Sustainable Technologies: Paradigms and Practices

Sus­tain­able Tech­nolo­gies: Par­a­digms and Practices

or

If I was a deter­min­ist I would want to know that which often for­bids us to talk about what we can­not know.

>Jor­dan Parker Williams

Soci­ety, Nature and Technology

Posi­tion Paper II

16 Novem­ber 2006

 

Are we a prod­uct of tech­nol­ogy or tech­nol­ogy a prod­uct of humans? The very ques­tion itself is based on a false dichotomy.  It is based on a false par­a­digm or “map of human nature”, that of deter­min­ism.  We are a prod­uct of nei­ther nature nor nur­ture; we are a prod­uct of choice, because there is always a space between stim­u­lus and response, as we exer­cise our power to choose based on prin­ci­ples, the space will become larger.[i] The idea of deter­min­ism is deeply embed­ded into present day cul­ture and has rein­forced a cul­ture of vic­tim­iza­tion because of the ter­ri­fy­ing sense that if I do have choice, then I am also respon­si­ble for my present sit­u­a­tion.  If a per­son can say I am what I am and I am where I am because I so choose to be there, then that per­son can real­ize a state­ment of:  I choose other wise.  This is an impor­tant real­iza­tion of the human con­di­tion, admit­tedly far too often tech­nolo­gies are mar­keted with knee jerk responses to their use­ful­ness and seem all too agree­able; but—being human allows  us to choose, even in the most over­whelm­ing polit­i­cally set tra­jec­to­ries, we have the power to choose.

Com­monly in socio-technological stud­ies there are two cat­e­gories: 1) “tech­no­log­i­cal vol­un­tarist” advo­cat­ing that social sys­tems shape tech­nolo­gies and humans have a choice, voice, and con­trol over and in tech­nolo­gies and their tra­jec­to­ries and 2) “tech­no­log­i­cal deter­min­ist” who believe tech­nol­ogy has a set path and inevitable evo­lu­tion, pro­duc­ing arti­facts along the way.

In this posi­tion paper I will look at tech­nol­ogy through a vol­un­tarist lens to see how sus­tain­able par­a­digms and prac­tices can evolve and how “reflex­ive mod­ern­iza­tion” is best to allow us to evolve to a sus­tain­able future in which our choices in every­day deci­sions matter.[ii]

 

SUSTAINABLE CHOICES

The choices we make, deter­mine our abil­ity to make sus­tain­abil­ity hap­pen, to deter­mine what’s best and for whom (the earth, future gen­er­a­tions, and the masses) can be a daunt­ing task/decision(s).  We are talk­ing about the fundamental/early ideas and deci­sions that can lead to a more holis­tic sys­tems think­ing or in con­trast short-term destruc­tive prac­tices, and these get played out by many decen­tral­ized cor­po­ra­tions, busi­ness, orga­ni­za­tions, indi­vid­u­als’ every­day.  So the ques­tions to ask are: how to decide what is best? How to con­vince some­one to do some­thing else? How to find out what to ques­tion in the first place? What is “wrong”? How to see through the fog of our con­ven­tions and nor­ma­tive practices?—these every­day things can have a tremen­dous effect on our world, cumu­la­tively destroy­ing or cre­at­ing.  How do we get to the goal, from here to there?  It comes down to incremental-ism, baby steps toward sus­tain­abil­ity, becom­ing greener and greener, more earth friendly, more like ecosys­tems (no waste), that is our goal to affect the whole;  but we can’t get “out there” over night, we can think it, and then we begin to evolve to it.

In Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Soci­eties Choose to Fail or Suc­ceed he argues that the deter­min­ism can have two cat­e­gories bio­log­i­cal and cultural—and cul­tural entrench­ment occurs where soci­eties choose to keep liv­ing on in unsus­tain­able man­ners based on cul­tural rea­sons rather that choos­ing to change and adapt to bio­log­i­cal concerns.[iii] Where ratio­nal actors, who must have sus­pected that the destruc­tion of resources would result in the destruc­tion of their civ­i­liza­tion, still stand by pas­sively and watch their own demise[iv].  Ignor­ing pos­si­ble choices that could result in a dif­fer­ent cul­ture and outcome.

 

ENTRENCHMENT (Hughes)

This is much like Hughes’ view of tech­nol­ogy where entrench­ment of social/cultural val­ues or sys­tems can be irre­versible once enough tech­no­log­i­cal momen­tum is gained and sys­tems become less respon­sive to change, whether it be chang­ing social val­ues, envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion, or cul­tural change.[v] These sys­tems have reached a trig­ger point, where nat­ural selec­tion re-forms itself from con­scious selection, of the entrench­ment of a sys­tem or tech­nol­ogy bring­ing it down again into an uncon­scious tele­ol­ogy, a bell curve of evo­lu­tion.  Once that crit­i­cal peak is reached another tech­nol­ogy, another curve starts at “zero”, build­ing off what has been learned, this hap­pens because entrench­ment lim­its innovation.

 

A CONSPIRATORIAL VISION (Har­away, Latour)

We have to ques­tion what we think of as “out of the ques­tion” espe­cially when our qual­ity of life is at stake, and we must be open to choos­ing “zero” to allow for inno­va­tion and dif­fer­ent paths.  Bruno Latour in Open­ing Pandora’s Black Box states that mod­ern knowl­edge and those who study it are too scat­tered and dis­con­nected by their specialization—no decoders or trans­la­tors or out­siders exist out­side of the sys­tem to explain it and relate it to other larger com­mon problems.[vi] These actors are crit­i­cal in choos­ing “zero” and allow­ing an evo­lu­tion that does not become entrenched by ques­tion­ing, trans­lat­ing, and vision­ing.  The entrench­ment or the ques­tion­ing of entrench­ment affects how we as a col­lec­tive con­scious can trans­late our prob­lems and our knowl­edges gained by sci­ence into real­i­ties that are ben­e­fi­cial to us.  This affects how we make choices.   Latour also points to the con­cept ‘rule of method,’ where switch­ing from ‘get the facts straight’ to a more strate­gic one of ‘choose who to believe’ or ‘look for a weak point’ can open ‘black boxes.‘[vii] Which can be help­ful when faced with a dom­i­nant view of any­thing.  Har­away in Sit­u­ated Knowl­edges also shares this view call­ing out Sci­ence as a search for trans­la­tion, con­vert­ibil­ity, mobil­ity of mean­ings and uni­ver­sal­ity, a form of reduc­tion­ism where one dom­i­nant lan­guage rules.[viii] Har­away points to a “pas­sion­ate detach­ment” one that is sim­i­lar to Heidegger’s view point of ‘con­scious con­tem­pla­tion,’ where there is no right answer but we can keep a watch­ful eye for “easy rel­a­tivisms and holisms built out of sum­ming and sub­sum­ing parts.“[ix] This idea of sum­ming and sub­sum­ing parts is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Heidegger’s reac­tion to effi­ciency and his con­cept of enfram­ing, where if we assume, ‘essence’ is lost and we lose our consciousness.[x]

 

NONHIERARCHICAL (Feen­burg).

Feen­burg writes that as mod­ern soci­eties depend on tech­nol­ogy, it requires an author­i­tar­ian hierarchy.[xi] In his ‘crit­i­cal the­ory of tech­nol­ogy’, he empha­sizes an “alter­na­tive approach of con­tex­tual aspects of tech­nol­ogy ignored by the dom­i­nant view,” where non­hier­ar­chi­cal mod­els that cater to more than one solu­tion allow social actors to choose appro­pri­ate technologies.[xii] This is sim­i­lar to how Donna Har­away rep­re­sents Sit­u­ated Knowl­edges, she notes that “the only way to find a larger vision is to be some­where par­tic­u­lar”, rather than in the every­where of rel­a­tivism and total­iza­tion, which denies respon­si­bil­ity and crit­i­cal inquiry and most impor­tantly choice.[xiii] Har­away also states that the most pre­ferred per­spec­tive is a ‘sub­ju­gated’ one—seeing from the bot­tom seems to be the most “ade­quate, sus­tained, objec­tive, trans­form­ing account of the world.“[xiv]

 

MORE DEMOCRATIC (Win­ner)
Lang­don Win­ner fol­lows suit in the idea that tech­nol­ogy and sci­ence are not neu­tral, and what mat­ters is how soci­eties choose to use technologies.[xv] Win­ner also priv­i­leges that some tech­nolo­gies and ways of think­ing about tech­nol­ogy are more demo­c­ra­tic and are more com­pat­i­ble with cer­tain types of social relations.[xvi] He gives the exam­ple of nuclear energy, a cen­tral­ized power sys­tem ver­sus solar energy, a decen­tral­ized power system—where solar allows for more demo­c­ra­tic and less inher­ent author­i­tar­ian hier­ar­chies.  He also notes that some sys­tems lend them­selves to not lim­it­ing civil lib­er­ties, lay­ing out that some sys­tems cre­ate more sus­tain­able out­comes and give peo­ple more choice than others.[xvii]

 

STEWARDSHIP vs. DETERMINISM (Bijker and Law and Beck)
In the intro­duc­tory essay The Social Shap­ing of Tech­nol­ogy by Weibe E. Bijker and John Law they site Ulrich Beck’s ‘reflex­ive mod­ern­iza­tion,’ where progress is a co-evolved “process that is actively, and demo­c­ra­t­i­cally, shaped.“[xviii] Coa­lesc­ing the polit­i­cal process with the activ­i­ties and goals of the cit­i­zen ini­tia­tives, this seems like a strong way to achieve a more sus­tain­able, respon­sive future. [xix] This is an exam­ple of a future of stew­ard­ship allow­ing mul­ti­ple agen­das and pri­or­i­ties of a dif­fer­ent nature—free from positivist’s view points, which often for­bid us to talk about what we can­not know.  Stew­ard­ship relies on plurism, cul­ti­vat­ing dif­fer­ent and many view­points, while remain­ing hum­ble, in con­trast a deter­min­ist view is usu­ally about a sin­gu­lar teleology—successive leaps of indi­vid­ual genius, rather than a new cul­ture of simultaneity.

 

WHAT IS A SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGY ?(Heidegger)

This is a hard ques­tion to answer but as Hei­deg­ger first started to hint  that mod­ern tech­nol­ogy can eas­ily take us for a ride and we lose touch with our­selves and the earth, but at the same time we can use tech­nol­ogy for our own benefit.[xx] We can see an exam­ple of this from the web­site of the Devel­op­ment Cen­ter for Appro­pri­ate Tech­nol­ogy, we see their mis­sion state­ment is aligned with this idea of simul­tane­ity and choice:

We envi­sion a world where com­mu­ni­ties thrive and are built in har­mony with nature, because peo­ple under­stand the con­se­quences of their choices and make deci­sions for their own and the Earth’s benefit.[xxi]

In the end, it’s really about con­sid­er­ing more than one agenda simul­ta­ne­ously and mak­ing the best choice for a sus­tain­able future that you define as a world citizen.

 

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[i] Covey, Stephen R., The 8^th Habit: From Effec­tive­ness to Great­ness. (New York: Free Press, 2004): Chap.1.

[ii] Weibe E. Bijker and John Law, “Gen­eral Intro­duc­tion,” Shap­ing Technology/Building Soci­ety (Cam­bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992)

[iii] Dia­mond, Jared, Col­lapse: How Soci­eties Choose to Fail or Suceed. (New York: Pen­guin Group, 2005): Prologue

[iv] Dia­mond, Jared, Col­lapse: How Soci­eties Choose to Fail or Suceed. (New York: Pen­guin Group, 2005): Prologue

[v] Thomas Hughes, “Tech­no­log­i­cal Momen­tum,” Does Tech­nol­ogy Drive His­tory: The Dilemma of

Tech­no­log­i­cal Deter­min­ism, Mer­ritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx, Eds. (Cam­bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994): p 101–114.

[vi] Latour, Bruno, “Open­ing Pandora’s Balck Box,” in Sci­ence in Action (Cam­bridge, MA: Har­vard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1987): p 16.

[vii] Latour, Bruno, “Open­ing Pandora’s Black Box,” in Sci­ence in Action (Cam­bridge, MA: Har­vard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1987): p 8.

[viii] Donna Har­away, “Sit­u­ated Knowl­edges: The Sci­ence Ques­tion in Fem­i­nism and the Priv­iledge of Par­tial Per­spec­tive” in Tech­nol­ogy and the Pol­i­tics of Knowl­edge, Andrew Feen­burg and Alas­tair Han­nay, Eds., (Bloom­ing­ton, IN: Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity Press, 1995): p 179.

[ix] Donna Har­away, “Sit­u­ated Knowl­edges: The Sci­ence Ques­tioon in Fem­i­nism and the Priv­iledge of Par­tial Per­spec­tive” in Tech­nol­ogy and the Pol­i­tics of Knowl­edge, Andrew Feen­burg and Alas­tair Han­nay, Eds., (Bloom­ing­ton, IN: Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity Press, 1995): p175-194.

[x] Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, “The Ques­tion Con­cern­ing Tech­nol­ogy,” The Ques­tion Con­cern­ing Tech­nol­ogy and Oth­er­Es­says (New York: Harper and Rowe, 1977): p 115–154.

[xi] Andrew Feen­burg, “Sub­ver­sive Ratio­nal­iza­tion: Tech­nol­ogy, Power, and Democ­racy,” in Tech­nol­ogy and the Pol­i­tics of Knowl­edge, Andrew Feen­burg and Alas­tair Han­nay, Eds., (Bloom­ing­ton, IN: Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity Press, 1995): p 2.

[xii] Andrew Feen­burg, “Sub­ver­sive Ratio­nal­iza­tion: Tech­nol­ogy, Power, and Democ­racy,” in Tech­nol­ogy and the Pol­i­tics of Knowl­edge, Andrew Feen­burg and Alas­tair Han­nay, Eds., (Bloom­ing­ton, IN: Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity Press, 1995): p 4.

[xiii] Donna Har­away, “Sit­u­ated Knowl­edges: The Sci­ence Ques­tion in Fem­i­nism and the Priv­iledge of Par­tial Per­spec­tive” in Tech­nol­ogy and the Pol­i­tics of Knowl­edge, Andrew Feen­burg and Alas­tair Han­nay, Eds., (Bloom­ing­ton, IN: Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity Press, 1995): p175-194.

[xiv] Donna Har­away, “Sit­u­ated Knowl­edges: The Sci­ence Ques­tion in Fem­i­nism and the Priv­iledge of Par­tial Per­spec­tive” in Tech­nol­ogy and the Pol­i­tics of Knowl­edge, Andrew Feen­burg and Alas­tair Han­nay, Eds., (Bloom­ing­ton, IN: Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity Press, 1995): p175-194.

[xv] Lang­don Win­ner, “Cit­i­zen Virtues in a Tech­no­log­i­cal Order,” in Tech­nol­ogy and the Pol­i­tics of Knowl­edge, Andrew Freen­burg and Alas­tair Han­nay, Edsl, (Bloom­ing­ton, IN: Indi­ana Uni­veristy Press, 1995): p 65–84.

[xvi] Lang­don Win­ner, “Cit­i­zen Virtues in a Tech­no­log­i­cal Order,” in Tech­nol­ogy and the Pol­i­tics of Knowl­edge, Andrew Freen­burg and Alas­tair Han­nay, Edsl, (Bloom­ing­ton, IN: Indi­ana Uni­veristy Press, 1995): p 65–84.

[xvii] Lang­don Win­ner, “Cit­i­zen Virtues in a Tech­no­log­i­cal Order,” in Tech­nol­ogy and the Pol­i­tics of Knowl­edge, Andrew Freen­burg and Alas­tair Han­nay, Edsl, (Bloom­ing­ton, IN: Indi­ana Uni­veristy Press, 1995): p 65–84.

[xviii] Weibe E. Bijker and John Law, “Gen­eral Intro­duc­tion,” Shap­ing Technology/Building Soci­ety (Cam­bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992)

[xix] Weibe E. Bijker and John Law, “Gen­eral Intro­duc­tion,” Shap­ing Technology/Building Soci­ety (Cam­bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992)

[xx] Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, “The Ques­tion Con­cern­ing Tech­nol­ogy,” The Ques­tion Con­cern­ing Tech­nol­ogy and Oth­er­Es­says (New York: Harper and Rowe, 1977): p 115–154.

[xxi] Devel­op­ment Cen­ter for Appro­pri­ate Tech­nol­ogy ‚Mis­sion State­ment, http://www.dcat.net/about_dcat/mission.php (accessed Novem­ber 14, 2006).

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