Science and Technology

Weekend Reading, 9/2/2011

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 2 Comments

As you may have noticed, posting has been light this week, and by light I mean non-existent. The fall semester has commenced and I’m already swamped. I’ll try to keep up the posting, but in the mean time here are some items to keep you busy. Three weeks in row!

Cornel University’s Chatbots on Youtube: This is just interesting. Cornell University researcher has two chatbots talk to each other and they have an intriguing conversation. I’ll let you decide what to make of it. (Update: I forgot to include a link to Kevin Kelly’s exchange with the programmers and his observations on his blog.)

Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age by Cathy N. Davidson in The Chronicle: In defense of online, technologically mediated education. Some good points, but I’m not quite convinced with the tenor of the whole. Would love to hear your thoughts.

When Cursive Cried Wolf by Elissa Lerner at The Book Bench: On the reemergence of handwriting as a creative niche and its benefits.

The Haimish Line by David Brooks in The NY Times: Wisdom regarding the simple, happy life with a Yiddish twist.

A Walk to Remember to Remember by Jesse Miller at Full Stop: This is a lovely reflection on the virtues of walking in a digital age. If you’re only going to read one of these, make it this one.

Weekend Reading, 8/26/2011

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 10 Comments

So there was a modest, but positive response to last week’s “Weekend Reading” post, enough encouragement for me to try to make this a regular feature. Without further ado then, here are links to a few of the more interesting articles I came across this week.

“Why Are Finland’s Schools Successful” by LynNell Hancock in Smithsonian: Profile of the Finnish educational system which over the past 20-30 years has become one of the best in the world. Happily, only scant mention of technology in the classroom; emphasis is elsewhere.

“Print vs. Online” by Jack Shafer at Slate: An anecdotal endorsement of print reading’s advantages over digital with a study or two thrown in.

“Does This Technology Serve Human Purposes?” (Part One and Part Two and Part Three) Henry Jenkins interviews Sherry Turkle at Aca-Fan: Three part interview with Turkle, MIT professor and author most recently of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Jenkins himself is a highly regarded scholar of new media and popular culture.

“Reading is Elemental” by Helen Vendler in Harvard Magazine: Ostensibly an unlikely plan for reforming elementary education, but, in fact, an impassioned commendation of reading and the humanities. “Without reading, there can be no learning. The humanities are essentially a reading practice.”

“Literature Brings the Physical Past to Life” by Scott Herring at The Chronicle of Higher Education: Professor encourages his colleagues to view literature as an opportunity to rediscover the materiality of the past. “Knowing the past means knowing what people carried in their pockets, what they did with their sewage, where their dogs slept.” Told in part through a moving personal anecdote.

“Team Bonding Suffers in Tech Age” by Adrian Dater in Sports Illustrated: A look at the impact of social media and smart phones in on sports teams. Some advantages noted, but also contributing to the erosion of team chemistry and camaraderie. (h/t: Mr. Bailey)

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Disclaimer: Unless it’s clear from my brief comments, passing on these links should not necessarily be taken as an endorsement.

Kranzberg’s Six Laws of Technology, a Metaphor, and a Story

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 66 Comments

Dr. Melvin Kranzberg was a professor of the history of technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the founding editor of Technology and Culture. In 1985, he delivered the presidential address at the annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology in which he explained what had already come to be known as Kranzberg’s Laws — “a series of truisms,” according to Kranzberg, “deriving from a longtime immersion in the study of the development of technology and its interactions with sociocultural change.”

I’ll list and summarize Kranzberg’s laws below, but first consider this argument by metaphor. Kranzberg begins his address by explaining the terms of the debate over technological determinism. He notes that it had become an “intellectual cliche” to speak of technology’s autonomy and to suppose that “the machines have become the masters of man.” This view, which he associated with Jacques Ellul and Langdon Winner, yielded the philosophical doctrine of technological determinism, “namely, that technology is the prime factor in shaping our life-styles, values, institutions, and other elements of our society.”

He then noted that not all scholars subscribed to “this version of technological omnipotence.” Lynn White, Jr., for example, suggested that the technology “merely opens a door, it does not compel one to enter.” This is a compelling metaphor. It captures the view I’ve taken to calling “technological voluntarism,” technological determinism’s opposite. Technology merely presents an opportunity, the choice of what to do with it remains ours. Yet, while working with an element of truth, this view seems ultimately incomplete. And by pursuing the open door metaphor itself, Kranzberg suggests the inadequacy of a view that focuses too narrowly on the initial choice to use or not to use a technology:

Nevertheless, several questions do arise. True, one is not compelled to enter White’s open door, but an open door is an invitation. Besides, who decides which doors to open-and, once one has entered the door, are not one’s future directions guided by the contours of the corridor or chamber into which one has stepped? Equally important, once one has crossed the threshold, can one turn back?

Those are astute and necessary questions, and all the more evocative for the way they play off of White’s metaphor. These questions, and the answers they imply, lead Kranzberg to the formulation of his First Law: “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.” By which he means that,

“technology’s interaction with the social ecology is such that technical developments frequently have environmental, social, and human consequences that go far beyond the immediate purposes of the technical devices and practices themselves, and the same technology can have quite different results when introduced into different contexts or under different circumstances.”

Here are the remaining laws with brief explanatory notes:

Second Law: Invention is the mother of necessity. “Every technical innovation seems to require additional technical advances in order to make it fully effective.”

Third Law:  Technology comes in packages, big and small. “The fact is that today’s complex mechanisms usually involve several processes and components.”

Fourth Law: Although technology might be a prime element in many public issues, nontechnical factors take precedence in technology-policy decisions. “… many complicated sociocultural factors, especially human elements, are involved, even in what might seem to be ‘purely technical’ decisions.” “Technologically ‘sweet’ solutions do not always triumph over political and social forces.”

Fifth Law: All history is relevant, but the history of technology is the most relevant. “Although historians might write loftily of the importance of historical understanding by civilized people and citizens, many of today’s students simply do not see the relevance of history to the present or to their future. I suggest that this is because most history, as it is currently taught, ignores the technological element.”

Sixth Law:  Technology is a very human activity-and so is the history of technology. “Behind every machine, I see a face–indeed, many faces: the engineer, the worker, the businessman or businesswoman, and, sometimes, the general and admiral. Furthermore, the function of the technology is its use by human beings–and sometimes, alas, its abuse and misuse.”

There is a good deal of insight packed into Kranzberg’s Laws and much to think about. I’ll leave you with one last tidbit. A story recounted by Kranzberg to good effect:

A lady came up to the great violinist Fritz Kreisler after a concert and gushed, “Maestro, your violin makes such beautiful music.” Kreisler held his violin up to his ear and said, “I don’t hear any music coming out of it.” You see, the instrument, the hardware, the violin itself, was of no use without the human element. But then again, without the instrument, Kreisler would not have been able to make music.

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Material Faith: Gestures Toward a Theology of Technology

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ Leave a comment

In his 2003 book, Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology, philosopher Albert Borgmann invites us to consider what a theology of technology might look like.  He suggests that “there is hope for a coming to terms with technology not in the vortex of the initial confrontation, but only after one has passed through it.”  Then he goes on to add,

A radical theology of technology would be one that, through the experience of technology, could call into question what now counts as unproblematic …. In short I believe that the experience of technology can awaken in us a new potentia oboedientialis, a new capacity to hear the word of God.

As I read him, Borgmann is suggesting that a theology of technology is enabled by the experience of technology to perceive aspects of human experience that would otherwise remain obscured.  Passing through the vortex allows us to see more clearly what we may have apprehended only vaguely, if at all.

So for example, it seems that the vortex of rapid technological change encourages us to become aware of technology’s cultural consequences in a way that those who experienced technological change at a glacial pace would have been unlikely to perceive.  When technology does not change markedly in a generation or more, it tends to blend into the presumed natural order of things.  The acceleration of technological change encourages awareness of the attendant disruptions of established patterns of life.  Such awareness is sometimes accompanied by anxiety, euphoria, or nostalgia.  At best, though, it is a first step toward a discerning, critical disposition aimed at faithfulness and wisdom.

Two elements of experience thrown into relief by passing through the technological vortex come to mind.  Theorists of technology, and of digital media in particular, have over the last decade drawn attention to the materiality of texts and to the embodied nature of knowledge.  It is a concern fostered by the apparent immateriality of digital media and the not-so-fringe visions of disembodied immortality that animate many in the Silicon Valley set.

The rhetoric of disembodied posthumanism, for example, led Katherine Hayles, a scholar of literature and computer science, to articulate a countervision which secures the significance of the body.  In doing so, Hayles drew on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Paul Connerton.  Both Bourdieu and Connerton produced rich studies of embodied practices within traditional societies — practices geared toward the task of cultural remembrance.  Connerton cited, among other examples, the significance of the enacted Christian liturgy as an instance of embodied practice aimed at securing enduring social memory. The ascendency of digitized memory, then, is the figure against which the ground of embodied knowing and remembering becomes visible.

Along similar lines, Jerome McGann working within the field of literary studies and having pioneered the digital archive (Rossetti Archive) drew attention to the significance of materiality in the case of texts.  When texts become digital, it is suddenly important to ask what difference the material attributes of the book makes.  Reinforcing Borgmann’s point, the materiality of the book would have remained largely taken for granted had not the advent of digital texts and e-readers drawn our attention to it.

Similarly, a theology of technology will address itself to the new fields of human experience being disclosed by the rapid advance of technology.  This by no means amounts to a wholesale endorsement of all technological change and its consequences.  Marshall Mcluhan, for example, viewed the task of understanding technology as an act of resistance to that same technology:

I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change, but I am determined to understand what’s happening because I don’t choose just to sit and let the juggernaut roll over me.  Many people seem to think that if you talk about something recent, you’re in favor of it.  The exact opposite is true in my case.  Anything I talk about is almost certainly to be something I’m resolutely against, and it seems to me the best way of opposing it is to understand it, and then you know where to turn off the button.  (Understanding Me:  Lectures and Interviews, 101-102)

Of course, we need not take quite so oppositional a view either.  Rather, the point is to reckon with what technology discloses about itself, the world we inhabit, and the human condition – and to take theological account of such disclosure.

It is worth noting that the renewed focus on embodiment, materiality, and what amounts to liturgical forms of knowing and remembering accord well with prominent themes within the Christian tradition.  It is, however, a focus that the Christian tradition has historically struggled to maintain.  Strands of American evangelicalism in particular, but not exclusively, have tended to reduce faith and practice to assent to the intellectual content of propositional statements thus occluding the significance of the material and embodied conditions of Christian discipleship and worship.

Perhaps taking a cue from theorists of technology it is possible to look again at the significance of the body and the rich material culture of Christian faith and practice.  Moreover, resources within the Christian tradition may fruitfully be brought to bear upon contemporary discussions of embodiment and materiality yielding genuine engagement and dialog.  The Christian faith after all is a faith of bread and wine, water and wood, body and blood.  It is just the right time, then, to rediscover the body and materiality of faith.

Capitalism, Magic, and Technology

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 1 Comment

In his chapter on the “cultural preparation” for the age of the machine in Technics and Civilization, Lewis Mumford cites, among other phenomenon, capitalism and magic. Here’s the abridged version:

“Thus although capitalism and technics must be clearly distinguished at every stage, one conditioned the other and reacted upon it.”

“It was because of certain traits in private capitalism that the machine — which was a neutral agent — has often seemed, and in fact has sometimes been, a malicious element in society, careless of human life, indifferent to human interests.  The machine has suffered for the sins of capitalism; contrariwise, capitalism has often taken credit for the virtues of the machine.”

“… indeed, the necessity to promote continual changes and improvements, which has been characteristic of capitalism, introduced an element of instability into technics and kept society from assimilating its mechanical improvements and integrating them in an appropriate social pattern.”

“Between fantasy and exact knowledge, between drama and technology, there is an intermediate station: that of magic. It was in magic that the general conquest of the external environment was decisively instituted.”

“In sum, magic turned men’s minds to the external world: it suggested the need of manipulating it: it helped create the tools for successfully achieving this, and it sharpened observation as to the results.”

“As children’s play anticipates crudely adult life, so did magic anticipate modern science and technology …”

“… magic was the bridge that united fantasy with technology: the dream of power with the engines of fulfillment.”

Capitalism, magic, and technology — an odd grouping at first blush, but less so upon further reflection. The common denominator? Human desire — its generation, manipulation, and satisfaction.

Interestingly, this was a confluence of influences (sans capitalism) also eloquently articulated by C. S. Lewis, a scholar of Medieval and Renaissance literature, in The Abolition of Man:

I have described as a `magician’s bargain’ that process whereby man surrenders object after object, and finally himself, to Nature in return for power. And I meant what I said. The fact that the scientist has succeeded where the magician failed has put such a wide contrast between them in popular thought that the real story of the birth of Science is misunderstood. You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole we can discern the impulse of which I speak.

There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique ….