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Frankenstein in the University

5/28/2008

By Luke Fernandez

Captive Customers
There are also less obvious and more pedestrian ways in which technology exercises control over our university's destinies. This often happens when schools choose to buy a learning management system or an administrative system from an outside vendor. Although acquiring software from organizations outside the university doesn't have to mean giving up control over one's technological destiny, it often feels like it does. For example, vendors often compel campus IT departments to perform upgrades that are seen as unnecessary because the current software works acceptably. While IT departments sometimes prefer not to do these software updates, they do them anyway since vendors will refuse to support software that hasn't been kept up to date. Moreover, while campus IT departments usually want to customize software and fit it to local needs, vendors often won't allow this; almost always the evolution and telos of the software is controlled by the vendor rather than the customer. Finally, after a vendor's product has been installed on campus, it can be difficult for a university to change to something more competitive even if university constituencies have a strong desire for change. Robert Pool, the author of Beyond Engineering: How Society Shapes Technology, illuminates this dilemma: "Once the choice has been made to go a certain way, even if the reasons are not particularly good ones, the institutional machinery gears up and shoves everybody in the same direction. It can be tough to resist."

To be sure, the dilemma of the captive customer isn't strictly suggestive of technological determinism. Schools, in almost all cases, retain self-agency by continually assessing when the every-day disappointment is so large that switching to something new is merited despite the "change pain" in making the switch. But because vendor technologies shape and constrain the way business and teaching is conducted on campus, and because the work of technology assessment isn't always well advertised,  it sometimes looks like the imperatives of the technology are determining a school's technological destiny.

Technology and Nihilism
While the specter of technology out of control is worth dwelling on (if only to make sure it doesn't happen) we shouldn't resign ourselves to it. If we do, we truly do become its victims. To be sure, the highly technical environment we live in has latent tendencies that encourage certain outcomes. To deny that would be to ignore some of central structural tenets of the social sciences. But even if our lives are constrained and pushed in certain directions, we have some agency. To deny that would be to succumb to the most nihilistic form of technological determinism. If we believe that we can shape technology as much as it shapes us we can hold out the hope of at least playing some minor role in influencing the direction that the university takes in the information age.

And while each of us needs to do this in our own way perhaps we can all agree with the historians on the fundamentals -- that history is rarely driven by one thing. If the prospect of Frankenstein's monster, the Terminator and the Matrix uncovers a deep anxiety that we all share, it doesn't mean that we can't do concrete things to prevent these fears from being realized. We can imagine, as some have done, that technology is poisoning and corrupting university life. But even if we accept the doubtful premise that it has, we are not powerless to change our fates or to adjust our technological course.

[Editor's note: Read more at Luke Fernandez's blog, "IT in the University," http://itintheuniversity.blogspot.com/]

Luke Fernandez is an assistant manager of program and technology development and an adjunct instructor in information systems and technologies at Weber State University (UT).

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