QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT SPECIFIC TECHNOLOGIES (Version 6)

(Many of the items in the following list have been derived from works by Corlann Gee Bush, G.M.Fourez, Jerry Mander, Marshall & Eric McLuhan, Langdon Winner and John Zerzan &Alice Carnes)

THE DEVELOPMENTAL CONTEXT

• What tasks are performed and or specific problems solved by this technology?
• What has been the developmental trajectory of the technology?
• What existing technology(ies) did it replace or push aside?*
• What are the principles of science and mechanics applied by the tool or technique?
• What specific resources, tools, processes, and systems were employed to develop it or are involved in its production?
• What recurrence or retrieval of earlier actions or services is brought into play simultaneously by the new form?*
• How is this technology functionally integrated with other parts of the technological system?
• Does this technology represent a qualitative change in the general development of technics?
• Is it incremental, radical, or systemic in its influence?
• At what stage, if at all, did, or may, this technology get "locked in"?
• What other bifurcations/decision points are expected on the trajectory of this technology?

THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

• What benefits are sought or claimed for this technology?
• Which social groups, sex or individuals benefit (in terms of welfare or status) from this technology and its consequences ?
• Which social groups, sex or individuals lose or suffer disbenefits as a consequence of this technology?
• What are or may be the indirect consequences in the wider society?
• Does it serve democracy or not?
• Specifically, does the new technology tend to concentrate or equalize power and wealth in our system?
• What institutional or cultural social structures may have their stability threatened by this technology?

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTEXT

• How does this technology affect the human conceptual framework (what we think, how we think, what we know and what we can know)?
• How does it affect the way we view ourselves our relationship to each other to the planet to other living creatures?
• Does this new technology further reinforce technological domination over the individual?

THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT

• What will be the ecological effect (impact on human and planetary health) of accepting this technology versus the consequences of continuing current techniques?
• This question should address the conditions of manufacture as well as the conditions of use.
• What are the risks and what are the exposures to harmful effects?

CONCLUSIONS

• What kind of a world are we making?
• What is the potential for the new form, when pushed to its limits, to reverse what had been its original characteristics ?*
• To what extent are the consequences of this technology dependent on the bias of the culture in which it is embedded and to what extent on the intrinsic bias of the technology?
• All things considered, is it better or worse for the new technology to be introduced?
• If we were able to control it, what scale of operations would we consider to be optimal?

REFLEXIVITY

In what way may your own interests, bias or lack of information have influenced your conclusions?

Email sent to: sci-tech-studies@UCSD.EDU, Date: Wed, 11 Jan 95 10:33:02 MST

From: Eric Tachibana
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 1995 14:45:31 -0500 (EST)

Other important question might be:

• How does the technology change existing social institutions? ...more than just "threaten".
• Which avenues does the technology open up for the future and which does it deny.

Gentle STSers:

In response to Peter Fitzgerald-Moore's posted "questions to ask about technology, I suggest that much about the developmental, socio-cultural, psycological, and environmental affects and effects of a particular technology can be learned by asking variants of the questions:

• What specific resources does/will this technology depend upon to continue being utilized/produced and who produces/utilizes those "downstream" resources?
• For what/whom will be/is this technology a "downstream" resource?

(Give "resource" an abstract definition: Anything tangible or intangible that sustains interaction between two or more entities, e.g., knowledge claims, trees, money, electricity).

Regards, M.Lee

If you trace such resource dependency "chains", much can be learned about the technological/social/economic/political/environmental origins and effects of a specific technology.

THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

• Which social groups, sex or individuals benefit (in terms of welfare or status) from this technology and its consequences ?
• Which social groups, sex or individuals lose or suffer disbenefits as a consequence of this technology?

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTEXT

• How does this technology affect the human conceptual framework (what we think, how we think, what we know and what we can know)?

THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT

• To what extent are the consequences of this technology dependent on the bias of the culture in which it is embedded and to what extent on the intrinsic bias of the technology?

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