The Importance of Black Studies for Science and Technology Policy

Abstract

IN THE SYNOPSIS SECTION of my course syllabus, Science, Technology and Public Policy, I make the statement that science and technology are artifacts of the mind. As such, they are influenced by the values, attitudes, beliefs, ideologies and behavior of their creators, and by the cultures in which they are created, developed and deployed. That is, they are fundamentally human endeavors and we lose much in an examination of the products of those endeavors whenever we separate them from the people who made them. Moreover, science and technology are seldom without purpose (implicit in their design and construction) and/either goal, vectors conditioned by the sociopolitical and psychocultural milieux within which they are learned and practiced. That is, contrary to the conventional wisdom, they are not done for their own sake alone. Thus the untenability of believing in their objectivity (a social construct) or value neutrality, terms employed to mask their fundamentally political character.1 Accordingly, it is both right and proper to talk about their regulation as social products since, as devices for focusing power (a basic force of/in the universe), they have consequences for the societies which support them and employ their products in a variety of ways. Thus, science and technology policy where policy-making is understood as a proposed course of action addressed to some specific concern executed by an actor or set of actors legitimized by some social authority to do so concerns itself with making choices about what kinds of science and technology are encouraged and supported, and how they will be used, managed, evaluated and regulated as they do not exist in a social vacuum however much science education is