Practical Lenses for Socio-Technical Systems

William FreyCollege of Business Administration

UPRM

Cogentrix

• Cogeneration plant proposed for Mayaguez

• Produce electricity and steam

• Rejected by local opposition and Rossello administration

• Counter Case: AES Corporation– Company offsets pollution from co-generation through

reforestation projects in Costa Rica

Copper Mining

• Kennecott and Amax, two U.S. mining companies, propose mining copper in PR in 50s and 60s. Large-scale project turned down in 70s.

• Southern Gold proposal in early 90s was smaller but still generated opposition. Mining area was converted into a nature preserve (Bosque del Pueblo)

• Projects generated vigorous environmental movement in Puerto Rico

Windmills• Windmar proposed windmill farm to be located near Bosque Seco

de Guanica

• Proposal has generated strong local opposition– Concerns about commitment of private company to eolic energy– Concerns about impact on ecosystem of Bosque Seco de Guanica– Lack of access to public hearings held on project

• Analogous Cases– Cape Wind. Energy Management Inc “generated intense opposition

from socially prominent residents of Cape Cod” (Business and Society, Lawrence

and Weber, 10)– Vattenfall from Sweden set up 100 turbines off coast of England in North

Sea (GB aiming for 15% energy generated from renewable resources by 2020) Associated Press, 9/23/10. “World’s largest wind farm opens off UK coast”

Laptops• See cnx.org/content/m14257/latest/

• Hypothetical: What would result from giving a laptop computer to every public school student in Puerto Rico?– Texas Laptop Project of late 1990s– Puerto Rico project of laptops to teachers in late 1990s– MIT Laptop Project: One Laptop Per Child

• Exporting Harm– See presentation, Marilyn Dyrud, “Computers, Obsolescence, Engineering

Ethics”. Given at APPE 2010 Annual Conference– Two UPRM student projects identified exporting harm

• UPRM Solutions– Develop government-private industry recycling/disposal facility. Fund with

surcharge on computers at point of purchase– Redesign computers for recycling. Model recycling center after state-of-the-

art existing centers.

What is a “lens”?• Definition:

– “a practice lens…examine[s] how people, as they interact with a technology in their ongoing practices, enact structures which shape their emergent and situated use of that technology.” (Orlikowski)

• Reimagining the technical artifact: bicycle, computer, cell phone, television, automobile

• Old account: the technical artifact is a physical object that, somehow, embodies value– Value embodied in the structure of the object – User appropriates the object through use but the object (via the values or politics

it embodies) highly constrains the user in terms of its structure

• New account: Orlikowski– Embodied structure reframed as emergent structure

• structure emerges from transaction between user and artifact– Appropriation is reframed as enactment

• user does not appropriate technology; user enacts a “technology in practice”

Sense of Lens in This Module

• Somewhat different than Orlikowski

• A lens represents a conception of the relation between technology and society

• It also presents an ideology– Kuhnian paradigm: self-contained account of the world– Different paradigms (or lenses) are incommensurable

(at least at first blush)

Implications of Lenses• Incommensurability suggests methodological relativism (see

Sismondo)– Assumes that each lens provides a valuable view or perspective on a

complicated reality– To be explored initially on its own terms

• Thus, each lens opens a different line of inquiry by suggesting different, yet productive, questions

• Comparing different lenses (after exploration) – Reveals the partiality of each – Sets up the possibility of integrating them into a broader , more

comprehensive standpoint

Technological Determinism

Heilbroner and Winner

Heilbroner: Two Quotes

• From Marx– “The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord;

the stem-mill society with the industrial capitalism.– Straight-line determinism: the technology (hand-mill,

steam-mill) determines the social form (feudal socicety, industrial capitalism)

• The question here, that Heilbroner only partially answers, is “How?”

How• For Heilbroner, technological determinism comes from the

convergence of events that characterizes modern times

• “high capitalism [has converged with] low socialism”– “the forces of technical change have been unleashed but when the

agencies for the control or guidance of technology are still rudimentary”

• Value-neutral, mechanistic science + technical know-how (precision work with metal) = Configuration of Economic Relations (Capitalism)– Bourgeois class employs technology to solidify their power and control

over the proletariat

• Technology makes possible and solidifies capitalism– This allows for the usual spinning out of Marxists theories of surplus value,

class warfare, and worker alienation

General Statement of Technological Determinism

• Feenberg, Questioning Technology, 77

• TD = UP + DB

• Unilinear Progress:– “Technological progress appears to follow a unilinear course, a fixed track,

from less to more advanced configurations. Each stage of technological development enables the next, and there are no branches off the main line.”

• Determinism by Base:– “Technological determinism also affirms that social institutions must adapt

to the “imperatives” of the technological base. This view, which no doubt has its source in a certain reading of Marx, is long since the common sense of the social sciences. Adopting a technology necessarily constrains one to adopt certain practices that are connected with its employment.”

Lens Questions• What forms of political, economic, and social organization does the

technology instantiate?– Arranged on continuum ranging from individualistic to collective

• What kind of decision-making structure does the technology require– Horizontal/participative to vertical/top-down control

• What approach to working does technology require?– Division of labor or holistic approach to labor

• How does technology stand in relation to power– Does it require the centralization of power and control or its decentralization?

• In general, following Mumford, is the technology democratic or autocratic?– Shrader-Frachette argues that the soft energy path (renewable resources) is

democratic while the hard energy path (nonrenewable) is authoritarian.

Social Construction

Pinch and Bijker

Epistemological Relativism

• All scientific theory proposals and technological variations are treated the same whether successful or not

• This allows for an examination of how they compete historically and reveals the social process that selects some and de-selects others

• Methodological relativism lays bare the social process by which technologies are constructed

First Stage: Interpretive Flexibility• Meaning of technology is open

– Is bicycle a recreational vehicle or a mode of transportation?

• Social interaction generates different variations– Boneshaker, Penny Farthing, Lawson’s Bicyclette

• Positive competition stimulates creativity– Individuals interact with variations, experiment with them, and clarify their

needs and interests vis a vis this interaction

• Interests, needs, and problems become filters that select some variations (those conducive) and de-select others (those that become obselete)

Second Stage: Closing of Interpretive Flexibility

• Variations in design begin to disappear

• Needs, interests and problems stabilize as process of experimenting with variations closes

• Designs that pass through interest/needs/problem filters emerge as dominant, others retreat as recessive

Third Stage: Black Box

• Closure is achieved through – rhetorical means (advertising)– problem definition (fixing on smooth ride for rubber tires)– inclusion in a wider context (variations are integrated into

broader STS)

• Closure conceals historical process where variations are developed, tested, and filtered

• Dominant design becomes a black box

Lens Questions• What is the historical process that has culminated in the

formation of the technology at hand? (This forces opening of the black box)

• What variations competed for dominance in the interpretative flexibility stage?

• How did users and non-experts interact with these variations?– What interests, needs, and problems emerged as a result of this stage?

• What rhetorical means, problem definitions, and STS integrations led to a closing of interpretive flexibility?

Determinisms or Co-determination

Langdon Winner: Technologies have politics

Summary taken from Hickman

John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology. Indiana University Press, 148 and following

• Winner rejects “straight-line” notion of tool use– Guns aren’t good or bad; only the people who use them

• Winner also rejects (in text) technological determinism (211)– “technology develops as the sole result of an internal dynamic

and then unmediated by any other influence, molds society to fits its patterns.”

• Winner finally rejects social determinism of technology– “What matters is not the technology itself, but the social or

economic system in which it is embedded. …This view provides an antidote to naïve technological determinism….But it has its own shortcomings; taken literally, it suggests that technical things do not matter at all

Winner’s Positive Argument Against Social Construction

• Manifest Complexity:– The technology or tool displays complexity such as

“tightly coupled systems” and “non-linear” chains of causality. For example, nuclear reactors

• Concealed Complexity:– Technologies are frequently backed by decision-making

procedures that are opaque to independent scrutiny. • Pre-market regulation of nuclear reactors by NRC• Pre-market equivalence (built on previously-approved design)

Winner’s Positive Argument Against Social Construction

• Technological Imperative:– Technologies transform and redefine human needs.

Machine needs become imperative and trump human needs.

– Finding food, clothing and shelter require first responding to machine requirements such as electrical power, highways, bridges, sewers, and other infrastructure

• Reverse Adaptation:– Because complex technologies redefine needs (and values)

we are forced to adapt ourselves (and our needs) to them

Lens Questions• Assess the manifest complexity of the technology in question

– What is the manifest complexity of wind turbines?

• Assess the concealed complexity?– What is the regulatory process concerning the adoption of eolic

technology? Pre-market approval procedures? Pre-market equivalence?

• Identify the operation of any technology imperatives.– Are there any technological needs that are pushing aside and

replacing human needs?

• Identify any instances of reverse adaptation– Does the technology require reverse adaption? Does it require

humans to adapt to its needs rather than vice versa?

Third Lens

Social-Technical Co-Determination

Orlikowski: Using Technology and Constituting Structures

• New account: Orlikowski– Embodied structure reframed as emergent structure

• structure emerges from transaction between user and artifact– Appropriation is reframed as enactment

• user does not appropriate technology; user enacts a “technology in practice”

• There is no separation between technological artifact and those who use the artifact– Users and technological artifact interact– Users modify technology by filtering features and carrying out “work-arounds”– Technologies still constrain human action (Holding a discussion in Stefani auditorium

requires climbing on and off the stage)

• Consequently, technological artifact and human user co-determine one another– The technology is the structure that emerges when users interact with artifact– The artifact does not embody value (value emerges)– Humans do not impose value on the object through design and use; value emerges as

individuals interact with object

Supporting Empirical Studies

• Notes (groupware)– Developed by Lotus Development Corporation

• Features– Electronic messaging– Text Editing (word processing)– Document Management– Customization potentiality– Replication (copying and distributing documents)– Security (password protection)– Application Development (database)

• The following slides are build out of figures 3-9 in Orlikowski article

• Wanda J. Orlikowski. (2000). “Using Technology and Constituting Structures: A Practice Lens for Studying Technology in Organizations.” Organization Science, 11(4), July-August 2000: 404-428.

• What is interesting here:– One and the same technical artifact generates a

series of different technologies as individuals with different values working in different cultures interact with it.

Developers Use Notes

• Distributed Authority

• Participative Culture

• Nonhierarchical Structure

• Technology-in-Practice– “Developers use Notes extensively to collaborate on

the design and development of the Notes Product”

Technologists Use Notes

• Cooperative Culture

• Individual and collective Incentive Structure

• Collective Problem-Solving Technology-in-Practice

• Technology-in-Practice– “Technology staff use Notes frequently for technical

problem solving and cooperation”

Consultants Use Notes• Individual Incentive Structure

• Competitive Culture with time-based billing structure

• Relationship Management

• Limited Use TIP

• Technology-in-Practice– “consultants use Notes minimally, sporadically, and perfunctorily”

Consultants in Different Corporate Environment

• Individual Incentive Structure

• Competitive Culture

• Time-Based Billing Structure

• Individual-Productivity Technology-in-Practice

• Technology-in-Practice– “Consultants use Notes regularly to improve their personal

efficiency”

Support Specialists Use Notes• Learning Orientation

• Cooperative Culture

• Time-Incentive Structure

• Process-Support Technology-in-Practice

• Technology-in-Practice– “Support specialists use Notes and the ITSS application routinely to

deliver electronic technical support to clients

General Structure• Different culture implies different values that select features

from Notes package that resonate with culture

• This produces a mode of enactment unique to each context or socio-technical system

• Two positions rendered partial– Determination of society by technology (Technological Determinism)– Determination of technology by social construction (Social

Constructionism)

• Two positions combine to produce a third: the co-determination of society and technology

Things to remember about lenses…

• Lenses filter– Allow certain factors to pass through that come to

our attention– Filter out other factors– They produce a figure (=area of attention or focus)

and a ground (=area not attended to or left out)

• The need to finish with a developed, comprehensive picture of situation