Technical Fouls: Democracy And Technological Change

by Jacobsen,John Kurt

• ISBN13: 9780813319995
• ISBN10: 0813319994
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2000-08-10
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

What is it that shapes the direction of technological progress in advanced industrial societies? Is it science? Technology itself? Or is it something even more powerful and all-encompassing, like power or money or politics? John Kurt Jacobsen addresses this topic by investigating how contemporary democratic capitalist states govern the development and deployment of their scientific and technological resources. He examines the interaction of ideology, profits, and power, and their combined effect upon technology policy in democracies.The "social function of science" has been a contentious area of scholarly study throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Although the book focuses mainly on the United States, for the sake of instructive comparison, it also studies technological development of other societies, including the former Soviet Union and China. Some competing accounts of technical change across the borders include laissez faire, cultural, and neo-Marxist markets. In fact, with regard to laissez faire markets, even to inquire if science has a social function is to deviate from the appropriate images of economic development. What is always politically at stake is who will rule the next stage in production due to each swing in technology, which will, in turn, be associated with a new structure of control. Most recently, the microchip revolution and cyberspace are the most highly publicized candidates for the next upswing in technologyand thus the next new structure of control.The explanatory focus of the book is on ideology, or on ideas about how technology works and should work, and the three key areas of policy contention discussed are industrial development, military uses, and the environment. Students and scholars of science, technology, and sociology should find this book useful in coming to terms with the fundamental questions underlying the development of technology today.

Author Biography

John Kurt Jacobsen is research associate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Chasing Progress: Ideology, Industry and Dependent Development in Ireland.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	1	(10)
Technology as a Cultural System	11	(29)
Futurism Isn't What It Used to Be	12	(3)
Autonomous Technology	15	(5)
The Phantom of Technocracy	20	(3)
Mumford's Megamachine	23	(2)
Interrogating Science	25	(2)
Critical Theory and Technological Society	27	(1)
A Participatory Democracy?	28	(3)
The Paradox of Technological ``Fixes''	31	(2)
Conclusion	33	(7)
The Specter of Automation	40	(30)
High Tech: Military Origins, Commercial Imperatives	43	(4)
Riding the Fifth Wave: Radical Critiques	47	(3)
Critiques of the Sussex Critics	50	(1)
The Ambiguities of Technical Change	51	(3)
Shaping Technology: A ``Tricky Matter,''	54	(2)
Dilemma or Problem?	56	(6)
Conclusion	62	(8)
Aimless Accuracy: Technology and the Military	70	(34)
From Stirrups to Smart Bombs	73	(3)
The Second World War	76	(6)
Lessons of Military Keynesianism	82	(3)
Enabling Vietnam: Technology, Arrogance, and Attrition	85	(3)
Creeping Toward Star Wars	88	(3)
Does Technology Prevent Peace Dividends?	91	(2)
Conclusion: Smart Weapons, Dumb Choices?	93	(11)
Weeding Them Out: The Curious Case of Eugenics and Genetics Engineering	104	(36)
The Advent of Eugenics	108	(4)
Tainted Breeds, Tainted Deeds	112	(4)
Degeneration and Its Discontents	116	(2)
Sterile Environments	118	(1)
With Liberty, or Sterilization, for All	119	(3)
The Third Reich and ``Life Unworthy of Life,''	122	(2)
After the Holocaust	124	(5)
Conclusion	129	(11)
Emancipating Nature: Ecology and Ideology	140	(29)
Eco-Responsibility or Rain-Forest Chic?	143	(2)
Third World Repercussions: China and Brazil	145	(3)
Western Woes and Corporate Wiles	148	(2)
The Politics of Ecological Logic: Bookchin, Gorz, and Beck	150	(4)
Feminist Interrogations	154	(1)
Reconnoitering the Battlefield	155	(5)
Conclusion	160	(9)
Epilogue	169	(6)
Selected Bibliography	175	(16)
Index	191