Intro:

<snip>

Slide 1: Non-critical view

This quote is typical of nearly all histories of inventions. What 
suprised me more is that it isn't at all typical of technology textbooks,
which do tend to be quite critical - and at times have whole diatribes
on the dreadful state of modern society and the responsibility of
technology in all this.


Slide 2: Left critic

Need to get Marx out of the way first. Not incredibly useful for this topic,
because although he wrote a lot about technology his real interest is
always WORK, not technology itself. But Marx's domination of the left has
meant that all left approaches to this problem are filtered through this
optic.

More Marx:

Capital: 'Modern Industry, indeed, compels society, under penalty of death, 
to replace the detail-worker of to-day, grappled by life-long repetition of 
one and the same trivial operation, and thus reduced to the mere fragment of 
a man, by the fully developed individual, fit for a variety of labours, ready 
to face any change of production, and to whom the different social functions 
he performs, are but so many modes of giving free scope to his own natural 
and acquired powers.'
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S9

Mere lip service: note that in PRACTICAL programme - ie. Gotha programme -
he is talking about need for 'new man' who has been educated by factory work to
adapt to life as an appendage.

'In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of 
the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis 
between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not 
only a means of life but life's prime want....'

This is the seed of the Bolshevik's attitude which led them to accept
Taylorism: labor BECOMES life's prime want, not IS life's prime want. Why?
Because labour is slavery to machines in general, and the new man 
must be trained to enjoy this slavery.

But this is getting a long way away from technology in general.

Slide 3: Right critic 1

Cobbett: quite practical and not just backward looking: eg. search for
ideal varieties of straw to create new straw hat industry extended to USA.
Also beer, bread:
details of illegality of home production enforcing commodity status (so
pubs had coexisted with home brewing for centuries before this). First step
on route to 'radical monopoly' (never completed with beer; new step of
commoditised ingredients intervened).

Ruskin: far less practical; aiming at restoration of guild-type production.
Proto-corporativism already visible.

Thoreau: american variant - no feudalism to return to, so 'back to nature'.

These are 'feudal socialists' for Marx:

Grundrisse p. 162:
'In earlier stages of development the single individual seems to be developed 
more fully, because he has not yet worked out his relationships in their 
fullness, or erected them as independent social powers and relations opposite 
himself. It is as ridiculous to yearn for a return to that original fullness 
as it is to believe that with this complete emptiness history has come 
to a standstill. The bourgeois viewpoint has never advanced beyond this 
antithesis between itself and this romantic viewpoint, and therefore the 
latter will accompany it as legitimate antithesis up to its blessed end.)

(The relation of the individual to science may be taken as an example here.)'

But more useful to incorporate within Marx's 'deskilling' process: first
stage in deskilling is to move the skill from the home to the factory;
this is an integral part of turning products into commodities. 

Slide 4: Right critic 2

Tolkien as English Heidegger (parallel with Rorty's Heidegger with Jewish
wife). Even look alike!

Result total pessimism: either destroy everything or give up.

Tolkien:

'There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled 
men of dynamiting factories and power stations; I hope that, encouraged now 
as 'patriotism', may remain a habit! But it won't do any good , if it is not 
universal.'
Tolkien (letter to son, 1943)

The pessimism then affects the left too, so that eg. Marcuse:

'Technological rationality, stripped of its exploitative features, is the 
sole standard and guide in planning and developing the available resources
for all. Self-determination in the production and distribution of vital
goods would be wasteful. The job is a technical one, and as a truly
technical job, it makes for the reduction of physical and mental toil.'
One-Dimensional Man p.196 1964 

So no optimistic alternatives available in 1968ff. Back to the land
seen as the only way

Slide 5: The Bicycle Story

What Bijker did observe was that ... everything flexible... 'what works'
depends on what it should work FOR. The ordinary bicycle 'worked' as long
as bicycles were defined as machines for daredevil sportsmen; once redefined
as a mode of transport for the general public, the ordinary ceased to 'work',
and the safety bicycle took its place. Following this line of thought, the
IC is currently seen as a major technological success - but might just as
well be seen as a technological failure in a society where an IC factory
is undesireable fopr a whole range of reasons.

Noticeable that Bijker's examples are ones for which Marx's deskilling
thesis does not apply at all; eg. bicycle is ex nihilo.

STS movement of 70s that seems to have faded with a residual element
in technology teaching in the US. Bijker et al 'Social Constructivists':
relation of technology to society to be reconstructed afresh for each case.
Classes do not exist. Commodities do not exist. 

Counter argument: Soviet Union technology not fundamentally different
from rest of world. Possible answers:
1. Society not actually that different
2. There actually were differences, even if vanishing (eg. decision to go
with IBM clones in computing as against Soviet ideas on fine grain
parallelism a political choice)????


Slide 6: Alternatives
 
Morris: AFTER revolution will have choice. Take control of production through
a) technological advance: electricity as decentralized power source
b) technological retreat: automation balances decrease in unpleasant and
pleasant labour; where loss of pleasant labour outweighs gain, reverse
automation

Simondon: ideas (see quote) taken up by educationalists (DDR?) Another of his
ideas: inevitable advance from abstract (modular) to concrete (custom)
technology. Education flounders on this: devices no longer 'open' once
fully concrete.

Illich: convivial technology. Follows Ellul in absorbing social organization
into technology

Negative:
use of convivial tools does not require enforced labour  [programming
currently fails this] or enforced learning [computers currently fail this -
ECDL!] or enforced consumption [eg cars in LA] of others.

Positive: can be used by anybody whenever wanted to do what user wants.

Example: telephone. 

Illich partly moral appeal, partly (very temporary) Maoism: fed into
Homebrew Hardware club and into Whole Earth catalogue (?) but now
faded.


Slide 7: What works?

Illich quote: End to politics based on fight over surplus value does not
mean end to politics of power, since power is built into technology.

How to agree program on this basis?

Lucas plan: Lucas Aerospace expecting mass redundancies in 1970s produced
plan for production of alternative useful products (cart for children with
spina bifida, life support system for ambulance, hybrid cars, low-energy
housing, gear box for universal power source, etc. ), kidney machines,
robot controlled robots ('telechirics') - opposite to CNC ie reflect 
skill of user rather than replacing it.


Slide 8: Free software -> technology


Slide 9: Electronics

Slide 10: Technology -> free software