LBST 2213-110: Science, Technology, and Society » September 19th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Prefaces and Ch. 1

September 19th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Prefaces and Ch. 1

Announcements

  • Next Class (9/21): NO CLASS READING–Catch-up Day
  • If you’re interested in looking out into space, check out More Galaxies!!!
  • Collins & Pinch’s second Golem book–Technology
  • Time permitting…let’s discuss artificial intelligence
    • This might be good for the conversation:
      Godfrey, Neale. “Dying Careers You May Want to Steer Clear Of.” Kiplinger (13 Sept. 2021).

Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large: Technology

Preface and Introduction

  • p. 1: Excerpt from the first volume in The Golem Series—“The personality of science is neither that of a chivalrous knight not pitiless juggernaut.”
    What do they mean by the “personality” of science? Isn’t science just facts? Do facts have personalities?
  • p. 2: Definition of technology—application of science.
    • Broadly speaking, however, technologies are tools humans (and only rarely other species) create.
    • Are instinctual tools—mud nests, burrows, bee hives, etc.—the same as technologies when we consider technologies as social constructions?
  • p. 3: “Scientific and technological debates seem to be much more simple and straightforward when viewed from a distance.”
  • p. 3-4: “[Collins & Pinch] present [technology] as a human endeavor rather than a superhuman feat.”
    • Remember, even superheroes aren’t perfect. Collins & Pinch–and humanistic analyses of science and technology–want citizens to recognize that science and technology are open to the same shortcomings that all human activity (re)presents.
    • This doesn’t mean all science is wrong and all technologies are failures. Critically aware citizens shouldn’t expect perfection and should scrutinize too-good-to-be true statements from authorities.
    • For instance, what can $1 Billion do for cancer research?
      • The Optimist
        *Cure all cancer
        *Continue current cancer research
        *Increase funding for overlooked cancer
      • The Pessimist
        *Nothing
        *Profits for pharmaceuticals
        *Almost nothing…cure little cancer
        *Get misused by cancer researchers
  • p. 5: Commonly, we see “failures of technology…as failures of human organization, not science.”
    • That view is the antithesis to a humanistic approach to technology.
    • That doesn’t mean humans are never to blame for nefarious activities. It simply means we usually hold technologies and science up as perfect and humans flawed, thus, blaming the users. As we’ll see, it’s more complicated than that.
  • p. 5: “[T]echnology becomes more reliable as our experience grows and our abilities develop.” That is a prevailing belief, related to the assumption that all technology will improve in the future. Our culture believes that.
  • p. 6: “Since all human activity takes place within society, all science and technology has society at its centre.”
  • p. 7: Democracy and Technology—Who’s allowed expertise when it comes to technology?
  • p. 8: Goal for the book and Science, Technology, and Society, in general: “…to understand how to handle science and technology in a democratic society and resist the temptation to lurch from technocracy to populism.”

More on technocracy and populism. Science and technology are often seen as individual endeavors. Guglielmo Marconi in his lab or Thomas Edison and his team at Menlo Park. History often gives us the portrait of the lone inventor myth. Science and technology are rarely individual efforts, and they are never developed in a vacuum that isolates scientists and engineers from social forces. Although we can’t ignore the private funding that goes into scientific and technological discoveries, society drives research and development (R&D).

The problem that we seem to be running into with populism and science and technology is that many believe if they don’t agree with a science, they can say “I don’t believe that” and ignore the facts experts present. Going back to Asimov’s “The Cult of Ignorance,” we also remember that the public’s right to know requires the public to be informed. When populism en masse rejects established, credentialed scientific authorities, we have an alarming situation where conviction supersedes scientific theories and laws that are tested, retested, and used for expert opinion. We shouldn’t relinquish democratic oversight for government R&D, but we can’t be silent while the uninformed try to deny scientific claims.

You may never be able to make decisions about a new product’s development, but, as a member of a hi-tech society, you drive the demand for products. There’s no survey that you fill out, and there’s no focus group that we all attend. Ideology drives much of the demand for certain products. Let’s recap from earlier what values lead to what technologies:

  • Values: freedom of speech, privacy, mobility
    Technologies: Internet, network security, e-mail
  • Values: defense, trade routes, economy
    Technologies: satellites, aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons

As mentioned before, it’s probably more accurate to say hegemonic forces drive the development of science and technology. Let’s move onto war technologies and two (in)famous missiles that caught our attention in late-1990 and early-1991–The Patriot Missile and the Scud.

Chapter 1: “A Clean Kill?: The Role of Patriot in the [First] Gulf War”

We’re moving into more philosophical discussions of technology. Specifically, we’re going to be discussing what’s called the rhetoric of technology. The rhetoric of technology doesn’t focus on how a technology is physically constructed; instead, it considers how meaning is embedded into the technology. Technologies are both physically and rhetorically constructed. The artifact or device or tool is put to use; however, the idea of the technology is constructed through complex discourses and a priori assumptions.

We’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating: All of us have assumptions about technology. One prevailing—pretty close to universal—belief is that technology will advance, will do more. Does that mean it will be better? That is a question best left to ethical discussions regarding what “better” means. We will consider those questions, but, before moving onto a discussion about how meaning was affixed to the Patriot anti-missile missile during the First Gulf War, let’s first consider a set of technologies from the 20th Century.

What do the following have in common?

Internet, machine gun, satellites,* Interstate Highway System, Hummer, microwave ovens,** and nylon

Four Things to Take Away from Ch. 1

  1. Myth of science and technology: If we just had enough data, we could end debate and definitively draw conclusions for controversial science and technology. Human (re)presentation of that data will mean interpretation. There is no direct translation of technical subjects to “everyday language.”
  2. It’s difficult to build consensus when so much is in doubt.
  3. Technologies aren’t perfect. To work out the issues, you need time. We can’t create a system to predict everything. {This point has MAJOR implications for so-called Artificial Intelligence.}
  4. Technological imagination is part of the rhetoric of technology even if what’s imagined is not feasible. There are many reasons why a Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI or Star Wars) anti-ballistic-missile system is far fetched, but the idea is out there, and that can motivate citizens. Technology as well as our beliefs in technology are political.

Questions to start us off

  1. Why worry, why study the Patriot or past technology in general after the war was won?
  2. What might keep people interested in the debate on whether or not the Patriot worked? Don’t just focus on the technical. Draw conclusions based on political, social, and cultural aspects.

The Scene: the Patriot anti-missile Missile in the Theater of War

  • p. 10-11: “It may be that the military ineffectiveness of the Scud was due to the success of Patriot. It may be that irrespective of its military effectiveness, Patriot played an important role in keeping Israel out of the war.”
  • p. 11: “Though there are firm opinions on both sides, we still do not know whether the anti-missile missile stopped Scuds from hitting Israel, stopped them from hitting Saudi Arabia, or failed to stop them at all.”
  • p. 12: “The estimated efficacy of the Patriot missile in shooting down Scuds varies from around 100 per cent to around 0 per cent; some said every Scud warhead engaged was destroyed, some said not a single one was hit.”

Let’s decipher these quotations. It relates to “experimenter’s regress” in that we aren’t sure what the outcome should be because we don’t have reliable experiments. Were the Scuds ineffective? Were the Patriots (the missiles, not the cheaters) effective? Were they effective enough, at least, as a symbol to keep Israel out of the war? Although the scale isn’t comparable—serious damage and loss of life—this issue relates to Eddington’s observations. Ultimately, bending of light occurs according to Einsteinian physics, but Eddington had observations that supported both Einsteinian and Newtonian physics. There is probably evidence for some Patriots destroying, diverging, or demoting Scud missiles. Also, there’s evidence and high probability that the Scuds weren’t very accurate, limiting their potential to inflict greater damage.

  • p. 13: “[t]he problem of measurement is hard to solve; we do not, and cannot have, a clean scientific kill.”

Patriot Success in the Eye of the Beholder

Note on War…much like the disagreements you have with significant others, “the first casualty of war is truth,” and Collins & Pinch go on to mention “a principal weapon of war is lies” (p. 13). If you want to explore questions of reality and meaning(lessness), enroll in a rhetoric class I teach, or register for a variety of philosophy classes. Alternatively, the Cure has a wonderful explanation of the precarious nature of truth in the song “This is a Lie.” Always remember, though, just as “wartime claims about success of the missile reflect the demands of war rather than the demands of truth” (Collins & Pinch, p. 13), many, in fact, all wartime claims have rhetorical meanings. After all, there’s no speech act devoid of rhetoric—wartime speech especially.

  • p. 13-14: Usefulness of the terms “destroyed” and “intercepted”
  • p. 24: “President Bush’s forty-one out of forty-two, and the US Army’s forty-five out of forty-seven referred to ‘interception’ not destruction.”
    Mission accomplished, right?
  • p. 30-31: “interception says nothing about destruction, damage, or diversion.”
  • p. 26: Belief that the success would lead to the SDI or Star Wars program is unfounded by some. After all, as Peter D. Zimmerman points out, “A strategic defense system…will probably get it right some time around the second or third nuclear war.”{Watchman reference: If Dr. Manhattan stops 99% of the Soviets’ nuclear missiles…}

Regardless of intention, claiming Patriot missiles intercepted Scud missiles has the rhetorical effect of “Patriots destroyed Scud missiles.” This is especially true when consuming sound bite media.

  • p. 21: “anti-missile defensive systems will always be fighting the last war and evasive measures that cannot be anticipated will always defeat the defensive umbrella.”
    • What are the implications of the above statement? Think about the problems of anticipating situations for other systems (i.e., levees, pipelines, dams, bridges, etc.)?

      Hoover Dam, June 2016.
  • p. 14: Raytheon had a chance to build their ethos (and market share) by showing the Patriot was effective. Additionally, “the proof of an anti-missile missile on the battlefield gives a boost to the prospect of whole new weapons systems.”
  • p. 22: Robert Stein of Raytheon claims the Patriot was a success.
  • p. 23: Criteria for success list…is rhetorical. If you want to support the Patriot, focus on the criteria (or a criterion) that bolsters your claim. Remember, CNN, even though they have 24-hour coverage, is broadcasting sound bites and repeating video of the war.
  • p. 24: Ted Postol wanted “to prevent Patriot gaining the sort of false reputation which would justify further expenditure on an anti-missile technology which, he believes, is bound to fail.”
  • p. 27-28: Even after British SAS (Special Air Service) supposedly dismantled or destroyed the mobile Scud launchers on 26 January 1991, “other accounts say that thirteen Scuds fell on Israel between 28 January and 25 February.”

Syllogism: Deduction Patriot’s Efficacy in Saudi Arabia
Major Premise: Patriots must fire in order to intercept Scuds.
Minor Premise 1: Patriot anti-missile defense malfunctioned and wasn’t deployed.
Conclusion: Therefore, we cannot claim the Patriot Missile Defense was effective in Saudi Arabia.

Let’s let the above sink in for a moment. No, this isn’t in the reading and being in class will be the best way to fully understand the point. Is that the only conclusion you can think of?

“Proof” of Patriot Efficacy by Deduction

p. 30: We aren’t given the fine details of the Postol-Stein debate, but Collins & Pinch note Stein’s reference to the destruction of Tactical Ballistic Missiles (TBMs) during Iran-Iraq War. Stein points out that TBMs caused major destruction during that war, but this war had “relatively low loss of life and minimal damage in Israel.” He attributes this to the Patriot.

Syllogism: Deduction Proving Patriot’s Efficacy
Major Premise: TBMs caused lots of death and destruction during the Iran-Iraq War.
Minor Premise 1: Anti-missile defenses stop TBMs.
Minor Premise 2: The Patriot Missile Defense was used in Israel during the Gulf War.
Conclusion: Therefore, the Patriot Missile Defense stopped death and destruction in Israel during the Gulf War.

The above isn’t what Collins & Pinch claim exactly, but it shows how one might use intuition to conclude what the benefits of the Patriot are—100% truth.

Conclusion: Mission Accomplished?

Ch. 1 goes into lots more detail regarding the engineering and deployment of the Scud and Patriot missiles. We don’t need to go over those in such detail, but it is important to remember that there remain questions regarding the effectiveness of both the Scud and Patriot. Apparently, both missiles were adapted and modified from their original purposes. That alone could raise lingering doubt as to the efficacy of either. Finally, and we’ll see more of this in Chapter 3, it would be irresponsible to conclude an experiment or demonstration would be comparable to action carried out under the fog of war.

  • p. 34: “[W]e do not know how efficient [the Iraqis] were at launching fully functioning missiles in the first place….they were forced to use mobile launchers.”
  • p. 35: GAO report: “there is no way to conclusively determine how many targets the Patriot killed or failed to kill.”
  • p. 37: Important conclusion for Collins & Pinch. They don’t claim the Patriot was successful or unsuccessful; instead, they present their findings to show “[i]n the evidence of the experts one sees a yearning for science in place of messy wartime reports: ‘direct and valid scientific data’ could put an end to this untidy debate.”

What steps could one take to figure out whether or not the Patriot succeeded—then or now? In other words, how would you construct the tests? Alternatively, how might you “fix” the Patriot? It’s perfectly fine to speculate on technological improvements. These missiles run on software.

REMEMBER: The Patriot only can destroy a missile it knows how to find. Knowing the Scud missile’s trajectory only helps if the Scud follows that trajectory.

Technical Details of Both Missiles

Below are some key issues that need to be considered in the context of firing these missiles. Many factors could affect the missiles’ performances.

  • p. 16: “Patriot was originally designed to shoot down aircraft rather than missiles.”
  • p. 18: “Patriot has to be pointed toward its potential impact point before launch.”
  • p. 19: “[T]he time window for an effective detonation [of the Patriot] is very short.”
  • p. 20: “[The Scud or Al-Husayn] had a tendency to break into pieces during its descent through the atmosphere….The Iraqis had inadvertently designed a missile with decoy warheads capable of making the equivalent of evasive manoeuvres!”

Think Critically about These Chapters

As I’ve mentioned before, this course strives to get you to have more questions than answers and that means asking more informed questions about science and technology. You aren’t just learning about Patriot and Scud missiles in this chapter; you’re learning to think about the rhetoric of technology. Consider the following questions inspired by the chapter.

  1. What meaning is conveyed by reports of the Patriot’s success?
  2. Alternatively, what meaning is conveyed by reports of the Patriot’s failure?
  3. What assumptions does the audience have about technologies?
  4. What conclusions will the audience draw or be likely to support based on reports of technologies (e.g., the “success of Patriot)?

That last question is important to break down further. One concludes or argues in support of their perspective based on a priori assumptions and goals. For instance, Postol was deeply concerned that reports of the Patriot’s success would lead the public to support R&D into anti-Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. Therefore, he argues from a particular perspective and will accentuate the ideas that show the Patriot isn’t effective. He’s not lying or purposely being deceitful. However, he has an agenda and will use the evidence that supports his perspective.

Below is a list of a priori assumptions that Postol has:

  • Technologies, especially military technologies, excite imaginations.
  • SDI is a bad technology to pursue.
  • Citizens (circa 1990) fear nuclear war.
  • SDI and other anti-missile systems convey the promise of defending against nuclear missiles.

Below is a list of assumptions that Postol had after Patriot was deployed:

  • The reports of Patriot success were inflated.
  • His estimates, culled from the Army’s own estimates, show the Patriot had no effect on the Scuds.
  • Raytheon and others were going to use the Patriot’s assumed success to push for getting funding for developing more anti-missile systems.

Next Class

Keep up with the syllabus reading. For Wednesday, 9/21, I’m giving you a catch-up day. You’re about to have a Midterm Exam in this class (10/05) and probably your other classes in the next couple of weeks, so use this time to catch up or, even better, get ahead.

*Although you might be able to find evidence—even straight from NASA (Rosenthal [July 1965], “The International Geophysical Year,” pp. 15-16)—that satellites were pursued for scientific purposes, there is overwhelming evidence that satellite technology was developed with military purposes in mind. Once the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I in 1957, there’s no debate that this technology was pursued primarily for military purposes. When thinking about the rhetoric of technology, you mustn’t fall victim to the intentionality fallacy: Just because someone, such as an author or engineer, claims their intention for the novel or technology was for different reasons doesn’t mean they’re the last word. They, too, are products of the cultures from which they come, and their pursuits are mediated by culture. Technology, like literature, isn’t created in a vacuum devoid of external influence. See more on “History of GPS.” Want more? Here’s a source to comb through: RAND Corporation. Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship. 1946.
**Raytheon. They made the Patriot missile and the first microwave oven. Also, the US Defense Department awarded Raytheon a large contract for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) for the aid to Ukraine.