[PEN-L:28626] Re: Re: Drudgery

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "joanna bujes" <joanna.bujes@xxxxxxxxxxxx>


> At 03:21 PM 07/26/2002 -0700, you wrote:
> >The Wall Street Journal today had a front page story about women
> >in Mali, whose use of mechanized grinding machines has given them
> >time to improve their lives and become literate.
>
> What's the point of this? Did the cotton gin enable slaves to improve their
> lives and become literate?
>
> The application of machines to work is a complex issue, let's treat it that
> way.
>
> Joanna

=========================

Escaping the Iron Cage, or, Subversive Rationalization and Democratic Theory
Andrew Feenberg

<...>

I start from the assumption that there is no unique correlation between technological advance and
the distribution of social power. If authoritarian social hierarchy is not technically necessary,
then there must be other ways of rationalizing society that democratize rather than centralize
control. We need not go underground or native to escape the iron cage. I will argue that this is in
fact the meaning of the emerging social movements to change technology in a variety of areas such as
computers, medicine, and the environment.

<...>

The strongest objections to democratizing technology come from experts who fear the loss of their
hardwon freedom from lay interference. Can we reconcile public involvement with the rationality and
autonomy of professional technical work or will the politicization of technology destroy the
autonomy of the technical professions?

The fear of democratization is based on an illusion specific to technical change. Successful public
interventions into technology result in changes reflecting interests excluded at earlier stages in
the design process. The eventual internalization of these new interests in design masks their source
in public protest. The waves close over forgotten struggles and the technologists return to the
comforting belief in their own autonomy which seems to be verified by the conditions of everyday
technical work.

Thus the notion that technology is apolitical is an illusion that arises from the very success of
public involvement in technical change; it reappears with each new phase of protest and intervention
as a defensive reaction on the part of professions and organizations that want no interference with
their technical initiative. But in reality the autonomy they claim was violated long ago in the
course of earlier controversies the outcomes of which they now unwittingly endorse in defending
their traditions. Informal democratic procedures are always already an implicit part of the design
process despite the impression of technologists and managers.

http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/feenberg/schom1.htm

Feenberg's home page is at:
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/feenberg/