Technology/telephone and ...

..politics
Always a controversial area.  Obviously government intervention (or, interference?) held back developments in telephony, so as not to harm their investment in the telegraph.  Despite this, the former overtook the latter.  When was the turning point?  Surely, other factors also impinged on the telephone's development, such as people travelling more, migration to urban areas, increase in commerce?  Why was the Post Office so negative about the telephone?  Was the system so perfect (with errand boys, telegrams, and twelve postal deliveries daily) that a telephone was superfluous?  Did they really need to invent a need for it?

..class/gender
Another controversial area.  These categories are not immutable and fixed in concrete.  They change over time so we mustn't look at, say, gender roles in the Fin de Siècle and assume these are the same gender roles that we know in the year 2010.  What could be examined is how telecommunications technologies mediated class/gender relations of the time and whether use* of these technologies reinforced/weakened those relations.  For example, how did domestic practices change when a telephone appeared in the hallway?  Who answered it?  What was the involvement of servants?  A gentleman would never think of paying a "morning visit" to a single young woman (and certainly without her mother/chaperone being present).  But what was society's reaction later when he could telephone her from the comfort of his own home?


..culture
How is the telephone represented in visual art, dramas, novels?  How soon after its invention did the telephone start to appear in cultural artefacts?  How soon is it before we can talk about the existence of a "telephone culture"?


..work
The telephone in business and the workplace.  Again, slighted related to class/gender in the sense of workplace relationships in connection with the telephone [boss/employee].  Particularly interesting is the introduction of the telephone in the City.  An ultra conservative domain of the male, upper classes, the City did not welcome the telephone with open arms.  Their business dealings were based on personal contacts, networks, gentlemen's agreements and word of mouth (see Kynaston's magisterial The City of London).  That's how it had always been done and they saw no reason to change in a hurry.
Developments also occurred in general office work (more office automation - typewriters, construction of large office blocks in city centres, office work becoming more suitable for women - feminisation of office work).  Telecommunications in industry/commerce, however, is too big a topic; it deserves a dissertation all of its own.




* Here I nearly fell into the trap of saying "whether these technologies reinforced ..." as if they had free agency.  The discussion should revolve around "technologies-in-use" and what people do with them.

The Social Shaping of Technology

MacKenzie, Wajcman 
The Social Shaping of Technology (1985)

Social scientists look at technology's effect or impact [my pet-hate word!] on society. 
Prior to this, we have to ask: What is shaping technology for it to have these effects?
What causes the changes in technology?
[i.e. a change in perspective from technological determinism to social determinism]

Questions the authors examine:
Which social factors shape technological change?
Does the type of our society affect the type of technology we produce?

If you accept technological change as an independent given,  then you see our social responses to that technology as passive; but,
If you concentrate on the effects of society on technology, then technology is no longer independent/autonomous.

From a SST perspective, technology is just another facet of our social life, just like our political or economic system.

Warning - just because technology can be shaped socially, it does not mean that it is easy to change technology


Technological Determinism
Technology is autonomous, independent, outside of society;
Changes in technology cause changes in society
It is problematic to ascribe agency to inanimate objects or systems - how can they cause society to be this or that?
Some technologies are resisted or rejected - which technologies are eventually adopted depends on the characteristics of the society.  Technology then is not so autonomous after all.


Contradiction to technological determinism - the same technology can have different effects in different societies.  When explaining social change, we must look to other factors in addition to technology.

Technology - consumption - culture

Telephone (as one example of a communications technology) is an artefact.

Artefacts can be used to construct our identity.

Telephone is ambivalent, double-sided since it

1. isolates us [we communicate without needing to be physically present]
2. connects us [we communicate with others where it would be impossible for us to be physically present]

Technology is no longer associated with the idea of human progress (first promoted during the Enlightenment).  Technology has not been the panacea we imagined it to be (Hiroshima, Chernobyl, global warming, pollution, etc.)

The effects that a tech has are not built into it; the effects of a tech are determined by how it is consumed and consumption needs a context.

The home as a context for consumption of tech

* The home has gone from being a unit of production to a unit of consumption (unless you are a woman, in which case it is both).

* More leisure time is spent at home.

* Home has become self-sufficient, self-contained - a process of privatization has occurred

* More emphasis on consumption, less on public sphere/community

* Again, the ambivalence of techs that bring us closer together but also isolate us from each other.

Definition of "technology"

Techs are made up of three components:

1. Physical artefact
2. Surrounding human activity - necessary, otherwise artefact on its own is useless
3. Human knowledge (know-how) - applied to the design, maintenance, etc.

In other words, tech is a social phenomenon.

Technology can be:

1. a physical artefact; or
2. a technique, a way of doing something (with or without artefacts)

Technological Determinism

The prevailing technology determines our culture, e.g. steam to power factories during steam age determines dominant form of social organisation (cotton mills, urban slums, etc.)

This theory believes that tech develops outside of society with a life of its own, and then have an impact on society [as if society were a passive recipient].

Although tech. determinism as a theory has its flaws and is now overlooked by academics, it still has a persistent hold over us.  We still talk as if we were powerless beings at the mercy of our machines, e.g. how the Internet is affecting our children, how mobile phones change the way we communicate, etc.  Note how the technology has become the subject of the sentence and we are the objects upon which the verb is acted out.

Question - why do we insist on talking about technologies that do things to us, or affect us in a certain way?   Why do we not talk about the things we do with technologies or how we use them?  Why do we put ourselves in the position of passive receptor or 'victim' of technology?  Is it because we want to absolve ourselves of all responsibility for when things go wrong, or when negative side-effects appear?  If there is a problem with a company delivery, then we are told the computer is down or such like.  You never hear the excuse 'sorry, the computer programmer didn't foresee this problem and thus programmed the computer incompetently.'

Social Shaping of Technology

This theory concentrates on

• Actors (engineers, managers, scientists, consumers); and
• Networks in which the actors operate

Techs embody the culture that produced them.  Culture shapes technology.

BUT techs do have their limitations - they limit what is possible; design of a tech is limited by the nature of the materials used.

Technology as text

Like any other text, technology can be

• encoded - physically (in its design) and symbolically (styling, marketing)
• decoded - read by customers

Note that production and consumption of technologies must be considered together and symmetrically.

Preferred readings are encoded in technologies during their design (adverts, news stories, etc.)  A 'reader' is directed towards this particular reading but there are of course alternative readings.  Decoding is also shaped by the reader's own cultural framework and the reading thus generated may be at odds with the preferred reading envisioned by the technology's creators.  There is some degree of resistance and transformation on the part of the reader but we should not read too much into the power of this resistance (apologies for the pun!)

Aberrant or oppositional decodings

There are occasions for alternative uses for technologies, uses unimagined or unplanned by its producers (e.g. fax machine used by students to contact outsiders during Tiannamen Square incident).

New techs are cumulative

New techs have to fit into the context of existing techs.

The telephone

First uses of the telephone - broadcasting of: church services; concerts; political rallies, sporting events; news.  Telephone was thought appropriate only for businesses and household management.  Telephone companies took a long time to realise that encouraging subscribers to gossip would be good for profits. [see also Fischer, Touch Someone, 56]

Meanings of technology change

As a technology becomes more commonplace among the population, its meaning shifts.  This symbolic meaning is also shaped by culture.  Example - mobile phone in the beginning was only for elite businessmen, a marker of success.  Now it's used by everybody (school kids, plumbers, etc.)  It has lost its exclusivity.  To be marked out as an 'elite' mobile owner, you now have to be inaccessible.  

Hugh Mackay, ed. Consumption and Everyday Life.  London: Sage, 1997.
                                                       

SST

Social Shaping of Technology

e.g. Mackenzie & Wajcman; Williams & Edge

• Constructivist approach
• Technology-society relationship is characterised by mutual shaping
• Opposite to technological determinism
• SCOT is a spin-off of SST

Social Shaping of Technology

Proponents
Mackenzie - Wajcman
Williams - Edge

• constructivist approach
• relationship between technology and society: mutual shaping
• opposite to technological determinism
• SCOT is a spin-off from SST