Technology, Technological Determinism and the Transformational
Model of Technical Activity.
Clive Lawson
Rough Draft, 16th July 2004
Abstract:
Technology remains a relatively under-theorised category within the critical
realist literature. This is surprising not only because of its central importance
to a wide range of disciplines, but also because it seems to be a category about
which critical realism has much to say. One aspect of technology that has
proved to be especially problematic for commentators to accommodate is that
technology’s constitution is as much a part of the social as well as the natural
domains. This has caused problems to the extent that accounts of technology
implicitly reduce one domain to another or only manage to distinguish one
from the other in an unsustainable way (typically, those emphasising the
social constitution of technology tend to treat the natural world as
‘constructed’ in much the same manner as the social world, and those
stressing the importance of the material/natural component in technology tend
to treat the social world overly mechanistically). This paper draws upon the
critical naturalism of critical realism and the transformational model of social
activity in particular to develop a conception of technology that avoids these
problems. It then draws out some of the implications of this account. In
particular, some attempt is made to re-cast claims made by some so-called
technological determinists, such as Heidegger and Habermas, who on closer
inspection seem to be posing important questions that simply cannot be
addressed without the kind of systematic (ontological) elaboration of the
social and natural domains that I am suggesting.
1. Introduction
We all experience the role technology plays in social change on a daily basis.
Whether cleaning our home, purchasing an air ticket over the internet, paying for
shopping at a supermarket or borrowing a book from the library, we all experience a
constant prodding to our normal and routine ways of doing things that can be
attributed to the introduction of some new technology or other. But do such
experiences provide evidence to support the thesis of technological determinism? One
of the few sources of agreement in the recent technology literature, is that the answer
to this question must be no, i.e., technological determinism must be wrong. However,
I want to suggest that this ‘agreement’ actually obscures a problem with the treatment
2
of technology. Namely, I want to suggest that this rejection of technological
determinism has meant that certain questions posed by so-called technological
determinists remain untheorised or even unaddressed. Indeed I shall also argue that
these questions are difficult to deal with in any sustainable way within the framework
suggested by many of technological determinism’s critics, at least those most rooted
in social constructivism. Implicitly, of course, I am suggesting that these questions
asked by so-called technological determinists are important ones. And indeed I
believe their importance explains why so many writers on technology are continually
drawn to the thesis of technological determinism, accounting for the often noted fact
that "as moths to the flame we [theorists of technology] find ourselves continually
attracted to technological determinism’s alluring but dangerous glow" (Smith, 1996).
I also want to argue that the issues at stake here are fundamentally ontological
and that it is in this regard that critical realism has much to contribute to the study of
technology at present. Although, surprisingly, little attention has been given by
critical realists to technological issues, it would seem that the social ontology
developed within critical realist accounts has much to offer a basic conception of
technology and, consequently, the particular problems I address here. More
specifically the (transformational) conception of social activity, which of course is
particularly well suited to the avoidance of both determinism and voluntarism with
regard to social phenomena can very fruitfully be applied to an account of technical
activity. Furthermore, I shall argue that fundamental to an account of technology is a
conception of its dual constitution in the social and natural domains. However, it is
rare for technological commentators, especially recently, to attempt to elaborate an
account of technology in terms of the differences between these domains. My
intention here is to do just this by drawing upon the critical or qualified naturalism
3
developed within critical realist accounts. In so doing, not only do I explain the
nature of the current impasse (with regards to technological determinism), but also
provide a sketch of technology that incorporates what I see as the advantages of both
(so called determinist and constructivist) positions, and provide some (rather
speculative) attempts to re-cast the questions that technological determinists have
posed.
2.1 Varieties of technological determinism?
It is fair to say that technological determinism is most usually referred to in a crude,
undifferentiated manner. To the extent that different strands of the technological
determinist argument are distinguished, it is most common to find discussions of hard
and soft technological determinism (see Smith & Marx, 1996). The hard-soft
distinction is based upon a spectrum of technological determinisms – with movement
along the spectrum involving the degree of agency, or the power to effect change,
attributed to technology. At the hard end, technology has certain intrinsic attributes
that allow little scope for human autonomy or choice. At the other end of the
spectrum, soft determinism, simply emphasises the large scope for human
interventions and choice. Indeed, for Smith and Marx at least "the soft determinists
locate [technology] in a far more various and complex social, economic, political and
cultural matrix" (1996, p. xii). The immediate problem with such accounts, however,
is that it is not clear why they should be considered to be deterministic at all. Neither
hard nor soft are deterministic in any sense, given that some scope for the human
choice is accepted by both, the disagreement being over how much.
Indeed, this point seems to be the motivation for Bimber’s very useful if rarely
cited, distinctions between nomological, unintended consequences and normative uses
4
of the term technological determinism (Bimber, 1996). The nomological is that which
takes the 'determinism' in technological determinism most seriously: "technological
determinism can be seen as the view that, in the light of …the state of technological
development and laws of nature, there is only one possible future course for social
change" (1996, p. 83). There is no scope for human desires or choices.
Now, although this definition accords most closely with the philosopher’s (or
common sense?) meaning of the term, Bimber argues that it is actually almost
impossible to find any examples of technological determinism if such a definition is
strictly adhered to. The most likely candidates (perhaps unsurprisingly?) emanate
from the economics domain. The most familiar of these is Marx’s famous statement
that "the hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with
the industrial capitalist" (Marx, 1971, p. 109). However, it is very difficult to attribute
anything like a hard or nomological form of technological determinism once a wider
reading of Marx is undertaken (especially see Dickson, 1974; Rosenberg, 1976;
Harvey, 1999, pp. 98-136). One sense in which Marx might be understood as
encouraging such an interpretation is in his insistence that history or sequence
matters, and indeed this can sound unduly mechanistic, and has been interpreted by
later Marxists in an unduly mechanistic way (an obvious example is Heilbroner,
1967). But the crucial point that Marx, and indeed Heilbronner, are making is that
some kinds of technology could not happen without others and some kinds of
technology could not happen without others and that some kinds of social
organisation could not happen without certain technological developments. This idea
of the importance of sequence recurs throughout accounts that have been held up as
examples of technological determinism. Perhaps the most sustained of these is that
provided by Clarence Ayers, and which has had such a clear effect on the American
5
Institutionalists. On par with Marx’s handmill statement is Ayres contention that
given “the shipbuilding and navigation skills in existence in 1492, America was
bound to be discovered in a decade or two” (Ayres, 1952) – often read as betraying
the worst kind of determinism. However, on closer reading, as with Marx, the point
that emerges is that some technological development may be a necessary condition for
some other technological development (or indeed social development). But
nomological technological determinism requires that it is also a sufficient condition.
And it is doubtful whether such a position can be found in any of the above
contributors work.1
Bimber’s second use of the term, i.e. ‘unintended consequences’ technological
determinism, is one that emphasises the process whereby human ideas, values, etc.,
become manifest in some particular technology so giving a fixity or concretisation to
these ideas which is then hard to change. Perhaps the classic statement of such a
position is that made by Langdon Winner (1977; 1980). And as his account explicitly
brings out, although there is a concern with explaining the fact that technology
appears to be out of our control, the point is not that everything is strictly determined
or that choice is precluded. Rather, the point is that choices about the design and
building of technology have implications that require some living with. The call,
from Winner at least, is for greater democratic involvement at an earlier stage in the
development of some technology, not that it is not possible. This general idea is also
to be found in Marx with specific emphasis on the way that social relations become
1
Perhaps there is a case to made for that nomological technological determinism is alive and well in
the writings of mainstream economists or in the more mathematical technological trajectories literature
of neo-Schumpeterians of those such as Dosi <<refs not found - Not Found>>. However, in these
accounts, the adoption of closed-system methods generally imposes a determinism throughout the
social world (see - Lawson, T. 2004; T. Lawson, 1997). But there is nothing in these accounts that
suggests that there is anything specific about technology that generates determinism of any sort, and
thus does not really seem relevant here.
6
‘concretised’ in particular technologies which then act to maintain or reproduce those
social relations (MacKenzie, 1984)
However, neither the nomological nor the unintended consequences uses of
the term are, Bimber argues, the most familiar face of technological determinism
within the technology literature. Rather, in what he dubs the normative version of
technological determinism, technology appears to us as autonomous because the
norms by which it is advanced are "removed from political and ethical discourse and
… goals of efficiency or productivity become surrogates for value-based debate over
methods, alternatives, means and ends" (Bimber, 1996, p. 82). Here technological
development is an essentially human enterprise in which people who create and use
technology are driven by certain goals that rely unduly on norms of efficiency and
productivity. Thus other (ethical, moral) criteria are excluded, producing a process
that operates independently of larger political processes and contexts. The end point
is one in which society adopts the technologist's standards of judgement. Thus there
is a technological domain, which includes elements of society generally, which acts as
constraint and causal force on other aspects of society.
The main examples this time appear to be from the philosophy of technology.
Bimber singles out the contribution of Habermas (see especially; Habermas 1970}.
And although Habermas actually writes very little on technology, his position does
clearly involve the more general features that Bimber has in mind, although at this
level of generality it is perhaps as relevant to Mumford’s ‘megatechnics’ (1967) and
Ellul’s ‘technique’ (1964). Habermas is attempting to ground what he sees as the
negative or dystopian character of modernity in very general terms.
Central to
Habermas’s contribution, of course, is a Weberian differentiation of society into the
spheres of work (which is success oriented, purposive action concerned with
7
controlling the world) and interaction (communication between subjects in pursuit of
common understanding in the ‘lifeworld’).
Modernity is characterised by the
colonisation of the system of objectifying (delinguifying) behaviour of the former on
the latter lifeworld. Thus the problem of modernity amounts to the inappropriate
extension of one domain to another.
Although Bimber fails to mention it, perhaps the most developed position of
this sort is provided by the work of Heidegger. For Heidegger, we are engaged in a
transformation of the entire world (and ourselves) into 'mere raw materials' or
'standing reserves' (1977) - objects to be controlled.
But a place is given in
Heidegger’s account of a process of instrumentalisation in which methodical planning
comes to dominate, destroying the integrity of everything. An collection of functions
replaces a world of ‘things’ treated with respect for their own sake. Heidegger's
examples of the Greek jeweller making a chalice and a modern dam builder
destroying the local environment show the difference Heidegger has in mind between
(the older crafts-based activity of) bringing things together in harmony and the 'deworlding' of modern technology. The central point is that technology itself is not
neutral. Everything is sucked up into the technological process and reduced to the
status of a resource that has to be optimised in some way. Especially worrying is the
idea that, in so doing, people grow to see themselves in the same way. Increasingly,
sight is lost of what is being sacrificed in the mobilisation of human and other
resources for goals that remain ultimately obscure.
Although quite different in many respects, the concern of both Heidegger and
Habermas is the same i.e. with the reduction of meaning and value of humans in the
lifeworld. Human involvement is reduced to a minimum and the values of possession
and control tend to dominate social life. Central is the idea that using technology
8
makes us become something else. The use of technology creates a new lifeworld,
which separates, de-worlds, isolates and impoverishes both the natural world and our
selves.2
2.2 The constructivist critique3
It is fair to say that, more recently at least, criticisms of technological determinism are
most often made by, or with the help of arguments made by, social constructivists.
There are though several dimensions to the constructivist rejection of technological
determinism. There is an explicit rejection of the idea that technical change can be
seen as a fixed, or on some monotonic 'trajectory'. Technological change is genuinely
contingent and not reducible to some inner technological ‘logic’.
The relation
between science and technology (science is the independent, non political source of
technological ideas) is questioned, as is the idea that technological change leads to
(determines) social change and not vice versa. Instead, emphasis is placed, usually by
drawing attention to a series of case studies, upon the contingent nature of technical
change and on how technology is ‘shaped’, especially by different social groups in the
process of settling a range of technological/ social controversies and disagreements
(MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1985).
However, as Winner famously argues, this emphasis on the social
dimension of technology comes at a cost (Winner, 1991). In particular, what he terms
‘autonomous’ characteristics of technology are lost. To see why this might be, we
2
If not for limitations of space, I would also here address the more recent, and more social, reworkings of Heidegger’s work , such as that found in the work of Albert Borgmann (1984).
3
The main roots of social constructivist accounts of technology appear to lie in the sociology of
scientific knowledge (for a good review see Bloor, 1976; Shapin, 1982). The term ‘social
constructivism’ is most often used in a narrow sense to refer to the social construction of technology
(SCOT) approach outlined by Pinch and Bijker (1987) or more recently by Bijker (1995) and related
approaches (e.g. Woolgar 1991}. However, I shall also include here the ‘social shaping’ approaches
(MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1985; Wajcman, 1991) and the actor-network approach of Latour (1987) and
9
need to consider the particular manner in which the social is brought in to the
technological and in particular the role played by the ideas of symmetries. 4 Again the
main idea is taken from the sociology of scientific knowledge literature (Bloor, 1976):
that it is best to remain agnostic about the truth, falsity, rationality, etc., of competing
claims in settling scientific controversies. Translated to the technological realm this
means that the researcher should remain impartial with regards to the actual properties
of the technology involved in determining which technologies become ‘settled upon’
(Pinch & Bijker, 1987). The researcher must, in other words, treat as possibly true or
false all claims made about the nature of technology – such claims must be treated
symmetrically (explaining them by reference to similar factors), since there is no
independent way of evaluating the knowledge claims of scientists, technologists, etc.
As in the sociology of scientific knowledge literature, two ideas underlie these
arguments. First, the ‘real world’ plays no role in settling controversies (in settling
the form that technology takes) and, second, that the researcher has no independent
access to the world- so that there is no way of evaluating competing claims. Thus
claims about the relative efficiency or successfulness of different technologies or
technical progress (or how some technology comes to be accepted) are to be avoided
(see also Staudenmaier, 1995; Pels, 1996).
Secondly, given the emphasis upon the nature of technology itself in having
much bearing upon its own acceptance or emergence, existing technology is
understood to exist or is analysed in terms of the stabilisation of different
controversies and disputes. Once stabilisation is achieved, controversy is removed
and the properties of this stabilisation (how consensus is achieved) determines how
Callon (1987).These approaches are roughly in agreement (to varying degrees) over the following
points.
4
Various accounts put this aspect as central stage (Collins, 1985; Lynch, 1992) some even present the
field as a series of extensions of the symmetry principle (Woolgar, 1988)
10
that technology functions.
The focus, as with the SSK literature, is upon how
‘closure’ is achieved. Crucial to the idea of closure, is the idea that technology is not
interpreted or understood in any fixed way. These different interpretations of some
technology are not only of its social characteristics or relative functionality, but of its
technical content – of how it works. Thus ‘facts’ about technology are simply the
(different) interpretations of different social groups (Bijker, 1995).
It is thus a
rhetorical process of settling dispute via negotiation and social action that is
understood in the term ‘closure’. Technology is thus socially shaped and socially
constructed.
But, as such, and this is Winner’s point, the ability to distinguish technology
from any other social phenomenon is lost. Thus is would seem to be possible to
explain the one feature of technology, noted at the outset, that motivates most so
called determinist accounts – how is it the case that technology continually prods or
provokes all manner of social changes. Moreover, it also seems to generate certain
tensions in the accounts of some constructivists themselves. For example, Latour
seems unwilling to distinguish natural from social phenomena, even though he needs
some such account to sustain the idea that technology explains the differences noted
in spatial extensions of human and other societies (Latour & Strum 1987).
Constructivists are clearly correct to argue, against nomological determinist
accounts that contingency matters. However, little is said about the normative form
noted by Bimber and others.
Unseating the privileged position of science in
technology’s development, whilst surely right, actually distracts from the very factors
that Habermas, Heidegger and others are drawing attention to. The use of technology
may bring with it values of possession and control that dominate social life and drain
it of meaning, are questions about which the constructivist must remain silent. At root
11
here seems to be a failure to distinguish two quite different issues – the contingency
and irreducibly social nature of technology.5 In arguing effectively that the latter calls
for the former, perhaps the most plausible position (central to normative determinism)
that contingency is consistent with a conception of technology in which it is not
simply reduced to a social phenomenon, is missed.
Taken together these problems have led to a tendency for various questions,
which so called determinist accounts have raised, to be ignored or lost. For example,
how do we account for the extent to which technology appears to be ‘out of control’?
How do we make sense of the appearance of stages of development? How do we
account for the constraining effect technology has on social organisation? What do
we mean when we talk of technology concretising or fixing values or ideas? Why
should the technological domain impinge, if it does, on other domains? And how are
all these questions addressed whilst maintaining the irreducibly social character and
essential contingency, insisted upon by constructivist accounts? I shall argue that
these questions are best addressed by establishing a conception of technology that
draws upon recent developments in social ontology. Specifically, I want to argue that
technology is best conceptualised in terms of a transformational model similar to that
developed within critical realist accounts of social ontology.
3 A Transformational model of technical activity
The basic features of this model have been presented in different ways, notably as a
corrective to existing voluntaristic or reificatory accounts of social structure or as a
transcendental argument from the existence of generalised features of experience of
5
I am certainly not arguing that it is only social constructivists who make this mistake. Indeed,
although I do not have space to pursue this here, I would argue that many explicit reactions to
technological determinism have involved reduction of technology to a purely social phenomenon For
an example of such a reaction within Institutionalist thought (see Brinkman, 1997)
12
the social world, such as routinised practices.6 Either way, the main point is that
social structure only exists in and through the activity of human agents, even though it
is not reducible to such activity.
Put another way, against individualistic or
voluntaristic accounts of social structure, structure pre-exists and is a necessary
condition for all intentional agency, whilst, against reificatory accounts, structure only
exists in virtue of the activity it governs. Thus if social structure always pre-exists
actual behaviour this does not mean that individuals create structure in any sense but
that it is actively reproduced or transformed. Similarly, if it is something that only
exists in virtue of human activity, there is no sense in which it is outside of or external
to human activity. However, neither are structure and agency simply moments in the
same process – they are different kinds of thing. And it is this transformational nature
of the connection between the two (interestingly, for my purposes, often conveyed by
the Aristotelian metaphor of the sculpting artist fashioning a product out of the
material and with the tools available) that lies at the heart of the TMSA. The resulting
emphasis, then, is upon transformation.
Fig 1 The Transformational Model of Social Activity
Social structures

Socialisation, enablement
Constraint
.

Reproduction/
Transformation

Human agency
Society, conceived of as the sum of the relations between agents is the ever
present condition and continually reproduced outcome of social activity. Society acts
as both an enabling and constraining influence on behaviour as well as, more
6
For the a statement of the former see Bhaskar 1989, and Archer, et al. 1998; and for a statement of the
13
constitutively, as a socialising force, thus impacting on how individuals react to the
structural constraints and enablements they face.
But as structure is only ever
reproduced or transformed through human action, where such structure endures, its
continuity as much as its change is a significant object of analysis. As such, social
change is inherently non-deterministic. To capture this aspect of structure, following
Giddens, the term duality of structure is often used. Similarly, it should be clear that
although action, where it does, reproduces certain structural forms, this will typically
not be the intention of this activity. Thus, my speaking English is not intended to
reproduce the grammar of the language, although it does generally do so. Following
Bhaskar, the duality of practice is used to capture this dual aspect of action.
One more aspect of this account needs to be drawn out before we can return to
a discussion of technology. Specifically, the TMSA can also be seen as an attempt to
elaborate how the social and natural worlds differ, and specially as part of a qualified
or critical naturalism (PON). In short, drawing un a conception of the natural world
as governed by tranfactually operating generative mechanisms <<see - Not Found>>
(Harré, 1970; Harré R. & Secord, 1972; Harré R. & Madden, 1975), the social can
be viewed in the same way (thus providing the basis for a naturalism of some kind),
the main differences depending on the differences in the kinds of mechanisms and
powers that can be discovered (retroduced). For present purposes, the important
differences lie in the relatively greater differentiability or isolatability of natural
structures, and the possibility of closing off the operation of some mechanisms to
observe the operation of others. Given the nature of the social world, as captured in
the TMSA, such differentiability and ‘closedness’ will be rarely if ever the case. Such
differences have been more formalised in terms of a series of limits naturalism. A
latter see T. Lawson 1997 ).
14
major point of the TMSA is that social structures only exist in virtue of the activity
they constrain or enable. Thus social structures depend, for their existence on the
activities of agents and the conception agents have of such structures. As such social
structures will not tend to endure across time and space in the same way that natural
mechanisms do.
Such differences (or ontological limits to naturalism) can be
summarised as the relatively greater activity-concept-time-space dependence of social
structures (see PON 1989 37-54, 174-179). The major epistemological limit is that
whereas the differentiability of natural mechanisms means that the natural world may
well be characterised very usefully in terms of closed systems, this is unlikely to be
the case for much of the social world.
This much should, for those familiar with critical realism at least, be familiar
if not uncontentious.
But how is any of this of relevance to a conception of
technology? The central link, I want to suggest, comes when we focus upon that
human activity that engages with technology in one way or another. The TMSA
above is an attempt to draw out the main features of human agent’s relationship with
social structure through the medium of social activity. The focus is on the plane of
social relations. However, such activity can be viewed under another aspect – as
technical activity. Human activity of course is essentially the same: people act,
always intentionally, in conditions not of their own choosing but transforming the
materials to hand. But here a distinction can be made between technical objects, that
act as the condition and consequence of technical activity and the technical subjects,
those human agents engaged in technical activity. These can be combined in a similar
way to that above to provide what is effectively a transformational model of technical
activity (TMTA). Here the technical subject and object are, similarly, not reducible to
or derivable from each other, they are different kinds of things, even though both are,
15
in some sense, the condition and consequence of each other. However, important
differences are apparent once the manner in which both act as condition and
consequence in the TMSA and TMTA are focused upon. Consider Figure 2:
Figure 2 - the Transformational Model of Technical Activity
(devices/artefacts)

Technical Object


Socialisation,
Reproduction/
enablement
Transformation
Constraint

.
(action/technique)

Technical Subject
Here the nature of the existing technological objects impose severe constraints
on the kind of activity that can be pursued. Such objects both enable and constrain
different kinds of activities. Thus distance is achieved between this and voluntaristic
accounts that tend to see a special (abstract) place for both science and the lonely,
inspired inventor, in the 'creation' of new technology.
Instead, a condition for
invention or developments in technology is the state of technology itself. This accords
with the observations of those such as Heilbronner and Ayres, that there are stages in
development (e.g. it is unlikely that the light bulb would be developed before
electricity and that similar patents are often filed more or less simultaneously in
different places). Furthermore, not only do the existing form of technical objects
constrain or enable kinds of action but affect the very nature of the agent. Again
consistent with the institutionalist literature, conditions not only constrain but
socialise. Thus as, say, Veblen would argue, mass production brings with it different
(socially acquired) capabilities and dispositions than craft work or agriculture.
Similarly, the action of technical subjects conditions the development of
technical objects.
As with the TMSA, the emphasis is upon reproduction and
transformation (this time of the technical object). In large part though, these come
about through two relatively distinct kinds of action: developing or using technology.
16
The former is the most obvious sense of technical activity. Existing artefacts or
devices are transformed into different objects. This is typically what we mean by
invention or innovation. However, a crucial difference with the TMSA needs to be
registered here. Technical activity does not change the laws of physics or, more
generally, the material content of technical objects. It is solely the form of such
objects that is, where it is, transformed. Thus it is the form that is irreducibly social.
Clearly, new materials are brought into use in the development of some object. But, as
with the sculpting artist, it is form that the human agent brings to the materials.
However, unlike society which would cease to exist without its reproduction and
transformation through human activities, the objects of technical action would not
disappear without such action. However, the question to ask, then, is would these
objects still be technology in any sense if humans disappeared?
A knife has a
measurable sharpness, but this quality is only sharp or a hazard or of any importance
at all in relation to human beings. Thus a stone or a tree trunk can be used by people,
and in and through use, become technical objects. Thus technology as such requires
both a relation to people and a transformed 'form'.
The main point to make about technical objects, then, is that they have
material content but social form.7 The content of such objects is as unchangeable to
us as is gravity. The sphere of natural relations, which constitute the object's content,
is something we harness or position ourselves with respect to. But there are two
distinct senses in which technical objects have social form. First, this harnessing or
positioning involves re-forming the object, thus different materials are combined in
different ways, various characteristics of the natural world (or existing technology)
are isolated and recombined in different contexts. This re-forming reflects (and of
7
I am grateful to T. Lawson for this formulation (see T. Lawson 1997 ,p 327n )
17
course embodies) human desires, purposes and values as well as, especially, given the
nature of technical action, of know-how. The resulting technological objects are then,
a kind of concretisation, objectification or repository of these ideas and knowledge..
about ways of doing things However, there is a second sense in which technical
objects have a social form which is more 'ongoing', which is of most relevance in
considering the reproduction rather than the transformation involved in technical
action. Specifically, I mean here the moment in which the social-relational character
of an object is reproduced through its use by people, typically as a means to some
other end. Thus when I use a machine in my place of work or a mobile phone on at
train, I am reproducing (although usually without intending it) some or other set of
social relations as I do so. As noted above, existing technological forms as well as the
relations in which they stand to human beings are reproduced as technology is used.
The latter though not the former is only reproduced to this extent.
It should be remembered, of course that the technical activity does not take
place in a vacuum. Thus there is also the need, in practice, effectively, to combine the
TMSA with the TMTA. Thus the material conditions of some action involve both
technical and social relations. The main point to make is that both the current state of
technical objects and social structures, both act simultaneously as condition and
consequence of human action and thus mutually condition each other. Alternatively
put, both the TMSA and the TMTA are continually in play. Thus just as the forms of
social relations that emerge are always embedded with existing networks of technical
objects, so the reproduction and transformation of different technical objects always
takes place, and must be embodied within a network of existing social relations. This
point is returned to below. For now, it is enough to point out that not only are existing
ideas or know-how reflected or concretised in the form of technical objects but so to
18
are the nature of existing social relations.
Moreover, it becomes impossible to
understand the nature of society without some understanding of the (nondeterministic) role played by the current state of technology
4. Implications of the TMTA
I believe the implications of conceptualising technology and technological activity in
the above terms to be both far reaching and particularly useful. However, given
space, I shall address myself here to only a few of the issues raised in the discussion
of technological determinism provided above. These fall briefly into two categories the implications of a transformational conception and the implications of the dual
nature of technical objects.
The emphasis on a transformational conception of technical action, focuses
attention upon conditions and consequences of action rather than creation out of
nothing. This much is in line with those such as Ayres who emphasise that invention
does not result from the whims of detached ‘genius’ inventors, but typically involves
a re-combination, in situ, of existing technical objects. Thus is sensitises the enquirer
to the importance of historical, or path dependent, context. But a conception of stages
or sequence is accommodated in a way that does not exclude the essentially social
nature of such a process. Indeed it would seem to amply accommodate positions such
as that of Winner in which the (social) consequences of action become the technical
conditions for future action. Most importantly, this accommodation of the main
insights of all these theorists is done with out at all encouraging the label of
technological determinism. Thus, just as the TMSA has clarified a relation between
structure and agency that steers a course between determinism and voluntarism, the
TMTA does performs the same task in the technological realm.
19
It
would also seem that the TMTA as set out above, provides a useful
framework for comparing different conceptions of exactly what technology is. For
some, technology comes close to being a way of doing things (e.g. Ellul’s
‘technique’) or are things which embody knowledge of ways of doing things. <<e.g.
Bunge insistence that social organisations are technology as much as machines or
high yield grain (Bunge 1999) Those within technology studies seem unwilling to
rule out such approaches (for not being about technology ‘proper’) as they do seem to
have something to say about distinctly technological processes. The TMTA has the
advantage of providing a framework within which these contributions can be at least
situated. However, in the above, I have tended to restrict the definition of technology
to technical objects (which of course are still social in the senses noted above).
Technical objects, like social structures, are then artefacts. And the tendency to
reduce technology to simply another social phenomenon can be seen in part to result
from an acknowledgement that technical objects and social structure are the outcomes
of action (are artefacts) in the absence of an account of the kinds of artefacts involved
(the constructivist mistake).
This last point brings us on to the second set of implications: how do social
structures and technical objects, as artefacts, differ? On this conception, the difference
lies in the fact that for technical objects although the form is social, the content is not.
More specifically, a series of differences follow that relate to technology’s being
rooted in a different way in the natural domain via the relative concept-activity-spacetime independence of the natural world and the relatively greater differentiability of
natural mechanisms.
Again, any attempt at an exhaustive account of these
implications is beyond the scope of the present paper. But the following should at
least be suggestive.
20
First, this account provides a much more complex grounding of the positions
such as Marx, Winner etc, for whom technology concretises the social in some way.
Ideas of endurability, fixity etc. seem plausible but are notoriously difficult to pin
down and are always open to counterexample. However, locating the concreteness of
technical objects in the relatively greater concept-activity-time-space independence of
the natural world seems would seem to avoid such problems in a sustainable way.
However, a more contentious set of implications follow from a focus on the
kinds of technical activity noted above. Returning to the TMSA, the main types of
activity distinguished were those which transform or reproduce social structure.
Loosely translated to the technical domain, we focus rather on activities of invention
or use. However, it is clear, on reflection, that these activities are actually quite
different. It is perhaps best to conceive technical action as involving two distinct
moments. The moment of invention will typically deal with the detection of natural
mechanisms, which given their relative differentiability, will typically involve the
pursuit of isolation or de-contextualisations of the natural world. This is essentially
Heidegger’s main insight. Once isolation has occurred, recombination of different
mechanisms and existing technical objects often seems to provide a spur for much
technological innovation (Lawson, 2000). However, a second moment to technical
activity, mostly concerned with the ongoing use of objects, will be involved in recontextualising or re-embedding these objects within particular contexts. This second
moment will tend to involve very different skills, attitudes, activities, etc to the
isolating moment. A feel for ‘fit’, place, contingency etc. is required in the process of
re-embedding which is of a different nature to that most useful at the isolating stage.
Put another way, the isolating stage involves an ability to deal with or negotiate
21
predominantly closed systems, whereas the secondary moment involves the ability to
deal with open systems.
Now of course, I am talking of abilities to deal with open and closed systems
as personal character traits or competences. And there is no a priori reason to think
that those who are comfortable or capable with one should be so with the other.
Indeed, recent accounts of autism, in which particular inabilities to deal with open
systems would seem to underlie some very stereotypically autistic behaviour (such as
being unable to deal with contingency, social (as opposed to fixed or binary) rules,
inability to maintain empathic social relations, etc.) suggests that differences in
abilities are great. Thus given technology’s dual constitution, I am suggesting that the
technological domain is a point of overlap or even ‘battleground’ for the competing
mindsets, values, etc attached to open and closed system ways of thinking about the
world. Such a scenario would seem to provide a solid foundation for Bimber’s
normative technological determinists. The invasion of the lifeworld by the
technological can better be understood in terms of the mistaken application of ideas,
values, methods, concerns of most directly relevance to closed systems to situations
that are predominantly open. However, without a conception of these different
moments of technical activity, and without some kind of sustained ontological
elaboration of the social and natural domains, it is not clear that these concerns can
even be posed in a sustainable way.
4. Conclusions
A series of important problems posed by so-called technological determinists simply
cannot be addressed by critics wedded to a social constructivism which ultimately
reduces technology to the social, thus making it impossible to consider the possible
22
nature of any ‘autonomous’ qualities it may have. This paper, by drawing on the
social ontology of critical realism, has attempted to provide a framework in which the
insights both of so-called technological determinists and their constructivist critics can
be accommodated without so reducing technology to just another social phenomenon
or committing the error of ‘nomological’ determinism. Some of the more obvious
characteristics of technology (its endurability, concreteness, quick diffusion etc.),
seem to be unproblematically grounded by conceiving of technology in terms of its
social form and material content, given the critical realist account of the differences
between the social and natural domains. Lastly, the normative concerns of various
philosophers of technology have been re-cast in terms of the different moments of
technical activity suggested by the TMTA i.e. of isolation and re-embedding.
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