Practical Lenses for SocioTechnical Systems
William Frey
College of Business Administration
UPRM
Cogentrix
• Cogeneration plant proposed for Mayaguez
• Produce electricity and steam
• Rejected by local opposition and Rossello
administration
• Counter Case: AES Corporation
– Company offsets pollution from co-generation
through reforestation projects in Costa Rica
Copper Mining
• Kennecott and Amax, two U.S. mining companies,
propose mining copper in PR in 50s and 60s.
Large-scale project turned down in 70s.
• Southern Gold proposal in early 90s was smaller
but still generated opposition. Mining area was
converted into a nature preserve (Bosque del
Pueblo)
• Projects generated vigorous environmental
movement in Puerto Rico
Windmills
• Windmar proposed windmill farm to be located near
Bosque Seco de Guanica
• Proposal has generated strong local opposition
– Concerns about commitment of private company to eolic energy
– Concerns about impact on ecosystem of Bosque Seco de
Guanica
– Lack of access to public hearings held on project
• Analogous Cases
– Cape Wind. Energy Management Inc “generated intense
opposition from socially prominent residents of Cape Cod”
(Business and Society, Lawrence and Weber, 10)
– Vattenfall from Sweden set up 100 turbines off coast of England
in North Sea (GB aiming for 15% energy generated from
renewable resources by 2020) Associated Press, 9/23/10. “World’s
largest wind farm opens off UK coast”
Laptops
• See cnx.org/content/m14257/latest/
• Hypothetical: What would result from giving a laptop
computer to every public school student in Puerto Rico?
– Texas Laptop Project of late 1990s
– Puerto Rico project of laptops to teachers in late 1990s
– MIT Laptop Project: One Laptop Per Child
• Exporting Harm
– See presentation, Marilyn Dyrud, “Computers, Obsolescence,
Engineering Ethics”. Given at APPE 2010 Annual Conference
– Two UPRM student projects identified exporting harm
• UPRM Solutions
– Develop government-private industry recycling/disposal facility.
Fund with surcharge on computers at point of purchase
– Redesign computers for recycling. Model recycling center after
state-of-the-art existing centers.
What is a “lens”?
• Definition:
– “a practice lens…examine[s] how people, as they interact with a
technology in their ongoing practices, enact structures which shape
their emergent and situated use of that technology.” (Orlikowski)
• Reimagining the technical artifact: bicycle, computer, cell phone,
television, automobile
• Old account: the technical artifact is a physical object that,
somehow, embodies value
– Value embodied in the structure of the object
– User appropriates the object through use but the object (via the
values or politics it embodies) highly constrains the user in terms of its
structure
• New account: Orlikowski
– Embodied structure reframed as emergent structure
• structure emerges from transaction between user and artifact
– Appropriation is reframed as enactment
• user does not appropriate technology; user enacts a “technology in practice”
Sense of Lens in This Module
• Somewhat different than Orlikowski
• A lens represents a conception of the relation
between technology and society
• It also presents an ideology
– Kuhnian paradigm: self-contained account of the
world
– Different paradigms (or lenses) are incommensurable
(at least at first blush)
Implications of Lenses
• Incommensurability suggests methodological
relativism (see Sismondo)
– Assumes that each lens provides a valuable view or
perspective on a complicated reality
– To be explored initially on its own terms
• Thus, each lens opens a different line of inquiry by
suggesting different, yet productive, questions
• Comparing different lenses (after exploration)
– Reveals the partiality of each
– Sets up the possibility of integrating them into a broader ,
more comprehensive standpoint
Technological Determinism
Heilbroner and Winner
Heilbroner: Two Quotes
• From Marx
– “The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal
lord; the stem-mill society with the industrial
capitalism.
– Straight-line determinism: the technology (handmill, steam-mill) determines the social form
(feudal socicety, industrial capitalism)
• The question here, that Heilbroner only
partially answers, is “How?”
How
• For Heilbroner, technological determinism comes from the
convergence of events that characterizes modern times
• “high capitalism [has converged with] low socialism”
– “the forces of technical change have been unleashed but when the
agencies for the control or guidance of technology are still
rudimentary”
• Value-neutral, mechanistic science + technical know-how (precision
work with metal) = Configuration of Economic Relations
(Capitalism)
– Bourgeois class employs technology to solidify their power and control
over the proletariat
• Technology makes possible and solidifies capitalism
– This allows for the usual spinning out of Marxists theories of surplus
value, class warfare, and worker alienation
General Statement of Technological
Determinism
• Feenberg, Questioning Technology, 77
• TD = UP + DB
• Unilinear Progress:
– “Technological progress appears to follow a unilinear course, a
fixed track, from less to more advanced configurations. Each
stage of technological development enables the next, and there
are no branches off the main line.”
• Determinism by Base:
– “Technological determinism also affirms that social institutions
must adapt to the “imperatives” of the technological base. This
view, which no doubt has its source in a certain reading of Marx,
is long since the common sense of the social sciences. Adopting
a technology necessarily constrains one to adopt certain
practices that are connected with its employment.”
Lens Questions
• What forms of political, economic, and social organization does the
technology instantiate?
– Arranged on continuum ranging from individualistic to collective
• What kind of decision-making structure does the technology
require
– Horizontal/participative to vertical/top-down control
• What approach to working does technology require?
– Division of labor or holistic approach to labor
• How does technology stand in relation to power
– Does it require the centralization of power and control or its
decentralization?
• In general, following Mumford, is the technology democratic or
autocratic?
– Shrader-Frachette argues that the soft energy path (renewable
resources) is democratic while the hard energy path (nonrenewable) is
authoritarian.
Social Construction
Pinch and Bijker
Epistemological Relativism
• All scientific theory proposals and technological
variations are treated the same whether
successful or not
• This allows for an examination of how they
compete historically and reveals the social
process that selects some and de-selects others
• Methodological relativism lays bare the social
process by which technologies are constructed
First Stage: Interpretive Flexibility
• Meaning of technology is open
– Is bicycle a recreational vehicle or a mode of transportation?
• Social interaction generates different variations
– Boneshaker, Penny Farthing, Lawson’s Bicyclette
• Positive competition stimulates creativity
– Individuals interact with variations, experiment with them, and
clarify their needs and interests vis a vis this interaction
• Interests, needs, and problems become filters that select
some variations (those conducive) and de-select others
(those that become obselete)
Second Stage: Closing of Interpretive
Flexibility
• Variations in design begin to disappear
• Needs, interests and problems stabilize as
process of experimenting with variations
closes
• Designs that pass through
interest/needs/problem filters emerge as
dominant, others retreat as recessive
Third Stage: Black Box
• Closure is achieved through
– rhetorical means (advertising)
– problem definition (fixing on smooth ride for rubber
tires)
– inclusion in a wider context (variations are integrated
into broader STS)
• Closure conceals historical process where
variations are developed, tested, and filtered
• Dominant design becomes a black box
Lens Questions
• What is the historical process that has culminated in the
formation of the technology at hand? (This forces opening
of the black box)
• What variations competed for dominance in the
interpretative flexibility stage?
• How did users and non-experts interact with these
variations?
– What interests, needs, and problems emerged as a result of this
stage?
• What rhetorical means, problem definitions, and STS
integrations led to a closing of interpretive flexibility?
Determinisms or Codetermination
Langdon Winner: Technologies have
politics
Summary taken from Hickman
John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology. Indiana University
Press, 148 and following
• Winner rejects “straight-line” notion of tool use
– Guns aren’t good or bad; only the people who use them
• Winner also rejects (in text) technological determinism
(211)
– “technology develops as the sole result of an internal
dynamic and then unmediated by any other influence,
molds society to fits its patterns.”
• Winner finally rejects social determinism of technology
– “What matters is not the technology itself, but the social or
economic system in which it is embedded. …This view
provides an antidote to naïve technological
determinism….But it has its own shortcomings; taken
literally, it suggests that technical things do not matter at
all
Winner’s Positive Argument Against
Social Construction
• Manifest Complexity:
– The technology or tool displays complexity such as
“tightly coupled systems” and “non-linear” chains of
causality. For example, nuclear reactors
• Concealed Complexity:
– Technologies are frequently backed by decisionmaking procedures that are opaque to independent
scrutiny.
• Pre-market regulation of nuclear reactors by NRC
• Pre-market equivalence (built on previously-approved
design)
Winner’s Positive Argument Against
Social Construction
• Technological Imperative:
– Technologies transform and redefine human needs.
Machine needs become imperative and trump human
needs.
– Finding food, clothing and shelter require first
responding to machine requirements such as
electrical power, highways, bridges, sewers, and other
infrastructure
• Reverse Adaptation:
– Because complex technologies redefine needs (and
values) we are forced to adapt ourselves (and our
needs) to them
Lens Questions
• Assess the manifest complexity of the technology in
question
– What is the manifest complexity of wind turbines?
• Assess the concealed complexity?
– What is the regulatory process concerning the adoption of eolic
technology? Pre-market approval procedures? Pre-market
equivalence?
• Identify the operation of any technology imperatives.
– Are there any technological needs that are pushing aside and
replacing human needs?
• Identify any instances of reverse adaptation
– Does the technology require reverse adaption? Does it require
humans to adapt to its needs rather than vice versa?
Third Lens
Social-Technical Co-Determination
Orlikowski: Using Technology and Constituting
Structures
• New account: Orlikowski
– Embodied structure reframed as emergent structure
• structure emerges from transaction between user and artifact
– Appropriation is reframed as enactment
• user does not appropriate technology; user enacts a “technology in practice”
• There is no separation between technological artifact and those who use
the artifact
– Users and technological artifact interact
– Users modify technology by filtering features and carrying out “work-arounds”
– Technologies still constrain human action (Holding a discussion in Stefani
auditorium requires climbing on and off the stage)
• Consequently, technological artifact and human user co-determine one
another
– The technology is the structure that emerges when users interact with artifact
– The artifact does not embody value (value emerges)
– Humans do not impose value on the object through design and use; value
emerges as individuals interact with object
Supporting Empirical Studies
• Notes (groupware)
– Developed by Lotus Development Corporation
• Features
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Electronic messaging
Text Editing (word processing)
Document Management
Customization potentiality
Replication (copying and distributing documents)
Security (password protection)
Application Development (database)
• The following slides are build out of figures 39 in Orlikowski article
• Wanda J. Orlikowski. (2000). “Using Technology and
Constituting Structures: A Practice Lens for Studying
Technology in Organizations.” Organization Science, 11(4),
July-August 2000: 404-428.
• What is interesting here:
– One and the same technical artifact generates a
series of different technologies as individuals with
different values working in different cultures
interact with it.
Developers Use Notes
• Distributed Authority
• Participative Culture
• Nonhierarchical Structure
• Technology-in-Practice
– “Developers use Notes extensively to collaborate on
the design and development of the Notes Product”
Technologists Use Notes
• Cooperative Culture
• Individual and collective Incentive Structure
• Collective Problem-Solving Technology-in-Practice
• Technology-in-Practice
– “Technology staff use Notes frequently for technical
problem solving and cooperation”
Consultants Use Notes
• Individual Incentive Structure
• Competitive Culture with time-based billing structure
• Relationship Management
• Limited Use TIP
• Technology-in-Practice
– “consultants use Notes minimally, sporadically, and
perfunctorily”
Consultants in Different Corporate
Environment
• Individual Incentive Structure
• Competitive Culture
• Time-Based Billing Structure
• Individual-Productivity Technology-in-Practice
• Technology-in-Practice
– “Consultants use Notes regularly to improve their personal
efficiency”
Support Specialists Use Notes
• Learning Orientation
• Cooperative Culture
• Time-Incentive Structure
• Process-Support Technology-in-Practice
• Technology-in-Practice
– “Support specialists use Notes and the ITSS application
routinely to deliver electronic technical support to clients
General Structure
• Different culture implies different values that select
features from Notes package that resonate with culture
• This produces a mode of enactment unique to each
context or socio-technical system
• Two positions rendered partial
– Determination of society by technology (Technological
Determinism)
– Determination of technology by social construction (Social
Constructionism)
• Two positions combine to produce a third: the codetermination of society and technology
Things to remember about lenses…
• Lenses filter
– Allow certain factors to pass through that come to
our attention
– Filter out other factors
– They produce a figure (=area of attention or focus)
and a ground (=area not attended to or left out)
• The need to finish with a developed,
comprehensive picture of situation