Technology assessement: the idea of "valence" and its implications for the neutrality of technology;
multiple contexts in which to evaluate technology, including the often overlooked end-user context.
The complexity of technology, and the variables one might use to analyze it
with: gender; race; class; economics; environment; history; holism/reductionism.
Technology assessment as an art, not a science.
Contrast: Global agricultural self-sufficiency with the death, on average, every 3 seconds of a child of malnutrition.
Brody: Biased sources - general
Ceruzzi: Biased sources - specific
Herb Brody, "Great Expectations: Why Technological Predictions Go Awry." [150-159, 6th edn, Teich; 107-116
7th ed.]
[NOT Fulton's Folly]
1970s predictions virtually useless: Why, and why care? [is orderly allocation of R&D resources so
significant?]
Believers and promoters skew predictions, but are easiest to find and poll
[not consumers or end-users?]
Media copy and multiply w/o checking, overblown initial statements
E.g.? [Industrial robots; CD-ROMs [152,153;110]; transistors > vacuum
tubes.
154/111: Underestimate established technology [already optimized and improving] E.g. optical >
x-ray chip lithography; transistor silicon chips > Josephson junctions.
155f/112f: Underestimating the revolutions [or, overestimating them: videotex]
transistors for radios not computers
computers for large scale uses only, not
consumers
videodisk superior to VCRs
158-59/114-16: Coping with uncertainty
check related fields; beware bias;
expect extant technologies to improve; beware of simple trend extrapolation; use different/change technology
forecast-market predictions; allow time for innovation to diffuse; pay attention to infrastructure.
[deForest broadcasting by 1912]
Paul Cerruzzi, "An Unforeseen Revolution: Computers and Expectations, 1935-1985." [160-174, 6th edn,
Teich;117-131, 7th ed.]
Zuse/Aiken'44/Eckert-Mauchly'45/Zuse <1940; Atanasoff < 1940/ UNIVAC 1950; IBM 650; SUCCESS beyond the 250
max needed.
Why would there be no need for more than a few computers?
only a few really big problems needed such computational complexity and
power
unreliability of vacuum tubes [minimize use in design]
scientist-created only usable by scientists, perhaps discard
only mathematicians can program
simply bigger and faster calculators: e.g. ENIAC
led to overlooking Turing universality,
and canned programs.
Neumann's brilliance led to overlook
possibility of 'high level language'
overlooked programmability's power
selective output need not swamp humans
overlooked word and accounting processing [business applications]
Bush: valenced technology; rethinking differential effect of technology
Corlann Gee Bush, "Women and the Assessment of Technology" [192-214, 6th edn, Teich;157-179 7th
ed.]
Time to unthink and rethink technological myths [tool, threat, triumph]
technological artifacts have valence
*4 Contexts:
design and development
user
environmental
cultural
social genderization [awk!] of technology and male/female differences concerning technology
*Exemplar: John Gorrie and mechanical refrigeration
cf. laundry, before and after washing machines
cf. horses in Great Plains Culture
cf. Palouse culture before and after mechanization, 1930s, 40s
206/171: "Technology is, therefore, an equity issue." Agree?
207-08/172-73: Lots of definitions.
development: manufacture, distribution
user: men/women differentiation; consumer/producer differences
envi: monoculture; disease control/transport
culture: diminish women's roles [food preservation]; accentuate men's control [processes]
Recommendation: technology and technology assessment that stresses collectivity, holism, and equity.
?Chief defect?: women as unconscious or passive [victims?] co-conspirators in their own "subjugation."