Research in Philosophy and Technology. Vol. 15, Social and Philosophical Constructions of Technology ed. by Carl Mitcham

Abstract

Book Reviews Research in Philosophy and Technology. Vol. 15, Social and Philosophical Constructions of Technology. Edited by Carl Mitcham. Greenwich, Conn., and London: JAI Press, 1995. Pp. xviii+423; notes, bibliog­ raphy, index. $82.50 (cloth). Philosophy and technology is an area of intellectual concern that has been closely linked to the interests of SHOT members through­ out the society’s history. Encouraged by Mel Kranzberg, SHOT has periodically hosted program sessions on the theme at its annual meeting and devotes a section of its annual bibliography to it; in­ deed, in 1974 SHOT awarded its Usher Prize to Carl Mitcham and Robert Mackey for their pathbreaking “Bibliography of the Philoso­ phy of Technology” {Technology and Culture 14 [April 1973]). It comes as no surprise that Mitcham, one of the leading scholars in this field of endeavor, has become the new editor of Research in Phi­ losophy and Technology, nor that this first volume under his editorship contains a number of items of interest to historians. The “construction” of technology (and its subsequent implica­ tions for society) is an issue of interest to philosophers as well as historians of technology and constitutes the primary theme section of the volume. Of the seven essays in this section, I found four to be of particular interest. Eduardo Aibar examines the Catalan civil engineer Ildefons Cerda’s mid-19th-century plans for Barcelona’s Eixample or extension beyond its then surrounding walls. Here town planning is analyzed as a form of technology, and the city is seen as a huge artifact subject to design and construction,just like any other machine or system. Aibar’s purpose in applying a “constructivist” approach is in part to respond to critics of constructivism, such as Langdon Winner, who have argued the shallowness of the approach due to its general failure to account for the social consequences of technological choice and its tendency to ignore “irrelevant” social groups. The Barcelona town-planning case suggests how an analysis of “the co-production of technology and society” (p. 15) can help us avoid lingering notions of technological determinism, while en­ gaging in the “politics” of technological change. Two essays, one byJosé Antonio López Cerezo and Mitcham and a second by Jesse Tatum, treat the issue of technology assessment. López Cerezo and Mitcham respond to the seemingly paradoxical question of how society can engage in independent or unbiased asPermission to reproduce a review published here may be obtained only from the reviewer. 122 TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 123 sessment of technology if indeed technology influences our collec­ tive societal values. Recognizing that any technological system consti­ tutes a complex social network, and drawing on Karl Popper’s suggestion that democracy entails not only the freedom to elect rep­ resentatives but to dismiss them as well, they suggest: “New technolo­ gies or new developments offamiliar technologies (ifan appropriate social assessment is to follow their adoption) should be designed so as to avoid producing unknown and irreversible transformation in social ways oflife” (p. 60). The idea here is to promote technologies that are relatively “benign” in terms of fundamental social transfor­ mation, open to subsequent social monitoring, and amenable to change and amelioration. Given the socially contingent nature of technological change, Tatum similarly argues the need for a more conscious and vigorous “constructive technology assessment” (CTA), one that recognizes, without alleging conspiracy, the implicit exercise of “political power” in technological choice. If we accept the constructed nature of technology, “there is room for attention to the process by which choices are made” (p. 106). What Tatum seeks through his call for CTA is a way to address legitimate demo­ cratic choices among alternative “forms oflife,” a phrase he borrows from Winner, and an answer to the question, “who else could we be?” (p. 108). Given the underdetermined nature of technology, one of the par­ ticularly intriguing questions for technology studies scholars is how society reaches “closure” on a given technology. In other words, given that a technological design might have been different, how did it come to take the form that it does? This is precisely the ques­ tion asked by contributors, many of whom are historians as well...