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=                           David_F._Noble                           =
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                            Introduction
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David Franklin Noble (July 22, 1945 – December 27, 2010) was a
historian and critic of technology, science and education, best known
for his seminal work on the social history of automation. In his final
years he taught in the Division of Social Science and the department
of Social and Political Thought at York University in Toronto, Canada.
Noble held positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the
Smithsonian Institution, and Drexel University, as well as many
visiting professorships.

Noble died suddenly in a Toronto hospital after contracting a virulent
strain of pneumonia that caused septic shock and kidney failure.

Noble was born in New York City.


                               Career
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Noble obtained an undergraduate degree in history and chemistry from
the University of Florida and a doctorate from the University of
Rochester. He worked as a biochemist at various institutions before
becoming an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Dismissed after being denied tenure in 1984, he landed at
York University. Between 1986 and 1994, Noble taught in the Department
of History and Politics at Drexel University. In 1997 he served as the
inaugural Hixon-Riggs Visiting Professor of science, technology, and
society at Harvey Mudd College. Noble taught at York University until
his death.


                              Pedagogy
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During his entire teaching career Noble refused to grade students,
based on the idea from critical pedagogy of the harm caused by
grading.


''America by Design''
=======================
Noble's first book, 'America by Design: Science, Technology, and the
Rise of Corporate Capitalism' (1977), a revision of his University of
Rochester dissertation under Christopher Lasch, was published to
unusually prominent reviews.  Robert Heilbroner hailed it as a work
that "makes us see technology as a force that shapes management in an
industrial capitalist society," while 'The New York Times' called the
book a "significant contribution" owing to its uncommon leftist
perspective on American technology.  Many academic reviewers praised
the book's bold argument about the corporate control of science and
technology, although some including Alfred Chandler expressed
reservations about its forthright Marxist thesis.


''Forces of Production''
==========================
In 'Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation'
(1984, 1st edition; 2011, 2nd edition) Noble recounts the history of
machine tool automation in the United States. He argues that CNC
(computerized numerical control) machines were introduced both to
increase efficiency and to discipline unions which were stronger in
the US in the period immediately following World War II. 'Forces of
Production' argues that management wanted to take the programming of
machine tools, which as "machines for making machines" are a critical
industrial product, out of the hands of union members and transfer
their control, by means of primitive programming, to non-union,
college-educated white-collar employees working physically separate
from the shop floor. Noble's research argues that, in practical terms,
the separation was a failure.  The practice angered and alienated
union machinists, who felt that their practical and night-school
knowledge of applied science was being disregarded.  In response, they
sat back while watching the programmed machines produce what Noble
described as "scrap at high speed." Noble then went on to argue that
management compromised with the unions, in a minor violation of the
US's 1948 Taft-Hartley Act (which reserved all issues except pay and
benefits to management discretion), to allow the union men to "patch"
and even write the CNC programs. Although Noble focuses strictly, in
'Forces of Production', on the narrow and specialist area of machine
tools, his work may be generalized to issues in MIS software where the
end users are restive when told to accept the product of analysts
ignorant of the real needs of the business or the employee. David also
wrote the Introduction to the second edition of Mike Cooley's
Architect or Bee? published in the US in 1982 by South End Press.


Last writing
==============
Pursuing his critique of the role of the university, since 2004 Noble
was active in bringing attention to what he identified as issues of
social justice. These included the notion of the increasing
corporatization of the Canadian public university, and defending the
idea of academic freedom and the role of the tenured academic as
public servant. Noble's most recent book, 'Beyond the Promised Land:
The Movement and the Myth', is a sweeping historiography of what he
described as the myth of the promised land, connecting the
disappointments of the Christian religious story of redemption and
salvation with the rise of global capitalism and the response to these
disappointments by recent social justice movements.


                         Political activism
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In 1983 Noble co-founded the National Coalition for Universities in
the Public Interest with Ralph Nader and Leonard Minsky to try "to
bring extra-academic pressure to bear upon university administrations
who were selling out their colleagues and the public in the pursuit of
corporate partnerships."

Noble's leftist politics and supposedly aggressive tactics gave him a
rocky career. He was denied tenure at MIT, forced to leave his
appointment at the Smithsonian Institution, and blocked from giving
the commencement address at Harvey Mudd College because the
administration argued he was "anti-technology." His appointment to the
J.S. Woodsworth Chair in the Humanities at Simon Fraser University was
suspended following what Noble and others saw as irregularities in the
hiring process.

In 1998, he was awarded the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage,
which "recognizes individuals who take a public stance to advance
truth and justice, at some personal risk." The award honored Noble's
decades as "a singular voice in seeking to fight the commercialization
of higher education and to protect one of society's most precious
assets, an independent intellectual capacity to engage the serious
issues of our day."


Corporatization and commercialization
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In the 1990s, Noble criticized the way in which "second tier"
universities accessible to the majority have been forced, owing to
budget pressures absent at well endowed "first tier" universities, to
adopt corporate-friendly policies. According to Noble, these policies
subordinate the educational mission to a more careerist vision in
which students were taught "practical" subjects, but in such narrow
ways that they were, in effect, less broadly employable. In his 1998
paper [http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_1/noble/ Digital
Diploma Mills] , Noble wrote: "universities are not only undergoing a
technological transformation. Beneath that change, and camouflaged by
it, lies another: the commercialization of higher education". Noble
argued that high technology, at these universities, is often used not
to improve teaching and research, but to control and overwork junior
faculty and graduate students, expropriate the intellectual property
of leading faculty, and, through various mechanisms such as the
recorded lecture, replace the visions and voices of less prestigious
faculty with the second-hand and reified product of academic
"superstars".


"Tail that Wags the Dog"
==========================
In his broad-based critique of what he viewed as an
academic-industrial system, Noble questioned Israel's strategic role
in Western institutions on a broad basis. In late November 2004, at
York University, Noble raised controversy for handing out flyers
entitled "The York University Foundation: The Tail That Wags the Dog
(Suggestions for Further Research)" at a campus event. The information
sheets alleged that the Foundation, York University's principal
fund-raising body, was biased by the presence and influence of
pro-Israel lobbyists, activists and persons involved in Jewish
agencies, whom he identified as the "tail", and that this bias
affected the political conduct of York's administration in important
ways, through their power to "wag the dog". In particular, Noble, who
was of Jewish descent himself, claimed that there was a connection
between alleged "Pro-Israeli influence" on the York Foundation and the
university administration's treatment of vocal pro-Palestinian
campaigners on campus and to a scuttled project to build a Toronto
Argonauts football stadium on the campus.  York University responded
with a public statement that "condemned the material in the flyer as
offensive."  In 2006 Noble launched a $25-million
[https://web.archive.org/web/20071220203018/http://indaily.net/?p=2652
libel suit]  at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice against a series
of individuals and of York University, Jewish, and Israeli
organizations for defamation and conspiracy, accusing them of having
improperly criticized his "Tail That Wags the Dog" campaign as
antisemitic.  In 2007, Noble's grievance against York that his
academic freedom had been violated was settled, with the arbitrator
saying, "York breached Article 10.01 of the Collective Agreement by
failing to respect Professor Noble’s rights as an academic. Indeed, it
may be said that York failed to extend Professor Noble even the most
basic of courtesies that might reasonably be expected to be enjoyed by
a faculty member."


Jewish holidays
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Noble and York University also were in the news in October 2005 with
regard to his vocal opposition to the university's policy, adopted in
1974, of cancelling classes during the three days marking the Jewish
High Holidays.  Noble originally stated he would defy the policy and
hold classes nonetheless, but eventually pledged instead to cancel his
classes on 'all' religious holidays observed by 'any' student in his
classes, including all Muslim holidays.  In April 2006 Noble lodged a
complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission, alleging that
cancellation of classes during certain Jewish holidays constituted
discrimination against non-Jewish students.  In 2008 he held a class
when the university was closed for one of those holidays.  When York
independently changed its policy the discrimination matter was
withdrawn. In his complaint, Noble also alleged that York engaged in a
campaign of reprisal against him. The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario
found no reprisal and dismissed Noble's complaint in its entirety.


York Public Access
====================
In his final years at York, Noble was involved in creating an
organization called York Public Access as an alternative to what he
identified as an increased corporate slant in the approach taken by
York University's official media relations department.


                              See also
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* Critique of technology
* Jeremy Rifkin
* Michael Adas
* Mike Cooley


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