Modernity and Technology

Thomas J. Misa, Philip Brey, and Andrew Feenberg (editors).
Modernity and Technology.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003.
cloth, 376 p., ISBN 0-262-13421-7, UKŁ26.95, US$40.00.
MIT Press: http://mitpress.mit.edu

One goal of this volume is to examine modernist icons in the light of social theory, while another goal is to consider them at the same time explicitly as technologies. Technologies are understood as embodiments of human desires and ambitions, as solutions to complex problems, and as interacting networks and systems. To capture the fluid relations between technologies and society and culture, the notion of co-construction is adopted, and serves as a constant perspective informing the thirteen chapters that make up the volume. As Thomas J. Misa puts it in his introductory chapter, "while philosophers and social theorists asserted the 'technological shaping of society', historians and sociologists countered with the 'social construction of technology'" (p. 10). The central aim of this volume is to grasp both perspectives - the social construction of technology and the technological shaping of society — and to develop new intellectual frames by which to comprehend them.

Misa's chapter is woven around four proposals: That the concepts "technology" and "modernity" have a complex and tangled history; that technology may be the truly distinctive feature of modernity; that modernization theory missed what was modern about technology; and, that postmodernism no less and no more than modernism is tangled up with technology. Throughout the book, the various authors examine individual technologies in order to disaggregate the singular "technology" and inquire into the diverse social and cultural processes that shape the technologies and are shaped by them.

The three papers that comprise part I of the collection are methodological pieces reflecting on the interactions between technology and either modern socio-economic structures or modern notions of culture, ideology or identity.

In chapter 2, Philip Brey posits the need for integrated studies of modernity and technology. While technology has been the engine of modernity, shaping it and propelling it forward, the common wisdom that technology is socially shaped, or even socially constructed, implies that a full understanding of modern technology requires a conception of modernity within which modern technology can be explained as one of its products. However, few works exist that bridge the two fields; in modernity theory, technology is often treated as a "black box", while in technology studies the larger sociocultural and economic context in which actors operate are not considered, partly due to the difficulty of connecting the microlevel concepts of technology studies to the macrolevel categories of modernity theory. Brey analyses this problem and ways in which it may be overcome in order to bridge the disciplinary gaps that separate modernity theory and technology studies.

In chapter 3, Andrew Feenberg also aims at bridging the chasm by diagnosing the philosophical and methodological gaps and overlaps between technology studies and modernity theory. He proposes a possible resolution through a synthesis of the main contributions to each of these fields, and illustrates this with an application of his own instrumentalization theory.

In chapter 4, Barbara L. Marshall notes that the juxtaposition of feminist theory, technology studies, and theories of modernity cuts to the heart of some critical debates. She sets out to demonstrate that "the insistence on gender as a crucial analytical category ... introduces important disaggregative and normative considerations that hold potential for pointing a way out of the theoretical and methodological impasses that frame this volume" (p. 106). While broadly in agreement with the theoretical framework developed by Feenberg in the previous chapter, she notes that "the notion of secondary instrumentalization needs to more explicitly recognize that in the recontextualization of technology, the nontechnocratic participation of social interests and values may not always be progressive" (p. 120).

Part II, while continuing the methodological discussion with a focus on the co-construction theme, examines various sociotechnical systems and technologies with prominent symbolic and material relations to modernity.

In chapter 5, Don Slater's ethnographical study of Internet use in Trinidad demonstrates that the concepts of "modernity" and "technology" are context-dependent rather than global; but that even "the context of a technology is also partly a consequence of that technology" (p. 153). Moving on from Brey's discussion of levels of analysis in chapter 2, Slater argues for a comparative approach situated between ethnographic particularity and higher-order generalization, enabling us to view modernity as a global phenomenon emerging from particular local conditions. The disaggregation of the Internet stems from the particularities of Internet use in Trinidad, which challenge the presumptions of the global notions of modernity underlying much of the academic literature on the Internet. This leads to a disaggregation of modernity positing a specifically Trinidadian construction of modernity in place of a global and abstract notion. The comparative approach is then used to identify dynamics that can be applied across a wide range of cultures allowing us to "build a sense of modernity under construction from the ground up" (p. 155).

In chapter 6, David Lyon begins his discussion of surveillance technology and surveillance society stating that "Surveillance is a distinctive product of the modern world. Indeed, surveillance helps us to constitute the world as modern" (p. 161). Bound up with this modernity are the technologies that support data collection, particularly computers, which Lyon points out are "socially shaped as well as socially influential" (p. 161). Writing in the aftermath of 9/11, he illustrates this point by noting how [American] society's response to this event will play a part in deciding what new surveillance technologies are adopted, and how the use of these technologies will alter relationships between citizens and the state.

While the surveillance technologies that helped constitute modernity are still present, "surveillance at the start of the new century is networked, polycentric, and multidimensional, including biometric and video techniques as well as more conventional dataveillance" (p. 172). Noting that the most rapidly growing sphere of surveillance is commercial, Lyon argues that increased reliance on ICT and intensification of consumerism are features of postmodern surveillance. As technological shifts are rarely examined empirically in the literature on postmodernity, "an examination of the co-construction of these emergent social and technological formations, as seen through the case of surveillance, promises to throw light on both of them" (p. 173).

Just as Lyon notes that surveillance technology is so much an intrinsic part of daily life that we often take it for granted, Paul N. Edwards in chapter 7 points out that "the most salient characteristic of technology in the modern (industrial and postindustrial) world is the degree to which most technology is not salient for most people, most of the time" (p. 185). Mature technologies have become largely invisible, and we generally only notice them when they fail, but they form the stable foundation, or infrastructure, of modern social worlds. Taking up once again the question of scale explored by Brey in chapter 2, Edwards argues that infrastructure not only bridges the micro and macro levels, but also offers a way of comprehending their relations.

Edwards provides several examples to illustrate the various levels of analysis. In tracing the development of the ARPANET, the micro-scale version, familiar from Hafner and Lyon (1996), focuses on the individual computer scientists. By this account, the process of development is non-hierarchical; "Indeed, the supposedly meritocratic, otherwise egalitarian culture of the ARPANET protocol builders has become part of the defining libertarian mythology of Internet culture" (p. 216). The meso-scale approach reveals an entirely different view, whereby U.S. military institutions, seeking a survivable command-control system for nuclear war, were the driving force. The macro-scale story would place the ARPANET against the larger background of other computer networking experiments, or situate the Internet against the long-term history of information and communication infrastructures.

Rather than attempting to choose which version is correct, Edwards' concept of mutual orientation allows us to move among these scales and accept all three stories as true. He thus raises the question of whether the conception of modernity itself is partly an artefact of the meso-scale perspective, "an abstraction to which reality corresponds only when viewed on a single scale" (p 222).

The final chapter of part II, by Junichi Murata, is titled "Creativity of Technology: An Origin of Modernity?" and is concerned with the unplanned, often unforeseeable, noninstrumental and nonrational aspects of technology. Murata argues that such developments as the transformation of the Internet from a military tool to a commercial medium is creative in that a new meaning for artefacts is realized, one which may well go against the original intent of designers and producers. This thesis is illustrated through a survey of modernization in Japan, and in particular a detailed comparison of western, Chinese and Japanese mechanical clocks. Murata concludes that "if we focus on the creative function of technology, we could describe the distinguishing feature of modern technology as the institutionalization of creativity within a certain sociotechnical network, in contrast to a traditional technology, in which creativity remains a random phenomenon" (p. 229).

While the essays in parts I and II are mostly concerned with description and analysis of existing or historical conditions, those in part III shift attention to practical and political matters.

In chapter 9, Johan Schot explores the idea that, as part of a modernization process that gained speed in the nineteenth and twentieth century in the western world, a typical modernist practice of technology politics emerged, which consists of separating the promotion of technology from the regulation of technology. "In this practice, technology development is perceived as a neutral, value-free process that needs to be protected and nurtured (because it creates progress, material wealth, health, etc." (p. 257). Schot suggests ways to go beyond such a dichotomous politics, aiming ultimately to "identify ways to open up space for the actual shaping of technology and for discourses on how to manage technology in society" (p. 258).

In chapter 10, David Hess focuses his examination on the medical field, which, he says, "provides a particularly important site for the problem [of modernity and technology] because biomedical conflicts tend to magnify some of the issues of technology and modernity, and also because health policy occupies a central place in the political and normative discourse of late modernity" (p. 279). His analysis is conducted within three macrostructural frameworks; cultural ecology, cultural values, and political economy, categories which, as observed in earlier chapters, are mutually shaped by technology.

Arthur P. J. Mol begins chapter 11 pointing out how the attitudes of environmentalists towards modernity and modernization have changed during the past two decades. Whereas twenty years ago the common denominator of environmental movements was their antimodern ideology, there is now a wide range of positions which are generally less hostile towards modernity. Conversely, responses to environmental concerns have begun to change the institutions of modern society. Mol explores how environmental considerations and interests are contributing to the transformation of modernity. He identifies five heuristics of ecological modernization, which, while valuable in framing research for analysts, are also used by policy actors as "normative paths for change".

In chapter 12, Haider A. Khan offers an analysis of the theoretical connections among technology, modernity and development in a non-western context. The principal concern of this essay is to identify the limits imposed by a modernist framing of technology and development, and to explore a rigorous conceptual model for moving forward and beyond the modernist impasse.

The afterword by Arie Rip provides a useful and sometimes critical overview of the issues that have been raised throughout the volume. One important comment here notes how agency has been forced to the background by the concern to show the co-construction of modernity and technology. Rip also articulates the point that just as concrete and plural "technologies" have been abstracted under the singular label "technology", it might be appropriate to seek "modernities" in the plural.

Overall, this is an interesting and well-integrated collection that opens up the conceptual space for the understanding of the co-construction of modernity and technology.