There are ways to analyze the work process that are elided so far in the discussion.
On Sep 16, 2006, at 6:47 AM, michael a. lebowitz wrote:
The complexity of the work he performs means that he must be alert. Presence of mind is among his essential attributes; law-breakers must be curbed instantly. The code of laws, in the form of the score, is in his hands. There are others who have it too and can check the way it is carried out, but the conductor alone decides what the law is and summarily punishes any breach of it....
Doyle;
The musical knowledge being produced is approximately synchronized. Most written text is not considered synchronous. Other forms of synchronous knowledge production are street conversation and phone conversation. A common language represents a lot of people sharing the same words and therefore each works on the same work but not synchronously.
The image of the conductor as a petty dictator of course ignores jazz improvisation in a group in which musicians 'play' with the common lead role. Or the band leader acts the part of the show boat for the crowd. Where the quote says;
In front of him sits the orchestra and behind him the audience. He stands on a dais and can be seen both from in front and from behind.
Doyle;
The structure of the information production is clarified. The content produced is one to the audience. The 'one' being a communal production unified in time by synchronous aspects of human hearing. The audience can produce a common communal sound of their own like applause, or dance to the music to which the musicians respond into a whole public performance.
The audience can reject the dictator of the conductor as well. Boooooo that stinks I won't listen and you can make me, so a kind of consensus is understood if crude. Crude in the sense that the information content of music is not language like.
Language presents another sort of integration of knowledge process. All people produce language but the building up of knowledge via the creation of new words and other people using those words is virtually asynchronous. Coordination and cooperation are enforced by inability to communicate. Which is both a formidable barrier to group ties and intimacy, but to do work in the global economic sense. Though a lot of work is only slightly tied to language production, knowledge production becomes ever more important to all work. That which can be programmed such as robots on assembly lines embody knowledge work that increasingly depends upon language like communications structures.
Michael L writes;
The conductor, I add, hates jazz, hates spontaneity. Nothing could be stranger to his ears than Rosa Luxemburg's statement that 'the working class demands the right to make its own mistakes and learn in the dialectic of history'.
Doyle;
Shows how early great Socialist leaders understood that the masses create history. The dialectic or argument over meaning of actions is the hardest of all to embody in knowledge production. Because it elaborates precisely the path that language impels upon Socialist methods of organizing the means of production. Text based knowledge production is one to many and defies the challenge of language like knowledge exchange or interaction as computing production is called.
Thanks,
Doyle Saylor
