The Social Character of Technology (Reply to Collingridge)

Abstract

I take this opportunity to respond to David Collingridge, not because I wish to contest further the precise merits of his writings, but because the very debate is likely to contribute to my original objective -further to arouse interest in the social character of technology. I find little evidence of the misunderstandings claimed by Collingridge in his reply.' With regard to 'when is a decision wrong', the position is one of disagreement, not misunderstanding. His claim that 'a single decisionmaker may be said to have made a wrong choice when facts are discovered which, had he [sic] known of them earlier, would have led him to make a different decision',' in no way recognizes the extent to which decisions about the development and introduction of technology are negotiated. Facts are never compelling, and the assignment of error is invariably a political process. But the major issue, at least to my mind, is the explicit assumption and defence of the machinery view of technology. Collingridge allows that 'technology cannot be equated with machinery, for all technology involves complex interactions between hardware, institutions, individuals and society as a whole',' but in his analysis of inflexibility, he claims that 'the machinery of technology provides the clearest cases of inflexibility which we possess'.4 Because it is not only 'straightforward', but also 'easy to understand', it is assumed that technology can be treated as 'nuts and bolts' . Such assumptions indicate a very limited conception of the social dimension of technology one which, I have argued, has severely hindered comprehension of technology as a social and cultural phenomenon. The apparent 'straightforwardness' rests on the assumption that once technology becomes embodied in hardware a physical object occupying space the influences and constraints it provides are obvious in commonsense terms. As 'nuts and bolts', technology has the status of a natural object, no more open to political determination than the phases of the moon. The 'ease of understanding' therefore rests on the view that material processes are evident and understandable indeed, in this scientific age, they are so evident as barely requiring explanation, whereas social processes are mysterious and arcane. But without a social conception of technology, we are trapped in the situation of seeking explanations of the sources of power, and of those influences shaping our lives, in the nature of physical objects! And this in a world shaped by a scientific ethos that rejects essentialism and allows explanations in terms of mechanism only. We constantly need to remind ourselves that the shaping of technology is a social process,