Foundations Key Concepts Flashcards
Technological Narratives
Narratives that describe the relationship between humans and technology: neutrality, deterministic, social construction, domestication
Technological neutrality
Tech isn’t good or bad. This is just a matter of how people choose to use it.
Critics of technological neutrality
Winner: they are powerful forces that shape our “forms of life,” actively shaping human activity and its meaning. This would be individual habits, perceptions, concepts of self, moral/political boundaries
Technological determinism
Technologically inevitably causes particular kinds of social transformation. We aren’t in control, technology is.
Critics of technological determinism
Baym: this narrative is especially pervasive when a technology is new. Produces both utopian and dystopian visions. It disempowers people removed from the production of technology and absolves powerful actors from building safeguards
Winner: the concept of determinism is much too strong and does little justice to the genuine choices that arise, in both principle and practice, in the course of technical and social transformation
Social Construction of Technology
Technology is the product of social forces. This narrative focuses on various actors and institutions involved in making technology and looks at the way users (and non users) change the meaning of a given technology. It also considers material constraints (and features) as resulting from prior social choices. Consequences arise from a mix of accordance’s and the unexpected ways people make use of them. Values can be embedded in a design but these are not deterministic. Technologies amplify certain social forces and research focuses on studying the practice of users
Domestication of Technology
“Taken-for-grantedness” of technology. Follows social shaping in considering both accordance’s and practices but is concerned with a particular stage in the development and adoption of technology; when it goes from being noteworthy to mundane. Explains why deterministic narratives are so pervasive in early stages
Lessig and Code
A governing force, which is the components of a technological system. Code can reinforce social and cultural values and create new ones. Advantages of being regulated by code include enhanced reliability and greater efficiency. However, code is vulnerable to outside threats and can control what we see on our screens
Public Values
Brey: values that are widely held by society, such as justice, freedom, autonomy, democracy, privacy
Modes or Regulation
Architecture (code), market, law, norms. These forces are interdependent and how we draw these lines will invoke different narratives for describing the relationship between technology and society
Capital P vs Lowercase p Policy
Capital P:
- Formal laws and rules that govern technology
- Developed by law makers, regulatory agencies, judges, international standard orgs
- follows well defined procedures
Lower case P:
- de facto policy as enacted by the actors who control the technology we use
- developed by private companies engineers and online communities
- Procedures for development are not always transparent or public
- Can be formally or informally enforced
Glitch
Thinking of tech as infrastructure, something we only notice when it breaks. Can a technology be both infrastructural to some groups and constantly glitchy to others
Noticing technology through breakdown
Ruha Benjamin: tech designers are erecting a digital caste system, structured by existing racial inequalities. They are sold as morally superior because they purport to rise above human bias. We should consider how private industry choices are in fact public policy decisions
Winner: judgements about technology have been made on narrow grounds. Only later does broader significance become clear
Benjamin: a narrow investment in technical innovation necessarily displaces a broaden set of social interests. This is more than a glitch. It is a form of exclusion and subordination built into the ways which priorities are established and solutions defined in the tech industry
Hostile architecture
UCSD Giesel Library makes it harder for large gatherings such as protests
Camden Beach subordinates certain groups by preventing certain uses
Law Lag Narrative
The law loves too slowly to keep up with the fast pace of technology. Often also relies on a perception of regulators as uninformed.
Technocracy
Rule by experts
Science and tech experts and advisory bodies are “Fifth Branch of Government”
When we attach agency to tech or constrain social action due to claims about the nature of tech, we implicitly give power to technologists
To question technocratic practices is not to challenge the values of expertise, but to ask which kinds of expertise are valued at the expense of others
Criticism of Law Lag Narrative
Huge oversimplification. Which side of law is lagging and on what front?
Often relies on a perception of regulators as uninformed. Tech deterministic, fatalists, empowers technologists, dismisses existing social norms and legal obligations
Doezema and Frahm: only actors with formal powers to govern and regulate are always portrayed as lacking proper knowledge and qualifications to do so, and as arriving too late. Ignores state investment in innovation and involvement in promoting commercialization. Calls for policymakers to finally catch up, preventing deeper debate on what intervention is desirable.
