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Inside the Politics of Technology Discuss The Amsterdam University Press hans harbers The old saying that ‘man is the measure of all things’ presupposes free and autonomous human beings on the one hand, and neutral instruments on the other. Humanism plus instrumentalism, however, is a double illusion, this volume argues. Science and technology are not simply the means to reach human ends. On the contrary, they also actively shape human beings, their goals, their meanings, and their mutual relations. By means of case studies of technological innovations as diverse as video- cameras, electric cars, electronic notebooks, pregnancy tests, and genetic ( ed. screening devices the authors of Inside the Politics of Technology discuss the implications of this so-called ‘co-production’ of science, technology, and ) society for our philosophical and political ideas about humanity and techno- Technology of Politics the Inside logy. Are human beings the only ones endowed with agency, or do technolo- gical artifacts act as well? And if they do, then how should we understand or practice a politics of technology? Hans Harbers was trained as an historical sociologist and is currently Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Groningen. His research and publications focus on the roles of nonhuman actors in the co-production of knowledge, power, and morality. With contributions by: Cornelis Disco, Philip Brey, Nelly Oudshoorn, Margo hans harbers (ed.) Brouns, Ellen van Oost, Dirk Stemerding, Annemiek Nelis, Peter-Paul Verbeek, Petran Kockelkoren, Boelie Elzen, Tsjalling Swierstra, Jaap Jelsma, and Marcus Popkema. Inside the Politics ISBN 90-5356-756-9 of Technology Agency and Normativity in AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS the Co-Production of Technology and Society www.aup.nl 9 789053 567562 Inside the Politics of Technolo 24-06-2005 10:58 Pagina 1 Inside the Politics of Technolo 24-06-2005 10:58 Pagina 2 Inside the Politics of Technolo 24-06-2005 10:58 Pagina 3 Inside the Politics of Technology Agency and Normativity in the Co-Production of Technology and Society Hans Harbers (ed.) Inside the Politics of Technolo 24-06-2005 10:58 Pagina 4 Cover illustration: Fortunato Depero, Gli automi, Milan, Collection Gianni Mattioli Cover design: Studio Jan de Boer BNO,Amsterdam Layout: Adriaan de Jonge,Amsterdam © Amsterdam University Press,Amsterdam, All rights reserved.Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photo- copying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copy- right owner and the author of the book. Inside the Politics of Technolo 24-06-2005 10:58 Pagina 5 Contents Preface Introduction:Co-Production,Agency,and Normativity Hans Harbers The Distribution of Agency Back to the Drawing Board:Inventing a Sociology of Technology Cornelis Disco Artifacts as Social Agents Philip Brey Diversity and Distributed Agency in the Design and Use of Medical Video- Communication Technologies Nelly Oudshoorn, Margo Brouns, and Ellen van Oost The Mediation of Agency Choices and Choosing in Cancer Genetics Dirk Stemerding and Annemiek Nelis Artifacts and Attachment:A Post-Script Philosophy of Mediation Peter-Paul Verbeek Art and Technology Playing Leapfrog:A History and Philosophy of Technoèsis Petran Kockelkoren Inside the Politics of Technolo 24-06-2005 10:58 Pagina 6 The Politics of Agency Taking the Socio-Technical Seriously:Exploring the Margins for Change in the Traffic and Transport Domain Boelie Elzen Trapped in the Duality of Structure:An STS Approach to Engineering Ethics Tsjalling Swierstra and Jaap Jelsma The Cultural Politics of Prenatal Screening Marcus Popkema and Hans Harbers Epilogue: Political Materials – Material Politics Hans Harbers References About the Authors Index of Names Index of Subjects Inside the Politics of Technolo 24-06-2005 10:58 Pagina 7 Preface During a stay from - as research fellow at the University of Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands, I participated in the so-called “Mumford-pro- gram” – a project to stimulate and co-ordinate intellectual collaboration on the spot between various strands of Science and Technology Studies: from philosophy, sociology, and history of science and technology up to research policy and management studies. This volume, discussing the analytical and normative consequences of (conceiving) technology and technological arti- facts as agents, is one of the project’s principal results. Accordingly, the con- tributing authors are (or were) all engaged with the University of Twente. Earlier versions of the contributions to this volume were extensively dis- cussed in a common workshop with Emilie Gomart and Knut Sørensen as ex- ternal discussants. I would like to thank both of them for their stimulating comments and critical remarks.In addition,different chapters were reviewed seperatelybyexperts:DonaldMacKenzie(BacktotheDrawingBoard),David Hess (Artifacts as Social Agents), Adele Clarke (Diversity and Distributed Agency in the Design and Use of Medical Video-Communication Technolo- gies), Annemarie Mol (Choices and Choosing in Cancer Genetics), Andrew Feenberg (Artifacts and Attachment), Sven Kesselring (Taking the Socio- Technical Seriously), Bryan Wynne (Trapped in the Duality of Structure), and John Law (The Cultural Politics of Prenatal Screening). We are grateful for their encouraging remarks and helpful criticisms, which improved the original drafts substantially.Dick Pels,Tsjalling Swierstra,and Nil Disco com- mented on the earlier versions of the introduction and the epilogue. Their persistent support helped me overcome moments of hesitation. Finally, I would like to thank George Hall and Nil Disco for their careful corrections of the English, and Maarten Zeehandelaar for his conscientious compilation of the index. Groningen,June Hans Harbers Inside the Politics of Technolo 24-06-2005 10:58 Pagina 8 Inside the Politics of Technolo 24-06-2005 10:58 Pagina 9 Introduction Co-Production,Agency,and Normativity Hans Harbers The Netherlands, . a.m., February :A few minutes after take-off from the nearby Twente Air Force Base,an F- fighter plane gets into trouble, tries to turn around and return to the base, but crashes into the residential area of Hasseler Es in the town of Hengelo. Houses catch fire, cars are de- stroyed,summerhouses and sheds are ruined.Total material damage: € mil- lion. Plus an F- of course – a multiple of that amount. Fortunately, there were no personal injuries; even the pilot was saved by his ejection seat at the last minute.A “divine miracle”,according to Hengelo’s mayor,Lemstra. The accident prompted an immediate debate on the risks of military flights over densely populated areas.Voices were raised demanding to closure the Twente Air Force base. Part of the discussion concerned the cause of the accident.Was the engine failure caused by a technical defect,fuel problems,or could it simply be a matter of a bird flying into the intake compressor? And what about the pilot? Did he act properly? Shouldn’t he have flown straight ahead after he had received the first signals of engine trouble from his dash- board instruments, instead of making a sharp turn to the right in order to re- turn to the base as soon as possible, a move which brought him above the stricken area? Or, simply another possibility, might not the accident have been caused by the lack of radar control, since that very morning the ground station was out of order due to technical maintenance? This was the twenty-fifth F- to crash since this aircraft was first deployed by the Dutch armed forces in .According to the Air Force’s public rela- tions department, % of these crashes were attributable to technical trou- bles; % to human failure. But what is technical and what is human in this case? Is the absence of ground radar, due to maintenance work, a technical or a human affair? If, as it appears, engines can be destroyed by flying birds, why can’t human beings take that into account? And when the engine fails, this is manifested to the flying pilot as a technical defect, but couldn’t it have been foreseen by maintenance personnel at the airbase, thus making them or their Inside the Politics of Technolo 24-06-2005 10:58 Pagina 10 military superiors accountable? If something went wrong during the engine production process, shouldn’t General Dynamics, the manufacturer, be held liable? Or does the final responsibility lie with the politicians who decided to purchase the F-? Apparently, technical issues cannot be neatly distin- guished from human actions.We are confronted here with a hybrid situation in which human beings and technology are tightly interwoven – a mixture, a muddle of man and machine. This is all the more obvious when the attribution of guilt commences from the other side – human error instead of technical defects. Suppose the pilot makes a mistake: is it his fault, or just the consequence of the sophisticated technology he has to deal with? In his cockpit filled with instruments and on- board computers, he receives an amount of information that, according to experts at an air force conference in , threatens to exceed the processing capacity of human beings. Moreover, scientific research shows that the high speed of an F-, in combination with its vast manoeuvreability, can result in sensorial disorientation: human brains do not always function in accordance with normal physiological processes under such extreme conditions. Conse- quently, it is not avoidable human failure that is at stake here, but the in- evitable, natural limits of (the body of) the human being. These limits are reached or even surpassed by technological developments, which, in turn, paradoxically enough, are initiated by those very human beings. Where does one draw the line between man and machine, between human responsibility and technical inevitability, between the subjective world of politics, culture and morality and the objective world of science, technology and nature? There is no such line – at least not a priori – stored in the nature of things, as an essence.
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