Onderwijs in relatie tot P2P/Toetsing aan praktijk en theorie/Illich: institionalisering: verschil tussen versies

Een sprekend voorbeeld van hoe we stilaan afhankelijk worden van allerhande machines is dat van de computer, waar Illich al in de jaren tachtig van de vorige eeuw over schrijft. In een korte tekst met de sprekende titel “Silence is a Commons: Computers are doing to communication what fences did to pastures and cars did to streets.”streets” geeft (Illich, (1984) geeft hij aan hoe computers en de communicatie die hierdoor mogelijk wordt een keerzijde heeft. Een managementslogica doet haar intrede en onze communicatie wordt meer en meer gecontroleerd: “Clearly you foresee that machines which ape people are tending to encroach on every aspect of people's lives, and that such machines force people to behave like machines. The new electronic devices do indeed have the power to force people to "communicate" with them and with each other on the terms of the machine. Whatever structurally does not fit the logic of machines is effectively filtered from a culture dominated by their use. (…) The machine-like behaviour of people chained to electronics constitutes a degradation of their well-being and of their dignity which, for most people in the long run, becomes intolerable. Observations of the sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The political process breaks down, because people cease to be able to govern themselves; they demand to be managed.”
Illich zal verder in de tekst verduidelijken dat de mens die machine wordt, ook een anders omgaat met zijn of haar omgeving: “I shall distinguish the environment as commons from the environment as resource. (…) Enclosure has denied the people the right to that kind of environment on which - throughout all of history - the moral economy of survival had been based. (…) Enclosure, once accepted, redefines community. Enclosure underlines the local autonomy of community. Enclosure of the commons is thus as much in the interest of professionals and of state bureaucrats as it is in the interest of capitalists. (…) People become economic individuals that depend for their survival on commodities that are produced for them. (…)Just as the commons of space are vulnerable, and can be destroyed by the motorization of traffic, so the commons of speech are vulnerable, and can easily be destroyed by the encroachment of modem means of communication.(…)” Illich ziet dus in de modern communicatiemiddelen een risico, net zoals hij dat in het modernmoderne gemotoriseerde vervoer ziet.
Maar hij stelt ook dat de nieuwe elektronische middelen ons nog meer afhankelijk maken dan dat we afhankelijk zijn (geworden) van de auto: “The issue which I propose for discussion should therefore be clear: how to counter the encroachment of new, electronic devices and systems upon commons that are more subtle and more intimate to our being than either grassland or roads - commons that are at least as valuable as silence. Silence, according to western and eastern tradition alike, is necessary for the emergence of persons. It is taken from us by machines that ape people. We could easily be made increasingly dependent on machines for speaking and for thinking, as we are already dependent on machines for moving.” Vanuit deze analyse van een dreigende afhankelijkheid – door de instititionele logica van de computer -, pleit hij in de jaren tachtig dan ook voor dringende politieke actie: “It needs to be recognized if we are to organize defense movements of what remains of the commons. This defense constitutes the crucial public task for political action during the eighties. The task must be undertaken urgently because commons can exist without police, but resources cannot. Just as traffic does, computers call for police, and for ever more of them, and in ever more subtle forms. By definition, resources call for defense by police. Once they are defended, their recovery as commons becomes increasingly difficult. This is a special reason for urgency.”