To pierce the illusion of neutrality it is only necessary to take a closer look, for example at the computer built into the nose cone of a cruise missile, enabling the missile to use altitude readings to assess where it is and to adjust its course as necessary. The computer is designed to help the missile reach its target and destroy it. This computer is not neutral. The idea of neutrality may be attractive to people because it removes the necessity to think carefully about the values built into the design, choice and use of technology.
The idea that technology is neutral provides no leverage for analysing technology for nonviolent struggle. After all, if technology is neutral, that presumably means that any technology can be used for nonviolent struggle and there is no obvious means for choosing between technologies.
Sometimes it seems like technologies have a will of their own. The telephone and the automobile have spread throughout society and no one seems able to stop their use. What is called “technological determinism” can be interpreted in various ways. It can mean that once a new technology is developed — such as guns or nuclear weapons — it has an inherent momentum leading to its widespread use. It can mean that there is general pattern of technological development that is inevitable, such as the use of steel, electricity or computers.
Simple interpretations of technological determinism don’t stand up to scrutiny.[2] There are plenty of technologies that have been developed but have never become dominant, such as housing with passive solar design, supersonic transport aircraft, microfiche publishing and cryonic suspension. How can it be said that technology determines its own development when so many technologies are failures? One answer is that some technologies are “better” and hence more successful. But this provides a circular argument, at least when the way to determine whether a technology is better than another is to see whether it is more successful. Technological determinism provides a convenient excuse for ignoring the human choices, especially the exercise of power, in development of technology.
Technological determinism provides no help in analysing technology for nonviolent struggle. It assumes that military technologies are dominant due to their own inherent properties; nonviolent alternatives have not been successful and hence may be ignored. My entire analysis is based on a rejection of technological determinism and an endorsement of the view that social choice is the basis for technological development and that that choice should become more participatory.
However, by adopting the topic of technology for nonviolent struggle, it is hard to avoid sounding like a technological determinist at times. Because the focus is on technology, it is possible to create the impression that by adopting a suitable technology, the cause of nonviolent struggle is automatically advanced. My view is that development and use of technology is always a social process and, as such, is one of a number of social locations for promoting or waging nonviolent struggle.
Social Shaping of Technology
Rather than assume that technology has intrinsic properties — being good, bad, neutral or inevitable — another approach is to assume that technology is a product of society and reflects or embodies its origins in various ways. This general approach can be called “social shaping of technology.” It proceeds by examining social influences on the nature of technology.
An extreme version of this approach is to claim that large-scale social structures almost entirely determine technology, for example that capitalist society leads to technology that serves capitalists.[3] This can be called “determined technology” or “social determinism” and is the converse of technological determinism. This approach provides an antidote to technological determinism but isn’t particularly helpful when it comes to developing alternative technologies. If the structure of society determines technologies, then advocating alternatives to current technologies seems futile since it doesn’t change the process of social determination. In other words, this approach assumes that the only way to change technologies is to change the fundamentals of social structure. My analysis assumes the contrary, that technology is one potential avenue for intervening to change society as well as technology itself.
A more moderate approach involves examining the interaction of social and technical factors on the development and choice of technology. For example, there have been studies of compression versus absorption refrigerators, numerically controlled machine tools, light bulbs and electricity systems.[4] This approach has been used in a number of studies of military technology, some of which were mentioned in chapter 2. It is valuable for analysis of actual technologies and also for opening up the possibility that other technologies might have been developed if different forces had been influential.
One of the most cited examples of social shaping of technology is the low bridges, designed by Robert Moses for New York, which allegedly prevented the twelve-foot high buses from passing underneath and hence prevented those relying on public transport, especially blacks and poor people, from easily visiting beaches.[5] This example has been frequently used to show how social values, in this case racism, can be built into artefacts, in this case bridges. Its pedagogical value seems to arise from it being neither too complex nor too simple, and having an obvious bad guy. Military technology provides plenty of examples that are almost too simple. Weapons are designed to kill and destroy. Detailed examples can be produced by the dozen. Brightly coloured landmines are designed to attract the attention of children. Tumbling bullets are designed to cause horrific exit injuries. One can speculate why scholars haven’t raised these sorts of examples more often. Perhaps the social shaping is too obvious.
Although the social shaping approach is quite valuable, it has some limitations as actually applied. Most social shaping analyses look at rejected alternatives that are fairly similar to their successful rivals, such as the AR-15 rifle that was rejected in favour of the M-16. Postulating comprehensive wide-ranging alternatives is unusual, possibly because it requires too much of a jump from the historical record. Certainly there have been no discussions of technology for nonviolent struggle, nor even much study of the field of appropriate technology, which would seem a natural area for analysis.
More fundamentally, the social shaping approach deals with the social influences on technology and says little about the actual technologies that exist or might exist. For example, it is all very well to analyse the social forces shaping military and civilian communication systems, but what guidance does this give for assessing which such systems would be useful for nonviolent struggle? The social shaping approach is restricted by its focus on influences on technology, which leaves out the effects of technology. The next stage in the development of this theory is to look at the ways that society and technology co-shape each other.
Various more focussed theoretical frameworks, such as labour process theory,[6] can be applied to technology within the general ambit of the social shaping approaches. A different angle on technology is provided by “actor-network theory,” which is based on getting rid of the dichotomy between humans and artefacts.[7] In this approach, anything potentially is an “actor”: a scientist, a scallop, a mechanical door-closer, a bullet. The task of the social theorist is to “follow the actors,” namely to watch what they do without making assumptions about them in advance, and to observe their networks, namely to see how they create, destroy and rearrange relationships between themselves. One advantage of the actor-network approach is that it gets away from the essentialist assumption that social structures such as the state are ordained categories for understanding social reality.
2.
For a critique of technological determinism, see Langdon Winner,
3.
One of the few works that comes close to this view is David Dickson,
4.
Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman (eds.),
5.
Langdon Winner, “Do artifacts have politics?,”
6.
The classic work, much criticised but immensely influential, is Harry Braverman,
7.
Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor J. Pinch (eds.),