Midwest Conference on Technology, Employment & Community
Chicago Circle Center, UIC,
750 South Halsted, Chicago,
March 2 - 4, 1995
Notes on Workshop #18:
Who is deciding?
The workshop began with an interesting set of proposals and a vision for a new
democratic society from Rado Mijanovich of the Industrial Union Party. His
vision, based on a the traditional Marxist view of the need for workers to
organise and take control of the means of production. His proposals were
challenged immediateley on the basis that this was now a model with minimal
resonance for todays complex society, where gender, race etc. have much more
importance.
A broad ranging discussion followed, which focussed little on what
many people felt to be the issue they had come to disucuss - who decides, and
who controls technology therefore. The conclusions were that the workshop was a
good discussion, that we were able to cover a vast number of issues - how to
make the "revolutionary" transition to a socialist democracy, how to organise
the dispossed, and disenfranchised, and combine witht the working class and
other middle class intellectuals and liberals, and a little about the role of
technology in this - that access and control of technology may be one of the
most powerful tools we have to make the transition.
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Maintained by Robin Burke <burke@cs.uchicago.edu>
Last modified: Fri Mar 3 17:08:19 1995