Md. Dalim #661345 11/02/02 Blue Black Modernity and Technology 6641 FM UG 9/12/02 5:38 PM Page i 6641 FM UG 9/12/02 5:38 PM Page ii This Page Intentionally Left Blank Modernity and Technology edited by Thomas J. Misa, Philip Brey, and Andrew Feenberg The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 6641 FM UG 9/12/02 5:38 PM Page iii ©2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Sabon by UG / GGS Information Services. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Modernity and technology / edited by Thomas J. Misa, Philip Brey, and Andrew Feenberg. p. cm ISBN 0-262-13421-7 (hc. : alk. paper) 1. Technology—Social aspects. I. Misa, Thomas J. II. Brey, Philip. III. Feenberg, Andrew. T14.5 .M63 2003 303.48Ј3—dc21 2002071754 10987654321 6641 FM UG 9/12/02 5:38 PM Page iv Contents Acknowledgments vii Workshop Participants ix 1 The Compelling Tangle of Modernity and Technology 1 Thomas J. Misa I Modernity Theory and Technology Studies 2 Theorizing Modernity and Technology 33 Philip Brey 3 Modernity Theory and Technology Studies: Reflections on Bridging the Gap 73 Andrew Feenberg 4 Critical Theory, Feminist Theory, and Technology Studies 105 Barbara L. Marshall II Technologies of Modernity 5 Modernity under Construction: Building the Internet in Trinidad 139 Don Slater 6 Surveillance Technology and Surveillance Society 161 David Lyon 7 Infrastructure and Modernity: Force, Time, and Social Organization in the History of Sociotechnical Systems 185 Paul N. Edwards 6641 FM UG 9/12/02 5:38 PM Page v vi Contents 8 Creativity of Technology: An Origin of Modernity? 227 Junichi Murata III Changing Modernist Regimes 9 The Contested Rise of a Modernist Technology Politics 257 Johan Schot 10 Technology, Medicine, and Modernity: The Problem of Alternatives 279 David Hess 11 The Environmental Transformation of the Modern Order 303 Arthur P. J. Mol 12 Technology, Modernity, and Development: Creating Social Capabilities in a POLIS 327 Haider A. Khan 13 Modernity and Technology—An Afterword 359 Arie Rip References 373 About the Authors 409 Index 413 6641 FM UG 9/12/02 5:38 PM Page vi Acknowledgments The volume draws on an international workshop held at the University of Twente in the Netherlands in November 1999, which brought to- gether a diverse group of scholars from the communities of modernity studies (philosophy, cultural studies, and social theory) and technology studies (history, sociology, anthropology); see Ͻwww.iit.edu/~misa/ twente/Ͼ. This workshop was made possible by financial support from the U.S. National Science Foundation (grant SES-9900894), the Univer- sity of Twente, and the Dutch Graduate School for Science, Technology and Modern Culture (WTMC). Our collective efforts to understand technology and modernity go back to a seminar series that Pieter Tijmes, Johan Schot, and Tom Misa organized at Twente in the spring of 1997. At Twente we would especially like to thank Gerdien Linde-de Ruiter for a thousand small acts of kindness and assistance in planning and preparing the workshop, as well as the friendly and expert assistance of Femke Merkx in conducting the workshop. Many workshop partici- pants freely shared their own ongoing research and reflections, giving our authors invaluable insights. 6641 FM UG 9/12/02 5:38 PM Page vii 6641 FM UG 9/12/02 5:38 PM Page viii6641 FM UG 9/12/02 5:38 PM Page ii This Page Intentionally Left Blank Workshop Participants Hans Achterhuis (University of Twente, Netherlands) Michael Allen (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA) Anne Balsamo (Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, USA) Anne-Jorun Berg (SINTEF Institute for Social Research in Industry, Norway) Regina Lee Blaszczyk (Boston University, USA) Philip Brey (University of Twente, Netherlands) Nil Disco (University of Twente, Netherlands) Paul Edwards (University of Michigan, USA) Andrew Feenberg (San Diego State University, USA) Hans Harbers (University of Groningen and University of Twente, Netherlands) Mikael Hård (Technical University Darmstadt, Germany) Gabrielle Hecht (University of Michigan, USA) David Hess (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA) Thomas Hughes (University of Pennsylvania, USA) Haider Khan (University of Denver USA) Michiel Korthals (Wageningen University, Netherlands) Andrew Light (New York University, USA) David Lyon (Queen’s University, Canada) Barbara Marshall (Trent University, Canada) Thomas Misa (Illinois Institute of Technology, USA) Joel Mokyr (Northwestern University, USA) Arthur Mol (Wageningen University, Netherlands) Junichi Murata (University of Tokyo, Japan) David Nye (Odense University, Denmark) Johan Schot (University of Twente, Netherlands) Don Slater (London School of Economics, United Kingdom) Pieter Tijmes (University of Twente, Netherlands) Ulrich Wengenroth (München University of Technology, Germany ) 6641 FM UG 9/12/02 5:38 PM Page ix [...]... disciplinary and philosophical obstacles to analyzing technology and modernity together, and then by developing methodological proposals for surmounting these obstacles Feenberg aims similarly at “bridging the gap” by diagnosing the philosophical and methodological gaps and overlaps between technology studies and modernity theory Using Thomas Kuhn and Karl Marx as exemplars of these two traditions, and gathering... well-worn argument hinging on technology: postFordist manufacturing technology, media technology, communication technology, and especially computer and information technology From this volume’s viewpoint, these technologically determinist theories—common to many modernists and postmodernists alike—simply miss the theoretical salience of technology It is in the details of technology, and not its macro-level... various levels of understanding The papers in part I, Modernity Theory and Technology Studies,” are methodological pieces concerned with description and analysis Philip Brey, Andrew Feenberg, and Barbara Marshall take up various disciplinary angles (respectively, technology studies, philosophy, and sociology) Each of their essays reflects on the interactions between technology and either modern socioeconomic... technologies we face and the ambiguities in the technologies that we might exploit.23 Abstract, reified, and universalistic conceptions of technology obscure the significant differences between birth control and hydrogen bombs, and blind us to the ways different groups and cultures have appropriated the same technology and used it to different ends To constructively confront technology and modernity, we must... omnipotent, and deterministic “technique.” And Habermas, as Feenberg (chapter 3 in this volume) writes, “has elaborated the most architectonically sophisticated theory of modernity without any reference at all to technology. ” These theorists of modernity invariably posit technology, ” where they deal with it at all, as an abstract, unitary, and totalizing entity, The Compelling Tangle of Modernity and Technology. .. infrastructures.” Technology and modernity, to repeat the theme, are co-constructions Showing how these co-constructions occur, and developing a methodology for understanding these processes, are the goals of Edwards’ chapter Reviewing the SAGE early-warning military system in the 1950s and the ARPANET/Internet system beginning in the 1970s, and retelling the The Compelling Tangle of Modernity and Technology. .. practical and political matters These chapters provide a normative critique of modernity and technology as unitary, totalizing, and universal by suggesting alternative modes of developing technology or, indeed, alternative modernities.34 In their discussion of alternatives, the chapters in this section also offer original and substantial critiques of technology policy, medicine, environmental technology, and. .. of theoretical and methodological issues in bringing together modernity studies (e.g Marx, Weber, Habermas, Heidegger, Giddens, Beck, Latour, Castells) and technology studies (sociology and history of technology) , including a perspective on postmodern theory (including Harvey, Jameson, Baudrillard, Lyotard) He develops the co-construction theme, which jointly problematizes modernity and technology, first... cultural formations and technological systems that together constitute modern society “Our fate is worked out here as surely as on Heidegger’s forest paths,” as Andrew Feenberg phrases our contemporary dilemma (Feenberg 1999a: p 197) Our volume takes up this pressing task The Compelling Tangle of Modernity and Technology 5 Proposal One: The concepts technology and modernity have a complex and tangled... analysis of technology Even more so than Feenberg and Brey, she combines her theoretical comments with detailed empirical discussion Her illustrations of what she terms the “gendertechnology -modernity nexus” include the feminist-inspired sexual assault evidence kit as a forensic technology and the pharmaceutical framing of erectile dysfunction with Viagra “[T]here is no point at which technology and modernity . Tangle of Modernity and Technology 1 Thomas J. Misa I Modernity Theory and Technology Studies 2 Theorizing Modernity and Technology 33 Philip Brey 3 Modernity Theory and Technology Studies: Reflections. SES-9900894), the Univer- sity of Twente, and the Dutch Graduate School for Science, Technology and Modern Culture (WTMC). Our collective efforts to understand technology and modernity go back to a seminar. concepts technology and modernity have a complex and tangled history. For more than a century modernity has been a key theoretical con- struct in interpreting and evaluating social and cultural