MIT271: Technology

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MIT271 Technology Human Values

• March 19, 2002
• Technology and Social Justice

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Administration

• Tests back next week
• Revised reading schedule Dyson postponed till
  Thursday.

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McGinn Grounds for infringing rights

1. Survival of society
2. Effective social functioning
3. Natural resources vital to society
4. Debilitating financial cost to a society
5. Significant cultural, historical, spiritual or
   aesthetic value to a people
6. Highly valued social amenity

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Jeremy Rifkin

• Long-time activist, especially against technology
• The End of Work

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The End of Work

• Increasing unemployment
• New jobs low-paying temporary

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Substituting software for employees

• Computer-based technologies promise to replace
  the human mind itself
• Companies make more profit

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Re-engineering

• restructuring the workplace to make it
  compatible with high-tech machine culture
• Leads to elimination of some traditional
  management, compressing job categories and
  training employees in multilevel skills
• Not loss of jobs to foreign production, because
  manufacturing productivity is increasing

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Alarmist?

• Rising youth violence
• Neo-fascism
• Radical right-wing

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Discussion

• How does Griffins concept of technological
  maximality relate to Rifkins concerns about
  Re-engineering?

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Corlann Gee Bush

• Like McGinn
• Sceptical of tech-fixes
• Need to think about the context in which
  technology operates
• Rethinking popular assumptions about technology
• Technological change itself needs to be
  transformed

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Tech-fix

• df technology can be used to solve all problems,
  even social problems
• Used to rationalize inequity, when part of
  laissez-faire economics and discriminatory public
  policy
• Examples?

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Tech-Myths

• Partially true but oversimplified
• TRIUMPH (U.S.A)
• THREAT
• TOOL

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Valence

• a bias a tendency to interact in similar
  situations in identifiable and particular ways
• E.g. guns (versus knives, hammers,) valenced to
  violence TV, cars and microwaves valenced to
  individuation, trains and campfires valenced to
  accretion

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Contexts

• For technological decisions, information, and
  innovation
• Design/development
• most attended
• masculine
• Use
• feminine
• Environment
• Cultural

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Sex role differences

• Different expectations, experiences, and training
• Create problems because men make most decisions
  about technology

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User Environment

• Effect on womens roles e.g. wash
• Impact assessment?

• Forseeable problems eliminated in some cases
• Environmental assessments required as part of
  technological decision-making

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Sexist society affects technological valence

• Innovation builds the status of mens roles and
  erodes womens
• E.g. Plains Indian women from dog to horse
• E.g. Mechanization on the farm

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More generally

• Technology provides ADVANTAGE
• So we need an equity analysis, applied to all
  contexts

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Equity analysis of refrigeration

• Developmental
• Solves problems caused by heat distribution?
  Manufacture?
• User
• Commercial, medical, food preparation, better
  nutrition working lives
• Environment
• agriculture, disease, pollution
• Cultural
• Men take over womens important roles