Andrew Feenberg: Questioning technology
Preface
The essence of technology
Alternaitve to essentialism
Essentialism
Constructivist sociology of
technology
Appropriating technology
Consequences
Don Ihde
More than efficiency
has been main focus, as being rational control, efficiency and
something independent of social life. Feenberg however,
claims that that the technical and the social cannot be
separated without loosing sight of important dimensions.
Feenberg offers an alternative to representatives such as
Ellull, Heidegger, Borgmann, Habermas.
Technology reduces everything to function and raw materials.
Goal oriented technological practices rather than human
meaning.
How we encounter technology in our lifeworld. The social
and historical specificity of technological systems. Introduced
difference into the question of technology.
Subordinate actors strive to appr. technologies and adapt them
to the meanings that illuminate their lives. Feenberg gives the
example of how we have domesticated the technicized house,
and not following the essentialist efficiency.
“Lifeworld meanings experienced by subordinate actors are
eventually embodied in technological designs”. Past practices
of users. Experiental dimension of technology.
“technology is only what it is in some use-context”.
Not merely efficiency oriented practices, but include their
contexts as these are embodied in design and social insertion.
1. Technology, philosophy, politics
Humanist
Progressivism
Techology and social life
1. Technocracy
2. Substantive theories of
technology
More substantivist
Substantivist emphasis on
domination
> Essentialism
Technology considered irrelevant.
The idea of progress, with focus on technology. Materialists
such as Marx and Darwin. > Technological determinism.
Technology seen as neutral and fulfilling nature’s mandate.
and with political impacts > 1. Technocracy 2. Substantive
Politics as another branch of technology. Technical expertise
and the end of ideology
Technology recognized as political. Technology is not neutral
but embodies values. Shape our way of life. Heidegger.
Modernity as an epistemological event, discloses the hidden
secret of the essence of technology. Which is rationality >
efficiency.
Weber: dystopian conception of an ‘iron cage’ of
rationalization.
Ellul: “Technique has become autonomous”.
McLuhan, but not from the same pessimistic perspective?
Affinities with determinism: technological advance with an
automatic and uniliniar character. But more pessimistic, with
a view on technology as biased toward domination.
One and only one “essence” of technology.
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Left dystopianism
Analytical examples
Break with technocratic
determinism
Marcuse and Foucault
The Frankfurt school
Technology as ideology
Tremendously simplifying
model
1960s and 1970s: Substantivism grew popular, the new left.
Provoked by the rising technocracy: Wide-ranging
administrative stystem, legitimated by reference to scientific
expertise rather than tradition, law or will of people. Ex. the
Vietnam war. Rhetorically rather than its practice. The
question of technology redefined as political.
Chapter 2: The French May Events in 1968
Chapter 3: The environmentalist movement in early 1970s.
The emergence of an American school of philosopy of
technology with elements of substantivism in a democratic
framework. Winner, Borgmann, Ihde. And Feenberg?
Critics of the role of scientistic ideologies and technological
determinism in the formation of modern hegemonies. A left
dystopian critique of technology. Technologies as an
environment. Forms of power. But differs from substantivism
by introducing a more socially specific notion of domination.
Reject essentialism: argue for the possibility of a radical
change in the nature of modernity. Choises are at the level of
whole means-ends systems. The ambivalence of technology.
Claiming that technology is materialized ideology. Habermas:
Technization of the lifeworld: Technology only acquires a
political bias when it invades the communicative sphere.
with definite political implications. “In left dystopianism,
politics and technology finally meet in the demand for
democratic intervention into technical affairs” (8).
Technology is
Autonomous
Humanly
controlled
Neutral
(complete
separation of
means and ends)
Determinism
Instrumentalism
(e.g. traditional
Marxism)
(liberal faith in
progress)
Value-laden
(means form a
way of life that
includes ends)
Substantivism
Critical Theory
(means and ends
linked in systems)
(choice of
alternative meansends systems)
Theories differ: the role of human action in the technical
sphere, and the neutrality of technical means. Feenberg
positions himself together witht the critical theorist: Means
and ends are linked in systems subject to our ultimate control.
1980s. Influence by Kuhn and Feyerabend. Respectable to
Social contructivism
study the history and sociology of science and technology.
Technology viewed as a dimension of society. The many
possible paths leading from the first forms of a new
technology. Depending on support in the social environment.
The social alliances behind technical choice. Leading to a
process of “closure” – a black box – when the artifact appears
purely technical and inevitable.
Feenberg’s critique Constructivism lacks any sense of the political contexts and
does not include macro-sociological concepts such as class
and culture. Feeberg however, uses the constructivist
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The postmodern dilemma
Essence and history: on
Heidegger and Habermas
Essentialist
Heidegger’s solution
Habermas’s solution
Feenberg’s account
perspective to reconceptualize the politics of technology, as
constructivism is (unconsciously) linked to increased
resistance to the dominant technical institutions of society.
Little focus on the question of technology in the philosophical
discourse of the 1980s. Left to postmodern literary theory and
cultural studies. Associated with multiculturalism:
Technology beceoms ever more perpetual and encompassing
of social life. No cultural differences left to speak of.
Epistemological relativism. Feenberg is critical of
underemphasising the distinction between premodernity and
modernity, which is characterised by concepts such as
modernization, rationalization and reification. The dilemma
Feenberg sets out to disolve: “Must we choose between
universal rationality and culturally or politically particularized
values” (14)?
Early Habermas and late Heidegger. Essentialist theories, fail
to discriminate different realizations of technical principles.
Modernity governed by a very abstract concept of technical
action. But are we more rational and control-oriented by
comparison with earlier times?
Deny all continuity (between premodern and modern?) and
treat modern technology as unique. Instrumental action in
modern societies considered as pure expression of a certain
type of rationality.
Distinguish earlier from later stages in the history of technical
action in terms of the degree to which it has purified itself of
the admixture of other forms of action.
Social dimensions of technological systems belong to the
essence of technology. “Instrumentalization theory”: embrace
the wide variety in which technology engages with its object,
subjects and it environment.
Part II The politicizing of technology
2. Technocracy and rebellion: The May events of 1968
Revolution-like
Opposing against the technocratic society. > Anti-technocratic
redefinition of the idea of progress. Creating a deeper cultural
change and inaugurated social imagination. The limits of
technocratic power. “Progress will be what we want it to be”.
3. Environmentalism and the politics of technology
1970s debate
Paul Ehrlich vs. Barry Commoner. At the core of the
disagreement: different views on the nature of technology.
Feenberg: what is needed is an encompassing theory of
individual lifestyle, social control over production and of
cultural change (? 67).
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Part II Democratic rationalization
> develop a theory of democratic technical change based on a revised constructivist approach.
4. The limits of technical rationality
1900s: Weber’s view on modernity has dominated. Theory of
rationalization: the increasing role of calculation and control
in social life. Inspires pessimistic philosophies of technology.
Technocracy
When technical hierachy merges with the social and political
hierarchy. Characterised by a supposed “neutral” instrumental
rationality. Technological imperatives. No room for
democracy.
Democratic rationalization
A contradictioni in Weberian terms. But the new left struggles
of the 1960s has shown a more democratic conception of
progress.
Technology is ambivalent
1. Conservation of hierarchy
2. Democratic rationalization.
Feenberg’s project is to establish the rationality of informal
public involvement in technical change.
FROM DETERMINISM TO CONSTRUCTIVISM
Two typical deterministic beliefs, which are both false:
Determinism defined
- that technical necessity dictates the path of
development
- that path is discoved through the pursuit of efficiency.
Autonomous technology
that can be explained without reference to society. As such
comparable to science and mathematics.
Two premises of
1. Uniliniar progress: appears to follow a course from
determinism
less to more advanced configurations. The premise is
based on two claims of unequal plausibility: technical
progress proceeds from lower to higher levels of
development; that the development follows a single
sequence of necessary stages.
2. Determination by the base: affirms that social
institutions must adapt to the “imperatives” og the
technological base. E.g. railroads > timekeeping
> Present decontextualized, self-generating technology as the
foundation of modern life. Modernity and the modern
technology as universal.
From the philosophy of science. The Duhem-Quine principle:
Underdetermination
The fall of the thesis on
the inevitable lack of logically compelling reasons for
uniliniar progress
prefering one competing scientific theory to another.
Rationality is thus not sufficient as an explanation.
Technical effectiveness similarly not sufficient to account for the success of certain
innovations. Neither is economic efficiency.
Constructivism “ (…) the choice between alternatives ultimately depends
neither on technical nor economic efficiency, but on the “fit”
between devices and the interests and beliefs of the various
social groups that influence the design process” (79).
Ex. The evolution of the Pinch and Bijker: the interpretive flexibility. The two
bicycle competing alternatives: the sports vehicle and the
transportation means.
Political matter
When various technical solutions have different effects on the
distrubution of power. The political implication are then
embodied in the technology.
Technology and democracy
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Social process
Indeterminism
The fall of the thesis of
technological base
Thus
Technology as a site of
struggle
CRITICAL
Technology study
Methods
Function or meaning
Hermeneutics of technology
Latour
Baudrillard
Feenberg
Technological hegemony
Marcuse and Foucault
Thus the deterministic focus on decontextualized temporal
cross-sections in the life of technological objects is flawed.
Feenberg mentions the struggle over child-labour in mid-19th
Century England to illustrate the flexibility of technical
systems. Adapt to social demands < the responsiveness of
technology to social redefinition.
 Technological development can reach higher levels
along several different tracks.
 Social development is not determined by
technological development but depends on both
technical and social factors.
No technological imperatives dictate the current social
hierarchy. Technology as a site of social struggle on which
political alternatives contend.
CONSTRUCTIVISM
From a humanistic approach. Technology as hermeneutically
interpretable meaning. Constructivism makes the study of
technology important in humanistic perspectives:
1. Technical design as a social process
2. That social process concerns the cultural definition of
needs.
3. Competing definitions < conflicting visions of
modern society realized in different technical choices.
Applying the same methods as in studies of instututions,
customs, beliefs, art. The definition of technology expands to
embrace its social meaning and its cultural horizon.
Abstracted from a larger social context, functionality plays
only a limited role. A symbolic aspect that is determining for
their use and evolution.
Bruno Latour and Jean Baudrillard
Norms are not merely subjective human intentions but are
also realized in devices. Equivalent of Hegelian Sittlichkeit >
the technical world as the objectification of social values, as a
cultural system.
The study of the aesthetic and psychological dimensions of
this “system of object”. A linguistic distinction of denotation
and connotations. The difference between the functions of
technical objects and their many associations.
Baudrillard’s approach valuable but caugt in the functionalist
paradigm. The distinction between denotation and
connotation of technologies as products, not premises, of
technical change. Often no concensus on the function of new
technologies. Personal computer as obvious example.
Technical functions not pregiven but discovered in the
development and use. The ambuigities in the definition of a
new technology pose technical problems which must be
resolved through interactions between designers, purchases
and users.
A second hermeneutic dimension: the cultural horizon of
technology. One of the foundations of modern forms of social
hegemony. The belief in the technocratic rationalization.
Design mirrors back the social order.
“Technological rationality” and “regime of truth”: not merely
a belief and ideology but incorporated into the machines.
“Apparently neutral technological rationality is enlisted in
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support of a hegemony through the bias it acquires in the
process of technical development” (87).
Closure: privileging one among many possible configurations.
Technical regimes and
Establish standard ways of looking at problems and solutions.
codes
Technological frames; technological regimes; paradigms
Regime “the technology-specific context of a technology which
prestructures the kind of problem-solving activities that
engineers are likely to do, a structure that both enables and
constrains certain changes” (Rip and Kemp in Feenberg, 88).
>Technical codes “define the object in strictly technical terms in accordance
with the social meaning it has acquired” (ibid). Appears as
self-evident. Note that this is not what Feenberg previously
has called technical elements. In cases of disputes over
technical designs, a hegemonic order brings technology into
conformity with dominant social forces.
Difficult to understand. Concerning lay interventions in the
Kuhnian perspectives on
shaping of technologies. Influence technical rationality
technical change
without distroying it. Explained with Kuhn’s distintion
between revolutionary and normal science. ??? Ordinary
people constantly involved in technical activity (<-> natural
sciences). The situated knowledge of the users.
A socially conscious design process > reflexive
Reflexive design
transformation of technical disciplines.
PROGRESS AND RATIONALITY
The final leg of the autonomy thesis: technical rationality can
The tradeoff model
supply the most efficient solution to economic problems when
it suffers the least intereference. Tradeoff between ideology
and technology
A democratic model to
Feenberg will analyse the limits of technical rationality in
technocracy
social policy. Examples from the environmental arena and
nuclear power. The tradeoff model > dilemmas instead of
syntheses. Better design can usually be found and apparent
barreiers to growth dissolve in the face of technological
change.
Economic exchange and
Exchange is all about tradeoff. The aim of technical change is
technique
to avoid such dilemmas – devising “concrete” designs that
optimize several variables at once. Design is thus not a zerosum economic game, “but an ambivalent cultural process that
servers a multiplicity of values and social groups without
necessarily sacrificing efficiency” (95).
Steamboat example with lots of casaualities before the
Regulation of technology
regulatoin of safety. Hence, improvements are not
technologically determined. Technical code responds to the
changing cultural horizon of the society.
Overemphasised focus on cost/benefit ratio of design changes.
The fetishism of efficiency
Technology concerns much more than purely economic
factors. Non-economic values intersect the economy of
technical code. Thus, technology is more than a means to an
end. Wider human implication in framing a way of life.
The concept of potentiality The difficulty of seing the un-optimized potential before it is
actually used. Suboptimization, rooted in the technical code –
the generalized wastefulness of a technological system.
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5. The problem of agency
Advanced societies: great concentration of power in
technically mediated organizations, Weber-like.
Fundamental problem
for democracy: the survival of agency in an increasingly
technocratic universe.
Technocratic order translated into legitimacy and silencing of
Technocratic legimization
opposition to technical processing and control of human
beings.
Latour’s delegation theory
Norms are delegated to devices that enforce moral obligations
by their structure and functioning.
Prescription The moral and ethical dimensions of mechanism. The
behaviour imposed back onto the human. In complex
societies, social cohesion depends on technical prescriptions.
Technocracy As the use of technical delegations to conserve and legitimate
an expanding system of hierarchical control. Based on
technical roles and tasks in modern organizations.
Technocracy masks its valuative bias behind a façade of pure
technical rationality (you can’t argue with that, you won’t
even notice the mascerade). This is thus a rationalization
theory without deterministic implications.
With lines back to the dystiopian technocracy-protests of the
The recovery of agency
1960s. Today: more moders in ambitions. Micropolitics, local
knowledge and action.
Democratic rationalization
The tensions in the industrial systems can be grasped on a
local basis from within, by individuals. Actualize ambivalent
potentialities surpressed by the prevailing technological
rationality. We are the actors.
A NON-INSTRUMENTALIST THEORY OF AGENCY
Feenberg’s goal: develop an account of collective action in
Cultural studies and
the technical sphere. To explain actual democratic struggles
critical theory
over everyday technology. Changes from below. Show how
recent technology studies can be reconfigured to recognize the
role of technical micropolitics in democratic technical change.
Cultural studies
Influence of R. Williams, Gramsci, French post-structuralism.
Active producers of meaning. Contestable hegemony: the
power structure of modern societies.
Domestication
Roger Silverstone: a reception theory of the appropriation of
technology in the household. The concept of domestication
too cozy. Revised of Merete Lie and Knut Sørensen: join
domestication theory to social constructivism.
Problem wit the domestic
Too attached to the idea of the home, priviliges adaptation
metaphor
and habituation. Feenberg rather lays focus on agency.
> democratic rationalization User interventions, challenge undemocratic structures in
modern technology.User agency. Differs from domestication:
- Not conservative but prefigurative
- Do not represent the moral economy of the houshold
but wider and more significant values
- Involve innovative communicative strategies.
Still with a focus on struggle against the technocracy.
Technocracy’s monopoly on rationality.
> Beck’s risk society
And the concept of “sub-politics”. Reflexive modernity.
Technology freed from the macro systems, and emerge as an
autonomous subsystem.
Beyond technocracy
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Foucault, de Certeau and Latour as starting point for a
revision of Critical theory.
Foucault
Notion of power as relations (see also Gauntlett). Power as
- A structural system of
social practices, and both sovereign power and resistance as
practices out of which agents structures. Power detached from individuals and institutions
emerge
and embodied in practices. Thus resistance is seen as a
dimension of the power relation. Practices embodied in the
panopticon (relations between dominators and dominated) and
in the scientific-technical discourses. System > agents. Thus,
agents do not possess power but embody positions and
practices?
Truth Regimes of truth: power-dependent epistemic horizons,
characterize certain periods and disciplines. Corresponding
subjugated knowledges, the p.o.v. of the dominated.
> hope of radical change without reliance on agent-based
models (class struggle).
Michel de Certeu. Games as a model for society: with rules
Strategies and tactics
defining range of action but not player’s moves. Can also be
applied to technology – the technical code.
Strategies Institutionalised controls embodied in modern social
organizations. Accumulate capital of power.
Tactics Potentials for resistance. Reacting tactically to strategies they
cannot escape, responding to the framework of the dominant
strategy with subtly deviant actions that alter its significance.
Tension between strategies and tactics < multiplicity of codes.
Implementation involves unplanned action: Feenberg calls
these the “margin of maneuver”. “Technical tactics belongs to
strrategies as implementation belongs to planning” (113).
Ambivalent technical base
> can be modified through tactical response. The potential of
democratic implementation of technology.
THE THIRD SYMMETRY
Latour and Callon. The basis for a theory of democratic
Actor Network theory
interventions in the technical sphere.
Latour
Technology as embodiment of “programs”. Intentional
- semiotics of technology
structures (close to de Certeu’s strategies). Technical objects.
Nodes in a network of people and devices in interlocking
roles. Comparable to the relationship between authors – text –
readers. I.e. machines as texts. Semiotics of technology.
Shifting out The process where functions are delegated to humans or
nonhumans. Through technical design. F. ex. the door closer.
Images of resistance
Difficult passage. Networks are constructed by simplifying
Callon
their members. But the simplification may fail, and the
suppressed qualities reemerge. Its anti-program.
System, network, lifeworld Politcial implications of system breakdowns > de Certeau
The problem of function
Resembles price as a form of objectivity. In reality function is
not an objective inherent character of an object. Function as a
part of a system (in a system-theoretical sense).
System
Complexes of interacting elements – appear as self-producing
structures (> autopoietic entities). Systems as systems in the
eye of the beholder.
Networks
More loosely organized complexes of interacting elements,
may support several systemic projects.
Breakdowns
?? > Functions as selections from the full range of
possibilities revealed in the breadown. May include positive
elements, systematized through new or modified
Counter-hegemony
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technological designs.
1. constructivism > symmetry of successful and
unsuccessfull theories and devices
2. actor network theory > symmetry of humans and
nonhumans
3. Symmetry of program and anti-program. The basis of
a democratic politics of technological rationalization.
DEMOCRATIC RATIONALIZATION
Concerns the structure of communicative practices. The
Technical micropolitics
public ators are those who are affected. Local situations and
situated knowledge. Ex. the environmental movement.
Creative appropriation
Innovative applications. The computer as the obvious
example. Turned from an information processor into a
communication medium. A posteriori interventions.
The resistance of technocracies to solve problems. Rather
Controversy:
information control strategies and hiding facts.
Environmentalism
Pacey: “innovative dialogue”. The impact of lay people on
Innovative dialogue and
technical innovations.
participatory design
Participatory design: locals expereinces and knowledege
internalized in the modernizing technical code.
> solution to the conflict between lay and expert. “(…) a
technology continually revised and advanced through
innovative dialogue would incorporate different values
reflecting a broader range of interests and a more democratic
vision” (125).
The Minitel example: people using the technology
Creative appropriation:
reapproriates the function of the technology. From
Reinventing computers
information to communication medium. Same thing with the
and medicine
Internet but is not centrally controlled. AIDS patients and
medicine as another example.
Emancipatory?
Truly democratic? Towards a society in which technical
development serves communicative advance? >>
New cateogires not
dependent on the selfunderstanding of managers
6. Democratizing technology
Technology is power. Many obstacles to technical democracy:
growing. > Technocracy: the imperative of efficiency and the
urge to remain passive. The problem of lacking
implementation of politics of technology in political theory.
COMMUNITARIAN DEMOCRACY
Participatory democracy
A reevaluation of participatory democracy, but no longer with
an unrealistic belief in direct democracies.
Sclove
defence of strong democracy in the technical sphere,
supplemented with participatory institutions. “Democratic
design criterion.
Dewey
The problems of combining participatory and representation.
Focusing on the machine age. Still pertinent today. Hoped
that free communication would mitigate the problem and
revitalize local community.
Technology and power
9
TIME, SPACE, AND REPRESENTATION
In technical sphere
The nature of representation in the technical sphere.
Space/time
Not as important for technical authority (as for political
representatives). The new role of time in technologically
mediated social systems. Temporal parameters determine the
shape of authority.
Time/heritage
Design < heritage of properly technical choices biased by past
circumstances.
Representative form
Passed from an open direct democracy of technique to a
covert representative form.
The technical network
the principle of organisation for the emergent large-scale
technical systems. Global as refering to larger networks,
“local” as the basic institutional setting in which tactical
resistance emerge. Individuals deliberate and act in “local”
technical settings. But local not so much as geographically
local.
PARTICIPANT INTERESTS
Uniting
What unites individuals in these networked locales? >
Participants interests in the design and configuration of the
activities. How individuals are to successfully realize the
technologies in question. Example-cases: The movement of
disabled people for barrier-free design; The struggle over
AIDS discussed previously: combining the interests of the
patients and the researchers.
DEEP DEMOCRATIZATION
Ensuring a democratic
How to democratize temporally based technical power. A
technical representation
democratic embodiment of social and political demands in
technical code – avoid a too heavy bias of representing a
narrow ruling group.
> transformation of the technical codes and the educational
process through which they are inculcated.
Habermas
“plagued by this allergy to technology”. But Feenberg still
finds Habermas’s approach more realistic as he includes that
the modern state is also an administrative complex. Possible
to sustitute the “administration” with “technology” in
Habermas’s arguments.
The opaque administration constantly goes beyond the narrowly pragmatic choice of the
most efficient means to explicitely legislated ends >
legitimacy comes into question.
> Participatory As the solution. Open to influence from public inputs.
administration Feenberg equals state administration to technical decisionmaking – goes beyond questions of efficiency to shape the
social environment and life patterns of people. Democratic
rationalization as participatory legitimations necessary to
remove suspicion that decision are arbitrary or according to
covert interests.
Autonomous technical
Inevitably separate from the mass. But “the operational
leadership
autonomy of experts and managers could be significantly
reduced” (146). > Subordinates tactical initiatives.
Deep democratization
Democratic rationalization of technical codes + electoral
controls on technical institutions. An alternative to
technocracy. Popular agency as part of the process of
technical design. Do I actually understand Feenberg? How is
this supposed to be in reality, not in theory?
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Part III Technology and modernity
> Bring together theories of modernity and empirical work on technology. Previosly
“marched together in mutual ignorance”.
7. Critical theories of technology
Feenberg aims to develop a critical theory partly inspired by
Habermas and Marcuse – a revised synthesis.
1. Substantivist critique of
Frankfurt school, especially Adorno and Horkheimer. Also
technology
Heidegger and Ellul. > Technophobic approaches, ending up
in retreat into art, religion or nature. But valuable antidote to
positivist faith in inevitable progress.
Habermas
Technology is neutral in its proper sphere. But emerges
outside and causes social pathologies of modern societies.
2. Design critique
> reform of technology. Social interests or cultural values
influence the realization of technical principles. > Theories of
technical hegemony with biased technical codes.
Marcuse
Believes human action can change the epochal structure of
technological rationality. > A new type of reason.
Feenberg’s aim
Neither metaphysicians nor instrumentalists, reject both a
romantic critique of science and the neutrality of technology.
FROM “SECRET HOPES” TO NEW SOBRIETY
All-encompassing technical thinking. In every sphere of
“All power to the
human life, human relations, politics etc.
imagination” Marcuse
Change in instrumentality
A new disclosure of being through transformation of
practices. > A new science and technology in harmony with
nature. Nature treated as another subject instead of as raw
material. But subject in Aristotelian terms – substance.
Aesthetic practice
Science and technology reconstructed in accord with the
demands of life instincts. A model of transformed
instrumentality, not the conquest of nature.
Reason and imagination
> transcend the separation of art from daily life.
Ex. Mies van der Rohe vs. Lloyd Wright
Attacks the notion of a new science and technology as a
The neutrality of
romantic myth. Offers a theory of the transhistorical essence
technology. Habermas
of technical action in general. Technology grounded in the
critique of Marcuse et.al.
nature of purposive-rational action.
Technocracy
Not resulting from the nature of technology but from an
imbalance between the action-types of work and interaction.
Solution
Technical action limited to facilitating the complex
interactions required by a modern society. Tinkering with the
boundaries of the action systems.
Critique of Marcuse
But according to Habermas’s misreadings of Marcuse.
Essence of technology
Cannot be changed (as Marcuse claims). Technology always a
non-social, objectivating relation to nature, oriented toward
success and control.
Later Habermas ignorant of
due to his treatment of technology as neutral in its own
technology
sphere. This thesis obscures the social dimension of
technology. Habermas views suited the Zeitgeis of
Sachlichkeit in the 1980s and thus his ideas prevailed.
RATIONALITY IN THE CRITIQUE OF MODERNITY
Habermas declines any hope of the new left of the 1960s to
Weber and Habermas
being able to contribute to the reform of the modern society.
Bases this critique on a chart illustrating rationalizabel worldTwo types of critique
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ratlations.
The Chart of world-relations
1
Objective
worlds
Basic
attitudes
3
Expressive
1
Objectivating
2
Social
3
Subjective
Art
Cognitive-instr.
rationality
Science
Techn.
2
NormConformative
X
Social
Techn.s
Moral-practical
rationality
X
Law
Morality
Aesthetic-practical
rationality
3
Expressive
X
Eroticism
The top
The side
Nine world-relations
Modernity
Pathologies of modernity
The three X’s
The irrationality that can
make no contribution to the
refrom of modern society
A Marcusean reply
Abstractions and realisatoins
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Objective
Art
The three worlds in which we participate: objective world of
things, the social world of people, the subjective world of
feelings. Constant movements between worlds.
Basic attitudes with respect to the three worlds: an
objectivating attitude that treats everything as “things”; a
norm-conforming attitude which views the worlds in terms of
moral obligation; an expressive attitude which approaches
reality emotively.
Habermas follows Weber: rationalized world-relations <
clearly differentiated and build on past achievements in a
progressive developmental sequence.
Based on the rationalizable world-relations: the stepped boxes
in the model: cognitive-instrumental rationality; moralpractical rationality; aesthetic-practical rationality.
< the obstacles capitalism places in the way of rationalization
in the moral-practical sphere.
Non-rationalizable world-relations, and the basis for
Habermas’s critique of the new left:
 the norm-conformative relation to the objective world
– the fraternal relation to nature. (an implisit critique
of Marcuse).
 The expressive relation to the social world,
bohemianism, counter-culture, Marcuse and the new
left.
Drawn on the arguments against the neutrality of science and
technology. Cannot be neutral but necessarily embodies
certain values. The apparent neutrality is an ideological
illusion.
Abstracted technical principles, but when applied to a context,
they take on a socially, specific content relative to the
“historical subject” that applies them. When contextualised in
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capitalist societies, capitalist values are incorporated. The
slippage between the abstract formulation and its concrete
realizatoin is ideological.
Habermas: a structure of rationality behind modern social
Technological rationality
development. Marcuse however, critizises Weber’s
understanding of technical ratialization itself. Weber
overlooks the biasing of any technical rationality by social
values.
Theory or sociological
Habermas: these problems are inappropriate at the
detail?
fundamental theoretical level. The actual application never
correspond exactly to principles.
Marcuse’s critique: of ratioanlity’s historically concrete
expression > technological rationality.
Technological rationality
Social imperatives in the form in which they are interalized by
a technical culture. Equivalent to Feenberg’s notion of
technical code.
Marcuse’s major claim – the social charcter of rational
Constructivism,
systems – commonplace of constructivist research.
phenomenology, and
Underdetermination. Early Habermas too points to the
critical theory
significance of valuative biases. The real difference between
Habermas and Marcuse concerns our self-understanding as
subjects of technical actoin.
Marcuse’s
account of trhe lived nature with which we are immediately
phenomenological
enganged.
Heidegger/nature
Modern distinctions between objectivity and subjectivity,
nature and culture block Heidegger’s notion of world – our
experienced reality.
> Berque: Landscape: more than natural features: also a
symbolically invested habitat, an écumène.
More than subjective
The meanings invested in nature by human practices are more
associations
than subjective associations. Both causal mechanism and
meaningful social objects. Implies an ethic < charged with
human values.
Rationalization
Internalizes unaccounted costss born by “nature” – something
exploitable for power or profit.
Feenberg’s aim
Reformulate the Marcusean design critique inside a version of
Habermas’s communication model modified to include
technology.
REFORMULATING THE MEDIA THEORY
According to Habermas: Modernity explained > differentiated
The media theory
subsystems based on rational forms such as exchange, law,
administration. Media: power, money – make possible for
individuals to coordinate their behaviour.
Media-related
Consists in stereotyped utterances or symbols > not at mutual
communication
understanding but at successful performance.
Technocracy
Explained from Habermas’s concepts of system and lifeworld.
Technocracy as the colonization of lifeworld by system. The
criteria of efficiency permeates all spheres. But at this stage
Habermas is no longer concerned with technology and
technology as a medium like power and money. Purposiverational action. According to Feenberg Habermas ignores the
types of communicative content that technology may have. As
such Habermas’s theory in incomplete.
Technology as a medium
Feenberg incorporate technology as a medium in Habermas’s
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model of coordination media Interestingely it seems that he
distinguishes this type of technology from small-scale means
under individual control. Admits a fuzzy line. To make it
possible to judge the degree of technologization of the
lifeworld.
VALUE AND RATIONALITY
The sketched communication-theoretic formulation of a
A two-level critique
critical theory of technology > deeper problems concerning
the technological design.
Design
A critical theory of technology needs to concern the
hegemonic design process. Design > normative implications,
not simply matter of efficiency.
Two level critique of
1. Following Habermas: the media have general
instrumentality
characteristics which qualify their application.
Substantivist argument
2. Media design shaped by the hegemonic interest of the
society it serves.
Fundamental objection
System/lifeworld distinction: analytical or real?
Habermas: An analytical distinction, but also in some degree
a real distinction. Action coordination characteristics, media
steered or communicative, of system and lifeworld are always
combined in real situations. Still: fundamental difference
between the two.
> the analytical distinction tend to become indistinguishable
from real ones.
The real problem: how system is identified with a pure and
The bias of the system
neutral formal rationality. This is not the case – as feminist
studies have shown.
The system concept
Habermas applies a Luhmannian usage of the term: “system”
refering to the structure of interactions carried out in media
such as power and money (and media in a Luhmannian sense
is more extensive than in a Habermasian sense). But media
cannot be understood as neutral realizations of a rational
logic.
Technlogical design
Second problem of implicit media design in normative biases
of rationalizsed institutions.
Hermeneutic approach
Instead of a functionalist approach where technical devices
stand in external relations to the social and its goal. Rather:
devices possess complex meanings that include delegated
norms and connotations. Valuative dimensions of technology
embodied in devices through design. System and lifeworld
distinguished according to the different ways in which fact
and value are joined in different types of social objects and
discourses.
Functionalistic Habermas
Analytical distinction between system and lifeworld ends up
as real distinctions.
An attempt to extend the Marxian critique to the rational
Critical theory of
institutions of systems. Marcuse: modern technological
technology
rationality incorporates domination in its structure. Rooted in
hegemonic values, order, But Marcuse’s novelty: idea of
future change in the structure of technological rationality.
Instrumentalisations
Feenberg develops two notions of instrumentalisation to
combine the approaches of Habermas and Marcuse?
1. Primary: Common core of attributes of technical
action systems and rationalities (Habermasian
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The essence of technology
Boundaries and layers
influence?) The basic technical subject-object
relation.
2. Secondary instrumentalisation: the social dimenstions
of technology – norms, aesthetic forms, relational
properties (Marcusean influence?).
The sum of all the major determinations it exhibits in its
various stages of development.
Based on Habermas’s two-level critique of law but applied to
technology:
 Pure technical principles do not define actual
technologies. Must be concretiszed through a
technically realized conception of the good – context
and connection of society.
 Technical systems cannot merely be bound. Needs to
be layered with demands corresponding to conception
of the good life. > Democratic rationalization.
8. Technology and meaning
HEIDEGGER’S CRITIQUE OF MODERNITY
De-humanizing?
Technology turns everything into raw materials. Everything
as objects of technique. Modern technology “de-worlds” its
materials – “summons” nature to submit to extrinsic demands.
Art and craft vs. technology
Rooted in an ontological distinction. Art and craft are
ontological openings > let things appear as they really are.
Prior to human will. Technology however does not let being
appear. Makes things be according to an arbitrary will.
Technology causes not opens.
Heidegger’s hope
That we would free ourselves from technology. Art regain
power to define worlds.
Curse of technology
As it is, technology is a cultural form through which
everything in the modern world becomes available for
control.
Corresponds to an inflation of subjectivity of the controller –
a narcissistic degeneration of humanity.
The essence of technology
According to Heidegger: nothing technological (cannot be
understood through its usefulness), must be understood
through our technologically engagement with the world.
Feenberg’s question
“Is that engagement merely an attitude or is it embedded in
the actual design of modern technological devices” (186)? In
the former case, it is possible to achieve a free relation. But as
Feenberg is concerned with the technological design, he will
necessarily propose this is not enough.
A CONTEMPORARY CRITIQUE
In a Heideggerian sense modern technology is inimical to a
Technology and meaning
life rich in meaning.
Albert Borgmann and the
Technological society > efficiency. But at the cost of
“device paradigm”
distancing us from reality (clearly Heideggerian). Possession
and control as the highest values.
Device/meaning
Borgmann deals with technology within a philosphy of
modernity and reminds us of the existence of human
expereince that are suppressed in a situation of the total hail
of technology. The technical sphere needs to be bounded >
restore meaning (clearly parallels to Habermas).
Feenberg’s critique of
Nothing on the ways meaning is intertwined with technology
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Borgmann
Interpreting the computer
The appropriation of
technology
Secondary
instrumentalisation
THE GATHERING
Dasein
The fourfold
Towards a network
metaphysics
Are devices things?
Feenberg’s democratic
rationalization
> imagines no restructuring of modern society around
culturally distinctive technical alternatives to preserve and
enhance meaning.
According to Borgmann: “Hyperintelligent communication”
increases communication range, but at the same time reduces
communicaton partners to “commodities” that can be turned
off at will. Distances those it links. Telephone is another form
of hyperintelligent communication, whereas “reflective
written correspondence” is not!
Feenberg argues that Borgmann does not consider the social
contextualisation and apprpriation of communication
technology. The obvious example of the implementation of
CMC in the 1990s.
To solidify the “nature of the technology” as technologies are
ambiguous. The integration of technology in a wider social
contexts.
Heidegger: the concept of gathering nature of the thing. We
share the earth with things rather than reducing them to mere
resources.To become aware, to assume our human being.
Geviert of earth, sky, mortals and divinities, all united in a
ritual practice.
The thing not just as a focus of practical rituals, but
essentially as constiutued as thing by these involvements ( I
guess the Geviert).
Yes of course, according to Feenberg. They too focus on
gathering practices that bring people together with each and
with earth and sky. Heidegger’s notion of modern technology
is however seen from above, functionally, which is why it
lacks the pathos of gathering and disclosing (revealing its true
nature).
> reskilled work medical practices that respect the person,
architectural and urban design that create humane living
spaces, computer designs that mediatede new social forms.
< Human beings intervening in the design of devices with
with they are involced in their everyday lives.
> The struggle for a humane and livable world.
9. Impure reason
THE IRONY OF PARMENIDES
The essence of technology
Definition of technology that crosses the line between
artifacts and social relations. The essence of technology as the
systematic position/place for the sociocultural variables that
diversify its historical realizations.
INSTRUMENTALIZATION THEORY
Drawing on both substantivist philosophies of the meaning of
A two-level theory
technology and constructivism’s reflection on who makes
technology, why and how.
Feenberg’s strategy Incorporating answers to these questions into a single
framwork with two levels.
The two levels Primary instrumentalisation: the functional constutution of
technical objects and subjects.
Secondary instrumentalization: the realization of the
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Primary
instrumentalization:
Functionalization
1. Decontextualization
2. Reductionism
3. Autonomization
4. Positioning
Secondary
instrumentalization:
Realization
1. Systematization
2. Mediation
3. Vocation
4. Initiative
Reflexive technology
constituted objects and subjects in actual networks and
devices.
Primary instrumentalization consists in four reifying moments
fo technical practice: Decontextualization and reductionism –
Heidegger’s notion of enframing + autonomization and
positioning – the form of action implied in Habermas’s media
theory.
Lays out the basic technical relation.
Natural objects are de-worlded. Taken out of their natural
context and isolated according to functions. Reveals itself as
containing technical schemas. Appears as technically useful
from its bits and pieces.
The de-worlded things are stripped of what is useless.
Stripped down to their primary qualities (relative to a
subject’s program.
The subject using technology isolates itself from the effects of
its action on its objects. Technical action automizes the
subject.
Technical action controls its objects through their laws. Using
the law of its objects to advantage < positioning itself
strategically with respect to its objects.
Technique must be integrated with the natural, technical and
social environments that support its functioning. Combination
of decontextualized elements. Works with dimensions of
reality from which the primary instrumentalization abstracts.
The process of making connectins and combinations of
technical elements. Decontextualized technical objects
combined with each other and re-embedded in the natural
environment.
Simplified technical object < ethical and aesthetic mediations:
new secondary qualities embed in its new social context. In
modern industrial societies production and aesthetics are
partially differentiated.
The succession of acts > a craft or way of life. The subject is
deeply engaged. The impact of tools on their users.
Forms of tactical initiative of individuals. Capitalism has led
to the sharp split between positioning and initiative, strategy
and tactics.
The secondary instrumentalisation: A reflexive meta-technical
practice, which treats functionality as raw material for higherlevel forms of technical action. Hence as opposed to the
substantivist approach of understanding technology as
ideology – which would make reflexivity impossible.
Instrumentalization theory
Functionalization
(primary instr.)
Realization
(secondary instr.)
Objectification
decontextualization
reduction
systematization
mediation
Subjectivation
autonomization
positioning
vocation
initiative
THE LIMITS OF DIFFERENTIATION
Assuming that the goals of technical advance are fixed.
The problem of progress
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Underlies the essentialism of both Heidegger and Habermas.
Following an essentialist approach, modern societies are
characterised by increasing differentiation – also of technical
ends of the one hand and ethical and aesthetical values on the
other. This differentiation is taken to be the essence of
modernity. There is no way out, no possibilities for technical
change. E.g. the fundamental incompatibility of ecology and
economics.
Feenberg’s approach
The technical always incorporates the social in its structure.
Social constraints and demands are internalized in the desing.
The distinction between technical function and aesthetic form
are only analytical, there are no real distinctions.
> But then: how throughgoing is the social differentiation?
Essentialism follows the form of objectivity of technology in
Technological fetishism
modern societies – as a system of practices.
> Marx: price and value The price attached to commodities relfects the relations
between producers and consumers. Perceived as a “real”
price.
Fetishistic perception of
Masks its relational character. Appears as a non-social
technology
instantiation of pure technical rationality.
FUNCTION
We encounter technology basically as function. The
secondary instrumentalization more or less invisible.
Technology appears as already split into primary and
secondary qualities.
Hermeneutic of technology
The secondary instrumentalisations are just as inseparable
from technology’s intrinsic functions.
!! Implementation
Functionalistic to suppose that society poses demands that are
implemented by technical means. The notion of
implementation – clean separation between human subject
and technical object. NOT the case.
What kind of reality does the technical structure possess?
Theory and reality:
> Weberian modernity as the differentiation of technical
degrees of differentiation
disciplines from social and religious sciences – modern forms
of rationalization.
Purified objects and realIdeal-types only loosely linked to reality? Parallelled to the
world counterparts
idealized character of the object of economic discipline.
Likewise with the differentiation of technical disciplines >
rational structures, but structures that are abstractions from a
more complex and less differentiated reality. In reality
technical devices are subject to description in many
discourses (engineering, artistic, ethical etc.) none of which
are fundamental. Hence, Feenberg aims at defining
technology beyond the formal-rational properties of devices.
CONCRETIZATION AND TECHNICAL CHANGE
Moving beyond deterministic and essentialist notion of
Concretization
purified rationality.
Technicity and usefulness What makes technology technical; technologies tied to the
needs of individuals and groups. Concretization as the
fundamental law of development > technical elegance serving
many purposes.
Structural integration Technologies characterised as more or less abstract or
concrete depending on degree of structrual integration.
Concretization as discovery of synergisms between functions
technologies serve and between technology and environment.
Technologies exist within a social and natural environment.
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Technical pluralism
Ihde + Simondon
Invisible social influences
Technology and values
Ihde: Technical pluriculture: technologies take on different
meanings in different social contexts.
Theory of democratic rationalization: introducing Simondon’s
concept of concretizaton into the Ihde’s pluricultural model.
Feenberg illustrates with among others the AIDS and Minitel
cases: “Concretizing innovations incorporated the new
functinos into the initial structures. Experiment and treatment,
information and communication, were united in
multifuntional systems” (219).
when social constraints are internlised, they become invisible.
Technology appears as socially independent with its own
rational and with their own technical destiny.
Feenberg argues that the theory of concretization better
explains the bias of technology. That is, the theory of
concretization as he apapts it into his own model.
differentiation
Primary
instrumentalization
instu
Secondary
instrumentalization
instu
decontextualization
reduction
autonomy
positioning
systematization
mediation
vocation
initiative
concretization
Modern societies: differentiation of primary and secondary
instrumentalization. Still secondary instr. continue to shape
technical design.
> The complex social dimension of technology. Hence:
ambivalent technology.
CONCLUSION: THE POSSIBILITY OF ALTERNATIVES
Attacking capitalism
Modern Western technology shaped by capitalist enterprise.
The capitalist values are commonly comprehended as the
essential values of technology. This capitalist technical
rationality is reflected in the essentialism of Heidegger and
Habermas.
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