Being Technological

1
Being Technological Kathryn Denning Anthropology,
York University, Canada
2

• The General Idea
• One way to think about technology on Earth is to
  start by examining our ideas about technology in
  alien civilizations (ideas expressed in fiction
  and in SETI).
• Overview Being Technological
• The historical case of Mars From What is it?
  to What are they?
• The tales we tell about the development of
  technology on Earth
• The development of technology not just about
  logic
• Technology not just our tools
• The development of radio technology on Earth
  cultural factors
• Being technological What is it? What are
  they? What are we?

The fine print Illustrations have been
shamelessly purloined from various sources for
your amusement.
3
Percival Lowell and the canals of Mars
4
H.G. Wells and War of the Worlds
5
(No Transcript)
6

• Various stories we tell about the development of
  technology on Earth
• Technological development is discontinuous
  invention results from genius
• Necessity and utility drive the development of
  technology (necessity is the mother of invention)
• Technology develops in a logical progression

7
James Watt and the steam engine.
8

• Revising the various stories we tell about the
  development of technology on Earth
• Inventions draw on prior inventions, i.e.
  cumulative insights
• Invention is often the mother of necessity
• Inventions may develop on a trajectory, but they
  are not inevitable
• Many cases of technological stasis or regression,
  many technologies which might have been developed
  but never were, and many technologies which could
  have been widely adopted but werent

9
What Makes a Toaster Possible?
It does not just sear bread, but presupposes a
pricing mechanism for home amperage, government
standards for electric devices, producers and
shopkeepers who smell a profit, and peoples
various sentiments about the safety of electrical
current and what a breakfast, nutritionally and
socially, ought to be. There is a global system
that yields a toasters raw materials,
governments that protect its patents, a labor
force to work at the right price, and a dump
ready to absorb it in the end. Harvey Molotch
10

• The bigger picture
• No other cultures have been as preoccupied with
  the cultivation, production, diffusion, and legal
  control of new machines, tools, devices, and
  processes as Western culture has been since the
  eighteenth century.
• - George Basalla

11
Every age has its technoskeptics
12

• How does technology evolve? Theories
• Technological determinism technological
  development follows a progressive course, from
  less to more complex, through a series of
  necessary stages, and that societies must adapt
  to their technology
• VERSUS
• Constructivism there are always multiple
  technological options, technology is flexible,
  and social contingencies determine which paths
  technology takes

13
Typewriters of the late 1800s a diversity of
forms the QWERTY board did not dominate
immediately
14
Mua (Kaliai), and Oliver Lodge (Englishman)
Ghosts in the machines
15

• Technology not just our tools
• Are we technologys masters, or vice versa?
• First, all technical progress has its price.
• Second, at each stage it raises more and greater
  problems than it solves.
• Third, its harmful effects are inseparable from
  its beneficial effects.
• Fourth, it has a great number of unforeseen
  effects. - Jacques Ellul

16
In a sense, we have always been cyborgs.
17

• Another example radio technology?
• If we consider radio technology on Earth the
  history is full of contingencies, twists and
  turns, and conditions which were necessary but
  not sufficient for subsequent stages to develop.
  Cultural factors were constantly in play.

18
Lefeuvres physiological receiver, using
electrical sensitivity of frogs leg
19
(No Transcript)
20
Image courtesy of the NAIC - Arecibo Observatory,
a facility of the NSF.
21
Our technology tells us what we can do but not
what we must do its necessary but not
sufficient.
22
(No Transcript)