positivist worldview and instrumental reason are also brought to bear. Finally, Adorno’s negative dialectics and his associated constellation approach are used in a combined methodological approach that examines key policy alternatives related to the future of work. Each policy option is judged upon its relative merits in terms of its ability to negate and replace the structural causes of our current state of crises. In doing so, this thesis presents a novel analytical tool for policy assessment

DOUBLE LOOP LEARNING ELEVATES THE INNOVATION DESIGN OF A PAEDIATRIC CLINIC FROM MEDIA TO INTERSUBJECTIVE DIALOGUE

We investigate the innovations actually enacted in an organisational research intervention, to identify double loop learning instances, as a counsellor-facilitator engages in therapeutic co-construction with the client. The case is situated in a paediatric clinic for children with developmental differences. Ethnography lasted three month of full immersion of the researcher-facilitator-counsellor. Followed by a co-construction process between counsellor and client to let emerge innovation design ideas. A number of double loop learning instances came to modify the practice culture of the clinic. Outstanding was the focus emerged on the intersubjective dialogue as the key element to boost impact of relational emotional interaction experiences with the child and with the parent. Other crisp concepts include attention to: breakdown in the relation with parents; dead or live speech as intentional communication style used with parents; more articulated and structured treatment notes reporting therapy sessions; first and second order cybernetic assessments; plus a variety of advices. The onset of focus on intersubjective dialogue, to further develop the clinical practice, the most striking outcome, contributed by the client. The impulse applied to therapist training, its greatest consequence. Significative the thrust towards assessing impact and nature of the clinical practice

Special Libraries, January 1967

Volume 58, Issue 1https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1967/1000/thumbnail.jp