Suchergebnisse

Late in 1997 the UK Government launched 'Connecting the Learning Society' (CtLS) as the first concrete step in instituting a 'National Grid for Learning' which will connect schools (and other sites and institutions) to an 'information superhighway'. This paper presents a textual analysis of CtLS which examines the ways in which technology and the child are presented. We find that CtLS relies on conventional constructions of children as learners and future adults and that, in parallel with this, its treatment of technology is schematic and articulated with and in terms of 'the future'. The transformation of society, and the arrival of a new socio?technical future, are taken as certain. We argue, on the one hand, that a vision is propounded in which the Grid is seen as transcendent, in that it will have a major impact regardless of the social relations in the context of use; but on the other, that a careful reading of the text reveals a concern with generating alliances, enrollments and trajectories which act as a kind of infrastructure for this vision. We conclude with some thoughts on the wider set of cultural assumptions that frame the document and which help to buttress its plausibility.

Two policy proposals for the bulk electric power supply industry, the reliability bills of the late 1960s & proposals for a national grid, are analyzed. The context is one in which interconnections have grown up according to the needs of private firms, with some public policy support. Proposals for reliability legislation led firms to set up their own regional councils for reliability efforts. The growth of interconnections, which appears likely to produce a national grid, has led to proposals for a federally-owned power grid corporation to coordinate this growth. This prospect of federal intervention, however, has led to increasing private interconnections. Alternatives to the proposals already advanced include making mergers easier for power companies, maintaining the status quo, establishing common carrier rules for power companies, rate reform & regulatory improvement, & establishment of organizations based on recognition of the diseconomies of scale & seeking decentralization. Little rigorous analysis exists in this area. W. H. Stoddard.

This article uses the litigation in National Grid v. Laws to demonstrate two aspects of the law surrounding occupational pension schemes: the wide range of interpretations that are possible when construing pension scheme rules; and the enormous difficulties faced by scheme members when seeking to assert an interpretation of those rules that runs counter to an employer's major commercial interests.