Work and Technology in Higher Education: The Social Construction of Academic Computing ed. by Mark A. Shields

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 653 banned, as would intentional analysis. History as an academic field would have to be completely recast in a positivist direction. I believe that few of us would want such a development, but in order to avoid it, we should be careful with our use of explanatory concepts. Here, Turner is of great help—although he is better at criticizing others than at constructing his own positive alternative. Finally, I have to pose a question to the publisher: why bother printing a book on acid-free paper if the pages in the paper edition start falling apart immediately after the reader has opened it? Mikael Hard Dr. Hard is professor of the history of technology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. He recently published “Technology as Prac­ tice,” Social Studies of Science 24 (1994): 549-85. Work and Technology in HigherEducation: The Social Construction ofAca­ demic Computing. Edited by Mark A. Shields. Hillsdale, N.J.: Law­ rence Erlbaum Associates, 1995. Pp. viii+198; notes, index. $49.95 (cloth); $19.95 (paper). Work and Technology in Higher Education explores an enduring theme in the history of technology: the gap between the stated pur­ pose of a technology and the ways in which it is actually used. This gap is particularly visible in the history of educational computing, where the extravagant utopian claims that accompanied many com­ puterization projects contrast sharply with their actual, often mod­ est, outcomes. This collection of essays aims to explain the disparity by “directing] attention to the interpretively open, socially con­ structed, and negotiated character of technologically mediated ac­ tion” (p. 5). The chapters fall roughly into two groups: theoretical articles by Peter Lyman, William Graves III, and editor Mark A. Shields, and more focused ethnographic case studies by the re­ maining authors. Lyman argues persuasively that the social process of learning to use computers shapes how learners perceive and use these ma­ chines. However, his analysis is undermined by his insistence that the computer’s textual nature gives it a unique agency (“because it uses symbols it contains a culture, and is a medium for introducing new practices and values” [p. 19]). Lyman’s own case studies offer convincing examples of ways in which computers can reinforce ex­ isting work practices and social hierarchies rather than introducing novel problem-solving skills, yet he sees these results only as an illus­ tration of educational institutions’ “failure” to realize the inherent revolutionary potential of the computer (p. 22). Graves argues that the fate of educational computing projects is determined by the participants’ “ideologies of computerization,” 654 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE which define and legitimate institutional computing practices. Graves’s focus on the situated understandings of participants is an effective counter to technological determinism, though he ap­ proaches ideological determinism when he argues that ideologies of computerization define “the rationale, conditions, opportunities, and limits of sociotechnical change” (p. 85). In a similar vein, Shields discusses the role of “institutional legitimation” in establish­ ing educational computing programs (p. 162), and observes that “al­ though there was a computational revolution in the means of aca­ demic production, it was not accompanied by a revolution in the social relations of academic production” (p. 175). The case-study chapters collectively refute the expectation that technology alone will transform educational work practices or social relations. Sherry Turkle stresses the need for educational computing technology to accommodate different styles of teaching: “It is naive to launch experiments in educational computing that expect diver­ sity in content but not in the form and feeling of computer use” (p. 63). William O. Beeman describes the work habits of art histori­ ans with the apparent aim of demonstrating that computers can do little to assist their research. Kenneth T. Anderson, Anne Page McClard, and James Larkin present an ethnographic study of com­ puter use in a freshman dormitory and find that “Computers do not seem to revolutionize the way students live and work but rather fit within existing individual and group social patterns” (p. 142). Patrick McQuillan explores the “same-instructor effect”—the ob­ servation that introducing computer-based materials tends to im­ prove student performance not only in...