16

Technology, Technological Determinism and the Transformational Model of Technical Activity.

Clive Lawson

Rough Draft, 16th July 2004

Abstract:

Technology remains a relatively under-theorised category within the critical realist literature. This is surprising not only because of its central importance to a wide range of disciplines, but also because it seems to be a category about which critical realism has much to say. One aspect of technology that has proved to be especially problematic for commentators to accommodate is that technology’s constitution is as much a part of the social as well as the natural domains. This has caused problems to the extent that accounts of technology implicitly reduce one domain to another or only manage to distinguish one from the other in an unsustainable way (typically, those emphasising the social constitution of technology tend to treat the natural world as ‘constructed’ in much the same manner as the social world, and those stressing the importance of the material/natural component in technology tend to treat the social world overly mechanistically). This paper draws upon the critical naturalism of critical realism and the transformational model of social activity in particular to develop a conception of technology that avoids these problems. It then draws out some of the implications of this account. In particular, some attempt is made to re-cast claims made by some so-called technological determinists, such as Heidegger and Habermas, who on closer inspection seem to be posing important questions that simply cannot be addressed without the kind of systematic (ontological) elaboration of the social and natural domains that I am suggesting.

1. Introduction

We all experience the role technology plays in social change on a daily basis. Whether cleaning our home, purchasing an air ticket over the internet, paying for shopping at a supermarket or borrowing a book from the library, we all experience a constant prodding to our normal and routine ways of doing things that can be attributed to the introduction of some new technology or other. But do such experiences provide evidence to support the thesis of technological determinism? One of the few sources of agreement in the recent technology literature, is that the answer to this question must be no, i.e., technological determinism must be wrong. However, I want to suggest that this ‘agreement’ actually obscures a problem with the treatment of technology. Namely, I want to suggest that this rejection of technological determinism has meant that certain questions posed by so-called technological determinists remain untheorised or even unaddressed. Indeed I shall also argue that these questions are difficult to deal with in any sustainable way within the framework suggested by many of technological determinism’s critics, at least those most rooted in social constructivism. Implicitly, of course, I am suggesting that these questions asked by so-called technological determinists are important ones. And indeed I believe their importance explains why so many writers on technology are continually drawn to the thesis of technological determinism, accounting for the often noted fact that "as moths to the flame we [theorists of technology] find ourselves continually attracted to technological determinism’s alluring but dangerous glow" (Smith, 1996).

I also want to argue that the issues at stake here are fundamentally ontological and that it is in this regard that critical realism has much to contribute to the study of technology at present. Although, surprisingly, little attention has been given by critical realists to technological issues, it would seem that the social ontology developed within critical realist accounts has much to offer a basic conception of technology and, consequently, the particular problems I address here. More specifically the (transformational) conception of social activity, which of course is particularly well suited to the avoidance of both determinism and voluntarism with regard to social phenomena can very fruitfully be applied to an account of technical activity. Furthermore, I shall argue that fundamental to an account of technology is a conception of its dual constitution in the social and natural domains. However, it is rare for technological commentators, especially recently, to attempt to elaborate an account of technology in terms of the differences between these domains. My intention here is to do just this by drawing upon the critical or qualified naturalism developed within critical realist accounts. In so doing, not only do I explain the nature of the current impasse (with regards to technological determinism), but also provide a sketch of technology that incorporates what I see as the advantages of both (so called determinist and constructivist) positions, and provide some (rather speculative) attempts to re-cast the questions that technological determinists have posed.

2.1 Varieties of technological determinism?

It is fair to say that technological determinism is most usually referred to in a crude, undifferentiated manner. To the extent that different strands of the technological determinist argument are distinguished, it is most common to find discussions of hard and soft technological determinism (see Smith & Marx, 1996). The hard-soft distinction is based upon a spectrum of technological determinisms – with movement along the spectrum involving the degree of agency, or the power to effect change, attributed to technology. At the hard end, technology has certain intrinsic attributes that allow little scope for human autonomy or choice. At the other end of the spectrum, soft determinism, simply emphasises the large scope for human interventions and choice. Indeed, for Smith and Marx at least "the soft determinists locate [technology] in a far more various and complex social, economic, political and cultural matrix" (1996, p. xii). The immediate problem with such accounts, however, is that it is not clear why they should be considered to be deterministic at all. Neither hard nor soft are deterministic in any sense, given that some scope for the human choice is accepted by both, the disagreement being over how much.

Indeed, this point seems to be the motivation for Bimber’s very useful if rarely cited, distinctions between nomological, unintended consequences and normative uses of the term technological determinism (Bimber, 1996). The nomological is that which takes the 'determinism' in technological determinism most seriously: "technological determinism can be seen as the view that, in the light of …the state of technological development and laws of nature, there is only one possible future course for social change" (1996, p. 83). There is no scope for human desires or choices.

Now, although this definition accords most closely with the philosopher’s (or common sense?) meaning of the term, Bimber argues that it is actually almost impossible to find any examples of technological determinism if such a definition is strictly adhered to. The most likely candidates (perhaps unsurprisingly?) emanate from the economics domain. The most familiar of these is Marx’s famous statement that "the hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist" (Marx, 1971, p. 109). However, it is very difficult to attribute anything like a hard or nomological form of technological determinism once a wider reading of Marx is undertaken (especially see Dickson, 1974; Rosenberg, 1976; Harvey, 1999, pp. 98-136). One sense in which Marx might be understood as encouraging such an interpretation is in his insistence that history or sequence matters, and indeed this can sound unduly mechanistic, and has been interpreted by later Marxists in an unduly mechanistic way (an obvious example is Heilbroner, 1967). But the crucial point that Marx, and indeed Heilbronner, are making is that some kinds of technology could not happen without others and some kinds of technology could not happen without others and that some kinds of social organisation could not happen without certain technological developments. This idea of the importance of sequence recurs throughout accounts that have been held up as examples of technological determinism. Perhaps the most sustained of these is that provided by Clarence Ayers, and which has had such a clear effect on the American Institutionalists. On par with Marx’s handmill statement is Ayres contention that given “the shipbuilding and navigation skills in existence in 1492, America was bound to be discovered in a decade or two” (Ayres, 1952) – often read as betraying the worst kind of determinism. However, on closer reading, as with Marx, the point that emerges is that some technological development may be a necessary condition for some other technological development (or indeed social development). But nomological technological determinism requires that it is also a sufficient condition. And it is doubtful whether such a position can be found in any of the above contributors work.[1]

Bimber’s second use of the term, i.e. ‘unintended consequences’ technological determinism, is one that emphasises the process whereby human ideas, values, etc., become manifest in some particular technology so giving a fixity or concretisation to these ideas which is then hard to change. Perhaps the classic statement of such a position is that made by Langdon Winner (1977; 1980). And as his account explicitly brings out, although there is a concern with explaining the fact that technology appears to be out of our control, the point is not that everything is strictly determined or that choice is precluded. Rather, the point is that choices about the design and building of technology have implications that require some living with. The call, from Winner at least, is for greater democratic involvement at an earlier stage in the development of some technology, not that it is not possible. This general idea is also to be found in Marx with specific emphasis on the way that social relations become ‘concretised’ in particular technologies which then act to maintain or reproduce those social relations (MacKenzie, 1984)

However, neither the nomological nor the unintended consequences uses of the term are, Bimber argues, the most familiar face of technological determinism within the technology literature. Rather, in what he dubs the normative version of technological determinism, technology appears to us as autonomous because the norms by which it is advanced are "removed from political and ethical discourse and … goals of efficiency or productivity become surrogates for value-based debate over methods, alternatives, means and ends" (Bimber, 1996, p. 82). Here technological development is an essentially human enterprise in which people who create and use technology are driven by certain goals that rely unduly on norms of efficiency and productivity. Thus other (ethical, moral) criteria are excluded, producing a process that operates independently of larger political processes and contexts. The end point is one in which society adopts the technologist's standards of judgement. Thus there is a technological domain, which includes elements of society generally, which acts as constraint and causal force on other aspects of society.

The main examples this time appear to be from the philosophy of technology. Bimber singles out the contribution of Habermas (see especially; Habermas 1970}. And although Habermas actually writes very little on technology, his position does clearly involve the more general features that Bimber has in mind, although at this level of generality it is perhaps as relevant to Mumford’s ‘megatechnics’ (1967) and Ellul’s ‘technique’ (1964). Habermas is attempting to ground what he sees as the negative or dystopian character of modernity in very general terms. Central to Habermas’s contribution, of course, is a Weberian differentiation of society into the spheres of work (which is success oriented, purposive action concerned with controlling the world) and interaction (communication between subjects in pursuit of common understanding in the ‘lifeworld’). Modernity is characterised by the colonisation of the system of objectifying (delinguifying) behaviour of the former on the latter lifeworld. Thus the problem of modernity amounts to the inappropriate extension of one domain to another.

Although Bimber fails to mention it, perhaps the most developed position of this sort is provided by the work of Heidegger. For Heidegger, we are engaged in a transformation of the entire world (and ourselves) into 'mere raw materials' or 'standing reserves' (1977) - objects to be controlled. But a place is given in Heidegger’s account of a process of instrumentalisation in which methodical planning comes to dominate, destroying the integrity of everything. An collection of functions replaces a world of ‘things’ treated with respect for their own sake. Heidegger's examples of the Greek jeweller making a chalice and a modern dam builder destroying the local environment show the difference Heidegger has in mind between (the older crafts-based activity of) bringing things together in harmony and the 'de-worlding' of modern technology. The central point is that technology itself is not neutral. Everything is sucked up into the technological process and reduced to the status of a resource that has to be optimised in some way. Especially worrying is the idea that, in so doing, people grow to see themselves in the same way. Increasingly, sight is lost of what is being sacrificed in the mobilisation of human and other resources for goals that remain ultimately obscure.

Although quite different in many respects, the concern of both Heidegger and Habermas is the same i.e. with the reduction of meaning and value of humans in the lifeworld. Human involvement is reduced to a minimum and the values of possession and control tend to dominate social life. Central is the idea that using technology makes us become something else. The use of technology creates a new lifeworld, which separates, de-worlds, isolates and impoverishes both the natural world and our selves.[2]

2.2 The constructivist critique[3]

It is fair to say that, more recently at least, criticisms of technological determinism are most often made by, or with the help of arguments made by, social constructivists. There are though several dimensions to the constructivist rejection of technological determinism. There is an explicit rejection of the idea that technical change can be seen as a fixed, or on some monotonic 'trajectory'. Technological change is genuinely contingent and not reducible to some inner technological ‘logic’. The relation between science and technology (science is the independent, non political source of technological ideas) is questioned, as is the idea that technological change leads to (determines) social change and not vice versa. Instead, emphasis is placed, usually by drawing attention to a series of case studies, upon the contingent nature of technical change and on how technology is ‘shaped’, especially by different social groups in the process of settling a range of technological/ social controversies and disagreements (MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1985).