Beyond the black box

Technikgestaltung zwischen Wunsch und Wirklichkeit, 2003

The social shaping of technology (SST) perspective has developed as a response to techno-economically rational and linear conceptions of technology development and its consequences. It has brought together analysts from different backgrounds with a common interest in the role of social and political action for socio-technical change. Thus, SST is a broad term, covering a large domain of studies and analyses concerned with the mutual influence of technology and society on technology development. In this chapter we emphasise the political dimensions of social shaping, through a focus on the socio-technical processes entailed in technology development and change. Our perspective is based on the understanding that technological development is a social process. As such, it unfolds through processes with political implications, involving actors, occasions and strategies that help bring about technological change. Our intention is to pursue a broader view on the political dimensions of technological decision-making, and a broader treatment of socio-technical space, maintaining a focus on the inclusion and exclusion of actors, salient issues, and how they are dealt with and resolved.

Social Science Computer Review, 2006

A s three academics located in the domain of information systems (IS), we are delighted to act as guest editors and to highlight scholarship that applies a critical lens to the examination of information and communication technologies (ICT). In this editorial, we briefly present how reference disciplines-particularly sociology-have addressed issues of technology in society, placing this discussion in the context of the comparatively new disciplinary field of IS and its paradigmatic roots. We argue that IS has been dominated by inquiry adopting the philosophical approach of positivism but stress that there is a small and growing body of theoretical and empirical research from a critical perspective. We discuss this broadening field of critical research and critical research in IS in particular. Finally, we are pleased to introduce the articles we have chosen for this special issue that apply critical theories and methods to a number of ICT applications. Looking back at the entirety of sociology as a discipline, studying the role of technology in society has been marginal at best. Although never central to their doctrine, Marx, Weber, and Parsons all noted that technology played an instrumental role in society, subordinate to economic action, effectively a means to an economic end (Shields, 1997). With the arrival of the Frankfurt School in the mid-20th century, the study of the role of technology in society merged with the burgeoning field of critical theory, in which technology was part of a critique of modernity and the developments and institutions associated with modern society. For sociologists, critical theory allied technology with modernity and again viewed it instrumentally, as a tool of the modern state used for more perfect subjugation of the masses and the individual. In the later half of the 20th century, sociologists have drawn on authors such as Habermas, Offe, Bourdieu, Foucault, Calhoun, and Kellner to develop a more sophisticated critique of domination with an emancipatory interest, the fusion of social or cultural analysis, and the role of technology in society. Critical theorists of technology are typically seen by sociologists as mild technological determinists who have focused on the coevolution of modernity and technology and their joint limitations, pathologies, and destructive effects (Kellner, 1989). The Discipline of IS In the context of how ICTs are viewed and studied in IS, it is useful to take a little time to discuss the emerging discipline of IS-a subject of contestation within the IS community.

Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

Has technology grabbed the reins and galloped off with us under the saddle? Are entrepreneurs and research labs and marketers riding herd, spurring technological change with consequences for who we are and what we can become? Or is it all the rest of us, as users, driving what technology is developed and how it is incorporated into social and political life, for good or ill? Who deserves the credit and who the blame, for what effect? These are not new debates, but communication studies, known more for neglecting philosophy than embracing it, has not always been party to the discussions, despite a recent fascination with new technologies in journalism and mass communication. The early days of the Internet followed by ubiquitous and powerful digital machines produced a heady optimism by many about the potential of social media for bypassing traditional gatekeepers and enabling robust networks of people across the globe. But those days are now covered in the trail dust of claims of fake news, contagions of hate and violence, trolls and bots, election interference, hacking, and opinion silos. Technology, appearing now to ride roughshod over hopes for democracy and community, is viewed in much public discourse as a culprit behind a world gone rogue. Have media researchers been complicit in this swing of perceptions from utopian to dystopian? From savior to satan? From technological determinism to determined technology? Do we have enough grounding in the philosophy of technology to ask the right questions and steer a better conversation? Have we interrogated what technologies are and how and why they are developed, the uses to which they are put, and the claims made and consequences incurred? This forum asked experienced scholars in mass communication theory and research how we should think about technology, what part it plays in how, and what we know and who and what we become. What technologies should be developed, by whom, for what purposes? And on what grounds should we judge them? The contributions in this forum give us a quartet of different voices, experiences, and problematics, raising more questions than answering them. Jeremy Swartz and Janet Wasko start off by opening up considerations about what technology is and what it does, using examples of definitions from John Dewey to 841380J MQXXX10.1177/1077699019841380Journalism & Mass Communication QuarterlyInvited Forum research-article2019 352 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 96(2) Marshall McLuhan and beyond and conceptions of technology from biology and the environment to complex systems. On what grounds can we judge technologies, if they are the product of the same system as our values? More opportunities are needed for mass communication scholars to reimagine disciplinary and material boundaries and share research and engagement if we want to influence systems, they conclude. Carolyn Marvin invites us to consider the long sweep of technological changes and the pattern of disruptions that come in their wake, from the printing press forward. These disruptions fundamentally reshape our social relations, as technologies provide the "sociospatial grids foundational to communicative practice." In other words, they manage social distance and trust. Thus, changes in technology produce crises in communicative relations by disrupting expectations and introducing new suspicions. Digital technologies have produced widespread anxieties that require new conventions to re-establish, "gradually and painfully," a new social geography. Robert Logan shortens our historical view to the media developed since the 19th century, taking us through a brief tour of the phonograph, telephone, telegraph, and Internet and their unintended consequences. Initial optimism, including his own, about the possibility of decentralization of knowledge occasioned by digital media was wrong. These technologies have now turned the table on Marshall McLuhan's description of media. We are the extensions of media, completing technological systems for the profit and advantage of media businesses. He argues that as scholars we can only warn about such consequences and try to repair the damage caused by new monopolies. While Beth Coleman, too, thinks we have experienced a profound shift in our relationship to technology, it has come from decentralization-the view of the "swarm"rather than centralization. It began with the Enlightenment's elevation of humans over nature, who, hand in hand with their computational technology, achieved a reordered command-control system and a decentralized logic. Now, like runaway slaves, smart technology is "marooned"; it has escaped dominion, a coalition with a black aesthetic and politics of innovation, resistance, and freedom. The fusion of the informational and material world has created a built world that surrounds us, irresistibly beckoning. We ignore this change at our own peril, she warns. Despite their differences, all four essays challenge us to reconsider what technology is, what changes are being wrought in who we are and how we know, and what we may or may not be able to do about it. Lana Rakow, Associate Editor form, material public space as democratic resource, and the history and theory of freedom of expression.

2004

In the previous chapter, we explored transnational networks of dissent and how ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) have contributed to what many describe as a'global civil society', a space that is neither market nor state, and in which political activity takes place within and across national borders, working with and against states, and challenging notions of governance in the international system. While these transnational networks are not new, ICTs have influenced the organizational forms they are taking.

Oxford University Press eBooks, 2004

Science, Technology, & Human Values, 2002

Although scholarship in the social construction of technology (SCOT) has contributed much to illuminating technological development, most work using this theoretical approach is committed to an agency-centered approach. SCOT scholars have made only limited contributions to illustrating the influence of social structures. In this article, the authors argue for the importance of structural concepts to understanding technological development. They summarize the SCOT conceptual framework defined by Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker and survey some of the methodological and explanatory difficulties that arise with their approach. Then the authors present concepts from organizational sociology and political economy that illuminate structural influences in shaping phenomena of interest to SCOT scholars. These structural concepts can be applied to the study of the design, development, and transformation of technology. The authors conclude that the limited amount of scholarship on structural fac...

The Information Society, 2013

European journal of social theory, 2000

Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Consequences of ICTs, 2000

The environment of the modern organization has always been technological, but this has been understood in a number of distinct ways. For example, seen as collections of rationalized and instrumental practices, organizations themselves have been regarded as technologies in which effective information and communication processes are critical . Of more interest to this volume are the perspectives that have looked at information and communication technologies within organizations. Technologies have had profound effects on the way certain information work is done, such as actuarial work . With the expanding capabilities of digital computing, fields of study such as office automation (Johnson & Rice, 1984), operations research and management information systems (Dickson, 1982) emerged to focus on the question of how computer-based information and communication technologies might be integrated into organizational processes to make organizations and organizational processes more efficient and effective or otherwise to fulfill unmet organizational needs. Even as organizational scholars turn increasingly to considering issues of information and communication technologies (ICTs), a complementary turn is made by technology scholars who look to social and organizational issues implicated in technology design and development. Located in fields such as the sociology of technology, computer science, and the anthropology of work, and typically organized under the general category of social construction, this research holds that technologies are and have always been social. Our interest in this chapter is to explore the intersection between social constructionism and the study of ICTs in the workplace. We begin by identifying a set of assumptions that underlie a constructionist perspective and indicate some ways in which these assumptions appear in studies of the workplace. Fundamental to constructionism is the active effort to privilege 1 neither social nor technical factors in constructing accounts of technology design, development, implementation, or use. In the next section we reflect on the impact constructionism has had on studies of the workplace. We observe that within these studies, scholars employ constructionism for different purposes. The first is to provide a framework for understanding ICTs in the workplace and the second is to provide guidance for designing and implementing ICTs in organizations. Our interest here is an assessment of the extent to which constructionist views are successful in each of these. Our argument will be that social constructionist views have in principle developed an understanding that privileges neither technology nor the workplace, but that their use in design and implementation have tended to tilt so as to privilege either the technology or the workplace. Using the terminology of Argyris and Schon (1978), this tilt may be seen in a contrast between the espoused theory of social constructionism (its theoretical understanding) and its theory-in-practice (its actual employment in research and in organizations). We conclude the chapter with some reflections on how scholars might address the this tendency to tilt, and maintain a constructionist perspective in practical contexts. Constructionist sensibilities tend to arise as a consequence of a move away from technological determinism. Because this move has occurred across a number of disciplines, constructionist principles come from a variety of traditions, including history, engineering and design, information studies, communication, and organization studies. The perspectives historically identified with the social construction of technology typically examine periods of technology development (Jackson, 1996; Leivrouw, in this volume). Yet we find constructionism increasingly influential in studies of the use and implementation of technologies within organizations. The variety of constructionist positions makes it difficult to catalog perspectives, but they tend to hold a number of assumptions in common. Determinism has had a steady presence in technology studies . Generally, determinism is the position that, given a set of initial conditions, outcomes can be predicted with a some amount of certainty. Underlying determinism is a logic of rationality, often referred to as technical rationality, or an assumption that the technical and social world operate according to rules that are prior to any particular situation and that predetermine the set of possible outcomes. Stronger variants of determinism hold that there exists a technological imperative, that artifacts move inexorably and in a linear fashion toward a certain end state (Edge, 1995). Within studies of technology across disciplines, determinism may be applied either to explaining the development of technologies, or to predicting the consequences of their use. All constructionist perspectives reject determinism, though at different levels. And, as a consequence, they embrace some level of indeterminacy. For example, sociologists of technology Williams and Edge (1996) point out that social shaping of technology (SST) perspectives reject the notion that technology emerges from 'a single social determinant, or through the unfolding of a predetermined technical logic' (p. 54). In their study of technology use in organizations, Sproull and Keisler (1991) hold that the more consequential impacts of technology use cannot be anticipated. Constructionist perspectives recognize that reference to technological elements alone can adequately explain neither technology development nor use . Instead, technical and social factors are intimately interconnected . It is through the interplay of these elements that technologies develop. Hughes (1986) describes this as an interactive perspective, one that provides all elements present in technological development with equal status. From an interactive perspective, technology itself is understood as a collection of dynamically related elements rather than as a static and stable entity. As Hughes (1986) makes clear, the key to the approach is the metaphor of the 'seamless web,' which discourages an isolation of individual elements and encourages a recognition of the multiple determinations of technologies. Within organizational studies, the socio-technical systems (STS) perspective was one of the first to argue for paying attention to the interrelationship of social and technical factors. Classic STS emphasizes the importance of fit or the match between the social and the technical, in order to optimize organizational processes (Emory & Trist, 1961; Mumford, 1983). In another example, it was this commitment to both social and technical factors that helped to launch the field of computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), which seeks to combine an understanding of the way people work with an expertise in computing technologies Mantovani, 1996;. The physical nature of most technologies, including the devices that accompany information and communication technologies, means that we tend to view artifacts as able to exist apart from any context of use (Jackson, 1996). Particularly in organizational contexts, technological artifacts are easily taken for granted, with a fixed and stable nature and a predetermined boundaries. Constructionism rejects this assumption and problematizes the constitution of technology, as in Bucciarelli's (1994) criticism of 'object-world' accounts of technological design. Rather than being complete or at rest, technologies continuously change and reconstitute through their engagement in communities. As a consequence, describing technologies becomes more complicated. Woolgar notes: The social researcher has no 'neutral' (that is, free of the social milieu) description of the technology around which to build a picture of 'social influences'. Instead, the 'technical character' of the technology--like what it can do and how it does it--becomes part of the phenomenon to be explained by reference to social and political factors. (1996:88) An important example with organizational studies is the use of structuration theory . Structuration posits a duality of structure, which is the notion that human action simultaneously creates structures of social systems and is shaped by such structures. Structuration emphasizes the interaction of technology and organization in creating these systems. For example, adaptive structuration theory (AST) DeSanctis & Poole, 1994), outlines a set of appropriation processes through which a technology comes to constituted differently by different groups of people. Similarly, the emergence perspective Markus & Robey, 1988) demonstrates the ways in which technologies continue to be defined throughout a changing context.

The research for this chapter was prompted by an event in 2002 involving a recent graduate of the New Technology degree of the University of East London's Department of Innovation Studies. She had obtained temporary employment on a project funded by the European Union in the London Borough of Newham. Her work involved creating an IT room in a run down housing estate used largely to house refugees. The estate was rat infested and the flats had water running down the walls. There was money to install the latest computers but no money to get rid of the rats or of the humidity in the flats. She wondered if this made any sense… customers will be Chinese, Indian, Brazilian, Thai…" This message was illustrated by the case story of Neelamma, who, as part of an experiment organised by Hewlett Packard, was charging local villagers "70 cents apiece for photos of newborns, weddings and other proud moments of village life" taken with a digital camera and printed with a portable printer powered by solar charged batteries which had been rented from Hewlett Packard for $9 a month.