Democracy and Technology by Richard E. Sclove

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 531 more information to know that they have needs, though such infor­ mation may aid efforts to demand an official response. The ques­ tions remain: What would constitute an appropriate response? How can technoscience operate as a resource in contexts where science is not able to “clean things up”? How can technoscience continue its work when reliance on conventional categories of cause and ef­ fect seems insufficient? How can technoscience continually acknowl­ edge its own potential both as a social resource and as a mechanism for legitimating environmental devastation and social deprivation? Kim Fortun Dr. Fortun, an assistant professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is a cultural anthropologist whose work has focused on the legacy of the Bhopal disaster in India and the United States. Democracy and Technology. Richard E. Sclove. New York: Guilford Press, 1995. Pp. xiv+338; figures, notes, bibliography, index. $42.00 (hardcover) $18.95 (paper). Richard Sclove’s book rests on the following moral syllogism: Polit­ ical decisions ought to be made democratically. Technological deci­ sion-making is a form of political decision-making. Therefore, tech­ nological decisions ought to be made democratically. Both the strengths and weaknesses of this insightful but exasperating book grow out of such moralistic and largely ahistorical reasoning. Democracy and Technology is divided into three unequal parts. Part 1, at fifty pages, defends the premises of Sclove’s moral syllogism. One chapter provides—with reference to recent work in science, technology, and society studies—a useful overview of the ways in which technology constitutes politics. Another offers a restatement ofBenjamin Barber’s theory of “strong democracy.” Putting the two views together—that technology constitutes politics and that good politics is strongly democratic—leads to the thesis that technology ought to be democratized. Having made his argument, Sclove pro­ ceeds to act on it. Part 2, one hundred pages long and the heart of the book, spells out in some practical detail a series of nine “design criteria” for democratic technologies. The first, concerned with the promotion of democratic community, states: “Seek a balance among communitarian/cooperative, individualized, and transcommunity technologies. Avoid technologies that establish authoritarian social relations” (pp. 62 and 98). The second, concerned with develop­ ment of the democratic person, states: “Seek a diverse array of flex­ ibly schedulable, self-actualizing technological practices. Avoid meaningless, debilitating, or otherwise autonomy-impairing techno­ logical practices” (pp. 83 and 98). 532 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE These first and most general criteria both have approximately twenty-page chapters devoted to them. The remaining seven supple­ mentary criteria are grouped into three chapters. Criteria three and four reject ideologically loaded and inequality-enhancing technolo­ gies. Five, six, and seven promote cosmopolitan decentralization. Eight and nine support anthropocentric environmentalism and technological flexibility. None of these “idealistic” moral maxims is left at the abstract level; all are fleshed out with abundant examples. Part 3, at another hundred pages, indicates strategies for getting from the “here” of a not very democratic technology to the “there” of a strongly democratic technological politics. One prefatory chap­ ter admits that the kind of strong democracy Sclove espouses re­ quires that the design criteria he proposes be accepted only provi­ sionally and remain “contestable.” Another rejects the economic marketplace as coming anywhere close to providing for strong dem­ ocratic participation in or influence on technological decision-mak­ ing. Then Sclove devotes one chapter to examples of how people could effectively participate in research, development, and design activities—with special references to the handicapped, women, the third world, and children. But the longest single chapter, almost half this third part of the book, is devoted to eleven categories of things to be done to realize Sclove’s strong participatory goals. Do commu­ nity inventories of technological impacts. Cut back on TV use and lower the workweek to provide more time for political activity. Get foundations and the government to support, and institute citizen sabbaticals to pursue, democracy and technology research. And so on. Sclove’s numerous practical insights are nevertheless frustratingly yoked to a rationalistic democratic moralism with roots in JeanJacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. Nothing will work without the...