Critical Theory of Technology: An Overview
نویسنده
چکیده
Critical theory of technology combines insights from philosophy of technology and constructivist technology studies. A framework is proposed for analyzing technologies and technological systems at several levels, a primary level at which natural objects and people are decontextualized to identify affordances, complemented by a secondary level of recontextualization in natural, technical and social environments. Technologies have distinctive features as such while also exhibiting biases derived from their place in society. The technical code is the rule under which technologies are realized in a social context with biases reflecting the unequal distribution of social power. Subordinate groups may challenge the technical code with impacts on design as technologies evolve. Examples are discussed from biotechnology and computing. Technology and Finitude What makes technical action different from other relations to reality? This question is often answered in terms of notions such as efficiency or control which are themselves internal to a technical approach to the world. To judge an action as more or less efficient is already to have determined it to be technical and therefore an appropriate object of such a judgment. Similarly, the concept of control implied in technique is "technical" and so not a distinguishing criterion. There is tradition in philosophy of technology that resolves this problem by invoking the concept of "impersonal domination" first found in Marx's description of capitalism. This tradition, associated with Heidegger and the Frankfurt School, remains too abstract to satisfy us today but it does identify an extraordinary feature of technical action (Feenberg, 2004a). I formulate this T A I L O R I N G B I O T E C H N O L O G I E S Vol. 1, Issue 1, Winter 2005, pp: 47-64
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تاریخ انتشار 2007