The Politics of Technology: a Critique of the Work of Langdon Winner
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University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection 1954-2016 University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 1990 The politics of technology: a critique of the work of Langdon Winner Richard W. Donnelly University of Wollongong Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses University of Wollongong Copyright Warning You may print or download ONE copy of this document for the purpose of your own research or study. The University does not authorise you to copy, communicate or otherwise make available electronically to any other person any copyright material contained on this site. You are reminded of the following: This work is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this work may be reproduced by any process, nor may any other exclusive right be exercised, without the permission of the author. Copyright owners are entitled to take legal action against persons who infringe their copyright. 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For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] THE POLITICS OF TECHNOLOGY: A CRITIQUE OF THE WORK OF LANGDON WINNER A thesis submitted m partial fulfilment of the degree of Master of Arts (Honours) from The University of Wollongong by Richard W. Donnelly, B.A. (A.N.U.), Dip.Ed. (Syd.) Department of Science and Technology Studies, 1990 UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG LIBRARY DECLARATION This work has not been submitted for a degree to any other university or institution. / Richard W. Bonnellv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the following for their assistance during the writing of this thesis: My supervisor, Brian Martin, for all his support, encouragement, constructive criticism and helpful advice; Stan Aungles and Richard Badham, whose encouragement, intellectual stimulation and friendship have been so valuable; The other staff and post-graduate students of the S.T.S. Department for their support and encouragement; Neville Neasbey for his unfailing efforts in rescuing my work from a troublesome word- processor. And my wife, Jill, for her love and support. ABSTRACT Numbers of writers have agreed that technology is political, yet in exactly what ways this is to be understood has been the subject of much debate. One author whose work has been influential in this regard is Langdon Winner. In his two books. Autonomous Technology and The Whale and the Reactor, he has argued that profitable insights can be gained by the application of the categories of political philosophy to the study of "technology itself", which, for him, involves understanding technologies as "political phenomena in their own right". In this thesis, I examine this claim and argue that, while Winner's analysis provides perceptive insights into the challenges posed by technology for contemporary politics, his locating of the political in the technology itself has significant conceptual problems. I will suggest that most of the problems in Winner's analysis arise from his inconsistent understanding and use of the concepts, "technology" and "politics". Furthermore, I argue that his failure to draw out the ideological nature of much of the discourse surrounding technological decision-making is a key weakness in his analysis and I suggest how such a perspective would do much to reconcile many of the ambiguities in his argument. INTRODUCTION That technology has significant implications for political life has been long recognised. However, what those implications are and how they should be addressed has been a matter of considerable ongoing debate. While the continuous development of science and technology has, for the past two hundred years, been seen as the indispensable motive power of progress, the post-war period, particularly since the sixties, has wimessed a growing restlessness about the identification of social progress with technological development. Environmental despoliation, worker alienation, urban breakdown, the greenhouse effect, exploitation of the Third World, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons are just some examples of what are widely understood to be manifestations of the failure of the technological promise. Critical studies from a number of different perspectives have called for and sought to provide a re-evaluation of the role of technology in modem societies. However, very few have sought to address specifically the issue of politics and technology. This may be due to the fact that in social thought, as Badham has shown, ^ there have been two dominant theoretical approaches to the politics of technology - industrial society theory and capitalist society theory. The dominance of these two models has tended to result in the conceptual separation of technology and politics, with the result that analysis focusses either on the development of technology, understanding the political as essentially responses to that development (industrial society theory), or alternatively on the politics of the existing class structure, understanding technology essentially as a reflection of that class structure (capitalist society theory). However, both theories can be said to share a common characteristic: the denial of the primacy of the political. In industrial society theory this is most obvious; here technology is understood as obeying its own technical requirements in relative autonomy, a situation to which politics must then necessarily adapt. In capitalist society theory, on the other hand, the devaluation of the political is a result of the Marxist understanding of politics as essentially a transitional stage - an aspect of the superstructure of capitalist 1 Badham R., Theories of Industrial Societv (Croom Hehn, London 1986). 3 0009 02932 4485 scx^iety, which will ultimately disappear in a communist future. Thus while the capitalist society analysis appears to have a greater commitment to the primacy of politics, it is only to be understood as a reflection of more profound structural contradictions within capitalism and an expression of class struggle. Nevertheless, at the same time, there has been within each of these perspectives a recurring argument that technology itself is political. But what exactly is meant by this claim? Does it represent a theoretical synthesis which does full justice to both the technological and the political, or does it merely conflate the one into the other? What does such a claim understand "technology" and "politics" to mean? This thesis aims to explore these questions as they are addressed in the work of Langdon Winner. Winner has consistently sought to explore the phenomenon of technology for contemporary political life. In so doing, he has formulated a "theory of technological politics", a perspective which he claims takes seriously the technical artifacts themselves and which, in fact, "identifies certain technologies as political 2 phenomena in their own right". Winner is significant in that his work can be understood as providing a theoretical bridge between those who are interested in a macro-analysis of technological change, and those who prefer the perspective of micro-analysis. At the same time, his contribution is distinctive for its commitment to the necessity for and centrality of political philosophy as a tool for technological analysis. Winner's work is characterized by the clarity of its insights into the challenges which technology poses for modem society and its strong commitment to democratic political theory. However, this thesis will argue that these strengths in fact become weaknesses when Winner seeks to analyse the political nature of technology. It will be suggested that his predilection to understand technology as culture and politics as democratic politics significantly restricts his perspective and limits the value of his analysis. In order to gain a clearer understanding of Winner's argument, Chapter One will attempt to place him in some sort of context by briefly referring to four authors who have 2 Winner,L., The Whale and the Reactor (University of Chicago, Chicago 1986) p.22. made crucial contributions to the intellectual framework within which he develops his theory, a framework that is generally critical of the implications of technology for political life: Jacques Ellul, Herbert Marcuse, David Dickson and Harry Braverman. Chapters Two and Three will then focus on Winner's argument in Autonomous Technology and The Whale and the Reactor respectively, before a final assessment of his work is attempted in the concluding chapter. CHAPTER ONE While there is no pretension here to exhaustiveness in choice or treatment, EUul, Marcuse, Dickson and Braverman have provided what have become classical statements of the political