04 Wajcman (JB/D) 16/4/02 10:09 am Page 347 Judy Wajcman Addressing Technological Change: The Challenge to Social Theory n their ‘millennial’ reflections on the end of the 20th century and the begin- Ining of the 21st, many sociologists see technology as the impetus for the most fundamental of social trends and transformations. Indeed, understand- ing the role of technologies in the economy and society is now central to social theory. While there are a variety of social theories that proclaim the radical transformation of society all contain, at their core, claims about technological change and its social impact (Kumar, 1995; Amin, 1994). This is as true of the three paradigmatic theories of the transformation that Western societies are undergoing – the theories of the information society, post-Fordism and postmodernity – as it is of more recent theories of globaliz- ation. Much emphasis is placed on major new clusters of scientific and technological innovations, particularly the widespread use of information and communication technologies, and the convergence of ways of life around the globe. The increased automation of production and the intensified use of the computer are said to be revolutionizing the economy and the character of employment. In the ‘information society’ or ‘knowledge economy’, the dominant form of work becomes information and knowledge-based. At the same time leisure, education, family relationships and personal identities are seen as moulded by the pressures exerted and opportunities arising from the new technical forces. The globalization literature similarly postulates that states and societies across the world are experiencing historically unprecedented change as they try to adapt to a more interconnected but highly uncertain world (Giddens, 1990, 1996; Castells, 1996; Sassen, 1996; Held et al., 1999). Prominence is given to the intensity, extensity and velocity of global flows, interactions and networks embracing all social domains. For example, Manuel Castells (1996) argues that the revolution in information technology is creating a global economy, the product of an interaction between the rise in informational Current Sociology, May 2002, Vol. 50(3): 347–363 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) [0011–3921(200205)50:3;347–363;024756] 04 Wajcman (JB/D) 16/4/02 10:09 am Page 348 348 Current Sociology Vol. 50 No. 3 networks and the process of capitalist restructuring. In the ‘informational mode of development’, labour and capital, the central variables of the indus- trial society, are replaced by information and knowledge. In the resulting ‘Network Society’, the compression of space and time made possible by the new communication technology alters the speed and scope of decisions. Organizations can decentralize and disperse, with high-level decision- making remaining in ‘world cities’ while lower-level operations, linked to the centre by communication networks, can take place virtually anywhere. Infor- mation is the key ingredient of social organization, and flows of messages and images between networks constitute the basic thread of social structure (1996: 477). For Castells, the information age, organized around ‘the space of flows and timeless time’, marks a whole new epoch in the human experience. Social Theory and Technoscience These ideas – or ideas like them (for example, Urry, 2000) – are now com- monplace in sociology and I foreground them here to illustrate the central- ity of technology to contemporary theories of social, cultural and economic change. There are strong echoes of the earlier ‘post-industrial society’ thesis in these accounts, and its tendency to adopt a technologically determinist stance. Castells explicitly builds on theories of post-industrialism, moving beyond a teleological model and giving the analysis a global reach (Bell, 1973; Touraine, 1971). However, while he explicitly attempts to distance himself from technological determinism, he does not entirely succeed. The idea that technology, specifically information and communication technology, is the most important cause of social change permeates his analysis of Network Society. The result is a rather simplistic view of the role of technology in society. In this, Castells is typical of most scholars of the information society who fail to engage with the burgeoning literature in the social studies of science and technology that has developed over the last two decades.1 I will return to this in the next section of my essay. The consequences of this failure are not confined to the theoretical domain. These metanarratives about the information age can themselves help to constitute that which they purport to describe and analyse. Technologi- cally determinist understandings of the economy play an increasingly important role in political discourse. Governments everywhere legitimate much of their policy in terms of a technological imperative. Thus access to Internet resources and educational training for the information age are promoted as the fundamental equity issues. As if in response to Bill Gates’s famous claim that the Internet would be a powerful force for eliminating barriers of prejudice and inequality, the UK government, for example, has undertaken to put a computer in every classroom as a guarantee of equality 04 Wajcman (JB/D) 16/4/02 10:09 am Page 349 Wajcman: Addressing Technological Change 349 in education. There can be no clearer example of the belief in simple techno- logical fixes to complex social problems. Rhetoric about the ‘digital divide’, that between the information rich and the information poor, serves to camouflage pre-existing patterns of social and class inequality. Furthermore, much government discourse about the inevitability of globalization also invokes new information technology as an autonomous and largely unassail- able force. In this process, technocratic discourse, globalization and free market economics coalesce into an extremely powerful ideological force (Johnson, 2000). The idea that technological rationality translates into political rationality has a long lineage. Frankfurt School writers such as Marcuse (1968, 1969) and Habermas (1971) were wise to it before the dawn of the computer age. Indeed, Habermas’s famous essay, dedicated to Marcuse for his 70th birthday, was entitled ‘Technology and Science as “Ideology”’ . Habermas argued that the legitimating role of market liberalism was replaced by a new modernist, technocratic ideology in which economic growth and social development appeared to be determined by scientific-technical progress. His discussion of the ‘scientization of politics’, whereby political problems are seen as techni- cal ones and the ‘expert’ directs the politician, has continuing relevance for the nature of democratic decision-making today. Key to the conceptualization of technical rationality in that prescient 1968 essay was the question of whether science is neutral or intrinsically about domination. The context was the argument, central to Frankfurt School thinking, that Western science and technology form a project of control or domination over both nature and humanity. In One Dimensional Man (1968), Marcuse argued that because domination is intrinsic to capitalist science and technology, a new society would require a new science and a new technology. This would be based not on mastery, but on the liberation of nature. By contrast, Habermas departed from the central Frankfurt School position to defend a positivist conception of science and technology as ideo- logically pure, value-free, and above all neutral. He disputes Marcuse’s claim that a science or technology fundamentally different from the one we presently have is a real possibility for advanced societies. Although the nuances of this highly abstract exchange have been lost over time, it foreshadowed much of the debate about the relationship between technology and society that is still central to the discipline of sociology. Habermas’s separation of two analytically distinct spheres of tech- nical rationality and substantive rationality (or ‘system’ and ‘lifeworld’), where the former may extend beyond its appropriate sphere and ‘colonize’ the lifeworld, is a form of implicit technological determinism. It is the position that is most evident in abstract discussions of social theory. However, within the social studies of science and technology, Marcuse’s argument that science and technology are socially constituted has had more resonance. 04 Wajcman (JB/D) 16/4/02 10:09 am Page 350 350 Current Sociology Vol. 50 No. 3 The writings of the Frankfurt School were to influence many within the political movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s to develop a radical critique of science. In campaigns against an abused, militarized, and pollut- ing science, it was argued that science was directed towards profit and warfare. Initially science itself was seen as neutral or value-free and poten- tially useful as long as it was in the hands of those working for a just society. Gradually, however, the radical science movement developed a Marxist analysis of the class character of science and its links with capitalist methods of production. A revived political economy of science began to argue that the growth and nature of modern science were related to the needs of capitalist society. Increasingly tied to the state and industry, science had become directed towards domination. The ideology of science as neutral was seen as having a specific historical development. One of the most characteristic formulations