Technology's Impact on Society: A Sociological Perspective, Slides of Introduction to Sociology

Download Technology's Impact on Society: A Sociological Perspective and more Slides Introduction to Sociology in PDF only on Docsity! Chapter 17 MEDIATING: TECHNOLOGY docsity.com Ubiquity and Significance of Technology Zygmunt Bauman (1993:187) Postmodern Ethics: ‘technology [is] setting the vocabulary of the world’s narrative in a way that allows nothing but technological action and that expresses any worry and trouble as a demand for a “technological fix”’. Albert Borgmann (1984:27), Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: Technology: ‘tentatively defined as the typical way in which one in the modern era takes up with reality’. docsity.com Modernity Characterised – Virilio Three Revolutions in Speed: 1. Transportation – movement across territory (enshrined in the engine: steam → internal combustion → jet → rocket) 2. Transmission – movement independent of territory (Marconi → Edison → radio → television → electronics) 3. Transplantation – inwards movement of technology. Miniaturisation and invasion of the human body (cardiac stimulator, memory implants, the “biomachine”) Paul Virilio (2000:35) docsity.com Virilio and the Accident • The invention of new technologies is also the invention of new accidents • E.g. the invention of the ship also invents the shipwreck • 20th Century: era of the mass produced industrial accident • E.g. the Titanic (1912), Chernobyl (1986) • 21st Century: era of mass produced industrial and postindustrial accidents • E.g. Genetic engineering, information technology → The era of the “generalized accident” docsity.com Effects and Consequences Edward Tenner talks about technology’s “revenge effects”. Key point: technologies have unintended consequences. Even though technologies are designed for specific ends they can be put to alternative uses (e.g. hacking). See also: Charles Perrow (1999) Normal Accidents. Princeton: Princeton University Press. docsity.com The Car Herbert Marcuse (1995:128): ‘The average man hardly cares for any living being with the intensity and persistence he shows for his automobile. The machine that is adored is no longer dead matter but becomes something like a human being’. docsity.com When Thinking about Technology We Should Think About: • Material objects • Who controls & accesses them • What is done to/with the technology • What the technology does to/for us docsity.com Thinking Technology as… • Environments (changing perceptions, creating forces and conditions) • Socio-technical systems (used by people in combination with other people and things - relationships) docsity.com Technical Artifacts as Processes Example - the telephone: → Was fixed, but is now mobile → It was a means to send and receive the disembodied human voice through space. → Now also a means to send and receive images, music and text (which its inventors never foresaw). → Mobiles also store data. What once was a phone now looks more like a computer device. docsity.com Technology and Gender (1) Many feminists have argued that scholarship on technology has focused on “big boys toys” → e.g. weapons and transportation technologies Relatedly, interest has been on the large and the spectacular rather than the mundane. docsity.com Technology and Gender (2) ‘The indices to the standard histories of technology … do not contain a single reference, for example, to such a significant cultural artifact as the baby bottle. Here is a simple implement which, along with its attendant delivery systems, has revolutionized a basic biological process, transformed a fundamental human experience for vast numbers of infants and mothers, and been one of the more controversial exports of Western technology to underdeveloped countries – yet it finds no place in our histories of technology.’ Ruth Schwartz Cowan (1979) ‘From Virginia Dare to Virginia Slims: Women and Technology in American Life’, Technology and Culture, 20 (1), p. 52. docsity.com Four Senses… 1. Women as bearers of children → Women menstruate, parturate and lactate – men do not. Technologies impinge on all these processes 2. Women as workers 3. Women as homemakers 4. Women as antitechnocrats docsity.com Four Senses… 1. Women as bearers of children 2. Women as workers → Paid less than men, labour markets gendered, often considered temporary → Leads to different experiences interacting with technological change: women replace men in the workplace when they work for less 3. Women as homemakers 4. Women as antitechnocrats docsity.com Four Senses… 1. Women as bearers of children 2. Women as workers 3. Women as homemakers → Most domestic labour done by women → Households largely unaffected by industrial labour-saving technologies → Domestic technologies invented by men for women 4. Women as antitechnocrats docsity.com Technology and Gender and the Automobile… David J. Hess (1995) Science and Technology in a Multicultural World: The Cultural Politics of Facts and Artifacts, New York: Columbia University Press, p.44-5. docsity.com When the Ford design executive Mimi Vandermolen was given the power to redesign a car, she consulted fifty women about problems they faced in automobiles. The newly designed Ford Probe resulted in a number of changes that made the car more appealing to the professional women whom Ford targeted as their market. For example, gas pedals were redesigned to be at the right angle for women who use high heels, knobs were contoured so that even women with long fingernails could clear them easily, and a new molding was used for the seats, so that women in dresses could get in and out of the car more easily. Furthermore … the point at which the windshield meets the engine compartment was lowered because their tests showed that women generally like to sit high and close to the wheel, and they preferred the lower design. [T]he car is available with a panic button on the key chain…. docsity.com The redesigned Ford Probe was based on the results of interviews with women at Ford and on discussions in a marketing committee within the company. As a result, the issues that were salient to these women reflect the clothing and comfort concerns of women who work for a large American corporation, and mostly professional women within that category. The design changes can hardly be considered radical, and they inscribe in the technology a particular image of women that could be considered patriarchal. In other words, the car is designed for a woman who has long fingernails, uses high heels, and so on. Thus, although the Probe provides one example of how a technology can be redesigned in light of masculinist design biases, the new design may also inscribe new biases of its own. docsity.com