Langdon Winner

Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding It Empty: Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Technology:

What do philosophers need to know about technology? What kind of knowledge do we need to have? And how much? Perhaps it is enough simply to have lived in a society in which a wide variety of technologies are in common use. Drawing upon an everyday understanding of such matters, one can move on to develop general perspectives and theories that may enable us to answer important questions about technology in general. The problem is that ones grasp may be superficial, failing to do justice to the phenomena one wants to explain and interpret. One may seize upon a limited range of vaguely understood examples of technical applications-a dam on a river, a robot in a factory, or some other typification-and try to wring universal implications from a sample that is perhaps too small to carry the weight placed upon it. An alternative would be to focus ones attention more carefully, becoming expert in the technical knowledge of a specific field, attaining the deeper understanding of, say, a worker, engineer, or technical professional. Even that may prove limiting, however, because the experience available in one field of practice may not be useful in comprehending the origins, character, and consequences of technical practices in other domains. The sheer multiplicity of technologies in modern society poses serious difficulties for anyone who seeks an overarching grasp of human experience in a technological society. Yet another strategy might be to study particular varieties of technology in a scholarly mode, drawing upon existing histories and contemporary social studies of technological change as ones base of understanding. And one

Citizen virtues in a technological order

Contemporary philosophical discussions about technology mirror a profound distance between technical practice and moral thought. I consider the origins of this gap as reflected in both ancient and modern writings. The philosophers version of technocracy ‐ rushing forward with the analysis of moral categories in the hope that policy‐makers or the public will find them decisive ‐ does nothing to bridge this gap and is, therefore, a forlorn strategy. The trouble is not that we lack good arguments and theories, but rather that modern politics does not provide appropriate roles and institutions in which the activity of defining the common good in technology policy is a legitimate project. I find glimmerings of an alternative practice in the ‘Scandinavian approach’ to democratic participation in technological design.

Engineering Ethics and Political Imagination

Recent attempts by American colleges and universities to teach ethics for scientists and engineers deserve strong praise. They represent a shift away from the idea that questions about ethics and morality are best left to humanists or to elder statesmen of science, a recognition that such matters ought to be an important part of education in the technical professions. One can hope that through these efforts a new generation of men and women will obtain a firm grounding in the ethical aspects of their vocations early enough to make a difference.

Technologies as Forms of Life

In this chapter, Langdon Winner discusses what he calls “technological somnambulism.” Our capacity and willingness to reflect on the significance of technology and to critically evaluate new technologies lags far behind our capacity for creating and disseminating technologies. As a result, we “willingly sleepwalk through the process of reconstituting the conditions of human existence.” Winner suggests several reasons for this somnambulism, including beliefs about the neutrality of technology and technological determinism. He is critical of each of these. Winner is also critical of the near exclusive focus of technological assessment on the positive and negative impacts or effects of a technology. Technologies certainly have impacts, but they also can restructure our physical and social worlds, and so how we live. Winner argues that this understanding of technologies as “forms of life” needs to inform our evaluations and choices regarding technological innovation and adoption.

Democracy in a Technological Society

Preface P.T. Durbin. Introduction L. Winner. Part I: The Nature of the Problem. Technology, Power, and Truth: Political and Epistemological Reflections on the Fourth Revolution M.W. Wartofsky. Technology and Democracy J. Ellul. Mechanical Dreams: Democracy and Technological Discourse in Twentieth-Century France R.L. Frost. Part II: Some Proposed Solutions. Marxism and the Democractic Control of Technology P.T. Durbin. Populism and the Cult of the Expert L.A. Hickman. Autonomous Technology, Democracy, and the NIMBYs J. Fielder. Technology, Bayesian Policymaking, and Democratic Process K. Shrader-Frechette. The Nuts and Bolts of Democracy: Democratic Theory and Technological Design R.E. Sclove. Part III: Historical and Cultural Reflections. Instrumentalists and Expressivists: Ambiguous Links between Technology and Democracy S.R. Carpenter. Politics, Progress, and Engineering: Technical Professionals in Russia V. Gorokhov. Heidegger on Technology and Democracy T. Rockmore. The Moral Assessment of Technology A. Borgmann. Political Morality under Radical Conditions J. Margolis. Name Index.

Enhancing Justice and Sustainability at the Local Level: Affordable Policies for Urban Governments*

Abstract There are creative, affordable ways to address community development and also achieve goals of environmental sustainability. Approximately thirty case studies, based on interviews and usually also site visits, were completed during 2005. The case studies examined community gardening and urban agriculture, the greening of publicly controlled urban electricity and bus agencies, reuse centers and local business associations in the United States. Policy recommendations for city governments that emerged from the case studies are summarized here. There are many opportunities for financially pressed cities to assist the development of ‘just sustainability’ projects with minimal financial commitments. They can do so by rechannelling the purchasing decisions of public agencies, building partnerships with community organizations and developing the small business sector. *This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under the grant ‘Sustainable Technology, the Politics of Design, and Localism’ (SES-00425039). Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Who Will We Be in Cyberspace

This article from the author, politial philosopher raises important questions about the kinds of social and political life that people will desire in a higly computerized society

The politics of networking technology in health care

The theme of the paper is the tension between centralization and the need for standardization versus the need for locally developed organization and use of information technology. Unanticipated side effects have always existed in IT-based organization change. However, the trend towards integration, both within and across organizational boundaries, may amplify the diversity and scope of such effects, thus making them more dificult to deal with. We will explore the tensions between local and centralized control on three levels: how networking technology applications can support centralization and decentralization of control, how standards and standarization processes deal with the central/local tension, and how well established information system design techniques such as modelling and formalization cope with this tension. The strategies for dealing with these political issues, we argue, are participatory and evolutionary standardization.

The Gloves Come off: Shattered Alliances in Science and Technology Studies

Langdon Winner The acrimonious disputes surrounding social studies of science today reflect long-standing disagreements about the character and purpose of inquiry in this field. The publication of Higher Superstition underscores how nasty these quarrels can be, perhaps foreshadowing explosive clashes between the two cultures in years to come.1 One might have hoped spirits less malicious than Gross and Levitts would have been the ones to bring these conflicts to light. But for those who have followed the development of science and technology studies (STS) over the years, it has been obvious that eventually the other shoe would drop, that someday it would occur to scientists and technologists to ask: Why do the descriptions of our enterprise offered by social scientists and humanists differ so greatly from ones we ourselves prefer? How much longer should we put up with this?

Trust and terror: the vulnerability of complex socio‐technical systems

A defining characteristic of contemporary civilization is how thoroughly life depends on the structure and proper functioning of numerous large-scale, complex artificial systems. Indeed our current way of living would be unthinkable were it not for powerful technologies in energy, transportation, communication, medicine, computing, water supply, food production, industrial production, and the like. So dependent have we become upon such things, so much are they part of our reality, that their presence is simply assumed, seldom questioned. For countries in the North, such dependency is welcomed with open arms because it seems crucial to prosperity and freedom. Large-scale, geographically extended technologies enable us to move about as we wish, to communicate freely and to be released from the urgent demands of day-to-day survival that confronted previous generations and that still threaten less prosperous nations around the globe. But now another, more troubling dimension of technological complexity demands attention. Dependency on complex technological systems looms as a source of vulnerability. If any major component within the systems that support modern life ceases to function for a significant period of time, our prosperity, freedom and comfortable lives are threatened. This was a matter of widespread public concern in 1999, as people agonized about the possibly disastrous system collapse that might be caused by the Y2K programming. Many were alarmed that the energy grid, airline transportation, banking system, and other systems would be disrupted by computer malfunctions, plunging society into chaos. It turned out that despite minor glitches here and