Urge Scholars Research Articles

Reply to Mark Elam

My essay on the empty black box seems to have hit some raw nerves. I am grateful to Mark Elam for taking time to respond and I appreciate the passion in his words. Unfortunately, he seems more interested in applying ideological decals and passing peremptory judgments than in addressing any of the issues I posed. Presenting himself in the graceful image of a good ironist, Elam shoots some rather illiberal, nonironic shots at fear and loathing, predilection for cruelty, and such like. Oh my. It looks as though Baudelaire is wearing his Godzilla costume today. Mr. Elam correctly notes that I urge scholars to take a position on the larger questions about technology and the human condition. I am convinced that important questions about moral and political life are answered within the artificial forms and processes of our world. For that reason it is incumbent upon a writer not only to describe, analyze, and interpret but also to let people know what he or she makes of these technologically embodied ways of living. This should not be the focus of every moment of scholarship and intellectual exchange. But, surely, at the end of the day, our readers and our students should know where we stand on such broad issues as the promise of technological development or on what we would advise on particular consequential social and technical patterns. Elam mistakenly supposes that I insist on rooting positions of this kind in truth. Wrong decal. As a matter of fact, my view is that both evaluations of technology and the cultivation of lasting virtues that concern choice must emerge from dialogue within real communities in particular situations. As regards decision making, I believe that the challenge is not that of how to impose universal standards of judgment clarified by liberal metaphysics, but how to expand the social and political spaces where ordinary citizens can play a role in making choices early on about technologies that will affect them (as argued in Winner 1992). From that point of view there is a great deal to be learned from social histories and sociological studies, including those written in a constructivist