A thought on reading Technology Matters

I am reading Technology Matters: Questions to Live With by David Nye. In his first chapter he defines "technology", providing a useful brief history of such definitions.

I continue to prefer to think of technology as a body of knowledge about how to accomplish useful purposes. I can then think of this knowledge as embodied in devices, materials (such as pharmaceuticals and seeds), facilities and infrastructure, people and institutions. We can impose categories on this knowledge, such as the technologies in a given system (e.g. the Internet and Internet based applications, roads, vehicles and their support) or in a given domain (e.g. chemical technology, electrical technology). There are also networks of related forms of technological knowledge:

• Some devices are in fact built out of other devices, as a car includes an engine, a drive chain, wheels and steering. These in turn are built of other devices, as an internal combustion engine requires fuel pump, carburetor, etc.
• Steel is made in mills, using furnaces, etc. The mills in turn are furnished with devices, each of which is produced by another process, and these factories are in turn equipped with devices made is still other factories.

Thus the body of technological knowledge is highly structured, and this structure in part determines the growth of the body of technology. So too does the real world and the needs it imposes on mankind, as well as the properties of nature that are available to mankind with which to build devices.

In Nye's second chapter he considers technological determinism -- the idea that technology determines social and economic relations and that technological change drives social and economic change. Again, he provides a brief but useful history of the evolution of the concept of technological determinism.

Considering technology as a global body of information (exhibiting different patterns of embodiment in different geographic regions and different cultures), it seems clear that there is no institution capable of controlling the changes in technology. Indeed, as Brian Arthur points out in The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves, the body of techological knowledge evolves under its own imperatives, beyond control. Of course, many governments seek to stimulate invention and technology deepening, especially within their borders and to promote economic growth within their own economies. There is some controversy over their success in such efforts, but even the most powerful states control only a portion of global technological invention and deepening.

Nye gives a couple of famous examples of rejections of the use of technology -- the Japanese Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879 and Mennonite rejection of the use of many modern technologies. Note that the Japanese did not give up knowledge of guns, nor of how to make guns, and indeed guns were stockpiled in armories, but simply not used. So too, the Mennonite community rejection of automobiles and telephones is done on the basis of knowledge of those devices, and with the possibility of reversing the decision at any time and purchasing devices and learning to use them.

Thus these two examples are of institutions involving a single culture in limited geographical areas choosing collectively to give up the use of specific devices. Of course there are many examples of cultural differences in the way technological knowledge is embodied. Europeans, Americans and Indians use quite different kinds of motor vehicles; French, Chinese and American kitchens use quite different devices for the preparation of food.

It seems clear that any reading of history would suggest that social and economic organization have been different in different ages, and that the technology available during an age limits the forms of organization possible in that age. One could not have large nation states without transportation and communications technology, embodied in transportation and communications infrastructures, capable of sustaining government authority over a large region. Similarly, one could not have markets covering large geographic areas without technologies and their embodying technologies capable of sustaining such large markets. It seems quite reasonable to believe that where technologies make large scale infrastructures capable of increasingly efficient governance and economic institutions possible, they will tend to evolve, even over the objections and in spite of counter efforts of existing power elites.

In short, it would seem that technology, culture and socio-economic institutions co-evolve. Each influences the other. All are evolving influenced by the planning of many individuals in many organizations, and each evolving beyond the deterministic control of any individual or group. It is only in the relatively constrained geographic and cultural contexts can decisions be made effectively to limit the use of specific technologies. Even in these cases, power is constrained. The choice of Mennonites to limit agricultural technologies will affect the ability of their communities to export agricultural products into larger markets; the choice of the Japanese to give up the gun proved not to survive the opening of Japan by foreign military forces.