Notes for access.html

1.   In what follows we will endeavour to earmark the senses in which we will use the word command, so as to avoid too much unnecessary confusion. Other terms could have been used in place of command (such as instruction and/or order), but to do so would simply reproduce the problem of multiple meanings. Each of these terms, no less than the word “command”, replicates a transposition of a meaning taken from situations of intersubjective interaction to apply metaphorically to interactions with computers.
2.   Upgrading from connection to the present Janet wiring to connection onto a fibre optic system has been contracted out from the university sector (under the Joint Information Systems Committee) to British Telecom. While this has enabled radical expansion of the bandwidth, and so of the speed of information transfer, the service is not universally available, due to the high cost of connection. As such SuperJanet has to be opted into. As the additional bandwidth enables faster access to large documents, SuperJanet makes it possible for large numbers of users to access full text graphic journal services, and other bulky materials, at a reasonable speed. Relations between bandwidth of superhighway routes, local network infrastructure and alternatives that may by-pass the need for expensive infrastructure upgrades will create an uncertain future of those making financial commitments for future needs within present constraints in the anticipation of future possibilities.
3.   The limitation to ethnomethodology’s contribution to the debate over democratic communication lies in its founders failure to extract their conception of the normative discursive basis of intersubjective interaction, from the normative theories of societal consensus found in the works of Parsons (1951) and Schutz (1972), from whom Garfinkel in particular developed his conception of normative order. Whilst critical of Parsons’ functional theory of social roles, norms and values, Garfinkel’s critique is based upon a radicalised phenomenology, such that any theory of general system or societal function is rejected for the study of the normative orientation of actors towards the maintenance of consensus at the level of everyday interaction. As such Garfinkel draws out the relativistic implications of Schutz’s conception of the lifeworld. However he fails to demonstrate how such a relativism is to be related to the claims made by ethnomethodology itself.