It's nice to be able to forget things.

BACK: Views of Science

Introduction

The way that Kuhn describes paradigms feels that it only applies to large concepts, big scientific ideas. However, we argue here, that this notion of paradigms can also be applied to technologies–our artifacts and tools that we use to extend our body and help us do what we need to do.

Tacit knowledge–we know how to do something, but we don’t know how to explain how to do it, ie: riding a bike. Our body knows, but our mind doesn’t. This idea of tacit knowledge is what makes science difficult to transport and bring to other places (cultures, societies, times…). You’re not going to be a chemist or physicist by reading a book.

But are these ideas useful for viewing technology? Transportation–from walking to horse riding to wagons to cars to buses to trains to electric cars. Some might argue that our current push for electric cars might not be a paradigm shift because it still looks and feels and runs like a car, but others might say that the main point of it is to come out of the need for oil.

Technology and Human Nature - Nye

Nye argues that we built humanity through tools and machines–it is inseparable from being human. The way we think is through technology, which makes a more complex social life possible. Humans are toolmakers. He distinguishes humans from other species as a toolmakers–not language or power systems. Our political and economic systems are created out of our tools.

A lot of people feel that technology arises out of necessity. Nye argues the opposite–rather, tools allow us to make social evolutions. Flying. When would the idea of flying feel necessary as it was being developed. But through the inventions and work that was done on different aircrafts, this allowed for social evolutions. Similarly for computers, calculators, and all of our technologies.

Toolmaking feels very much like storytelling. As you design and make it, you’re telling an imaginative narrative of a world that could happen with this tool.

What is Technology?

Greeks originally defined it as knowledge of practical skills. Technologists needed to be able to apply what they knew in order to practically apply themselves to their culture.

But modern science brought instead the notion of ‘control and prediction,’ which changes the role of technology as well. Galileo and Francis Bacon were both funded by the interests of politics in order to build tools for the military and invent useful artifacts for society.

In short, there is no concrete definition of technology. It has changed over time. Rather, we use other words to refer to the artifacts that are used–“invention.” German “Technik” have a larger set of ideas that refers to machines and tools in order to speicifically train engineers. By WWI, “technology” has expanded across many many fields. It is now an extremely important but vague term.

There is also a fear about autonomous technologies–that one day those tools that we’ve made are going to have a life of their own. This notion has also created the idea of technological determinism–it suggests that technology is distant and far away from our societies and will one day decide that it no longer needs us, even though we’ve had a completely symbiotic relationship with it thus far.

There is a gendering of technology–the notion that we associate masculine values to technology is a recent development. There is a technical education that is reserved to men–which has created this gender gap. A lot of work in the past that have been made by women. (more about this later)

Technological Artifacts are never “Isolated” - Lewis Mumford

How should we understand civilizations in relation to their technologies. He has a very geological view about this. Eotechnic, paleotechnic, neotechnic eras have a specific set of materials, processes, and machines associated with them–water and wood, coal and iron, electricity and alloy.

There is a large, technical system in play, a sequence of systems. “The machien cannot be divorced from its larger social pattern: for it is this pattern that gives it meaning and purpose.” It is a similar idea that Kuhn has with his paradigms–outside of the paradigm, the artifact will have less meaning.

Technology is not “applied science”

• The atomic bomb (tacit knowledge): this was based on materials, trial and error. There was no science involved.
• Steam Engine: Physics weren’t fully understood of the steam engine, but people developed it.
• Thomas Edison’s light bulb
• Airplane
• Computers and mathematics
• Telescope

No technological change is inevitable.

Technology is not a force of nature, Moore’s law is not a natural law. Machines shouldn’t be seen as a coercive agent dictating social change. It seems more reasonable to assume that cultural and socioeconomic choices shape their use.

• Rejection of guns in 16th century Japan
• The Wheel in North Africa
• Symbolic meaning of Technical Objects
• Hidden Assumptions

NEXT: Science as a Social Process