Capitalism
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Capitalism and Technology
Collaborative effort started by participants in T&L 522, Technology, Culture, and Education
Characteristics of capitalism that determine major features of technological design
Feenberg 185-186
Labor and/or the environment has no effect on technological design because they are not immediately involved in the networks of design choice. Labor and environmental concerns are merely "externalities" to be overcome after the fact.
Capitalist technical code
Feenberg 15, 20-21, 76-80, 87-88
Technical Code defines the rules by which technical choices are made. Strategic Coding is the development, modification, and application of codes by those in power, to control subordinate people or organizations in society.
Operational autonomy
Feenberg 75-76, 85-87
Organizations that put into operation a variety of microtechniques It is also the power to make strategic choices without regard to external consequences All viable strategies from his position must reproduce his operational autonomy.
Technological rationality
Feenberg 15, 75-76, 165-166
Role of power/knowledge in capitalism and social control
Feenberg 16, 65, 68
Technological action is an exercise of power and become even more true as society is further organized around technology.
Technology, according to Feenberg, is a two-sided phenomenon. On one side, we have the operator as object. This maintains social control. On the other side, we have technological rationity which tells us that mastery of the machine is the principle source of power.
The insidious feature of this phenomenon is in the technological mechanism of social control where technology is understood as "neutral".
Why the working class colludes in its own opression
Feenberg says this occurs because capitalism "delivers the goods." Maybe we are willing to trade physical comfort for political and cultural power. But, what happens when the jobs get out-sourced and we can no longer buy the goods? Will it be too late to take back the power we have so willingly abdicated to the capitalists?
rationalizing a system of domination
Capitalism, reifying and compensating integrative moments
Feenberg 178-183
Decontextualization and Systemization
Decontextualization is the separation of the "technical object"--human being, natural resource, etc.--from its immediate context. Systemization is the process of connecting decontextualized objects into networks. The new system then becomes the new context. Examples of "system-centered design"in our Capitalist society include:
- Decontextualization of workers from their families, communities, and culture for the benefit of industry or institution.
- Extended family has given way to the idea of the nuclear family as the smallest, mobile worker unit.
- Educational institutions that don't invite students to bring/share their own goals, culture, questions to school.
Reductionism and Mediation
The separation of primary from secondary qualities, or the reduction of objects to their useful aspects. Also, the relationship of the aesthetic and ethical qualities of technical design to its useful aspect.
Autonomization and Vocation
Positioning and Initiative
Where does this go?
The technological subject falls in with the object's own tendency to extract a desired income. What liitle initiative remains to the subject is limited and channeled leading to voluntary cooperation.