1. Technology and Society? James Stewart j.k.stewart@ed.ac.uk Internet and Society Week 1

2. Goals and Themes Theoretical approaches to studying the interactions and relationships between 'technology' and 'society’. How does society make technology? How does technology impact society?  Technological determinism,  Science and Technology studies - Social Shaping of Technology  The ‘Socio-technical’  Politics of technology  Roles of Users and Producers and Intermediariaries Shaping the Internet: the Internet is not a fixed and finished product.

3. What is the Internet? Discuss A Technology Lots of technologies Means of communication A community A huge Library/ Gallery A parallel universe An unlimited supply of free music and porn A market place A business An Infrastructure A revolution in society, economy and politics A new form of culture A big party An American tool of world domination

4. Why is studying the Internet Important?

5. Questions about the Internet What is the Internet? How was it created, and by whom, and why? Who controls the internet? How is it developing, and who is doing the development? Who benefits, and who loses out? Can we attribute social and political change to the Internet? Or has the internet developed in response to changing social economic and political requirements? What tools do we have for thinking about technology and society?

6. Technology and Innovation questions What is technology?  Why is it created?  How is it created, how does innovation happen?  How is it related to science, to organisation, to nature?  How does it change society and the economy?  How controls it, and can it be controlled or managed?  How is it related to power?  Who benefits and can innovation be democratic?  What can we do about unintended consequences? (CFCs, internal combustion, internet, airplanes etc)

7. What is technology? Things or Artefacts Knowledge - Technique  Formalised and tacit  Engineers Products Processes Other forms  Methods?  Systems  Architectures  Infrastructures  Networks  Standards Science-technology question. Invention Innovation Incremental Radical Disruptive Socio-technical: technology integrated with society and culture

8. How are technologies or ‘artefacts’ (things), such as the Internet, created by society?

9. Technological determinism A theory of Technology Push  Technology comes from inventors and science.  Invention and inventors ‘heros of technology’  Technical Research and Development are the drivers of economic development  Linear Model: R->D->product->manufacture- >usage  Major social, cultural and economic change based on technological revolutions (e.g. printing, seed drill, steam engine, petrol engine, antibiotics, microprocessor, genetic engineering)

10. Technological determinism Implications  Radical Technology is immutable and changes world  Social organisation based on technology  Technological fixes to social problems  We can conduct Impact Analysis of the effect of technology on society  We can therefore extrapolate Technological utopias and distopias But

11. Technological Determinsim But  Most inventions fail to reach market successfully  Much technology incremental and developed in use.  There are many possible social outcomes of technical change However  Technology does drive and influence social change. But to what degree, how and under what circumstances?

12. Market and Policy determinism “Demand Pull” The free market stimulates entrepreneurs to innovate according to demand Innovation  Technology  Use  Marketing  Organisation Ignores radical invention and science  “Accidental” invention  Deliberate search for the Disruptive (Christiansen) Technology will follow policy  But cannot pull technology out of thin air  Path dependency - technology builds on past decisions

13. Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) approach Technologies are “socially constructed”: things are changed to fit the meanings that different groups in society give them: Meaning = goals, interests, preferred uses etc  This is possible since technologies have “Interpretative Flexibility” – many meanings Relevant Social Groups shape technology How do technologies become fixed into stable forms - “Closure”  Social, not technical issue.

14. SCOT 2 Criticism:  Who are RSGs, what about other social groups?  How long does closure happen for?  Descriptive only - need to question differential power to impose ‘meanings’. Users/engineers/managers etc.  Where’s the technology and material? E.g. Bijker, Pinch

15. ‘Actor Network Theory’ ANT Semiotic approach - based on meanings/concepts, but integrating the material.  Latour, Callon, Law etc Technology and society not separate things The material (nature, technology) and the social (human) can both act in similar ways e.g. exert power over others: Material and ‘human’ can be interchanged. – Think of examples Heterogeneous Networks of human and non-human are created and hold together in ‘trials of strength’. However even stable networks : coalitions of social organisation and technologies are ultimately fragile.

16. ANT 2 Looks at the process of creating networks: Translation  Definition of problems, negotiating, taking and accepting roles in network.  Primary actor attempts to become ‘obligatory point of passage’.  Networks are not just constructed, but performed Restores the material to the relativist, constructivist position. Accused of being  apolitical  not taking into account existing structures and power  Problem with the agency of non-humans.

17. Social Shaping of Technology SST Socio-technical: don’t separate analysis of the two. Technology emerges from interactions of actors: it is negotiable Dynamic v. static  Innovation is complex and can be chaotic and unstable  When and how does technology reach closure and become entrenched, standardised, commodified, and embedded in social structures?  Innovation can be constrained in techno-economic paradigms. These can be broken.  It can be irreversible. We should not be afraid to open the ‘black box’ of technology.

18. SST 2 Innovation is an on-going, interactive process involving multiple actors: Much innovation occurs in its implementation and use in different social, economic and technical contexts. Society shapes technology and technology shapes society:  Co-evolution of society and technology.

19. Users and and Producers SST also problematises relationship between designers and creators of technologies, and the end users. How much do designers configure the users to act in certain ways? (e.g. Akrich, Wooglar) Do technologies embody particular politics or culture of the creators, and does this translate to the domain of use? Can these ‘scripts’ or ‘programmes’ be subverted or resisted Can one use technology to change/shape society?

20. Domestication and Social Learning How to design for users, or should one let do the users do the designing? Studies of use and users and how we adopt and appropriate technologies in everyday life: symbolically, socially and practically. Social Learning examines the interactions and feedback from innovations and use. Highlights the role of intermediaries in innovation processes

21. Is there anything special about computers and the Internet?

22. ICTS, computers and the Internet The Computer is an ‘universal machine’ - can be made to do an infinite number of things. Commodification and standardisation has made it very cheap. Modular, standardised technologies: lego systems Software replaces hardware - easy to create and modify, and free to copy and distribute, ICTs shape activities, communication and information production and access. Computer Networks link computers, information and people: how are they designed and controlled to shape this linking?

23. Media and Communications Studies Investigate human communication and the production and use of media Concern with how media represents the world, and who controls it. Concern with how we use, interpret and are influenced by media products. Mass Media->Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) How do electronic media influence the way we communicate person to person, as well as through mass media. How are new media products appropriated in everyday life. How are do the reinforce or subvert structures of power and the balance of existing socio-technical systems.

24. The Internet Result of a multi-layer social innovation process. Complex assemblage of social and technical elements in an unstable truce? An architecture based on standards and commodified technologies. How is it held together today, how might it change and who is driving the change? How do expectations and theories about what it should be get turned into new technical, media, political, economic and social elements? Is the Internet ‘political’ in its design and functioning? “Code is Law” argument – technical design imposes constraints on human relationships and Society

25. Conclusion The Internet, like all technologies, is not something fixed ‘thing’ shapes society, the economy, culture in a way that can be predetermined. The Internet is part of society, and changes with it. It can ‘solidify’ power and relationships, or make new relationships and social structures possible.

26. Next Week - Facebook Individual and Group work Read papers on Social Networking and post summaries Do exercise and writing on your own Facebook lives Map network How do you present yourself? What is private? How nosey are you? What does your network say about you? etc

27. Following Week Information Society to the Network Society Grand theories of social change and global organisation of society and economy Reading: Darin chapter and/or Webster Chapter, Presentation: Castells Intro: network society and Lash chapters Class/Group leaders:? Assignments: fill in your wiki entry. Post your notes on your blog/wiki page. Read and comment on other’s post.

28. Social Shaping of Technology Historians of technology Evolutionary Economists  Mangers have limited knowledge:. Bounded rationality  Path dependence – build on existing capabilities and ideas Science studies -  Radical questioning of science: science as a social process. Relativism, SSK and the Strong programme of the Edinburgh School (Collins, Bloor, Barnes). Feminist studies Work and Organisational sociology Democratic control of technology (CTA)  Problem of Experts  Critique Linear Model of Innovation  Constructivism and Semiotic approaches  Ethnography and Symbolic Interactionalism