" The belief in technology as a key governing force in society dates back at least to the early stages of Industrial Revolution. Referred to as "technological determinism" by 20th-century scholars, disbelief affirms the changes in technology exert a greater influence on societies and their processes and any other factor. ""
" Within this genre of thought and expression one can discern two versions of technological determinism: a "soft view," which holds that technological change drives social change but at the same time respondents discriminatingly to social pressures, and a "hard view," which perceives technological development as an autonomous force, completely independent of social constraints. [2]
2
Americans were so taken with the idea of progress.... For them, progress meant the pursuit of technology and science in the interest of human bettermeant (intellectual, moral, spiritual) and material prosperity. ... If carried to extremes, Jefferson worried, the civilizing process of large-scale technology and industrialization might easily be corrupted and bring down the moral and political economy he and his contemporaries had worked so hard to erect....
PROGRESS IS A DIRECTION WITH MO\force in society.
...technological determinism proved highly compatible with the search for political order.
..tendency of writers to view new technologies both as instruments of power and as trimpuant sumbls of human progress.....
8
in the eyes of the artist, technolgy had assumed ap lace of doimance in american culture.
technocatic thinking received an enormous boost from th bugeoning field of professional advertising....advertising became the instrument by which big business, in need of ever-expanding markets for its mass-produced products, imprinted instrumental values -- and, wth them the ethos of mass consumption -- on the poulace.
13
...advertisements that appealed to such thoughts and feelings as efficiency, eegance, family afection, freedom, modernity, patriotism, sexuality, status and youth.
..happier, helthier, and more cheeful wien the work is finished. " technolgy ha ndow become the cause of human well-being..
15
...advances in technolgy brought not only immediates personal gains byt also social progres.
19
"Men have become tools of their tools," henry david thoreau n walden.
26
the contrast betweeen the dyname and the cross symbolized an enormous shift of faith away from the great principles of Chirisianity, and rligion generally, toward those of sicne and utility. The former stood for love, the latter for power.
27
MUMFORD...in 1934 he published Technics and Civilizaion a study of tremendous breadth and insight that placed technology in a larger cultural context and argued, in effect, that culture preceded rtechnics in human evolution. ... Mumford pointed to WEstern religious monasticism and warfare as forces that sparked and sprad new technologies and ultimately led t the riesr of modern industrail capitalism, with its emphasis on rationality, regimentation,a dn order. ... In the end he consoloed himself with the hople that the new sciene-based technologies of the 20th century would reconcile the differences of an "organic mechanism" that would help humankind realise its highest potential.
28 ATTENTION FIELD Myth of the machine..."With this new mega-technis, " mumford lamented, " the dominant minorit will cretae a uniform, all-enveloping, super-planetary structure, designed for automatic operation. Instead of function actively as an autonomous personality, man will become a passive, purposeless, machine-conditioned animal whose proper functions, as technicians now interpret man's role, will either be fed into the machine or strictly limited and controlled for the benefit of de-ersonalize, collective organizations."
29
PRIVACY
"For those of us who have thrown off the myth of the machine," Mumford concluded, "the next move is ours . . . Each one of us as long as life stirs in him, may play a part in extricating himself from the power system by asserting his primacy as a person in quite acts of mental or physical withdrawal--in gesture of non-conformity, in abstentions, restriction, inhibitions, which will liberate him from the domination of the pentagon of power." (mumford technics and human development pp. 188-194' mumford the myth of the machine vol 2 the pentagon of power harcourt brace jovanovich 1964 pp 420, 430, 433-35.
"Technique (wrote Jacques Ellul "la Techniqe" (The technological society) "has become autonomous", that "no human activity escapes this technical imperative" (technics and human development pp 188-194-200 mumford) and that the human race has been swept up in the all-encompassing power of technique. "Technique has become the new and specific milieu in which man is required to exist . . . It is artificial, autonomous, self-determine, and independent of all human intervention." (the technological order)
30
technique (machines, organization methods, natural practices, manner of thinking, manner of consuming)
"In fact, technique is nothing more that means and the ensemble of means . . . Our civilization is first and foremost a civilization of means; in the reality of modern life, the means, it would seem, are more important than the ends. As any other asssessment ofs the sitaution is mere idealism." (the technological society, ellul)
Ellul concluded hat "as long as man worships Techniqe, athre is as good as no chance at all that he will ever succeed ind dmastering it," and that "if the individual cannot attain personal libery with repect to the technical ojects, thereis no chance that he will be apble to respond to the general problem of technique.
31
Not so Langdon Winne ....he defined "the idea of aotonomous technology" as "the belief that somehow technology has gotten out of control and follow s its own cours, independent of human direction. "
(means more important than ends....revense thorugh the loop!!) dd
technology driving culture is like the landscape driving water. dd
31 SELF INTEREST In today's world, technology legislates. .. A central point is that technological systems, wit their inherent political qualities, are not value neutral. Indeed, they invariably favor the interests of some over the interests of others
32 <=========================================================> RECOURSE OF EMPIRE: LANDSCAPES OF PROGRESA IN TECHNOLOGICAL AMERICA, Michael L. Smith.
"Technological determinism" is a curious phrase. The gist of it is heartbreaking in its simplicity: the belief that social progress is driven b technological innovation, which in turn follows and "inevitable" course.
..I say subversive, because the notion of inevitable, technology-driven progress pends the Second Lay of Thermodynamics, conjuring up a non-entropic universe in which dust never settles, things cohere and grow supple with time, and everything is always new and improved, forever young."
38
Those who insist that their children (and everyone else's) be taught that the Biblical creation myth is or at least might be) literally true may simply be trying to reclaim authority in a world where every category of human enterprise is controlled by experts.
..(tech determinism ahderents) share a social terrain and a vocabulary of representation--not only with one another but also with those who denounce them. .... Thomas Kuhn's now-hoary insight that science spins its own creation myths (and, we might add, fosters its own superstitions)--one major difference being that the pronouncements of science tend to be revised more frequently than those of religion."
(FANBOY MOBILE AUTOS HOME APPLIANCES)
Perhaps, an industrialized societies, technologies are visible primarily by mans of the trappings with which each culture dresses them. T understand technology as lived experience, we need to acquire a comparative view of how different cultures perceive, define, and meet technology challenges and opportunities.
39
POSITION
By and large, generations of the nation's political and corporate leaders have spoken in the sweeping cadences of technological determinism because of its irresistible power to case them as trailblazers on the uncontested, inevitable path of progress.
Prediction is a form of looking backwards. (dd)
40
In the absence of greater access to decision-making, citizens have been confined to the role fo consumers, lacking the shared capacity to view gradation of social possibilities for technology.
51
<==========================> Do machines make History? Robert L. Heilbroner.
How does the mode of production affect the superstructure of social relationships?
53
The question we are interested in, then, concerns the effect of technology in determining the nature of the socioeconomic order.
54
Precisely how does the mode of production affect the superstructure of social relationships?
55
What is interesting is that the development of technical progress has always seemed intrinsically predictable. ...
Two deeper-seated reasons why technology should display a structured history. 1. In any age, the constraint is the accumulated stock of available knowledge. 2. In any age, a constraint is the material competence of the age, its level of technical expertise.
57-58
The ability of many industries to cooperate in producing the equipment needed for "higher" stage of technology depends not alone on knowledge or sheet skill but on the division of labor and the specialization of industry. And this in turn hinges to a considerable degree on the sheer size of the stock of capital itself. Thus the slow and painful accumulation of capital, from which springs the gradual diversification of industrial function, becomes an independent regulator of the reach of technical capability.
In the future as in the past, the development of the technology of production seems bounded by the constraints of knowledge and capability and thus, in principle at least, pen to prediction as a determinable force of the historical process. 59
I think we can indeed state that the technology of a society imposes a determinate pattern of social relations on that society. 59
Marx: A certain mode of production, or industrial stage, is always combined with a certain mode of cooperation, or social stage." (The German Ideology)
The composition of the labor force : a given technology must be attended by a labor force of a particular kind.
The hierarchical organization of work: different technological apparatuses require not only different labor forces but different orders of supervision and coordination. ... As the intricacies of the production process increases, a much more complex system of internal controls is required to maintain the system in working order. 60
In addition, even where technology seems unquestionably to play the critical role, and independent "social" element unavoidably enters the scene in the design of technology. which must take in acount such facts as the level of educaitn of the work force or its relative price. In this way the machine will reflect, as much as mold, the social relationships of work.
"soft determinism" the prevailing level of technology imposes itself powerfully on the structural organization of the productive side of society.
(SOCIAL RELATIONS AS A COMMODITY?)
61
Technological Progress Is Itself A Social Activity
What factors serve to encourage or discourage this technical thrust is a problem about which e know extremely little at the present moment. (Oh, don't mention consumer behavior).
The Course of Technological Advance is Responsive to Social Directions. (i.e. consumer behavior dd)
Technological advances in the area of war, the arts, agriculture, or industry depends in part on the rewards, inducements, and incentives offered by society. IN this way the direction of technological advance is partially the result of social policy. 62 The general level of technology may follow an independently determined sequential path, but its areas of application certainly reflect social influences. (a general predictive attempt? dd) 63 Technological Change Must Be Compatible With Existing Social Conditions
Ad advance in technology not only must be congruent with the surrounding technology but must also be compatible with the existing economic and other institutions of society. For example, labor-saving machinery will not find ready acceptance in a society where labor is abundant and cheap as a factor of production.
Yet, to relegate technology fro an underserved position of primum mobile in history to that of a mediating factor, both acted upon by and acting on the body of society, is not to write off its influence but only to specify its mode of operation with greater precision. 63
MINIMIZING PRODUCTION, MINIMZING COST
The Rise of Capitalism Provided a Major Stimulus for the Developent of a Technology of Production
(note here the isolation of production as a technology within the domain of production)
Not until the emergence of a market system organized around the principle of private property did there also emerge an institution capable of systematically guiding the inventive and innovative abilities of society to the problem of facilitating production.
64
The Expansion of technology with the Market System Took on a New Automatic Aspect.
Under the burgeoning market system not alone the initiation of technical improvement but its subsequent adoption and repercussion through the economy was largely governed by market considerations.
The Rise of Science Gave A New Impetus to Technology
It is for these reasons tat technology takes on a special significance in the context of capitalism--or for that matter, of a socialism based on maximizing production or minimizing costs. For in these societies, both the continuous appearance of technical advance and its diffusion throughout the society assume the attributes of autonomous process, "mysteriously" generated by society and thrust upon its members in a manner as indifferent as it is imperious. This is why, I think, the problem of technological determnism--of how macines make histry--comes to us with such insistence despite the ease with which we can disprove its more extreme contentions.
(dd the extreme contentions show the difference to biusiness model determinism.
Communications changed when it became hosted in the business model. (i.e. diaries and letters))
65
<=================================> TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISM REVISITED Robert L. Heilbroner
(Force is generated in the flow of events through changes in the material basis of social life.")
...to examine the idea of technological determinism as a powerful force of history -- especially the history of large-scale socioeconomics transformations, of which the most important are the transition from feudalism to capitalism and the evolution of capitalism through its various stages. A great deal of attention is therefore devoted to the means by which "force" is generated in the flow of events through changes in the material basis of social ife, and to the kind of changes that this force effects.
67
In sharp contrast, the basic premise of modern historiography is that background forces arise from the same kinds of process, and can be approached and apprehended at the same levels of understanding and explanation, as the objects of immediate scrutiny. This unification of foreground and background is perhaps most strikingly evident in the rise of an "economic" interpretation of history. ... the hallmark of modern historical work is an effort to establish filiations between the subject that has been singled out for treatment and the background against which the subject is displayed.
... Machines make history by changing the material conditions of human existence.
... Hence, we may be tempted to depict the meaning of technological determinism as the ascription to machines of "powers" they do not have. 70
The challenge, then, s to demonstrate that technology exerts its effects in generalizable ways. (determinism must) reveal a connection between "machinery" and "History" that displays lawlike properties--a force field, if we will, emanating firm the technological background to impose order on human behavior in a manner analogous to that by which a magnet order the behavior of particles sprinkled on a sheet of paper held above it or that by which gravitation orders the paths of celestial objects. Is there such a force field? It is not difficult to find candidates for its order-bestowing task. Whitehead credited routine", without which "civilization vanishes." Many have located the source of behavioral regularity in "human nature", variously described: Hue said that human motivation was a kind of repeating decimal in history. For our purposes, what is lacking in these principles is an ability to translate the stimuli emitted by a chaging technology into behavioral responses of a predictable kid with regard to transformations of a socioeconomic order. 71
(MEDIA IS THE MSSING ELEMENT!) A huge variety of stimui arising from alteration inthe material background must be translated into a few well-defined behavoral vectors. There must be a systmati reduction of complexity of cause into simplicity of effect, enabling us to explain how the develop of new machineries of production can alter the social relationships constitutive of feudalism into those of capitalism.....
71 Economics as a force field
The mechanism, of course, economics (or media?), in the sense of a force field in which a principle of "maximizing" imposes order on behavior in a fashion comparable to the magnet and the gravitation al pull of the sun. Adam smith: bettering or condition by an augmentation of fortune. ("acquisitive mindset") Economics accomplishes this remarkable feat by ignoring all effects of the changed environment except for that that affect our maximizing possibilities. In this way, changes in technology, like changes in th weather of in our social situations, are depicted as loosening or tightening of constraints on our behavior, and these altered constrains are then perceived as changing our actions in sufficiently regularizes way to enable us to speak of "laws" at work in the marketplace or in the enterprise.
72
In this social order, changes in the technological background are registered in changes in the price system, indicating that the directions in which economic activity can most profitably assume. Thus the force field of maximizing allows us to elucidate how machines make history by showing the mediating mechanism by which changes in technology are brought to bear on the organization of the social order. .....
73
I believe that what we call economic behavior is best understood as the sublimated expression of much deeper-rooted elements of "political" and "social" behavior--dominance and obedience--which can, in turn, be traced to the human experience of protracted childhood dependency. Nonetheless, what is important is that "economic" behavior--that is, behavior motivated by the pursuit of exchange value-is set analytically arapt from and above behavior motivated by other considerations, because it manifests a degree of orderliness absent from "political" or '"sociological" activities.
74
COST OF PRODUCTION IS THE CLUTCH
These characteristics are not, however, the efficient cause. That lies in the translation of the engineering consequences of mass production in to the economic stimuli of large changes in cost per unit of production--a translation that makes visible the force field of maximization to which activity is exposed in the market sphere of capitalism. 75
The Bed of Procrustes
Technology looms as an immense presence, with the foregrond problem of the continuously evolving social order in which we live.
...bt its active search for regularities in and lawlike aspects to, historical change remains the most powerful unifying capability we have.
....the very idea of a historic orderliness were shown to be utterly without basis. History as contingency is a prospect that is more than the human spirit can bear. (so, we have the perspective because it would hurt not to? really, really wrong.)
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THREE FACES OF TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISM Bruce Bimber
Three types of technological determinism: Normative, Nomological, and Unintended Consequences
In spite of the best efforts of historians and others to show that the relationships between technology and society are reciprocal rather than unidirectional, claims for the autonomous influence of technology are reciprocal rather than unidirectional.
…whether Karl Marx was a technological determinist is a matter of perpetual debate among historians, economists and philosophers. (….some have)… argued that Marx’s historical materialism does not amount to technological determinism.
(the problem lies in the word determinism – opportunity might be better. )
Nomological: positive descriptions of an inevitable technological order based on laws of nature
Normative: claims that technology is an important influence on history only where societies attach cultural and political meaning to it.
Unintended Consequences: what? 81 Habermas: (toward a rational society) “…portrays this development as an essentially human enterprise in which people who create and emply technology are driven by goals and judgments about public and private goods. Their actions follow certain culturally accepted norms and are sanctions by politically legitimated forms of power.
NORMATIVE (Habermas’ critique …) rests on the observation that industrial societies have developed an overreliance on norms of efficiency and productivity in directing the conduct of these processes. By adopting reductionist values as guides to decision-making about technology, they exclude other ethical criteria, producing a self-correcting process that operates autonomous of larger political and ethical contexts. This social subsystem, made up of technologists pursuing the rationalization of life through the creation of technology, is autonomous when it frees itself from ethical, normative judgments directed at it from society at large. Complete acquiescence occurs when society has adopted as its own the technologists’ standards of judgment. Habermas’ fear points up toward the essence of a first interpretation of technological determinism: norms of practice. (technology is deterministic) when the norms by which it is advanced are removed political and ethical discourse and when goals of efficiency or productivity become surrogates for value-based debate over methods, alternatives, means and ends. “
82
Jacques Ellul (The Technoloigical Society) …technique is not merely technology; it is the domination of social, political, and economic life by the acopted goals of logic and efficiency.
Techniaue (efficiency, production)
Values-vased judgments (methods, values, means, ends)
82
NOMOLOGICAL
…defines determinism as the belief that “given the past, and the laws of nature, there is only one possible future.” (peter van inwager, an essay on free will).
…technology itself exercises causal influence on social practice.
…in light of past and current state of technological development and the laws of nature, there is only one possible future course of social change. (some processes, once begun, require forms and scales of organization or material or political resources, desirable or not, that are self-sustaining)
83 …so that a fixed and predictable course of economic, social, and cultural change follows inevitably from the adoption of the railroad.
Implicit in this account are two claims: that technological developments occur according to some naturally given logic, which is not culturally or socially determined, and that these developments force social adaptation and changes. (Richard Miller)
….Heilbroner….History is predetermined by scientific laws that are sequentially discovered by people and which, kn their inexorable application, produce technology.
UNEXPLAINED CONSEQUENCES
The uncertainty and uncontrollability of the outcomes of actions. … the crux of this view is that even willful, ethical social actors are unable to anticipate the effects of technological development. …(intention!!! Here)
85
Because factors such as knowledge and forms of social organization are important distinguishing features of societies, treating them as features of technology conflates cause and effect.
Unintended Consequences accounts also fail as forms of technological determinism. AS Winner point out, such accounts really amount to indeterminism. That an outcome is unpredictable and uncontrollable may be significant, but this does not require that it be “determined.”
85
Technological Momentum as alternative term to describe the increasing capacity of technological systems to influence (those) societies as those systems grow in size.” Because factors such as knowledge and forms of social organizion are important distinguishing features of societies, treating them as features of techlnology conflates causes and effects. If technological determinism is to provide a causal theory of how technology produces changes in society, ten technolgoy and soceity must be kept definitionally distinct.
86 Both of these concepts -- momentum and reciprocal causation--offer more precision and clarity to many theories of hisory than does "technological determinism."
89
Hansen claims hat Marx conceiv of social processes not in economic but in technological terms. Mmford tells us that Marx assigned technolgoy the "central place and directive function in human development." Heilbroner connects the "basic Marxian paradigm" to technological determinism. Yet Rosenberg claims Marx saw historical change as a social rather than a technological process, especially in the case of the mergence of capitalist markets from feudalism without the influence of any major technological achievements. MacKenzie claims Marx was not a technological determinist because the "forces of production", Marx's engine of history, do not equate to technology. Miller helps Marx escape the label by arguing that work relations are an independent force in history.
90
There is little doubt that, for Marx, whatever significance technology has derives from its relationship to economic activity--its role as a productive force--rather than from any other social or historical influence it might have. ... Asking whether Marx's historical materialism represents technological determinism is related to asking whether it represents economic determinism, and this distinction is a good starting point for analysis. I understand economic determinism to mean that the tendencies, forces, and outcomes of economic processes exert an independent, determining influence on other aspects of social development, such as political organization and cultural beliefs. ... all aspects of society are dependent upon a single underlying set of factors for development and change.... 91
If Marxian history cannot be attributed to economic factors, it cannot be attributed to technology. 92 Forces of production: the activity of people, the subject of work, and the instruments of work. Cohen categorizes these into two groups -- means of production and labor power...
One cannot explain the state of the relations of production in terms of the forces of production if the former are to be subsumed under the latter. (sum total of social relationships people must enter into to survive, produce & reproduce their means of life.)
92
The important point here is that a theory of human nature underlies Marx's description of the role of automation in industrialization. Marx is describing a process that is dependent not upon features of technology but up human characteristics, such as the drive to accumulate and the resistance to alienation. These compel the development of the forces f production and their influence over social and political life.
96
Necessary Factors in Marx's Theory of History
1. a basic drive for self-expression 2. the form of self-expression is production 3. expanding needs.
Conditions That Facilitate Productive Development in History
1. expanding population 2. increasing social intercourse 3. the availability of science and technology, especially in the latter phase of capitalism
Technological change is not the primary factor in social development--especially in feudal, trade-oriented and early manufacturing eras. It is significant only in capitalist economices, and then as an enabling factor.
On his account, technology is used instrumentally by human actors whose actins are ina collective sense, historically determined by their own characteristics. The intentional use of technology by human actors is an important theme in Marx's work, one quite contradictory in nature to real technological determinism.
(History is the development of labor process into social process).
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TECHNOLOGICAL MOMENTUM Thomas P. Hughes
(technological momentum is economic momentum in disguise.
Technological determinism | Technological momentum (property momentum, status momentum) | Social Construction (Perception momentum)
Hughes places technological momentum on par with technological determinism and social construction approaches.
technological determinism I define simply as the belief that technical forces determine social and cultural changes. Social construction presumes that social and cultural forces determine technical change. A more complex concept thatn determinism and social construction, technological momentum infers that social development shapes and is shaped by technology. Momentum is also time dependent.
“Technical” means physical artifacts and software.
“Technology” means technological or sociotechnical systems.
“The social” is the world that is not technical, or that is not hardware or technical software.
102
I see the social and the technical as interacting within technological systems. Technological system includes both the technical and the social. Outside of that is the ‘environment’. (nq)
Bijker and Pinch “The social construction of facts and artifacts” … argue that social, or interest, group define and give meaning to artifacts. They do this by selecting for survival the designs that solve the problems they want solved by the artifacts and that fulfill desires they want fulfilled by the artifacts. 103 --- Therefore, the momentum of technological systems is a concept that can be located somewhere between the poles of technical determinism and social construction. The social constructivists have a key to understating the behavior of young systems; technical determinists come into their own with the mature ones. Technological momentum, however, provides a more flexible mode of interpretation and one that is in accord with the history of large systems.
…the shaping of systems is easiest before the system has acquired political, economic and value components. (media exampes emerge soft, but harden with demand and consumption – dd)
112
…we must remind ourselves that technological momentum, like physical momentum, is not irresistible. (why must it be absolute? What is it necessary for there to be a cause?)
113
RETRIEVING SOCIOTECHNICAL CHANGE FROM TECHOLOGICAL DETERMINISM Thomas J. Misa
I will develop here a middle-level theory of technological determinism. I will argue that machines make history when historians and others analysts adopts a “macro” perspective, whereas a causal role for the machine is not present and is not possible for analysts who adopt a “micro” perspective. … I will … proposing a methodological advance toward synthesizing the social-shaping-of-technology thesis with the tehcnoloigcal-shaping-of-society-antithesis.”
Macro-level analysis see determinism, where micro-level analysis sees causations.
Indeed, technological determinism may be a special case of the larger historical problem of continuity vs. change…
MACRO tech change follow ordered path (abstracted, rationalized, functional) MICRO – it’s part of the soup, contingency, experience CASE STUDIES – refute rationality, confine functionality, are disorder respecting.
118
It is not merely the size of the unit (of analysis) that is important. Besides taking a larger unit of analysis, macro studies tend to abstract from individual bases, to impute rationality on actors’ behalfs or posit functionality for their actions, and to be order-driven. Accounts focusing on these “order-bestowing principles” lead toward technological, economic or ecological determinism. Conversely, accounts focusing on historical contingency and variety of experience lad away from all determinisms.
Consequently, since micro and macro-oriented histories use significantly different concepts and language, their different methodologies have bedeviled attempts to test large interpretive schemes by means of details case studies – a vexing consideration….
[all determinisms are opposite of historical contingency]
119
Techlnology defines the limits on what a society can do…..innovation at a most fundamental level of technology, that of information processing…..
[marco analysis tends to] abstracting from individual cases, imputing rationality, being order-driven, and picturing a technology-driven autonomous process – all attributes…. 123
Forces of production: --Means (instruments and methods) --Labor power (and labor relations) Relations of production --economic structure
…to say that an economic structure corresponds to the achieved level of the productive foreces means: the structure provides maximum scopre for the fruitful use and cevelopment of the forces, and obtains because it provides such scope. To say that the being determines consciousness means, at leas in large part: the character of the leading ides of a society is explained by their propensity in viture of that character, to sustain the structure of the economic roles called for the productive forces. (g.a.cohen, karl marx’s theory of history; a defense)
[the view from the Marxist position] macro – machines make history micro – machines are made by historical processes
124
…machines make history when analysts adopt macro perspectives, whereas machines are made by historical processes whenever analysts adopt micro perspectives and strip machines of their ability to appear causative of social change.
[what are all the causatives that are just appearances?]
125
Profits come from control of markets and competition, control of labor, and the ability to externalize many other costs that are largely social n nature, tha is, to force communities and workers to bear them and not have them reflected in the price of goods and services.
127
Technological-determinist accounts often conflate outcomes (ong-tern patterns that can be entirely independent of actors’ conscious agendas) with motivations (short-term conscious agendas of actors). To assert that the emergence of a particular pattern was caused by someone’s consciously planning the emergence of that pattern can be, in the absence of evidence, to commit the logical error of post hoc ergo propter hoc. ["Since that event followed this one, that event must have been caused by this one."]
137
“The central notion for all varieties of macro-history”, affirms William McNeill, “is that of a social process (or processes) acting largely in independence of human awareness and so, by definition, not to be found recorded and awaiting discovery in some primary archive.” [yes, but over millions of examples a pattern emerges with one play being the historical example.]
[dd Micro sees people. Macro sees patterns]
138
…historians should direct attention to what can be calles the “meso” level – the region conceptually intermediate between the macro and the micro. For historians of technology and business, this means analyzing the institutions intermediate between the firm and the market or between the individual and the state. A short list of these might include manufacturers organizations (including cartels and interfirm netowks), stardard-setting bodies, (including the engineerin profession and public agencies), export-import firms specializing in technology transfer, consulting engineering firms, and investment banking houses.
[but where is media?]
139 [MEDIA IS THE CLUTCH!] Finally what can w say about technology and social change—besides the observation that historians’ conclusions depend critically on the perspectives they adopt? On the one hand is the proposition that technological change has deterministic effects on social processes, which, I think , we should continue to reject on the evidence of micro-level studies. On the other hand is the charting of macro-level social processes that exist independent of contemporaneous individuals’ consciousness. ….historians … must take care not to repeat the methodological error of confusing the long-term emergence of patterns at the macro level with the short-term motivations of actors at the micro level.
140
“technology” is a short-hand term for the elaborate sociotechnical networks that span society. … Insofar as people are necessary parts of networks, to say that “technology” causes social change is really to say that ptople—through the sociotechnical networks they create and systain—cause social change. 141 [media was there, in an interstitial manner, between the cracks – the trade press, business communications, telegraphs and telephone, lading to the production of records and texts and transactions, media phasing over time from receipts to newspapers to twitter ]
Determinism and Indeterminacy in the History of Technology Philip Scranton
Determinism calls forth images of universal structures and dynamics that deny or sharply delimit the capacities of individuals and institution to alter history's trajectory on the personal, the social, or the global plane.
American greatness (not human perfect-ability) would arise from the mobilization of bouldless resources and the application of technical ingenuity...
144
From a nationally bounded and potically informed expectation, technical progress arguable emerged as the symbolic engine propelling American eminence, then preeminence.
145
In this setting, those who might wish to cleave to the clasic determinism -- the "Whig reading of Western technological evolution as inevitable and autonomous -- ..."
147
History as past politics is moldering. History as national saga or the consequence of relations between economic base and socio-cultural superstructure seems laughable. Historical study has devolved from period to field to multiplying concepts, methods and theories profoundly undercutting efforts at synthesis, preservation of a canonical narrative, or the native "addition" of new knowledge to received wisdom. Incommensurable approaches carve out fiefdoms in the imaginary terrain of sub disciplines, even as the cry for unity and integration echoes.
149
Situational determinism
First on the ledger of general notions: If a grand technological determinism is implausible, might there not be specific locales where, and temporal envelopes when, something like Hughes's technological momentum is sufficiently powerful to overcome the constraints offered by other factors in the situational context? ... there may well be sites, sectors, and periods in which a technology-oriented logic governs. ... calls for specification and differentiation...
Other means for identifying such local determination has been suggested by Hughes's investigations of technology-dependent systems, especially in power generation and military weaponry.
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How is it that the drive to technical innovation falters outside contexts of bureaucracy and regulation?
What do we mean by "context:? If it is inadequate to view technology as an autonomous, unmoved mover, and if technical change has meaning and influence only situationally, how many we best specify these settings and the relationships they embody? Often enough, I think, context is treated either theatrically or structurally. In the first case, the environment is constituted as a static stage set (proscenium, curtains an backdrops, bits of furniture) on which the action takes shape. In the second, it surfaces as a network of constraints operating to condition, obstruct, or deflect the initiatives of individuals and institutions. In the theatrical frame, agents' effects affect the set little; their implications affect later actions, for which the backdrops appear magically. A structural context leads to rhetorics of breakthrough and heroic overcoming of barriers (The Manhattan Project?) which do change the environment, sometimes in unanticipated ways. Yet neither engages context itself as a process.
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(historians) We do not simply find the right theater in which to mount our dramas; instead we build it.
First, structural features of an environment (e.g. institutions) possess both constraining and enabling capacities which materialize only in social practice (a matter Anthony Giddens has emphasized) Second, as Mark Granovetter has noted, action does not happen on the surface of context; action and context and mutually and intricately embedded in one another. Individuals act both in and upon institutions (a family, a firm, a government), and they embody, realize and reproduce those institutions through their daily activity. Such a perspective does not reduce technological change to a dependent variable within some other autonomous process (capitalist development, state formation), but rather entwines it with social practice and invites us to specify those historical dynamics to which it is critically salient and to assess others to which is is arguably peripheral.
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(context-framing actions and action-inducing contexts)
This evolving tapestry of context-framing actions and action-inducing contests generated a technological momentum different from that to which Hughes refers, for it was open, non-systemic, locally determined, and as much dependent on social relations as on engineering refinements.
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Blessed and cursed by our use of ordinary formal pros, we often rely silently on theoretical expectations about modernization, bureaucracy, rational choice, or market dynamics drawn from sister disciplines.
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ON each of these three counts--local determination, articulating context as process, and approaching theory--there is indeed much worth doing.
...reworking Gramsci's notion of hegemony..... ...for the contingent play of historical agency.
Four observations or propositions based loosely on the foregoing may merit attention. First, if we set totalize determinism aside, we abandon an notion that sifts in technology govern the restructuring of social formations (families, schools, firms, governments) or of cultural practices. Just as revisionist Marxism has grappled with the implausibility of "reading off" social relations from changes in the forces of production (in part through reworking Gramsci's notion of hegemony), historians of technology need to conceptualize the multiple oppositions and dis-junctures that surface in eras of swift technical change without relying on over-arcing teleologies. The problem here is ot to capture the dyamics of interacting intentionalities involving power, resistance, and consent while steering clear of fresh reductionisms that merely substitute a new universal (bureaucratization, the market) for the contingent play of historical agency.
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Third, in view of the above, the situational links between technical shifts and social and political relations have too readily been left unspecified and under-investigated.
...technical change must be insulated from being viewed as a consequence of extra-technical initiatives, as Perdue has rightly stressed.
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The levels of analysis for interpretation include "culturally available symbols that evoke multiple (and often contradictory) representations, "normative concepts" that fix dominant meanings of such symbols, the institutional complexes in which these are articulated, and the way in which the relevant symbols, norms, and institutions are implicated in the construction of subjective identities. ...
..culturally enabled --> symbols --> normative concepts -> institutional complexes --> construction of subjective identity.... 159
...we will notice a variety of silences and great forgettings in the history of technology....
Within the industrial realm, further silences and blocked-ff avenues may be noted. IN my own work, there are found in the world of batch and custom production, which somehow fell of the map of industrial history as scholars pursued the origins and mutations of mass production in American.
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In simple finished goods--wool blankets, work shoes, newsprint--there was so much diversity that the notion of sameness was essentially an artifact of hope.
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These matters can be related productively to my four earlier propositions: 1. that technological change proceeds in the absence of overarching rationalities 2. that is proceeds along multiple coexistent trajectories, 3. that links between technical change and sociopolitical relations are intimate and under-specified, and 4. that stepping beyond reductionist telelogies revels an array of intriguing silences in the history of technology.
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Machiner development's links to ideology, state, and society, moreover, have rarely been probed by researchers. Though they have not been systematically explored, there examples suggest that such machines suplied versatility and supported a technical virtuosity of a very different sort than historians have customarily treated.
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The cooperative impulse is located at the heart of intersecting indeterminacies.
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we can being better to appreciate yet another dimension of American workers' long reluctance to build and sustain unions.
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IN closing let me return to the challenge created by shedding determinism and acknowledging indeterminacy in the history of technology by way of a comment Michael Foucault offered in one of the last interviews before his death. If we are t take seriously the unhinging of determinisms that has materialzed over the last two generations, we might do well to ponder Foucault claim that "nothing is fundamental...[There] are no fundamental phenomena. There are only reciprocal relations, and the perpetual gaps between intentions in relation to one another." (Foucault live, p. 267)
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Technological Determinism in Agrarian Societies. Peter C. Perdue
The single-factor approach [to historical analysis of technological impact] has great merits. It draws our attention to a neglected element, and it simplifies analysis. But hen it goes too fr, careful consideration reveals glaring logical flaws. ... but White seems to shy away fro such implications when he states that the plough made highly productive agriculture possible but did not cause it.
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... The key was the consolidation of scattered strips of land, not the plough itself.
If widespread adoption come long after invention, then the use of technology requires an appropriate social environment.
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If population and technology spread together, neither determined the other. Different methods of surplus extraction by lords, not different technologies, explain the lag of England behind France in the us of the horse; while France moved toward rent collection, England revived the demesne and labor services. ... White embraces the "railroad train" model of technological advance, in which societies are arranged linearly along the same track, each one lagging more or less behind the next.
Marx, on Bruce Bimber's (1990) account, was not a technological determinist but a class-struggle determinist. In all debates about agricultural development, three standard alternatives to the technological argument reappear: population (in two variants, Malthusian (1798) and Boserupian (1965)), class structure (in various versions, of which surplus extraction is the simplest), and the market. Not surprisingly, each of these arguments is backed by a great theorist: Malthus, Marx, and Adam Smith, respectively.
Malthus -- population (Malthusian and Boserupian) Marx -- class structure Smith -- the market
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Without going into a detailed critique of all these theories, I will simply note that each of them follows the unfolding of a single logic, whether that of technology, that of class, or that of commerce, as the underlying mechanism driving agricultural change.
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Determinism and Pre-Industrial Technology Richard W. Bulliet
Perhaps there are other logics that would enable us to describe the interaction of technical change and social consequence with a generality equal to that of economics, we do not know of them.
Is pre-capitalist technological history indeed generically different from capitalist theory?
...
Technological boundaries of one sort or another exist in all periods from paleolithic times onward.
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The essentialist idea that technological boundaries coincide with cultural boundaries--roughly what Heilbroner implies by the word "routine"--is too simple and circular to account for the vagaries of technological diffusion. Some things move from one culture to another; others do not; but the cultures cannot be defined by what crosses boundaries and what does not.
{there are] technological dis-junctures within what are perceived to be coherent cultures. I will use three cases to support the argument that social groupings by class, race, educational background, etc. act as social filters for technological change, determining to a substantial degree what techniques disseminate and how rapidly they do so.
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Yet the entire technology was so encapsulated within the subculture of the underworld that learned members o f the higher social orders did not eve know the word for print block.
It is difficult to see how one important Chinese technology could have become popular among beggars and scoundrels without the upper class, which avidly welcomed the related technology of papermaking, even being aware of it.
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The Political and Feminist Dimensions of Technological Determinism Rosalind Williams
[critical of economic agendas and rational motives [the argument that technology is inherently rational is disturbing because technical systems can be designed for authortarian purposes of control and domination [women have been routinely excluded from the creation and operation of authortarian monotechnics [We dwell in an environment where natural and technological processes have merged.
What is "technology"?
machine, invention, technological system encompassing the natural world,
Fordism, social context, management strategies and modes of labor control
techniques of mass consumption
Because of the Marxist term "forces of production" includes labor power, MacKenzie notes, it "admits conscious human agency as a determinant of history; it is people as much or more than the machine, that makes history."
[Jacques Ellul and Lewis Mumford] have argues that knowledge and ideology are inherently part of meaning of "technology" ... historians favor "technological system"... has tended to expande imperialistically into social, cultural, economic, and political domains. 218
For example, the concept of a "Fordist system", or "Fordism", includes much of what used to be called "social context" -- management strategies and modes of labor control, as well as techniqeus of mass consumption. But the core of this multifaceted system is still commonly assumed to be the assembly line....
By encouraging us to think in terms of a material core dominating nonhuman or immaterial "other factors," the language of technological systems an become a covert form of technological determinism. ...
[technic contains the environment]
...the common assumption that certain technologies are more primary.... steam engines and automobiles are tacitly considered more powerful as determinants than houshold or entertainment technologies.
[media subsumed in technology, or used to be.....dd] [what is production?] ["production" definition in Marx obscure on media? dd]
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In Williams view, the common assumption that determination is equivalent to limitation reflects a bourgeois view of society as a system of constraints on a supposedly free preexisting individual. [Raymond] Williams insisted that determination is also pressure, in the sense of ongoing processes that may be internalized far below the level of consciousness. Although Williams does not invoke Antonio Gramsci in this discussion, elsewhere he reminds us of the importance of Gramsci's analysis of hegemony for any thorough understanding of determinism.
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[a limit and a process! dd]
Hegemony is a set of meanings and values which as they are experienced as practies appear reciprocally confirming. It thus constitutes a sense of reality for most people in society..." The most fundamental understanding fof what is possible and what is not--of what is determined and what is not--is bound up with the hegemonic order.
[the hegemonic order is related to the Attention Field]
modern investigators prefer t speak of probable trends ... rather than inevitable results.
from a footnote, Joseph Schumpeter , Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1947) "Even if mankind were as free to choose as a businessman is free to choose between two competing pieces of machinery, no determined value judgment necessarily follows from the facts and relations between facts that I have tried to convey...whether favorable or unfavorable, value judgments about capitalist performance are of little interest. For mankind is not free to choose. This is not only because the mass of people are not in a position to compare alternatives rationally and always accept what they are being told. There is a much deeper reason for it. Things economic and social move by their own momentum and the ensuing situation compel individuals an groups to behave in certain ways whatever they may wish to do--not indeed by destroying their freedom of choice but by shaping the choosing mentalities and by narrowing the list of possibilities from which to choose. If the is the quintessence of Marxism then we all of us have got to be Marxists."
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[is media within technology? or is media the people within technology?]
As Heilbroner stresses, the modern age has defined history in terms of socioeconomic factors rather than in terms of , say, political or diplomatic or religious events This way of defining history itself is a result of priorities that are technology-based, f not technology-determined. ... the concept of technological progress was gradually extrapolated to history as a whole, and history became redefined as the record of socioeconomic progress. ... Heilbroner ... reminds us..when we talk about how machines make history...the socioeconomic meaning .... [of] the crucial last word.'
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We need to unpack these words.....
It would be mre in the spirit of Karl Marx (which must hover over any discussion of this subject) to ask why an individual or group would be motivated to assert technological determinism--hard, soft, or otherwise. To paraphrase Heilbroner: We need to think of historical determinism itself in historical and even in political terms.
To affirm that technology drives history is to deny that God exists. ... technological determinists do more than slay God the Father: they also slay Mother Nature, or at least declare her death.
[Turgot] outlines the essence of the argument: that historical progress in time is determined by the creation of systems of transportation and communication across space. ...groups of human beings have become more enlightened in direct proportion to the frequency and intensity of their contacts with other groups. .... [briding the erasures of time were] Language." made of all the individuals stores of knowledge a common treasure house..." [then] Writing meant that genius, until then at te mercy of oblivion, cld reach a global audience and therefore become immortal, [and third] the Printing Press which rescued the treasures of antiquity from the dust..' etc.
Turgot argues that the scientific revolution will never be safe in one country alone; to be secure, the revolution must be global. The construction of technological systems of communication and transportation t disseminate scientific learning is a political act, for these systems are th weapons that will make the triumph of the bourgeoisie inevitable. Technology is a revolution.
[priting media freed humans minds from spatial limits. theory of progress tech of communication and transportation will conquer not just the clergy and the aristocracy, but history itself.]
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All the momentous effects of the invention of printing, which had finally and definitively freed human mind from spatial limitations:
...a comprehensive view of inevitable historical progress that emerged in the Enlightenment and still endures, though greatly weakened. Technological determinism is an integral part of that theory of progress, according to which technologies of communication and transportation will conquer not jus the clergy and aristocracy but history itself. The long centuries of ebb and flow, of rise and decline, of truth emerging and sinking back into the trackless ocean of time--those centuries are now over. Technical innovation is the decisive factor that has moved history onto an entirely new pathway of unending progress.
Fate can be engineered. In that case, we should look at those who choose to invest in large, complex technologies, and consider that they may do so quite deliberately in order to create technological determinism. [ALSO moved media to a new position dd]
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...investments in technological systems, that once in place, significantly reduce the range of subsequent choices.
They might well be tempted to speed up the pace of historical evolution by sponsoring the construction of technologies they see as determinative.
Limits & Pressures
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Marx wrote about technological determinism; Lenin built it in the form of vast projects of electricification, industrialization, and agricultural collectivization... making counter-revolution impossible.
...forces of technical change hav e been unleashed, but ... the agencies for the control or guidance of technology are still rudimentary (heilbroner)
In order for the threat of massive retaliation to be credible, the element of human decision had to be removed, precisely because rational human beings might choose negotiation over way.
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Mumford proposed -- throughout history there have coexisted two ideanil types of techcs: democratic and authoritarian.
democratic technics -- small scale method of production, human skill, animal energy, active direction of craftsmen or farmer
authoritarian technics -- compelling myth, absolute ruler, word was law, ruthless physical coercion, armies, labor, mass construction mass destruction. Authoritarian technics is designed to be determinative, to place power in the technological system itself. ' 228
mumford: technological determinism is essentially an illusion and that we can regain control of our technics simply by casting off the "myth of the machine." (but the systems are quite real)
determinism heilbroner links technological development to a stable and systematic acquisitive drive to maximize possibilities for gain. ... a mechanism that translates "a huge variety of stimuli ... into a few well-defined behavioral vectors." 229
Rationality versus Contingency in the History of Technology John M. Staudenmaier
intro: the issue at hand is the extent to which the older internalist tradition with its whiggish emphasis on priority in invention and its interest in producing master narratives of progress, can be modified and amalgamated with the younger contextual tradition, which, like the so-called new history, is primarily concerned with various political and cultural constituencies in the historical process and with the tensions and conflicts between them .....centrality of artifacts ....
Lawrence Levine summarizes much of he AHR exchange in the following observation:
There is one area of historiographical unpredictability, however, with which many historians have not learned to make their peace. This involves not changing interpretations of well-agreed upon standard events by changing notions of which events--and which people--should constitute the focus of the historian's study.
For them (historian's of technology) the methodological predominance of "the artifact" clarifies and simplifies; artifacts and artifact-events, along with the inventors, entrepreneurs, and engineers who preside over them, constitute our subject matter.
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Despite the received impression, however, it is precisely in making sense of the artifact's role in historical events that the history of technology has most to say to the larger historical profession.
Scott challenges the legitimacy of any reading of the historical record in which some consensus stands as the true story and in which the stories of those who fought that consensus are ignored or seriously marginalized. ..."They are justifications through teleology of the outcomes of political struggles, stores in which in their telling legitimize the actions of those who have shaped laws, constitutions and governments -- official stories. " (determinism of the victors)
But nowhere can we find a master narrative so deeply entrenched in popular imagination and popular language as in the mythic idea of progress, particularly technological progress.
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Scott and Rurup address ... both criticize historical accounts that settle for what they understand to be an excessively tidy rationality, screening out failed alternatives and rendering mute those constituencies who rejected the position that eventually won out.
[WE RELATE TO MEDIA THE WAY HISTORIANS RELATE TO ARTIFACTS, BUT THE ASPECT OF MEDIA WE RELATE TO IS NOT THE ARTIFACT, BUT THE CONTENT OF THE ARTIFACT]
Reinhard Rurup : "All too often the current fruits o technology appeared to be the necessary outcome of previous inventions and techniques, and one was inclined in retrospect to assume that from the very beginning the great inventions carried, as it were, the seed of all subsequent related developments, a seed which only awaited germination according to some "natural law" of technology. What this approach lacked above all--and for obvious reasons--was critical detachment from the object of research; in a sense it was "company history."
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