Technology

and Politics
Week 6: Rethinking the Politics 
of Technology

College of Humanities, Hanyang University

Spring Semester, 2018
 Weekly Schedule

 Week 07 (April 16): Case 1. How Do We Evaluate the

Success of Patriot Missiles?
 Week 08 (April 23): Mid‐term Exam
 Week 09 (April 30): Case 2. Who Were Responsible for
the Challenger’s Explosion?
 Week 10 (May 7): National Holiday
 Week 11 (May 14): Case 3. How Do We Test the Safety of
Trains and Airplanes?
 Week 12 (May 21): Case 4. Politics of Expertise (1)
 Week 13 (May 28): Case 5. Politics of Expertise (2)
 Week 14 (June 4): Case 6. Politics of the Fourth Industrial
Revolution
 Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch,
The Golem at Large (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
What We’ve Discussed So Far

 Technological Determinism & Technocratic

Thinking
 Technology is apolitical and value‐free even though it
has political effects.
 Use vs Abuse model & Technocracy

 Technology Does Have Politics & Gender

 The design and development of—and the arrangement
required for—technology may reflect power relations,
and its use and deployment may reproduce or reinforce
those relations.
 Technology as a form of life
Rethinking the Politics of Technology

 Technology as a Site and Object of Politics

(Sheila Jasanoff)
Rethinking the Politics of Technology

 Technology as a Site and Object of Politics

(Sheila Jasanoff)
 Technology as Risk
• The fall of Icarus
 Technology as Design
• Daedalus’ labyrinth on Crete
 Technology as an Instrument of Standardization
• Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
 Technology as Ethical Transgression
• Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Politics of Risk

 Mainstream Approach
 Defines risks in terms of the likelihood of the occurrence
of a harm and the severity of that harm
• Technocratic solution: Science‐based & economically‐
oriented analysis and management of risks
 Demarcation of facts from values
 Rational calculation of the likely consequences of
different choices and of their costs
 The goal is to minimize risks within the budget
that society is willing to spend on safety
• Technological determinism: Advances in S&T 
Better methods for identifying and assessing risks
(including previously unnoticed ones)
Politics of Risk

 Mainstream Approach (cont’d)

 Public “Deficit” Model
 Assumes that scientific and technological knowledges
are goods in short supply outside the expert
communities, and that the public is deficient in these
knowledges
 Views scientific and technical illiteracy as a serious
moral and political problem, leaving the public
incapable of evaluating risks and acting rationally
 This problem should be corrected by didactic
education, a transfer of scientific and technological
knowledges to broad publics
Politics of Risk

 Critiques
 Public evaluation of risks
 Involves assessments both of the quality of relevant
social institutions and of the extent and implications
of dependency upon those institutions for safety or
for the protection of other valued aspects of life
 Expert evaluation of risks
 Focuses on quantitative assessment of morbidity and
mortality, missing the public’s concerns
 Based on particular epistemic, theoretical, and
methodological commitments—which are grounded
in specific historical, social, and cultural contexts
Politics of Risk

 Critiques (cont’d)
 Thus, more advances in S&T will not automatically
resolve the conflicts over risks. Often, they produce new
forms of risks that are even more difficult to identify,
assess, and control.
 The identification and assessment of risks may also
contain broader normative and social assumptions, and
these assumptions should be subject to public scrutiny
 Non‐expert lay publics may well have relevant
knowledge and insights.
 Different politics of risk, which requires extending the
scope of public deliberation?
Politics of Design

 Mainstream Approach
 Adopts similar technological determinist and
technocratic assumptions
• The choices in design are governed by an inner,
technical logic that is free from society and politics
 Demarcation of facts and values
• The success or failure depends upon the inherent
technical superiority of those choices
 Expert’s rational evaluation of technological
feasibility and its cost
• Inputs from the public may be important, but only
as consumers (typically through market mechanisms)
Politics of Design

 Critiques
 The nature of choices in technological design
• Scientific and technical judgments cannot easily be
separated from value and political judgments.
 Interpretative flexibility
• Technology and its technical aspects may have
different meanings for different social groups.
 Beyond those who are directly involved in the
design and development of technology.
 The success or failure of technology
• How, by whom, and in what contexts the very criteria
for success is defined should be examined.
Politics of Design
Politics of Design
Politics of Design
Politics of Design

 Critiques (cont’d)
 Call for public participation not only in the decision‐
making related to the implementation of already existing
technologies but also in the design and development
phases
• Yet, it proves extremely difficult for lay citizens to
question expert decisions supported by the state
or industry.
 Resistance as the more readily available means of
political expression in public controversies over
technology
 NGO campaign against Monsanto’s “terminator
technology”
Politics of Standardization

 Mainstream Approach
 Modernity requires technologies of simplification,
through which increasingly complex technological
societies can be rendered manageable.
• Classification & Standardization (e.g., statistics,
numerical aggregation, cost‐benefit analysis,
quantitative risk assessment, etc.)
 Reducing complexity, eliminating ambiguity, and
providing the foundation for building trust and safety
 These technologies constitute effective instruments
of state power, but they could also allow citizens to
hold the state accountable for arbitrary actions.
Politics of Standardization

 Critiques
 Technologies of simplification often mask (rather than
reduce or eliminate) the complexity and ambiguity of
social life and the natural world.
 They may forcefully pigeonhole people and things into
categories in which they do not belong, and suppress
their historicity, particularity and diversity, etc.
• The implications are profoundly political.
 Recurrent conflicts between individuals asserting
themselves and political forces that treat them
(through technology) as members of manageable
population
Politics of Ethical Constraint

 Mainstream Approach
 Advances in S&T may entail ethical challenges and
dilemmas.
 E.g., the creation or use of human embryos for
research or medical treatments  the moral status
of human embryos, women’s health rights, etc.
 Frames the issue as a matter of striking a balance
between technological progress and moral values
 Emphasizes that the ethical aspects of technology are
often too complex for lay citizens to digest
 Prioritize the dialogue between experts in S&T and
those in ethics, law, and related social sciences
Politics of Ethical Constraint

 Critiques
 Mainstream thinking:
• Focuses on the ethics of “means,” taking technological
development as a fait accompli
• Rarely recognizes the ethics of “ends” that deal with
more fundamental questions (such as the goals and
purposes of technology)
• Does not address broader social and political contexts,
prioritizing individual liberty and rights
• Tends to overlook the public’s real concerns and
underestimate their knowledge and insights
 “Thinning” of public debates on technology
Politics of Ethical Constraint

 Critiques (cont’d)
 Again, call for more public participation in ethical
deliberation on technology
 Requires not only an understanding of technology
as a socio‐political product and process, but also a
reconceptualization of “ethics,” “politics,” and
“democracy”
Video clips

 Pandora’s Box: A Fable From the Age of Science

Part 6. A is for Atom (BBC TV, 1992)
 Using the cases of the United States, the United Kingdom,
and the Soviet Union, this documentary gives a critical
insight into the history of nuclear power technologies.
 While watching this documentary, please have in mind
the four, interconnected aspects of the politics of
technology we have discussed so far: (1) the politics of
technological risk; (2) the politics of technological design,
(3) technology as an instrument of standardization and
its political dimensions, and (4) the ethical questions
arising from the development and use of technology.