Critical Theory
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Critical Theory of Technology
Collaborative effort T&L 522 Technology, Culture, and Education.
Reification of Technology
Feenberg p.167, 175, 188
Reification: the structural process whereby the commodity form permeates life in capitalist society. Reification: Descrive social relationships and how they had become objects that can be manipulated, bought and sold.
"the structure of both market and bureaucracy is essentially related to the structure of formal rationality, and bring to light the congruence of modes of thought and ation that rest on the fragmentation of society, analytic thinking, technologty, and the autonomization of production units under the control of private owners (p. 166)."
Commodity exchange has become the central organizing principle for all sectors of society. This allows commodity fetishism to permeate all social institutions (e.g., law, administration, journalism) as well as all academic disciplines, including philosophy. Lukács was especially concerned with how reification makes human beings seem like mere things obeying the inexorable laws of the marketplace.
Ambivalence of Technology
Feenberg p.52-53
Critical theory would say that technology is not a thing, but an ambivalent process of development between different possibilities. It is different than "neutral" because of the role of social values in the design of technical systems. From this point of view, technology is a struggle where alternatives are debated and decided.
Potentiality
Feenberg p.9-10, 64, 187
Formal bias/Substantive bias
Feenberg p.80-82, 177
Technological Holism
Feenberg p.163, 170
The focus of a unified whole which is greater than the simple sum of their parts.
Marcuse propose us to focus on the overall picture rather "than through calculative contemplation of their manipulable components."
A modern "holistic ontology (Bloch)" that includes qualitative social dimensionality as well as scientific-technical rationality.
Primary Instrumentalization
Feenberg p.175-178, 183, 190
Primary instrumentalization is the technical orientation toward reality (Heidegger's "mode of revealing"). The primary instrumentalization is like the skeleton takes on body and weight in the secondary instrumentalization 's devices and systems in a social context. Capitalism tries to reduce technique to the primary level of decontextualization, calculation, and control and considers the secondary aspects nontechnical, thus eliminating contro by nontechnical influences such as religion, or moral authority in pusuit of efficiency and power. It is the capitalist fixation on technology simply as raw materials in servive of extrinsic goals and overlooks the benefits of secondary instrumentalization.
Secondary Instrumentalization
Feenberg p.175-178, 183, 190
Why Should/can ordinary people influence the design of technology?
Feenberg p.173-174
How can design be impacted?
Feenberg p.87
The design can be impacted by changing the technical codes. Capitalist technical codes are used strategically by the powerful to maintain control, while subversive strategies are used by workers (the dominated) to weaken management control and increase worker control. Feenberg describes Capitalism and Socialism as being, "ideal-types lying at the extremes of a continuum of changes in the technical codes of advanced societies."
What is the role of nature in Feenberg's Critical Theory of Technology?
Feenberg p.188-189
In order to avoid the problems caused by technology, there is the argument that we must return to nature and a more primitive way of life; however, Feenberg argues that this improbable choice is not the only alternative. Looking forward, rather than back, to nature toward a "totality" that consciously deals with a wide range of human needs and concerns. We can't recover pretechnological conditions. Instead, through mediation, totality aids in identifying the contingency of the existing tecnological system, or those places where new values and purposes can be invested, where fragmentation of the system maintains alienated power: craft labor, without alienation of industrial labor; the empowering the workers employed in today's society; the environmental and health considerations of the present (not returning to the horse and plow days). Remember, the system is artificial, fragile, at risk, and unable to adjust to the ecological and social problems it causes. A recogniton of the natural and human constraints on technical development and ways the environment can be enlisted in the structure of appropriate technology by acknowledging the interdependence of wociety with its environment. We can adapt to nature's limitations and use that method to form the process to adapt technology.