Figure 1
Ithiel Pool's Major Contributions to the Social Sciences
| 1. | Karl
Deutsch's list |
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| … | |
Content analysis | |
| … | |
Elite studies | |
| … | |
Computer simulation of social and
political processes |
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| 2. | Additions (Possible) |
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| … | |
Contact nets | |
| … | |
Technologies of Freedom and Politics in
Wired Nations analysis of impacts of new communication
technologies |
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Ithiel Pool as a Communication Technology Theorist and Science-Based Revolutionary
| "Most movements that
are self-described as radical are highly urbanistic, or
nationalistic, or oriented to obsolete class structures,
or to central bureaucratic planning. The changes that we
can see on the horizon are much more drastic than that .
. . People who think about social change in traditional
political terms cannot begin to imagine the changes that
lie ahead. Conventional reformers cast their programs in
terms of national policies, or in terms of laws and
central planning. But in the end, what will shape the
future is a creative potential that inheres in the new
technologies . . ." |
|
| - | Ithiel Pool, "Development of
Communication in the Future Perspective" in S. Aida
(Ed.), The Human Use of Human Ideas (NY: Pergamon
Press, 1983), pp. 237 - 238 |
| "With each passing year the value
of this 1983 book (Technologies of Freedom: On
Free Speech in an Electronic Age) becomes more
evident. Like no one before or since, Ithiel de Sola Pool
saw the world of communications whole and with
up-to-the-second knowledge in depth. . . Technologies of
Freedom . . . provided a theme - freedom of speech and
'press' is core - which I took up with relish. . . I've
seen this book convert liberals away from government
control of broadcast media toward a guided marketplace
approach . . . I've seen technology skeptics . . .begin
to get a gleam in their eye." |
|
| - | Stewart Brand. Review, 9/89, http://
www.gbn.org/ BookClub/Technologies.html (7) |
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Ithiel Pool's Operational Code as a Pioneer
| 1. | Focusing upon the most
important emerging trends, especially affecting
freedom |
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| 2. | Addressing questions that were, jointly,
of scientific interest and civic relevance for government
and citizen decision making |
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| 3. | Assessing where he, given his
background, could make the greatest contribution |
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| 4. | [Neat technology. Unstated, but probably
relevant, was that Ithiel liked the challenges of
developing new technology, especially for
research.] |
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What Ithiel Pool Would Be Doing Today
| I. | Developing
the communication framework as a formal and systematic
framework in the social sciences |
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| … | |
Measurement of trends | |
| … | |
Experiments to clarify and evaluate
creative potentials (e.g., scientific innovation) |
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| II. | Nailing the Huntington Thesis
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| [Intermission: What Ithiel
Pool Would Not be Doing] |
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| III. | Building Capacity for
Empirically-Based Policy |
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Domestic | |
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| … | International | ||
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| IV. | Travel (Japan, Russia)
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The Retreat of Social Science, 1954 - present
| "A
number of criteria should be applied in the selection of
research projects, among them the criteria of scientific
merit and political significance (sic)." |
|
| - |
Speier, Hans; Bruner,
Jerome; Caroll, Wallace; Lasswell, Harold D.; Lazarsfeld,
Paul; Shils, Edward; Pool, Ithiel de Sola (secretary).
"A Plan of Research in International
Communication." Condensation of the Planning
Committee Report, Center for International Studies, MIT. World
Politics 6, no. 3 (April, 1954): 358-377, p.
359. |
| "I very much doubt that a cleaned
up version [of the proposal to restart the testing of
ideological assumptions] would be acceptable in the near
term even if it came from another source and were backed
by a number of Academy members." |
|
| - | R. Duncan Luce [Co-Chair of the National Academy of
Sciences agenda-setting Commission for the social and
behavioral sciences in the 1980s and early 1990s that
(without public disclosure) quietly killed
recommendations for restarting progress in testing
ideological assumptions on the grounds that the research
would have too much political significance. Letter to the
author, May 14, 1992.] |
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