Conclusion: A Shared Civility


This chapter has attempted to demonstrate that its two major subjects, academic freedom and the technologies of surveillance, have never existed as autonomous or independent artifacts. Instead, both have been subject to the dominant ideologies and preoccupations of the larger society. Today, the inherent fragility of academic freedom is made clear by its competition with currently fashionable notions of modern technology. Whether this condition will remain permanent is doubtful. History demonstrates that the human need to learn in an environment conducive to intellectual growth is robust, surviving prior extraordinary pressures posed by public distrust , religion, sovereigns, industrial magnates, and fears of political sedition.

Although the past should provide some solace, the peculiar attributes of digital technology should not be disregarded by individual instructors, academic senates, or associations. In their consideration of information technology, Brown and Duguid (2000) introduce their 6-D interpretive model:

The D in our 6-D notion stands for the de- or dis- in such futurist-favored words as demassification, decentralization, denationalization, despacialization, disintermediation , disaggregation. (Brown & Duguid, 2000,p . 22)

These dynamics of isolation and fractionalization naturally challenge the highly collegial and trusting culture that has forever characterized institutional learning and, not incidentally, has provided the justification for academic freedom. As more comprehensively stated by former Yale president, A. Bartlett Giamatti (1990), [a] liberal education is a process of self-knowledge for the purpose of shared civility (p. 299).




Electronic Monitoring in the Workplace. Controversies and Solutions
Electronic Monitoring in the Workplace: Controversies and Solutions
ISBN: 1591404568
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 161

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