ENGL 4275: Rhetoric of Technology » January 22nd: The Politics of Technology

January 22nd: The Politics of Technology

Announcements

  • Latinx Honor Society (open to all undergraduates)
  • EGSA Conference
    UNC Charlotte, Student Union
    Fri., 1/31 (Time TBA…most likely all day)

Plan for the Day

  • Discuss Winner’s Ch. 1 for 20-30 mins (January 15th)
    • Then, Ch. 2 for 20-30 mins (below)
  • Online Presence and evolution of the assignment
  • Discuss Technology and Yourself, a Reflective Essay
  • Back to Winner (time permitting)
  • Looking ahead to Monday’s (1/27) writing discussion

Chapter 2: “Do Artifacts have Politics”

This chapter is often anthologized and (even more frequently) cited in STS (Science, Technology, and Society studies). We could fix our attention to many areas or try (and fail) to cover everything. I suggest we aim to discover what Winner means about “the politics” related to technology.

  • Technology in authoritarian or democratic societies: technologies adhere to the values of the societies from which they come.
    e.g. In (supposedly) democratic society technologies “are described as democratizing, liberating forces” (p. 20)  
    • What technologies could you argue for or against their democratizing or, alternatively, oppressive potential?
  • Winner wants us “to see the social circumstances of [technological] development, deployment, and use” (p. 21).
  • Notice Winner’s definition of politics: “arrangements of power and authority in human associations as well as the activities that take place within those arrangements” (p. 21)
    • The above definition is different for capital-P Politics, which refers mainly to the pathetic political parties we (and other cultures) endure.
    • Consider lowercase-p politics as “office politics,” “school/academic politics,” “dating politics,” “gender politics,” etc.
  • Robert Moses and engineering a racist and classist landscape (pp. 22-23).
    • Of course, this is only one example of racist urban planning…it’s not like we could find other examples…
      • “New Deal public works projects were of no help as they built swimming pools everywhere in the district except where black people lived” (Brentin Mock, 28 May 2014, para. 7).
      • More on “Pools, Picnics, and Protests” (Emily Sachs Pratt Chat blog).
      • “Redlining, the purposeful process of denying groups equal access to loans or similar services, kept African Americans in the 1930s (and beyond) from acquiring loans for houses, creating segregated communities that affect wealth transfer to this day” (Toscano, 2020, p. 2).
      • See also Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. New York: Liveright, 2017)
  • “Technological change expresses a panoply of human motives, not the least of which is the desire of some to have dominion over others…” (p. 24).
  • Technological advancements and iron worker union busting in 1880s Chicago (p. 24).
  • Planned obsolescence: the process of manufacturing goods that will eventually become outdated or “worn out” because of use, fashion, and/or updates (e.g. Windows 3.1, 95, 98, …, 7, 10).
  • Paying attention to just the functions of technologies is an imperfect/inadequate critique of technology (p. 25).
    • Ignoring the plight of disabled persons…oversight or willful ignorance?
    • “Looking at prosthetics as socially constructed, their development responds to an unconscious (and also conscious) demand to not see disabled/disfigured individuals. The glass eye or face implant does not just allow the individual to hide disfigurement; it also allows the public to ignore both otherness and events that led to disfiguring injuries” (Toscano, 2020, p. 22)
  • “The technological deck has been stacked in advance to favor certain social interests and that some people are bound to receive a better hand than others” (p. 26)
    • In what other social situations can we say the proverbial “deck” is stacked?
  • Why some people hate tomatoes–biological engineering (p. 26).
    • Perhaps this is why so much salt and sugar is added to food (beyond what might be sufficient for preserving foods).
  • “Scientific knowledge, technological innovation, and corporate profit reinforce each other in deeply entrenched patterns, patterns that bear the unmistakable stamp of political and economic power” (p. 27).
    • What are some examples?
    • “U.S. land-grant colleges and universities [have] tended to favor the interests of large agribusiness concerns” (p. 27).
    • If government funds (tax dollars) go to universities R&D that create new technologies, don’t we own these technologies?
    • Why do private companies seem to be the only ones profiting?
  • “Societies choose structures for technologies that influence” social activities (p. 28)
    • We can also say the culture reinforces what “systems” are appropriate.
    • Who structures the built environment?
    • Also, “different people are situated differently and possess unequal degrees of power as well as unequal levels of awareness” (pp. 28-29).
  • Engels: authority and subordination are part of all social organizations.
    • Yikes! Who wants to touch that argument?
    • Engel’s (via Winner): “The roots of unavoidable authoritarianism are…deeply implanted in the human involvement with science and technology” (pp. 30-31).
  • “[S]ome kinds of technology require their social environments to be structured in a particular way in much the same sense that an automobile requires wheels in order to move” (p. 32).
  • “If we examine social patterns that characterize the environments of technical systems, we find certain devices and systems almost invariably linked to specific ways of organizing power and authority” (p. 33).
    • When you examine technologies, are you thinking about the political power structure that produces the technology?
  • Chandler: the politics of 19th- and 20th-century technologies–“a large-scale centralized, hierarchical organization administered by highly skilled managers” (p. 34).
    • What are the patterns of hierarchy or control in general in the organizations with which you engage? Think about pages 35-38.
    • Winner, writing in 1986 and citing Silk & Vogel from 1976, is quite prophetic when he brings up “patterns of authority that work effectively in the corporation become for business[people] ‘the desirable model against which to compare political and economic relationships in the rest of society'” (p. 37).
    • Then, in 2010, we get Citizens United v. FEC…
  • Great observation: “In our times people are often willing to make drastic changes in the way they live to accommodate technological innovation while at the same time resisting similar kinds of changes justified on political grounds” (p. 39).
    • What do you think? If we assume Winner is addressing freedom–after all, he just got finished discussing hierarchy and authoritarianism–what technologies do we accept that, in effect, reduce our freedoms?
    • If no technology can exist without being compatible with “the system,” what, then, is THE system?

Question to Consider from Chapter 2 (time permitting)

These questions come directly from the bulleted questions above. Pick one (1) and briefly discuss it. Then, be ready to share your thoughts with the class.

  • What technologies could you argue for or against their democratizing or, alternatively, oppressive potential.
  • What are other social situations (other than technological production) where the proverbial “deck” is stacked? Think relationships, organizations, socio-economics, etc.
  • What’s the pattern–the “unmistakable stamp of political and economic power”–of video games? Aren’t they an innocuous technology?
  • Who structures the built environment?
  • Yes-No-Maybe so…
    Consider Engels: Authority and subordination are part of all social organizations.
  • What are the patterns of hierarchy or control in general in the organizations with which you engage? Think about pages 35-38.
  • Comment on Winner’s Great Observation above.

Next Class

We’re going to have our first writing reflection discussion on Monday (1/27). I’d like us to focus on writing as thinking. Consider how writing is a map of one’s thinking. We’ll also talk more about the first assignment, the Technology and yourself reflective essay.

David Noble’s The Religion of Technology is coming up soon…