Labor and Pedagogy in the Academic Marketplace

Concerns raised are valid good heads-up observations. Byrne however, to my mind, is on the most productive track ("Learning to Love Powerpoint") and he offers his piquant twist on what to make of lemons. Use it for art, dammit! Whack the master's ankles with his own stave-- or at least nibble holes in his shoes. Art has always subverted the tools of domination because it can flow under the door and waft like smoke and change shapes and re-purpose. After all, Foucault has prophesied and it has come to pass-- Orwell too-- why would we expect anything other than power replicating itself endlessly, and with our good help and complicity, using whatever tools evolve? Plain old paper can be a dumber-downer if submitted by the purile and subservient to the erudite scrutiny of the complacent and comfortably housed. Nothing is new under the sun, not really. While Tufte ("Powerpoint is Evil") charmingly belabors the obvious, Byrne makes hay. Noble's concerns ("Digital diploma Mills") let in a frisson of anxiety- mild terror to be clear. Could power get more powerful as it lives inside technologies that connect inside the physical world? It is already the postmodern Yahweh-- that which cannot be named and whom before we are less than worms. Not that it is a bad thing to critique the Shoney's Big Breakfast Buffet of super-size me American educational trends. However-- just because your tour bus stops there doesn't mean you have to eat "hashbrowns" (euphamism) with extra sausage gravy and wash it down with coca-Cola. There's usually some fruit. Or you can strike a Nihlist pose and smoke a Camel outside, or you can anticipate reality and bring some granola bars with you. Byrne has his granola with soy flakes, flax, and almonds too, and he is not having a 3000 calorie biscuit just because everyone else is. This is what you must do. I do not know what we will do when surveillance becomes intolerable, with its "standarization", its streamlining, its "business model" and "ThinkWave" programs (excruciating new torture for high school teachers who must be electronically accountable to parent-stockholders in an almost moment-by-moment report of their child's "progress" benchmarks). And yes, perhaps they could get along with no teachers and just use software, and return to the mid-Victorian goal of molding a middle class through standardization and uniformity and then deliver this grand project via computer. But then we might see revolution, and people taking it to the streets and schools under trees and an alternate economy in which education would circulate unregulated. How many systems might undergo a change? it's hard to tell. Everything seems tentative-- glaciers and asteroids and LIBOR financial instruments... Byrne's way is really practical. Don't be scared. Be alert. Make the best of it and see what shakes down.