Advanced Technical Centers Science the Best Tech Best Future Paper

Minimum 2000 words, with at least two references other than your text, dealing with a specific issue introduced in the course. Some examples include:   • answer a discussion question at the end of a chapter–one you did not address in the Forum

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Just choose any question from these and come up with a report which includes an introduction body recommendations and conclusion

1. In your opinion, which recent technology has produced the greatest benefit?Which has produced the most harm? Are there any harmful elements to thebeneficial technology, and has anything good come from the harmful one?2. Do all technologies require material artifacts of some sort? Does it make anysense to speak of bureaucracy as a kind of technology?3. Are technologies “gendered”? Are some technologies identified with womenand others with men? On what bases do we make these distinctions? Will thissituation necessarily continue in the years to come?4. Can you think of any technologies that were developed simply because of thetechnical challenges involved? How can these “impractical” technologies bejustified?5. How do you feel when a technological device upon which you dependmalfunctions? What do these feelings tell you about your attitude toward technology in general?6. It is sometimes asserted that the development and use of oral contraceptiveswere responsible for the sexual revolution that began in the 1960s. Is there asimple cause-and-effect relationship of the two? Have there been any otherforces that contributed to changing sexual mores?Notes  society
technological
change
and
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society
technological
change
and
seventh edition
Rudi Volti
Pitzer College
Worth Publishers
A Macmillan Higher Education Company
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C on t ents
About the Author xiii
Preface xv
part one
Orientations 1
Chapter 1
The Nature of Technology 3
Defining Technology 3
Technological Advance and the Image of Progress 7
Technology as a Metaphor 10
Technology and Rationality 12
Technological Determinism 15
Living in a Technological Society 17
Questions for Discussion 18
Notes 18
Chapter 2 Winners and Losers: The Differential Effects
of Technological Change 21
Technology as a Subversive Force 21
The Luddities 26
Neo-Luddism 28
Whose Technology? 29
What Technology Can Do—And What
It Cannot Do 29 v
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vi  Contents
The Technological Fix 30
Why Technology Can’t Always Fix It 31
The Appeal of Technocracy 33
The Technocrat’s Delusion 36
Questions for Discussion 37
Notes 37
part two
The Process of Technological Change 39
Chapter 3
The Sources of Technological Change 41
Technological Change as a Social Process 41
The Great Breakthrough 42
The “D” in R&D 44
All Together Now 45
Push and Pull 48
Belated Demand 51
Market Economies and Technological Advance 52
Noneconomic Sources of Technological Advance 54
Questions for Discussion 57
Notes 58
Chapter 4
Scientific Knowledge and Technological Advance 61
The Historical Separation of Science and Technology 61
Studies of Contemporary Science–Technology
Relationships 62
How Technology Differs from Science 64
How Technology Stimulates Scientific Discovery 66
Indirect Effects of Technology on Scientific Advance 69
The Commonalities of Science and Technology 71
The Translation of Science into Technology 74
Questions for Discussion 76
Notes 76
Chapter 5
The Diffusion of Technology 79
The International Diffusion of Technology 79
Clever Copyists 84
Adaptation and Adoption 85
Learning to Make Steel in Old Japan 86
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Contents  vii
Appropriate Technology 87
Business Firms and Technological Diffusion 90
A Risky Business 91
The NIH Syndrome 92
Efforts to Restrict the Diffusion of Technology 93
Patents and the Diffusion of Technology 94
Questions for Discussion 96
Notes 96
part three 
H ow Technology Affects the Health
of the Earth and Its Inhabitants 101
Chapter 6
Technology, Energy, and the Environment 103
Fossil Fuels, Air Pollution, and Climate Change 103
A Planet under Stress 107
Is Technology the Problem or the Solution? 108
Some Technological Fixes of the Past 109
Alternatives to Fossil Fuels 110
Doing More with Less 114
More Miles to the Gallon 116
Economic Systems, Government Policies,
and the Environment 118
Questions for Discussion 121
Notes 122
Chapter 7
Medical Technologies 125
New Medical Technologies: Choices
and Trade-offs 127
The Case of Kidney Dialysis 127
Replacing Broken Hearts 131
Diagnostic Technologies 135
Medical Technologies and Medical
Ethics 137
New Ways of Making and Sustaining Babies 138
When Does Life End? When Should It? 140
Halfway Technologies 140
Questions for Discussion 141
Notes 141
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viii  Contents
Chapter 8
Genetic Technologies 145
The Genetic Fix 145
Discovering Genes and Patenting Them 146
Bioengineering on the Farm 148
Genetic Mapping and Screening 151
Cloning, Present and Future 152
Stem Cells and Future Therapies 155
The Ethics of Genetic Intervention 156
Questions for Discussion 159
Notes 159
part four 
T echnology and the Transformation
of Work 163
Chapter 9
Work in Nonindustrial Societies 165
Working with the Earliest Tools 165
Work and Leisure in Technologically Primitive Societies 166
Work and the Development of Agriculture 168
Farming Techniques and Patterns of Work 169
The Ironies of Progress 171
Artisan and Craft Work 171
Guild Organization and Technological Change 174
Slavery and the Inhibition of Technological Development 175
The Measurement of Time and Changed Working
Patterns 176
The Clock 178
Questions for Discussion 180
Notes 180
Chapter 10 Technology and Jobs: More of One and Less of the Other? 183
The Technological Threat in Historical Perspective 183
A Case for Optimism 184
How Technology Creates Jobs 186
The Indirect Effects of New Technologies
on Employment 188
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Contents  ix
The Machines Aren’t Ready to Take Over 189
Technology, Jobs, and the Changing Structure
of the Economy 191
Technology and the Distribution of Income 194
Technology, Globalization, and Jobs 196
Rebounding from Job Losses 197
Benefits, but Disruption Too 198
Questions for Discussion 199
Notes 199
Chapter 11
Technological Change and Life on the Job 203
Industrial Production 203
Machine-Paced Labor 205
Is Technology to Blame? 207
Industrial Technology and the Division of Labor 209
Scientific Management Once Again 212
Industrial Work and Recent Technological
Developments 213
Technological Change and White-Collar Work 214
Telework 216
Smart Technologies and Dumb Jobs? 217
Questions for Discussion 219
Notes 220
part five
Communication 223
Chapter 12
Printing 225
The Printing Revolution 226
Printing and the Expansion of Knowledge 228
Printing and the Rise of Protestantism 229
Printing, Literacy, and Social Change 230
Psychological Effects of Printing 232
Newspapers 233
Circulation Wars and the Shaping of Public Opinion 235
Questions for Discussion 237
Notes 238
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x  Contents
Chapter 13
The Electronic Media: From the Telegraph to Television 241
The Invention of Radio 241
The Origins of Commercial Radio 243
The Rise of Television 245
The Federal Government Steps In 246
Problems of Regulation 248
The Television-Viewing Public 249
Violence on Television and Its Consequences 250
Delivering the News 253
Television and Politics 255
Television and Thought 257
Questions for Discussion 258
Notes 259
Chapter 14
The Internet Age 263
The Birth and Growth of the Internet 263
E-Mail and the Network Effect 266
Mobile Communications 267
More Digital Connections: Social Networks 268
Social Media and Social Movements 270
Video Games 272
The Digital Divide 275
Intellectual Property 276
Privacy in the Digital Age 278
The Electronic Media in Modern Society 279
Questions for Discussion 280
Notes 281
part six
The Tools of Destruction 285
Chapter 15
Weapons and Their Consequences 287
Military Technology in the Ancient World 287
Military Technology and the Feudal Order 289
New Weapons and the Decline of Feudalism 290
The Gunpowder Revolution 293
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Contents  xi
War and the Centralized State 296
Technological Change and Naval Culture
in the Era of the Battleship 297
Weapons and the Making of the Modern World 298
Questions for Discussion 302
Notes 303
Chapter 16
The Era of Smart Weapons 305
Cruise Missiles 305
Smart Bombs 307
High-Tech Surveillance 308
Drones 309
The Cost of Technological Sophistication 310
Asymmetrical Warfare 311
Technology and Terrorism 313
Cyberterrorism and Cyberattacks 315
Military Technologies in a Changing World 317
Questions for Discussion 319
Notes 320
Chapter 17 How New Weapons Emerge—And How They
May Be Contained 323
Action and Reaction 323
Social Structure and the Development of Military
Technologies 324
Organizational Interests and the Air Weapon 329
Social Revolution and the Enlargement of War 331
Industrial Technology in the Service of War 333
Controlling Military Technologies 335
Historical Attempts to Limit New Weapons 336
A Successful Example of Arms Control 337
Gun Control in Old Japan 339
The Control of Nuclear Weapons 341
Deterrence, but No More 341
The Perils of Proliferation 342
Questions for Discussion 343
Notes 344
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xii  Contents
part seven T he Shaping and Control
of Technology 347
Chapter 18 Technology and Its Creators: Who’s in Charge
of Whom? 349
Technological Advance and Cultural Lag 349
Technology, Globalization, and Cultural Convergence 351
Experts, Expertise, and the Shaping
of Technology 355
Engineers and the Control of Technology 358
Questions for Discussion 363
Notes 364
Chapter 19
Organizations and Technological Change 367
Technology as a Cause of Organizational Structure 367
Technology as a Consequence of Organizational
Structure 372
Organizations and New Information Technologies 375
Interorganizational Relations and Technological
Development 378
Organizations and Technological Innovation 379
Entrepreneurs and Organizations 381
Questions for Discussion 383
Notes 384
Chapter 20
Governing Technology 387
Government Actions and the Shaping
of Technology 387
But Is It Really Necessary? 391
Government Institutions for the Guidance of Technology 392
Processes 394
The Democratic Control of Technology 399
The Challenges of the Future 402
Questions for Discussion 403
Notes 404
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Index 407
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About the A utho r
Rudi Volti is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Pitzer College, where he was a
founding member of the program in Science, Technology, and Society of the
Claremont Colleges. His books and articles have covered a variety of topics on the
interaction of technology and society, including technology transfer to East Asia,
the history of the engineering profession, the origin of frozen foods, and the history
of automobile engines. His personal encounters with modern technology center on
cars, motorcycles, and model railroading.
    xiii
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P refac e
When the first edition of Society and Technological Change came out in 1988, Microsoft’s
initial public offering had occurred only two years earlier, tweets were something
birds did, and Mark Zuckerberg had not yet entered kindergarten. Since that time,
ongoing technological changes and new ways of interpreting the interaction of
technology and society have provided new opportunities to revise and expand succeeding editions. Even so, the animating spirit of the book remains the same. This
seventh edition of Society and Technological Change continues to explore the many
ways in which various technologies have influenced our lives. At the same time, it
shows how these technologies have themselves been shaped by social, economic,
cultural, and political forces, and that the study of technology is important not just
for its own sake but also for what it tells us about the kinds of societies we make for
ourselves.
This book is intended to be used in the growing number of courses on technology and society, as well as in other courses that take into account technology’s
role in human affairs. It presents perspectives, theories, and facts that should help
the reader to understand the consequences of technological changes, as well as the
forces that have produced these changes. Many specific examples of the interaction
between technological change and other changes are introduced, for general processes are often best understood through references to particular instances.
The rapid pace of technological change during the opening years of the
twenty-first century may have led to an overuse of the word “revolutionary,” but
it also provides the basis for significant new discussions of the reciprocal interactions of technology and society. In particular, the seventh edition of this book
now devotes an entire chapter to the Internet and digital communications media.
Chapter 14, “The Internet Age,” discusses mobile communications, social media
and social movements, the digital divide, and challenges to intellectual property and personal privacy. Another new chapter, Chapter 16, “The Era of Smart
Weapons,” tracks advances in weaponry amid a changing military and political
environment. Among the topics covered are weapons such as cruise missiles,
smart bombs, and drones, which are raising remote-control warfare to a new level.
Also discussed are cyberattacks, terrorism, the financial costs of technologically
sophisticated weaponry, and the psychological distance that new weapons put
between those who deploy them and the consequences of their deployment.
    xv
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xvi  Preface
One of modern technology’s strongest influences has been on the development
of the cluster of political, cultural, social, and economic changes that are subsumed
in the term “globalization.” New material in this edition covers offshoring and technology transfer, appropriate technologies in poor countries, new media and social
movements in authoritarian societies, and the extent to which the world’s cultures
are converging toward a common pattern.
Some of the most important issues involving technology and society center
on health, both the health of humans and the health of the earth. In regard to
the latter, the broad issue of sustainability is addressed by expanded coverage of
climate change and the use of sources of energy other than fossil fuels. As far as
human health is concerned, advances in genetics research are giving rise to new
healing technologies. At the same time, however, DNA-based technologies also
pose many practical and ethical problems that are noted in an expanded chapter on
these technologies. Apart from human health concerns, genetic technologies offer
a number of benefits, everything from improved crop yields to ascertaining the guilt
or innocence of criminal suspects. These too present a number of concerns that will
be explored in this chapter.
The preparation of this new edition also has provided an opportunity to update
and extend many pertinent facts and statistics. These include new data on climate
change, the costs of medical care, unemployment, the distribution of income, video
game sales, the use of various media (including e-mail, mobile phones, and social
media), future employment prospects, and government support of research and
development.
Also new in this edition are short introductions to related chapter groupings
that preview some of the overarching themes of each chapter. In addition, new discussion questions have been added at the end of every chapter, intended to stimulate further consideration of how particular technologies interact with the societies
in which they emerge, are adopted, and mutate.
Although this edition has quite a lot of new material, no pretense is made that
it presents an all-encompassing view of technology and society. Much has been
left out because of space limitations and my own limitations of time, energy, and
expertise. At the same time, systematic study of the interactions between technology and society is a relatively recent endeavor, and many gaps remain to be filled. It
can only be hoped that this book will provide a foundation for thought and future
study. If annoyance at the inadequacy of coverage leads the reader to undertake
more extensive explorations of some of the topics presented, then this book will
have served its purpose.
Acknowledgments
Writing can be a lonely activity. While I was putting this book together, some of
my loneliness was alleviated by being able to call on a number of colleagues for
assistance. I would like to thank the following people for reading portions of the
manuscript and making invaluable suggestions: Hugh G. J. Aitken, Newton Copp,
David Cressy, Stephen Cutcliffe, Paul Faulstich, Barbara Gutek, Margaret Hamilton,
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Preface  xvii
Lamont Hempel, Christine Ilgen, Sue Mansfield, Meg Mathies, Richard Olsen,
Robert Post, Leonard Reich, Kathryn Rogers, Mark Rose, John Truxal, James C.
Williams, and Andrew W. Zanella.
I would also like to thank those who have reviewed this and previous editions:
Janet Abbate, University of Maryland; Patience Akpan, Arizona State University;
Elazar Barnette, North Carolina A&T University; Wenda K. Bauchspies,
Pennsylvania State University; Donald Beaver, Williams College; Paul Cesarini,
Bowling Green State University; Dave Conz, Arizona State University; Jennifer
Croissant, University of Arizona; Adam Driscoll, North Carolina State University;
Kerry Dugan, Northeastern University; R. Valentine Dusek, University of New
Hampshire; Anna Erwin, Appalachian University; Nora Foust, Alamance
Community College; Martin Friedman, SUNY Binghamton; Ted Gaiser, Boston
College; Gary Gappert, The University of Akron; James Gerhardt, Southern
Methodist University; Kenneth Gould, Northwestern University; James
P. Hamilton, Pennsylvania State University; Kurt Helgeson, St. Cloud State
University; Robert Hoffman, North Carolina State University; Charles Jaret,
Georgia State University; Richard Kahoe, University of Central Missouri; Felix
Kaufmann, Eastern Michigan University; Robert Keel, University of Missouri—
St. Louis; Mark Kelso, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University; David Klein, Metro
State College of Denver; Diane N. Long, California Polytechnic University;
Carol MacLennan, Michigan Technological University; Toy McEvoy, Wayne
State College; Marilyn Mertens, Midwestern State University; Todd Morgan, De
Paul University; Karen Oslund, University of Maryland, College Park; Robert S.
Paradowski, Rochester Institute of Technology; Karin E. Peterson, NC-Asheville;
Dretha M. Phillips, Roanoke College; John Renzelman, Wayne State College;
Terry Richardson, Northern State College; Laurel Smith-Doerr, Boston University;
Donald Sorsa, DePaul University; James Steele, James Madison University; David
Swift, University of Hawaii; L. E. Trachtman, Purdue University; Yung-Mei
Tsai, Texas Tech University; Della M. Vanhuss, Tri-County Technical College;
Steve Vergara, Wayne State College; Rollin Williams III, East Tennessee State
University; and Thomas Zeller, University of Maryland, College Park. Their
knowledge and expertise exceed my ability to make complete use of the help they
have given me, and they are not responsible for any errors of fact or interpretation
that may be found in these pages.
I would also like to thank the editorial and production staffs of Worth
Publishers. Sarah Berger and Kirk Bomont have been terrific sources of guidance
and encouragement; although I am pleased to see the publication of this new edition, I will miss our regular conferences regarding its style and content. I also appreciate the able assistance of Cecilia Varas, Lisa Kinne, Edward Dionne, and Barbara
Seixas. Finally, special thanks go to my wife, Ann Stromberg, and our daughter,
Kate, for their unfailing support.
Rudi Volti
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p a r t
o n e
Orientations
The ability to create and use a great variety of technologies is one of the
distinguishing characteristics of humans, but what exactly is meant by “technology”?
The term is a familiar one, but like many words in current circulation it carries
with it a multitude of meanings. Chapter 1 offers a definition of technology that
is meant to be precise but elastic enough to cover the many connotations of the
word. Although technology is often associated with particular items of hardware,
the ultimate basis of technology is knowledge, and the chapter delineates the ways
of thinking that are associated with technological advance.
Chapter 1 also includes an effort to disentangle technological advance from an
even more slippery concept: “progress.” In Chapter 2 the discussion is continued
by noting that many technological changes do not necessarily make things better
for everyone, as is implied in the word “progress.” To the contrary, they may affect
individuals and groups in different ways, leaving some better off while others are left
in a worse position. This aspect of technological change is often ignored, making it
hard to resist the temptation to seek technological fixes for problems that require
more than the introduction of new devices and processes. This chapter describes the
kinds of situations where technological fixes are likely to be successful and others
where they are doomed to failure.
1
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chapter
one
The Nature of Technology
Today’s technology leaves us both exhilarated and terrified. Recent technological
developments have presented us with such marvels as spacecraft leaving the solar
system, instant access to billions of Internet Web pages, and diseases cured through
gene therapy. At the same time, however, the seemingly inexorable march of
technology has produced global pollution, overpopulation, and the threat of nuclear
annihilation. On many occasions technological change has also produced social
disruptions, as when automation destroys jobs in a particular industry or a new
weapon upsets the balance of power between nations. And when technologies fail,
some of them do so in a big way, as exemplified by the loss of the Challenger and
Columbia space shuttles, the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the catastrophic
failure of the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, and the disastrous breaching of the
levees in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Despite all the crises, disruptions, and disasters that have accompanied it,
modern technology is still viewed in a favorable light, according to public opinion
surveys. Although significant minorities of respondents express their disapproval of
certain technologies like nuclear power and genetically modified foods, the positive
achievements of technology as a whole are seen to substantially outweigh the negative
ones.1 But this support of technology is based more on faith than on understanding.
When confronting technology, most of us are poorly informed spectators, seemingly
incapable of understanding an esoteric realm of lasers, microprocessors, gene splicing,
and nanomaterials.
This inability to understand technology and perceive its effects on our society and
on ourselves is one of the greatest, if most subtle, problems of an age that has been so
heavily influenced by technological change.2 But ignorance need not be a permanent
condition. Although no one can hope to comprehend the inner workings of even a
small number of the most significant technologies, it is still possible to come to a better
understanding of the major causes and consequences of technological change. All
technologies, be they high-definition televisions or reinforced concrete bridges, have
some basic features in common. It will be the task of this chapter to show what they are.
Defining Technology
Gaining an understanding of the meaning of words is often the beginning of
knowledge. Before plunging into a discussion of the nature of technology, it is
3
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4  Orientations
necessary to provide a more precise definition of what is meant when we use the
term. The linguistic roots of the word “technology” can be traced to the IndoEuropean stem tekhn-, which seems to have referred to woodworking. It is the
source of the Greek word tekne, which can be variously translated as “art,” “craft,” or
“skill.” It is also the root of the Latin word texere, “to weave,” which eventually took
on the larger meaning of fabrication or construction. The term “technologist” was
occasionally used by Aristotle and others of his time, but in their usage it referred
to a grammarian or rhetorician. By the early eighteenth century the word had come
close to its present meaning when an English dictionary defined it as “a Description
of Arts, especially the Mechanical.” In 1831 Jacob Bigelow published Elements of
Technology, the first book in English with the word “technology” in its title. As he
defined it, technology consisted of “the principles, processes, and nomenclatures
of the more conspicuous arts, particularly those which involve applications of
science.”3
Technologies are developed and applied so that we can do things not otherwise
possible, or so that we can do them cheaper, faster, and more easily. The capacity
of human beings to employ technologies sets us apart from other creatures. To be
sure, beavers build dams, otters crack open shellfish with rocks, and chimpanzees
use sticks to extract termites from their nests. But no other animal comes close
to humans in the ability to create tools and techniques—the first two elements
in our definition of technology—and no other creature is so dependent on them.
The development of technology is in large measure responsible for the survival and
expansion of a species that lacks many of the innate abilities of other animals. Left
with only their innate physical capabilities, humans cannot match the speed of a
cheetah, the strength of an elephant, or the leaping ability of a kangaroo. They
do not possess the eyesight of an eagle or the defensive armament of a porcupine,
and they are among the 25 percent of all species that are incapable of flying. All
in all, humankind is a physically puny bunch. But compensating for this physical
weakness is an intelligence that is the ultimate source of technology. Humans
stand apart from all other animals in their ability to gain and transmit knowledge,
and to use this knowledge to develop tools and techniques. Without this capacity
to invent and use a great variety of technologies, members of the human species
would have never been able to establish themselves on virtually every part of the
globe.
Reliance on technology is as old as humanity itself. Whatever evils have
accompanied the use of particular technologies, it is pointless to indict technology
as being somehow “unnatural.” Our past as well as our future as a species is inextricably linked to our capacity to shape our existence through the invention and
application of implements and techniques that allow us to transcend our meager
physical endowments. It is certainly true, as Jacob Bronowski observed, that “to
quarrel with technology is to quarrel with the nature of man—just as if we were to
quarrel with his upright gait, his symbolic imagination, his faculty for speech, or his
unusual sexual posture and appetite.”4
Tools and techniques have been of unquestioned importance in allowing
the physical survival of the human species. Still, they are not the whole story.
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The Nature of Technology   5
It is necessary to add some elements to our definition of technology that go
beyond the usual identification of technology with pieces of hardware and ways of
manipulating them. The first of these is organization. This follows from the fact that
the development, production, and employment of particular technologies require a
group effort. Even a relatively simple technology, such as one centering on the use
of earthenware pots, requires a complex network of material suppliers, potters, tool
makers, marketing agents, and consumers capable of making good use of the pots. Of
course, one person can learn all these skills adequately if not expertly, but the day is
not long enough for him or her to do them all on a scale that produces a reasonable
degree of efficiency.  In the case of a complex technology like a computerized
manufacturing system, there is no possibility of a single individual developing even
a tiny fraction of the requisite skills. For a technology to be developed and used,
the energies and skills of many individuals have to be combined and coordinated
through some organizational structure. Organization may be likened to the software
that controls and guides a computer; without an operating system and application
programs, a computer is a useless arrangement of capacitors, transistors, resistors,
and other bits of hardware. In similar fashion, an organizational structure allows the
integration of diffuse human and material inputs for the attainment of particular
tasks.   From this standpoint, there is considerable merit in Lewis Mumford’s
assertion that the first “machine” was not a physical object, but the organizational
structures that the Egyptian pharaohs employed to build the pyramids.5
When technology is seen as a combination of devices, skills, and organizational
structures, it becomes natural to think of it as a system, the next element in our
definition. For an individual technology to operate effectively, more is required
than the invention of a particular piece of hardware; it has to be supported by
other elements that are systematically interconnected. When Thomas Edison
began to work on electrical illumination, he realized that this technology would
require the development of such a system. The invention of a practical, longlasting light bulb rested on the development of a serviceable filament and the use
of an improved vacuum pump that evacuated the interior of the bulb, thereby
preventing the combustion of the filament. But by itself, a light bulb was useless.
An effective electrical generator was needed to supply the current that produced
the incandescence of the filament. A network of electrical lines had to be strung up
between the generator and individual homes, shops, and factories. And metering
devices were necessary so that users could be accurately billed for the electricity
they used. Edison and his associates worked out all of these problems, and in so
doing brought large-scale electrical illumination to the world.6
The development of all the elements of a technological system can be an uneven process, for technological advance often entails the resolution of tensions
that are generated when one part of the technological system changes. This process
is exemplified by the development of the modern airplane. Early biplanes with
their drag-inducing wires and struts could not make effective use of more powerful
engines. The availability of these engines became a strong inducement to the
design of aerodynamically cleaner aircraft. The faster aircraft that resulted from the
marriage of streamlined airframes and powerful engines produced a new problem:
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6  Orientations
dangerously high landing speeds. This, in turn, stimulated the invention of wing
flaps and slots. By the 1940s it had become apparent that improved airframes could
achieve still higher speeds if provided with more powerful engines; this possibility
gave a strong stimulus to the development of the turbojet.7
For an example of the interplay of devices, skills, and organizational patterns,
we can take note of Lewis Mumford’s analysis of the technology of handwriting.8
Two hundred years ago, the standard writing instrument was a goose-quill pen.
Based on an organic product and sharpened by the user, it represented the handicraft
technologies typical of its time. Cheap and crude, it called for a fair degree of skill if
it was to be used effectively. In contrast, the steel-nib pen of the nineteenth century
was a typical artifact of the industrial age, the product of a complex manufacturing
process. Less adaptable than the quill, it was mass-produced in many different forms
in order to meet specialized needs. Although Mumford’s ideas were formulated
before the invention of the ballpoint pen in the 1940s, his analysis fits this
implement perfectly. Made from a variety of artificial materials and manufactured
to close tolerances, the ballpoint pen could only be produced through sophisticated
industrial processes. It is completely divorced from the organic world and requires
very little skill from its user. Indeed, the technological artistry embodied in the pen
itself stands in sharp contrast to the poor quality of the writing that so often comes
from the hand that wields it.
A technological system does not emerge all at once with every one of its
components neatly fitting together. In addition to changes in tools, techniques,
and organizational structures, many social, psychological, economic, and political
adjustments may be required for the support of a technological system. Technological
change is not always a smooth process, and many of the necessary changes may
entail considerable pain and disruption. Seeing technology as a system should help
us to understand that technological change is closely connected with a variety of
associated changes, and that the creation of a technological system may be fraught
with tension and discomfort.
Much of what has just been said can be incorporated into a schematic definition
of technology: a system created by humans that uses knowledge and organization
to produce objects and techniques for the attainment of specific goals.
Useful as it may be, this definition of technology is incomplete and possibly
misleading in one important respect. The last part of the definition implies that
technological change comes about as a response to existing needs: its purpose is
“the attainment of specific goals.” In the first place, one could legitimately ask whose
goals are to be attained. This is an important issue, but it is best left for the next
chapter. For now, we should note that although it is a human creation, technology
does not always respond to existing needs; a new technology may in fact create its
own needs. The development of technology on occasion exemplifies a phenomenon
that has been dubbed “the law of the hammer”: give a six-year-old a hammer, and
to the child everything starts looking like a nail.
The history of technology is replete with examples of inventions looking for
problems to solve. One example that illustrates this point is found in almost every
medicine chest: a bottle of aspirin. One of the most common uses of aspirin is
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The Nature of Technology   7
to suppress fevers that accompany various illnesses. But recent medical research
(as well as some ancient practices) has demonstrated that running a fever is a
therapeutic process that aids in a patient’s recovery; it is the body’s way of naturally
combating infection. Yet since the introduction of aspirin in the early 1900s, fever
has been seen as a problem requiring intervention. As one medical researcher has
noted, “It’s no surprise that society’s deep worries about fever closely followed the
synthesis of aspirin, the first drug that could safely reduce it.”9 In short, a new
technology created its own need.
It is also important to note that the goals achieved through the use of a
technology do not have to be “practical” ones. Some technologies have been
developed so that we can grow more food or construct more comfortable buildings,
but others have been developed simply for the challenge and enjoyment of
solving technological problems,10 a proclivity that Robert Post has described as
“technological enthusiasm.”11 The prodigious efforts that went into the Daedalus
Project, a successful attempt to build a human-powered aircraft capable of flying
forty miles across the open sea, were certainly not motivated by an effort to produce
a new form of transportation. A major reason for creating the aircraft was that its
construction posed an intriguing technological challenge to those who designed,
built, and flew it.
Flight seems to be a particularly attractive object for this kind of spirit.
Immensely expensive technological endeavors such as the supersonic Concorde
airliner and manned space exploration programs are hard to justify on practical
grounds, although their supporters have made valiant efforts to do so. Their primary
purpose seems to be the elevation of national prestige by demonstrating a nation’s
collective ability to solve daunting technological problems. At the same time,
many other technologies have a dual nature; they serve a practical purpose, but
they are not valued only for this reason. An outstanding example is the automobile.
It would be hard to justify the enormous resources employed for the building and
operation of cars if transportation were the only goal. For many people (the author
included), cars are objects of inherent fascination. Technological features like
variable valve timing and active suspension systems have little to do with utilitarian
transportation. The appeal is at least as much in the sophisticated technologies
themselves as in the purposes that they serve.
Technological Advance and the Image of Progress
The development of technology is an inherently dynamic and cumulative process.
It is dynamic because a technology is never perfect; there is always room for
improvement. As Henry Ford said of his firm, “If we have a tradition it is this:
Everything can always be done faster and better.”12 It is cumulative, for one
advance paves the way for another. The lessons learned in working with an existing
technology very often provide materials, tools, and, most importantly, a knowledge
base for the next stage of development.
The dynamic and cumulative nature of technological change sets it apart from
many other human endeavors. Ignoring for the moment the social consequences
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8  Orientations
Sometimes we are inclined to look to technology for our salvation, as personified in this
tongue-in-cheek rendition of a sanctified Steve Jobs. (© The Economist Newspaper Limited, London)
of technology, the process of technological change is usually one of continuous
improvement in the internal workings of a particular technology: as they evolve,
engines develop more power and are more efficient, integrated electronic circuits
pack more components on a single chip, aircraft fly higher and faster.
The process of technological advance can be graphically portrayed according
to the following diagram, in which the horizontal axis represents time and the
vertical axis represents just about any aspect of technological advance: the speed
of commercial airliners, the production of synthetic materials, or the number of
articles in engineering journals. Although there are inevitable fits and starts over
time, the general trend can be depicted as a sigmoid, or S-shaped curve:
Note that at first the curve rises rather slowly, inclines steeply in the middle,
and then begins to slow down. That is, after an initial period of slow growth, the
rate of advance accelerates, reaches a maximum, and then begins to proceed at a
slower pace but never completely levels off. Although the rate of increase is smaller
as the curve moves toward the right, this rate is applied to an increasingly larger
base, so the actual addition is still substantial.
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Technological advance
The Nature of Technology   9
Time
Not all human endeavors can be fitted to this sort of curve. While technology
tends to be dynamic and cumulative, the same cannot always be said of other
manifestations of human creativity. Although there is ample room for debate, a
good case can be made that succeeding generations of writers, composers, and
painters have not produced works superior to the ones created by Shakespeare,
Beethoven, and Vermeer. And while we continue to take great pleasure in the
artistic creations of eras long past, few of us would be satisfied with the technologies
that were prevalent in those times. We also see few indications that people are
more humane than they were centuries ago. The present era certainly provides a
multitude of horrifying examples of human cruelty, many of them augmented by
enlisting technology in the service of slaughter and destruction.
Still, when judged solely according to internal criteria, technology is one of
the best examples of humankind’s largely unrealized dream of continual progress.
Technological progress, however, is not the same thing as progress in general. The
fact that a society is able to develop and make use of advanced technologies does
not guarantee that it will be equally advanced in other areas.13 Nazi Germany
produced many technological triumphs, such as the all-conquering Mercedes and
Auto Union grand prix racing cars of the late 1930s and the V-2 rocket used during
World War II, but in its ideology and treatment of people it can only be described
as barbaric. Conversely, many technologically primitive peoples have exhibited
a high level of sophistication in their artistic creations, religious beliefs, and
social relationships. The term “progress” can be used with some precision when
applied to the development of technology per se, although even here problems
can crop up because different standards of evaluation may lead to conflicting
conclusions. Is it really “progress” when a new medical technology maintains an
individual’s life, but does so only at enormous expense while preserving nothing
but the maintenance of organic functions? Does maintaining a “life” of this sort
justify expenditures that otherwise might be used for expanded prenatal care or
other preventative measures? Given all of the value judgments, ambiguities, and
complexities surrounding the word “progress,” its use is avoided here unless its
meaning is clearly defined.
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10  Orientations
Built with slave labor, the V-2 rocket exemplified the technological advances achieved in Nazi
Germany. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Technology as a Metaphor
Despite these qualifications, it is evident that beginning in the late eighteenth
century and continuing today, technology’s stunning advances have fueled a belief
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The Nature of Technology   11
in generalized human progress. In this way, technology has operated as a metaphor—
the transference of an idea from one area to another. Technology has provided many
other metaphors that have affected our way of looking at ourselves and the world,
as when human thought is made analogous to the operation of a digital computer.
A further example of the power of a technology to shape our way of thinking
comes from the late eighteenth century. At that time the designers of windmills
and steam engines discovered the important principle of feedback, which the
great twentieth-century mathematician Norbert Wiener defined as “a method of
controlling a system by reinserting in it the results of its past performance.”14 When
a steam engine begins to rotate too rapidly, a feedback device such as a flyball
governor closes the valve that admits the steam, thereby bringing the engine back
into its proper operating range. When it slows down, the reverse happens, and the
governor opens the valve to admit more steam.
Flyball
governor
A steam engine with a flyball governor. Changes in the rotational speed of the vertical shaft
at the top of the engine causes the two balls to move up or down, controlling the linkage
that opens and closes the throttle. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS)
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12  Orientations
During the late eighteenth century the feedback principle offered a suggestive
metaphor for the workings of the economic system: instead of being guided by a
centralized authority, an economy might best be organized through the operation of
a self-regulating market, with the actions of independent buyers and sellers providing
the feedback. Thus, when buyers wanted a particular commodity, its price would be
high, motivating sellers to produce more of it. If the price were low, less would be
produced. In similar fashion, an increase in production would cause the price of a
commodity to fall, so more of it would be purchased, while a drop in production would
cause the price to rise, leading to a reduction of purchases. In this way, the actions of
buyers and sellers in the market provide a feedback mechanism through which supply
and demand are supposedly brought into equilibrium. It is probably no coincidence
that the Scottish economist Adam Smith developed this basic concept at the same
time that the steam engine was being put into service.15 Today, the widespread use
of the feedback principle makes its apparent applicability to the economic system
even more appealing, even though the real-world economy is hardly a neat closed
system like a steam engine. Laws and regulations as well as a host of other extraneous
elements may strongly affect individual feedback loops, thereby preventing a
complex economy from operating solely on the basis of supply-and-demand signals.
Technological development has supplied a useful metaphor in the feedback principle,
but like all metaphors it cannot be taken as a literal depiction of reality.
Technology and Rationality
The development of technology has stimulated a belief that progress is a natural
part of human life. At the same time, the progressive development of technology
has itself been the product of a distinctive set of cultural values and mental
processes that are characterized by a rational approach to the world and how it is to
be controlled. Technological development is more than the random accumulation
of tools, techniques, and organizational forms. Underlying the process is a set of
attitudes and orientations that are collectively described as “rational.”
What makes a technologically progressive society different from others is that
its methods of problem solving are oriented toward an objective scrutiny of the
problem at hand, coupled with a systematic, empirically based examination of
possible solutions and a logical selection of the most appropriate ones. Beyond this
approach to the solution of problems lies another cultural attribute: the belief that
solutions are possible and that constant changes are necessary in order to realize
them. A society imbued with a rational ethos is dynamic and essentially optimistic,
and it exhibits the confidence necessary to alter existing ways of doing things in
order to gain particular benefits.
These abstract concepts may be illustrated through a simple example. All
societies are faced with the problem of coping with the capriciousness of the
weather. A great deal of human suffering has been the result of the vagaries of
rainfall, and history provides many examples of the tragic consequences of drought.
A number of responses are possible when people are confronted with this problem.
The simplest is to succumb to despair, and perhaps try to find meaning in it by
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The Nature of Technology   13
attributing the drought to fate or God’s will. A more active approach might be to
offer prayers, perform a special ceremony, or sacrifice a member of the community.
These latter activities are not likely to meet with success. There is no logical
or empirically verifiable connection between them and the circumstances that
produced the drought, a fact that could be demonstrated by a systematic inquiry
into the long-term connection between prayers, ceremonies, or human sacrifices
and the incidence of rainfall.
Attitudes and behaviors of this sort stand in sharp contrast with rational
ones. Through the use of logic and empirical observation, it is possible to develop
ways of dealing with problems like drought that are both more effective and more
closely connected to the way the world actually works. A systematic and empirical
observation of weather patterns might allow the prediction of a drought so that
necessary steps can be taken to alter farming practices and conserve water. Other
solutions could be the development of drought-resistant crops, improved methods
of conserving water, and the distillation of sea water. It might also be possible to
artificially stimulate rainfall through cloud seeding. In short, a rational approach
to problem solving is continuously concerned with identifying and developing
appropriate means for achieving particular ends.
These remarks are not meant to convey the ethnocentric belief that modern
Western culture is superior to all others. The intention here is not to ridicule the
beliefs and practices of people and societies that use nonrational approaches to
problem solving. There is no reason to believe that rationality has been and always
will be the special attribute of a particular group of people. Moreover, modern
societies often manifest behaviors and patterns of thought that are anything but
rational, as when large numbers of people continue to find value in astrology,
numerology, and the predictions of supposed psychics.
It is also important to recognize that rational ways of thinking do not confer
moral superiority. To the contrary, the rigorous development and use of rational
procedures can be accompanied by major moral and ethical transgressions. The
rational method of problem solving, with its overarching concern for devising
appropriate means for attaining particular ends, makes no distinction concerning
the ends being pursued. There is nothing in the rational approach to the world that
prevents the use of logically and empirically derived means in the service of goals
that are neither rational nor ethically justifiable. We can take note of the words
of Captain Ahab, the main figure in Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick: “All my
means are sane, my motive and subject mad.” Nazi Germany provides many ghastly
historical examples of human destruction ensuing from rational thinking and its
resultant technologies. As Albert Speer, Hitler’s Minister of Armaments, ruefully
noted, “The criminal events of these years were not only an outgrowth of Hitler’s
personality. The extent of the crimes was also due to the fact that Hitler was the first
to be able to employ the implements of technology to multiply crime.”16
Even when rationality is not used for manifestly immoral purposes, it can still
leave a dubious spiritual legacy. The very strength of rationality and the scientific
and technological accomplishments that flow from it lie in their matter-of-fact
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14  Orientations
approach to the world. A rational approach to things is often accompanied by
a reluctance to admit there are any forces incapable of withstanding logical and
empirical scrutiny. As the great German sociologist Max Weber put it, the world
defined by rational thought processes had become “disenchanted,” for it was bereft
of the gods, genies, and spiritual forces that people not imbued with the spirit of
rationality used to explain their world.17 But “disenchantment” is a two-edged
sword, as the everyday meaning of the word makes clear. To be disenchanted is
to lose the sense of awe, commitment, and loyalty that is a necessary part of a
meaningful existence. Weber’s melancholy analysis of a world that has lost its
enchantment is summarized by the French sociologist Julian Freund:18
With the progress of science and technology, man has stopped believing in magic
powers, in spirits and demons; he has lost his sense of prophecy and, above all, his
sense of the sacred. Reality has become dreary, flat and utilitarian, leaving a great
void in the souls of men which they seek to fill by furious activity and through
various devices and substitutes.
Similar misgivings were voiced by the eighteenth-century political philosopher
Edmund Burke. Burke’s primary concern was the destruction of traditional
authority by modern mass movements, as exemplified by the French Revolution.
Burke attributed much of the demonic energy of that movement to the spread of
rational modes of thought that left no room for the traditional attitudes, values, and
political structures that had long sustained European civilization. Burke’s comment
on the downfall of the queen of France, Marie Antoinette, thus contains a sharp
indictment of the bearers of rational values who, in his estimation, were leading
Europe to its doom:19
Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in
a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers. I thought
ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a
look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of
sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is
extinguished forever.
Rationality also implies objectivity; coolness and detachment are part of the
rational approach to understanding and changing the world. Guided by a rational
outlook, scientific inquiry and technological application are usually based on the
abstraction or isolation of the part of the natural world that is being studied or
manipulated. This isn’t always a good thing, for it can produce a sharp separation
between the individual and the rest of the world. The scientist or technologist
stands apart from the system that is being studied and manipulated, resulting in a
kind of tunnel vision that all too often ignores the larger consequences of gaining
and applying knowledge.20 For example, in discovering a genetic marker for a
serious disease, a researcher might not consider potential abuses of that discovery,
such as insurance companies refusing coverage of people with that marker.
It also may be argued that a logical, detached, and dispassionate approach to
the world is suffused with a “masculine” approach to understanding and interacting
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The Nature of Technology   15
with the world. Some technologies have largely been a male domain, but
throughout history women also have made significant contributions to technological
advance.21 The complex relationship of gender and technology is illustrated by the
history of the technological artifact most strongly associated with the present era,
the digital computer. Its development has generally been viewed as the product
of hyper-rational male engineers, mathematicians, scientists, and technicians. In
reality, many of the programmers of first-generation computers were women whose
accomplishments have often been passed over in standard histories.22 More recently,
the development of computer technology has depended on thought processes that
are relentlessly rational, objective, and logical, but at the same time has required
an intuitive, interactive, and generally less structured approach.23 This is not to say
that either style is the exclusive province of men or women, only that technological
advance often requires both approaches. Equally important, although these modes
of thinking may be described in gender terms, they need not reflect the cognitive
approaches of individual men and women.
Technological Determinism
Nothing worthwhile in life comes without some costs attached. So it is with
technology; while it has expanded human power and made our lives materially
richer, the advance of technology has created many problems—environmental
degradation, alienation, and the threat of nuclear annihilation, to name only the
most obvious ones. And, most bothersome of all, there looms the possibility that
technology is out of control. If this is so, what began more than a million years
ago as a human creation has taken on a life of its own, with technology advancing
according to its own inner dynamic, unrestrained by social arrangements, systems
of governance, culture, and thought.24 The belief that technology acts as an
independent force in our life, unaffected by social forces, is known as “technological
determinism,” and if it is true, we have become the servant of technology instead
of its master.
There can be little question that technology exerts a great influence on social,
political, and economic relationships. Everything from antibiotics to zippers has
affected our lives to some degree; many of these influences will be explored in subsequent portions of this book. But that is not the end of the story. As will be explored
at greater length in Chapter 3, students of technology have given extensive consideration to the opposite possibility, that instead of operating as an independent force,
technology is shaped by social arrangements. According to social constructivists
(adherents of the Social Construction of Technology approach), the emergence
of particular technologies, choices between competing technologies, and the way
these technologies are actually used owe a great deal to socially grounded forces like
political power, social class, gender, and organizational dynamics.
Asserting the supremacy of either technological determinism or social
constructivism is not a very useful activity. Such straightforward cause-and-effect
relationships can be found in some realms—Newtonian physics, for example—but
technological and social change is better understood in terms of probabilities,
reciprocal interactions, and feedback loops. Even William F. Ogburn, a sociologist
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16  Orientations
who is often characterized as a technological determinist, on occasion took a
more nuanced view of the subject: “The whole interconnected mass [i.e., social
institutions, customs, technology, and science] is in motion. When each part is
in motion and banging up against some other part, the question of origins seems
artificial and unrealistic. If one pushes the question to the extreme, origins are lost
in a maze of causative factors.”25
The wondrously complicated interactions of technology and society often
result in unimagined consequences when new technologies emerge. To take one
example, when the first digital computers appeared in the mid-1940s, they elicited
modest expectations about their future applications. Today, the world as we know
it is almost unimaginable without computers, as everything from air travel to the
mapping of genomes is totally dependent on the storage, retrieval, and manipulation
of information performed by computers. Accordingly, the history of the computer
would seem to lend credence to technological determinism. Nobody saw it coming
in the 1940s, but within a few decades the computer had become a universal and
essential part of contemporary life.
This is the story from a technological determinist standpoint, but social
constructivists would challenge it by noting that the technical development of the
computer in the 1950s and 1960s was heavily supported by military expenditures,
just as one of today’s major computer applications, the Internet, was initially a
creation of the U.S. Department of Defense. Someone taking a social constructivist
approach might also point out that the expansion of the market for computers
was also powerfully stimulated by commercial enterprises like banks and insurance
companies, and that this huge market supported the research and development that
rapidly advanced computer technology.
A similar story could be repeated for most successful technologies. New
technologies bring changes to many aspects of society, while at the same time social
forces do much to stimulate and shape these technologies. To try to assign primacy
to one or the other is to ignore a crucial feature of technological and social change.
Both are dynamic processes characterized by the reciprocal interaction of a host
of factors, some of them narrowly technical in nature, others not. No reasonable
person could deny that technology has been a major force in making the world we
live in, but it is important to always keep in mind that technology has not operated
as an agent independent of the society in which it is imbedded.
Social constructivism therefore offers the possibility for more human agency
than technological determinism, but it is not likely that the ability to influence
the course of technological change will be evenly distributed among the population
as a whole. To the contrary, social constructivist analyses have often shown how
differences in power and access to resources have shaped technological change.
Particular technologies may be devised, selected, and disseminated because they
serve the interests of a particular group, possibly in opposition to the interests of
other groups. Technology confers power, but this power is not wielded over only the
nonhuman universe. As C. S. Lewis has reminded us, “Man’s power over nature is
really the power of some men over others with nature as their instrument.”26
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The Nature of Technology   17
Living in a Technological Society
The development and application of technologies that are suited to our needs requires
the informed participation of a wide range of people. Unfortunately, the very nature of
modern technology places severe limits on popular understanding. The sophistication
and complexity of contemporary technologies preclude direct involvement by all
but those immediately concerned with them. The rest of us are passive consumers,
content to reap the benefits of rationally derived knowledge but woefully ignorant of
it. This creates the fundamental paradox of modern society: technology has generated
massive powers available to human society, while as individuals we exert very little of
that power. We have access to a wide range of powerful technologies, yet our inability
to understand them often leaves us with feelings of impotence and frustration, as
anyone who has experienced a computer crash will attest.27
As has been noted, the application of rationality for the solution of human
problems is both the consequence and the cause of optimism and a willingness to
accept constant change. Yet one cannot help but wonder if these characteristics can
be sustained in an environment that sharply limits participation and inculcates widespread feelings of having little or no power over the process of technological change.
Strange notions can emerge when feelings of powerlessness are coupled with an
extravagant faith in technology. The consequences of this combination are sometimes
exhibited by fervent believers in alien spacecraft or UFOs (unidentified flying objects).
Although convincing evidence of UFOs is lacking, a belief in their existence does
not necessarily make one a crackpot. In some cases, however, a strident belief in the
existence of UFOs takes on the characteristics of membership in a religious cult where
the deities are superior beings who have produced an advanced technology. Alien
space ships represent a level of technical sophistication not attained on Earth, and
some UFO enthusiasts entertain the hope that the aliens that created them will take
over this planet and solve its problems. Faith in a higher technology may be combined
with a mistrust of the “establishment,” as a fair number of UFO adherents claim that
their government is engaged in a massive conspiracy to prevent the general public
from being aware of the existence of UFOs. There is no denying that on occasion
governments lie to their citizens, but a cover-up of the required magnitude would be
impossible for even the most well-organized government to pull off. Still, conspiracy
theories strike a resonant chord with people who feel that they have been excluded
from decision making, both political and technological. A quasi-religious belief in
UFOs may therefore combine an excessive confidence in technology in general with
a distrust of the people and organizations that control it in actual practice.
Distrust flourishes when people have no ability to participate in decisions that
shape their lives, and the inability to affect the course of technological change
can produce a mixture of naïve hope and paranoid reaction. A realistic sense of
control, including a sense of having some control over technology, is essential for
an individual’s mental health. No less important, widespread participation in the
shaping of technology is essential for democracy. Technology’s benefits cannot be
separated from its costs, and thus it becomes necessary to determine if the former
justify the latter. If a society is truly democratic, such decisions will be made with
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18  Orientations
as much citizen participation as possible. Moreover, the benefits and costs of
technology are not shared equally, and once again the apportioning of costs and
benefits should be done in as participatory a manner as possible. We will return to
these themes in Chapter 17, but first we will take a closer look at how technology
can affect people and groups in different ways.
Questions for Discussion
1. In your opinion, which recent technology has produced the greatest benefit?
Which has produced the most harm? Are there any harmful elements to the
beneficial technology, and has anything good come from the harmful one?
2. Do all technologies require material artifacts of some sort? Does it make any
sense to speak of bureaucracy as a kind of technology?
3. Are technologies “gendered”? Are some technologies identified with women
and others with men? On what bases do we make these distinctions? Will this
situation necessarily continue in the years to come?
4. Can you think of any technologies that were developed simply because of the
technical challenges involved? How can these “impractical” technologies be
justified?
5. 
How do you feel when a technological device upon which you depend
malfunctions? What do these feelings tell you about your attitude toward technology in general?
6. It is sometimes asserted that the development and use of oral contraceptives
were responsible for the sexual revolution that began in the 1960s. Is there a
simple cause-and-effect relationship of the two? Have there been any other
forces that contributed to changing sexual mores?
Notes
1. National Science Foundation, “Science and Engineering Indicators: 2010,” accessed on
January 3, 2012, at http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind10/c7/c7i.htm.
2. James D. Carroll, “Participatory Technology,” in Thomas J. Kuehn and Alan L. Porter
(Eds.), Science, Technology, and National Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1981), p. 416.
3. This paragraph is derived from Carl Mitcham, Thinking Through Technology: The Path
Between Engineering and Technology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994),
pp. 117–134.
4. 
Jacob Bronowski, “Technology and Culture in Evolution,” Philosophy of the Social
Sciences 1, 3 (1971): 199.
5. 
Lewis Mumford, “Technics and the Nature of Man,” Technology and Culture 7,
3 (July 1966): 303–317.
6. Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).
7. John B. Rae, Climb to Greatness: The American Aircraft Industry, 1920–1960 (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1968), p. 74; Edward Constant, Origins of the Turbojet Revolution
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980).
8. Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World,
1934), p. 110.
9. Edwin Kiester, Jr., “A Little Fever Is Good for You,” Science 84 5, 9 (November 1984): 172.
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The Nature of Technology   19
10. Daedalus of New Scientist, “Pure Technology,” Technology Review 72, 7 (June 1970):
38–45.
11. Robert C. Post, “Technological Enthusiasm,” in Rudi Volti (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of
Science, Technology, and Society, vol. 3 (New York: Facts on File, 1999), pp. 999–1001.
12. Quoted in Edward Constant, op. cit., p. 12.
13. Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Man: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of
Western Domination (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1989).
14. Otto Mayr, “The Origins of Feedback Control,” Scientific American 223, 4 (October 1970):
110–118.
15. Otto Mayr, “Adam Smith and the Concept of the Feedback System,” Technology and
Culture 12, 1 (1971).
16. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Macmillan, 1970), p. 212.
17. This concept is explored by Weber in “Science as a Vocation,” in H. H. Gerth and
C. Wright Mills (Eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1958), pp. 129–156.
18. Julian Freund, The Sociology of Max Weber (New York: Pantheon, 1968), p. 24.
19. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1959), p. 91.
20. Richard Schlegel, “Why Can Science Lead to a Malevolent Technology?” Centennial
Review 21, 1 (Winter 1977): 14.
21. For a narrative of the historical processes that have led to the perception that technology
is “men’s work,” see Ruth Oldenziel, Making Technology Masculine: Men, Women,
and Machines in America, 1870–1945 (Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam Press,
1999).
22. Jennifer  Light,  “Programming,”  in  Nina  E.  Lehrman,  Ruth  Oldenziel,  and
Arwin Mohun (Eds.), Gender and Technology: A Reader (Baltimore and London: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2003)
23. Sherry Turkle, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1984); Paul N. Edwards, “Industrial Genders: Hard/Soft,” in Gender and
Technology: A Reader.
24. The most influential exploration of this idea is Langdon Winner, Autonomous
Technology: Technics-Out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge, MA,
and London: MIT Press, 1977).
25. William F. Ogburn, “Technology and Governmental Change,” in Otis Dudley Duncan
(Ed.), On Culture and Social Change: Selected Papers (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1964), pp. 132–133.
26. Quoted in Ted Howard and Jeremy Rifkin, Who Should Play God? The Artificial Creation
of Life and What It Means for the Future of the Human Race (New York: Dell, 1977), p. 8.
27. N. Bruce Hannay and Robert E. McGinn, “The Anatomy of Modern Technology:
Prolegomenon to an Improved Public Policy for the Social Management of Technology,”
Daedalus 109, 1 (Winter 1980): 30.
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chapter
two
Winners and Losers: The Differential Effects
of Technological Change
The last chapter may have seemed a bit negative in its assessment of technology and
the culture that supports it. In one regard, however, there is no denying technology’s
positive consequences: technological advance has been the greatest single source of
economic growth. If our material lives are better than those of our grandparents, it
is largely because technological development has boosted the production of goods
and services. Equally important, it has created entirely new products while at the
same time improving the quality of existing ones.
Curiously, economists were slow to grasp this seemingly obvious fact.
Conventional economic analysis identifies three basic “factors of production”: land
(which includes natural resources), labor, and capital. Any increase in production
is therefore taken to be the result of an increase of these factors. This view began
to change in the 1950s when the historical course of economic development in the
United States was analyzed through the use of sophisticated statistical techniques.
It then became apparent that increases in the traditional factors of production did
not adequately explain the actual record of economic growth. The amount of land
had remained constant, and capital accumulation and increases in the labor force
accounted for only 10 to 20 percent of economic growth during the first half of
the twentieth century.1 Accordingly, the major source of economic growth was a
“residual” factor of overwhelming importance. Most economists agree that technological advance is the main element of this residual, although organizational
development and improved worker skills, along with economies of scale, are also
key components. Still, as we have already seen, organization and skill are integral
parts of technology, so it is reasonable to consider technological change as the major
source of economic growth.
Technology as a Subversive Force
While technological development has been the primary source of economic advance,
it has not been cost-free. One of the most pleasant myths about technology is that
it can work its wonders without altering existing social arrangements. Americans in
particular have often seen technological progress as the surest basis for progress in
general, and have tended to believe that technological solutions to problems are less
21
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22  Orientations
painful than solutions that require political or social changes.2 These beliefs are not
easily sustained after an examination of the actual pattern of technological advance.
It is a truism that a particular technology can be used for either good or evil
purposes; a construction team employs explosives to build a road, while a terrorist
uses them for roadside bombs. But there is less appreciation for a more subtle point:
technological change is often a subversive process that results in the modification or
destruction of established social roles, relationships, and values. Even a technology
that is used exclusively for benign purposes will cause disruptions by altering existing
social structures and relationships. There are many technological changes that are
small in scope, the effects of which are felt by only a few. A few technological
changes are massive, and they lead to vast social restructuring. In either case,
technology does not yield its benefits without exacting a cost.
The disruptive effects of technological change can readily be seen in the
economic realm, where new technologies can lead to the destruction of obsolete
firms, as when the fabled Pony Express rapidly lost its customers after telegraph
wires had been strung across the West. Of course, sometimes the disruption is
less apparent when technological innovation results in the creation of entirely
new industries that are not in direct competition with existing ones. Many new
industries and individual firms owe their existence to the emergence of a new
technology. Witness, for example, the rapid growth of personal computer
manufacturing, peripheral equipment production, software publishing, and
app development that followed the invention of the integrated circuit. Even
so, lurking behind these successes were a number of failures, most notably the
manufacturers of vacuum tubes and transistors, who faced a diminished market
for their products.
Concerns about the disruptive effects of technological change are not new, as
can be seen in an English magazine editor’s fulminations against the first railroads
in 1835: “Railroads, if they succeed, will give an unnatural impetus to society,
destroy all the relations that exist between man and man, overthrow all mercantile
regulations, and create, at the peril of life, all sorts of confusion and distress.”3
Anyone convinced of the virtues of technological change could easily criticize
this reactionary view by noting how the railroad stimulated economic development
and produced many social benefits. Even so, there is more than a grain of truth in
the concerns expressed by the agitated magazine editor. Technological changes, both
major and minor, often lead to a restructuring of power relations, the redistribution
of wealth and income, and an alteration of human relationships.
The experiences of the Yir Yoront, a group of Australian aboriginals, gives us
an excellent, albeit sad, example of the disruptive effects of a new technology.4 The
Yir Yoront were a truly paleolithic people whose highest technological achievement
was the stone axe. These axes were simple implements, but a considerable amount
of skill went into their production. Several different materials had to be gathered—
wood for the handle, bark for binding, and gum for fixing the head to the handle.
The stone itself was obtained through an elaborate trading network that involved
only adult males. The actual possession of the axes was also an exclusively male
prerogative. Women and children could only borrow an axe, and even then only
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Winners and Losers: The Differential Effects of Technological Change   23
Technological change may contribute to the decline of many established products and organizations.The closure of the Borders bookstore chain was due in part to the growing popularity
online ordering and e-readers. (David L Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images; RICHARD B. LEVINE/
Newscom)
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24  Orientations
from close relatives. The axe also had an important symbolic value, for it was a
totemic symbol that was used in certain religious ceremonies performed by men
only. Thus, the production and use of the axes reflected and reinforced traditional
social relationships based on age, sex, and kinship.
All this changed when steel axes began to be introduced into Yir Yoront society
during the early twentieth century. These axes were dispensed as gifts by missionaries, and they were given to all “worthy” members of the society, including women,
young men, and even children. As a result, mature men lost an important indicator
of their distinctive status. At the same time, the trading networks between men of
different tribes were bypassed. In their place new trading relationships emerged,
with some men even prostituting their wives in return for the axes. The possession
and distribution of axes no longer symbolized traditional relationships; a certain
kind of freedom was achieved, but at the expense of confusion and insecurity. A
more general malaise spread through the entire tribe, for the steel axes had no clear
links with the religiously based explanations of how the world came to be as it was;
they were alien objects whose origin could not be explained. Symbolically, steel
axes represented a new world that the Yir Yoront could not comprehend. The result
was rapid cultural disintegration and a bewildered and apathetic populace.
To be sure, it wasn’t the axes themselves that produced these disruptions. Steel
axes were part of an outside world that was impinging on the traditional aboriginal
order. Stone axes were an integral part of the indigenous technological system,
while steel axes were alien intrusions that represented both a new technology and
a new pattern of social relationships. For the Yir Yoront, the two were so closely
intertwined that the introduction of a new artifact produced a social and cultural
crisis that could not be surmounted.
Preindustrial people are not the only ones subject to the unpleasant consequences of technological change. On occasion, technological advance has fatally
disrupted modern communities and the people living in them. One such place was
Caliente, Nevada.5 Caliente was a small town with a variety of civic amenities—
schools, churches, a hospital, a theater, a park, and many prosperous small retail
businesses. Many of its inhabitants were proud members of civic organizations such
as the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary, the Masons, and the American Legion.
It was a typical American small town, with typical American small-town values.
The life of the town was supported by a single industry: the servicing of steam
locomotives. Caliente was an important division point on a transcontinental railroad,
and many of the town’s people worked as machinists, boilermakers, and repairmen.
Their incomes in turn supported Caliente’s commercial and civic establishments.
Then, in the late 1940s, the diesel-electric locomotive rapidly replaced the steam
locomotive. Diesels had many advantages; they were more fuel-efficient, hauled
longer trains, and did less damage to the rails and roadbed. They also required less
frequent servicing. When servicing was required, it took place in large centralized
shops. As a result, service facilities were eliminated at many division points, and
Caliente was one of them. The town lost its economic base, and within a few years
it had become a shell of its former self. People moved out, homes were abandoned,
and shops were boarded up. The local newspaper sadly noted, “Employees who have
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Winners and Losers: The Differential Effects of Technological Change   25
By providing many jobs, the servicing of steam locomotives formed the economic base of
towns like Caliente, Nevada. (Jack Delano/Farm Security Administration—Office of War information
Photography Collection [Library of Congress])
given the best years of their lives to this railroad are cut off without anything to
which they can turn, many of them with homes in which they have taken much
pride; while others, similarly with nice homes, are told to move elsewhere.”6
The tragedy of this small town has been repeated in many other communities
affected by technological change. Many places of employment have closed down as
new products and processes have replaced old ones, leaving communities and their
inhabitants in desperate straits. The technological advances that produced these
dislocations may have benefited society as a whole, but at great cost to the people
who were immediately affected.
Technological changes do not always result in the destruction or modification
of an existing social order; sometimes they may help to preserve it, as happened
when pneumatic molding machines were adopted by the McCormick reaper
manufacturing plant in the 1880s.7 These machines were not installed, as
conventional analysis would lead us to think, in order to reduce costs or to produce
a better product; in fact, they were deficient on both counts. They were installed
for the sole purpose of eliminating the skilled workers who formed the backbone
of the National Union of Iron Molders, an organization that was challenging
the entrenched authority of McCormick’s management. The molding machines
allowed the replacement of skilled workers by unskilled ones, and three years later,
having served their purpose, they were discarded by McCormick’s management.
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26  Orientations
Groups that are threatened by a technological innovation are not always as
helpless as the iron molders apparently were. Many affected parties have been
able to defend themselves against changes in the way of doing things. To take
one example, prefabricated buildings were vigorously resisted by many local
construction workers’ unions because they threatened their members’ jobs. One sad
tale is narrated by Peter Blake:8
Shortly after the end of World War II, an enterprising manufacturer decided to
mass-produce a so-called service core: a complete “package” containing kitchen,
bathroom, and utility room, with all fixtures, pipes, ducts, and wires in place,
ready to be plonked down in any typical suburban house.
The first twenty of these beautifully designed and beautifully made “packages”
arrived on a site near Detroit; local union plumbers and electricians promptly
refused to install them. Finally, after nine months of heated debate (during which
the units, parked on a sidewalk, were exposed to weather and vandalism), the
local unions agreed to handle the “packages”—by disassembling them on the
sidewalk and then reassembling them, piece by piece, in each of the houses. The
manufacturer, needless to say, thereupon went out of business.
Nineteenth-century China provides another example of the efforts of a group of
people defending their interests in the face of a potentially disruptive technological
change.9 For centuries, the Chinese had produced silk thread by manually unwinding
silkworm cocoons. The technology employed, although unsophisticated, was
adequate to serve a substantial domestic and export market. Then, in 1859, a
representative of the British Jardine Matheson Trading Company arrived in Shanghai
with the intention of building a modern factory that would use steam-powered
machinery to reel the silk. The machinery required skilled labor for its operation,
and many problems were encountered in mustering an adequate labor force. This
obstacle was eventually overcome, and the factory enjoyed an adequate measure of
technical success. Unfortunately, it was not an economic success, for the high price
of its basic raw material, silkworm cocoons, was not offset by increased productivity,
and the enterprise suffered chronic losses until it closed down less than 10 years
after its founding. The significant point here is that the factory could not obtain
cocoons at reasonable prices due to the opposition of an entrenched silk-makers’
guild. Accustomed to monopolizing silk manufacture, the guild prevented most
individual cocoon producers from having any dealings with the foreign operation,
while the few who did were able to charge high prices for their wares. As happened
with the disgruntled construction workers, the Chinese guild members effectively
undermined a technology that threatened their established ways of doing things.
The Luddities
There have been many other occasions when individuals and groups have
recognized that certain technological changes were not working to their
advantage. In some cases, their reactions have taken a violent turn. The most
famous of these are the outbreaks of machine-smashing that occurred in early
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Winners and Losers: The Differential Effects of Technological Change   27
nineteenth-century England.10 These attacks were the work of different groups
who were collectively known as Luddites, a name that was derived from one
Ned Ludlum, an apprentice stocking maker who, as legend had it, answered his
master’s reprimand by smashing his stocking frames with a hammer. There was
really nothing new about these attacks; the breaking of machines by disgruntled
workers had a long history in England, the earliest recorded episode taking
place in 1663. But the Luddite disturbances that began in 1811 did represent
a substantial increase in the scale of these attacks; by the following year, the
government had to deploy 12,000 troops to restore order to the parts of England
affected by the movement.
Since these attacks coincided with an era of rapid technological change, it is
easy to draw the conclusion that they were motivated by the fear of many workers that their jobs would be lost to new machinery. The actual story is a bit more
complicated. Luddite attacks occurred in a number of separate branches of the
textile industry, and each was characterized by a distinctive set of motivations and
responses. The Luddite movement began in the hosiery trades, where there long had
been opposition to the use of wider stocking frames that allowed the employment of
poorly paid unskilled labor for the manufacture of an inferior product. The situation
might have been resolved in a peaceful manner had it not been for the dire conditions encountered by many of England’s working people at the time. The Napoleonic
wars had resulted in the closure of many export markets, leading to a general trade
depression. To make matters worse, a series of bad harvests led to sharp increases in
the cost of food, and many workers found that their wages were insufficient to meet
their basic needs. These conditions produced a fertile ground for the spread of “collective bargaining by riot,” and Luddite attacks were soon fomented by shearers in
the textile industry. Another occupational group, the handloom weavers, viewed the
advance of steam-powered weaving machinery with understandable apprehension,
and, following the example of workers in the hosiery trade, some of them attacked
the factories housing mechanized looms, as well as the houses of their owners. Only
in a few instances was the machinery itself directly attacked.
Luddite disturbances were expressly oriented toward the prevention of technological change in the cropping trade. Wool cloth was traditionally finished by
raising the nap and then leveling the surface through the use of a heavy set of
shears. The growing use of the gig mill, a device for raising the nap, along with the
employment of a crude device for the mechanized cropping of cloth, threatened the
livelihood of the traditional hand workers. They responded with some of the most
severe attacks of the Luddite epoch. Although the machinery had been used for
many years in many textile establishments, the severe economic conditions of the
time brought matters to a head. More than the other instances of Luddite revolt,
the attacks on cropping equipment were motivated by a deep fear of unemployment
induced by technological change.
Within a few years the Luddite assaults came to an end due to the deployment
of government troops; the execution, imprisonment, and exile to Australia of a
number of the participants; and the general improvement in living conditions after
the defeat of Napoleon. The succeeding decades of the nineteenth century also
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28  Orientations
saw the replacement of the small manufacturing establishment by the large factory.
Machine-smashing by riotous crowds was a likely form of labor protest when workers were scattered and lacking in permanent organizational linkages. In contrast,
the large factory served as a fertile ground for the development of labor unions and
other organizational vehicles for pressing the interests of workers. Industrial sabotage did not come to an end, but it was generally superseded by unionization and
more effective forms of worker protest.
Neo-Luddism
These early episodes of machine-smashing have led to the application of the
“Luddite” label to anyone opposed to modern technology. But it is perhaps unfair
to impute to the original Luddites a hostility to technology per se. As we have
seen, most instances of Luddism were not motivated by a fear and hatred of new
machinery; their grievances were those of people suffering from the low wages and
unemployment caused by a generally depressed economy. The machines were seen
as convenient targets of their ire rather than the sources of it.
This is not to say that attacks on new technologies are always motivated by
concerns that transcend the technology in question. As the pace of technological
change has quickened and people have become more aware of its consequences,
numerous efforts have been made to prevent or restrict the spread of technologies
that are perceived as threats. For example, computerization in its initial stage posed
a threat to many established occupational roles and procedures, resulting in a fair
amount of resistance to computer installation and use. In one case that received a
good deal of national publicity during the mid-1970s, newspaper linotype operators
in Washington, D.C., demonstrated their opposition to computerized typesetting
equipment by engaging in large-scale industrial sabotage.
Another striking expression of Luddite sentiments appeared in 1995 when The
New York Times and the Washington Post published a lengthy critique of modern
society and the pivotal role of technology in creating and maintaining it. According
to its author, a society based on modern technology brings some material comforts,
but “all these technical advances taken together have created a world in which the
average man’s fate is no longer in his own hands or in the hands of his neighbors and
friends, but in those of politicians, corporation executives and remote, anonymous
technicians and bureaucrats whom he as an individual has no power to influence.”11
Regaining human freedom therefore required the total destruction of industrial society and the technologies that made it possible. This would not be a peaceful revolution, but one that required the destruction of factories, the burning of technical
books, and the eradication of all of the components of an industrial civilization. This
creed might have been dismissed as the agitated musings of a late twentieth-century
Luddite, but its author was not just a misguided critic of the modern world. Shortly
after the publication of the manifesto, it was discovered that its author was Theodore
Kaczynski, dubbed by the media as “The Unabomber,” an elusive figure who from
1978 to 1995 had been responsible for 16 bombings that killed three people and
wounded 23 others.
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Winners and Losers: The Differential Effects of Technological Change   29
Whose Technology?
We have just seen how specific technologies have been used and resisted by
particular groups in accordance with their own needs and concerns. These examples
should help us to realize that technology does not proceed solely through its own
momentum, as implied by technological determinism; its development is strongly
influenced by existing social and political arrangements.  Technological changes
may take place because they advance the interests of a particular group. Conversely,
some technologies may meet with stiff resistance because they threaten a group’s
interests. Technologies do not stand or fall solely on their intrinsic merits. The
decision to develop and deploy a new technology is often shaped by the distribution
of power in a society.
Social and political arrangements affect the course of technological change by
influencing the kinds of investments that are made, the research projects that are
funded, and the general priorities that are established.12 Large organizations, such
as corporations and government agencies, often wield disproportionate influence
over the process of technological change. As we will see in Chapter 17, the federal
government is a major source of financial support for research and development, with
the Department of Defense, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA), and the Department of Energy (primarily for nuclear research and
development) accounting for a large share of these expenditures. Although we can
only speculate about alternative outcomes, it seems likely that American technology
would have diverged markedly from its historic path if financial resources had been
distributed differently.
Perhaps with a different set of sponsors, technological development might have
made greater contributions to the solution of a number of pressing social problems,
such as poverty and crime. At the same time, however, it can be argued that certain
kinds of problems are simply not amenable to technological solutions. Even with
significant changes in the funding of research, technological solutions to many
social problems will not be forthcoming. This is an important objection, and we will
examine it in the next section.
What Technology Can Do—And What It Cannot Do
The growth of technology has brought dazzling changes to our lives. At the same
time, we seem to be mired in problems for which there seems to be no solution. The
continued existence of these problems is all the more frustrating when contrasted
with the rapid progress of technology. For example, we can use all kinds of sophisticated medical equipment and techniques to preserve the lives of sickly infants who
have been born many weeks premature, but we can’t seem to conquer the poverty
that often results in sick infants. Why, it is often asked, is there such a gulf between
technological progress and social progress? Why can’t technology be applied as a
solution for more, if not all, of our problems? If we can put a man on the moon,
why can’t we. . . ?
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30  Orientations
The Technological Fix
These are troubling paradoxes, and in recent years we have searched for ways of
finding technological solutions to a host of problems. The drug methadone has
been widely used to eliminate addicts’ cravings for heroin. As highway accidents
continue to result in tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries each year, efforts have been mounted to develop and manufacture cars capable
of protecting their occupants from the consequences of incompetent driving. Cities
befouled by graffiti have turned to the use of new paints and cleaning solutions that
resist the endeavors of spray-can artists. Overweight men and women spend billions
of dollars annually on medications, diet books, and exercise apparatus in the hope
of shedding excess pounds.
The list of technologies that have been or could be applied to the alleviation of
social problems is an extensive one, and examples could be supplied almost indefinitely. What they have in common is that they are “technological fixes,” for they
seek to use the power of technology in order to solve problems that are nontechnical in nature. In this section we will briefly examine a few of these technologies
and consider the extent to which technology can alleviate these pressing problems.
One study of a number of technologies directed at the solution of social problems bears the significant title “Technological ‘Shortcuts’ to Social Change.”13 The
authors examined a number of case studies, ranging from instructional television
to intrauterine devices for birth control. As might be expected, the application of
different technologies for the solution of social problems resulted in varying degrees
of success, but a few generalizations can be made about the efficacy of technological
solutions to social problems.
First, even if a technology “works” by producing the desired result, the actual
mechanisms through which the technology produces a change are often poorly
understood. This is particularly evident when the technology is used in conjunction with other interventions, such as the coupling of methadone maintenance
with individual counseling. Technological shortcuts also produce uneven results;
they work when applied to some segments of the targeted population but do nothing for the rest. Above all, technological solutions only eliminate the surface manifestations of the problem and do not get at its roots. A methadone program does
not address the social and psychological causes of drug addiction, and improved
methods of removin…

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