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20 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Merton's norms of science
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- Principles that guide good scientific research
- Principles: universalism, communalism, disinterestedness, organized skepticism - Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psychology are confirming what many social scientists, cultural theorists, and philosophers have been saying for several decades now: It is difficult to detach reason and “facts” from emotion, interest, and ideology (including religious, economic, and political worldviews) - We are better off acknowledging the limitations of reason (Enlightenment thinking); that our own minds can deceive us; that all knowledge is partial. We have to rethink assumptions we make about rational decision-making, democracy and governance of S&T - Endeavors that relate emotion/interest/ideology with the development of S&T: Japanese internment camps, Native American reservations, Manhattan Project, Project Plowshare, etc. - Violations: particularism, interestedness, organized dogmatism |
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Universalism
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science is impersonal: “race, class, nationality, religion, and personal qualities are irrelevant.”
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Communalism
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scientific knowledge is commonly owned. All results should be publicized for others to use and build upon.
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Disinterestedness
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scientists disengage their interests (e.g., funding sources , pride in theory, political affiliation, etc.) from their actions and judgment. They should report all results regardless of whether the results support the proposed theory or not. Don’t let theory become an ideology (worldview) that biases how one does research. This norm supposedly helps prevent fraud.
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Organized skepticism
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the tendency for the scientific community to question new ideas until they are well established. New ideas are subject to intense scrutinization by peers (peer review)
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Particularism
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national and institutional allegiances require more and more scientists and engineers to work on endeavors that require secrecy (corporate, military)
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Interestedness
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scientists are advocates for themselves (funding) and many causes (environment, energy efficiency, climate change, etc.); this often leads to scientific controversy
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Organized dogmatism
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due to increased secrecy of much knowledge production, much of it is not subject to peer review or public scrutiny. Organized dogmatism prevents scientists (and their funders) from being held accountable.
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Technological determinism
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- Technology drives history (rather than social and political decisions); it is the governing force of society
- Technological development determines social change. Society organizes itself around technological developments- design dictates human behavior - Technology is autonomous and develops in predictable ways beyond political and social influence - the results are inevitable - The general public is helpless in the face of technological advance; must adapt rather than use it for their own purposes |
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Technological momentum
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- When a technology is first introduced, society has the power to control its use and implications, but it will start to become more and more integrated into society until its own deterministic forces take hold, forcing society to adapt to it. Once the technology gains momentum, society no longer has control on its consequences; technological gridlock
- The longer a technology is around and used, the more power it has to determine future technology - Explanation of how technology and society govern one another; avoids extremism of technological determinism and social constructivism - The malleability and durability of a socio-technical system dictates how easy it is to change the direction of development (degree of technological momentum). The more momentum, the less control people have - Ex. 1: Cars have huge technological momentum. Cars changed the way people get around and made it easier to travel and migrate throughout the United States, changing society. However, Eisenhower’s highway initiative allowed cars to become the main source of transport in the US. At the same time, car development is advancing but not much effort has been put into making new common transportation systems. Integrating the Levels theory, roads and stoplights and traffic laws are already in place everywhere. Cars have huge techno-social momentum and aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. - Ex. 2: Electric light and power systems. The effects of this technology were far-reaching in the way they impacted everyday life--longer work hours, changing work/roles for women. alternately, political and economic factors contributed to the push to spread electricity throughout the US. - A system has technological momentum if the drive to produce or create a technical system exceeds the restrictions surrounding it (Ex. oil) - Creates a technological frame (Level II): knowledge production outcomes (development/research), what science has done & technology built/what questions are asked or funded (policy), social/cultural/political/economic/environmental meaning of S&T (what meaning is given to S&T outcomes) - Social Construction of Science and Technology: social, political, economic, and cultural values that influence the development of S&T |
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Interpretive flexibility
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- Technological artifacts have different uses, meanings, and interpretations for different groups of people.
- Technology is not inherently anything; it is what people make it - Multiple relevant social groups (users, citizens, engineers, marketers, legislators, etc.) define either through controversy or negotiation on the meaning and function of artifacts - Ex. How different group interpret drones; US views it as a power, Middle East views it as a weakness/fear of death |
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Micropolitics of power
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- Different groups have different levels of control, supply of opinions, and political influence that determine course of action
- Different proponents of an idea garner a network of support for their position and establish the prevalence of a scientific idea/technological system - Moral matrices (human needs/desires that govern behavior) get individuals at a primal level and bind them to a group; supposedly as a survival instinct |
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Levels I-III and Category Error
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- Level I: a technology that completes its intended function (linear cause and effect, functionality, static complexity)
- Level II: a network of technological artifacts that work together to perform a function. These systems interact with each other and may have technological lock-in (socio-technical systems, unpredictable, dynamic complexity, identifiable goal) - Level III: Large earth systems (environment, global economic, political) which interact with technologies and systems of technologies. Unpredictable behaviors emerge at higher levels of interaction (radical complexity, emergent behaviors) - Category error: the use of a level 1 technology to solve a level 2 or 3 problem. Simply, thinking that a new technology can do more than it really can (Ex. Idea that self driving cars will solve traffic congestion; this won't happen because there are too many other ideological, social, and legal factors that would also have to change - Ex. Cars Level I: technology addressed at solving a problem in society; cars were primarily created as a faster mode of transportation Level II: the set of agencies that have been established since the advent of cars for regulation purposes, i.e. MVA, Highway administrations, Traffic safety administration Level III: the unexpected social implications; globally linked network (faster movement of goods and services, internet shopping, etc.); cars affect how roads are laid and how cities are planned (East coast before cars mass produced, West coast after) |
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Middle-out social change
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Middle-out social change emphasizes a combination, or merging, of top-down and bottom-up initiatives. Top-down approaches normally involve experts and policymakers that implement systemic intervention onto organizations, groups and individuals below them in the political hierarchy. The opposite approach is the bottom-up approach, which is mainly identified with grassroots movements. This initiative involves "layman people," who sometimes are vary educated on the subject of concern, demanding institutional change of the powerful groups above them in power. The middle-out approach occupies the territory between these two movements. This initiative is usually performed by expert activists who hold a mid-range position in the political hierarchy. These expert activists help to make the grassroots interests heard while confronting the more powerful institutions to try to help them see and understand the concerns of the lay people.
Ex. AIDS activism |
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Partial knowledge
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- Our understanding or knowledge of something is affected by our individual perspectives, which means that we view knowledge through a certain bias that is shaped through the environments we are subjected to throughout our lives. Therefore, one’s views on certain topics are inevitably influenced by different factors in their lives, “partial” to their perspectives.
- People have biases since they do not have all of the experiences in the world, which pushes them to have a niche of knowledge (their partial knowledge) - Partial knowledge can be a good thing because it can bring together a community around a given idea that appeals to them |
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Public participation in science and technology
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- Some disciplines encourage or tolerate public input (ecology, natural resource management, medical sciences)
- Our role as citizens is greater than being a consumer - Public participation plays a role in determining the development of S&T; they determine in which direction S&T develops - Ex. AIDS activists took the time to educate themselves in the terminology of the AIDS epidemic and changed the way that AIDS research testing is carried out |
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Anticipatory governance
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- ability of a variety of stakeholders and the lay-public to prepare for the issues new science and technologies might present before those issues are realized. This process assumes that that the application of new knowledge is hard to predict, has unintended consequences and requires that contingency plans are developed for the possible positive and negative outcomes of the process
- Governance does not mean restriction on development; it is a planning and foresight approach that develops contingency scenarios to gain perspectives on emerging technologies whose impacts on society are uncertain - Technology's path being simply forward with few reassessments vs. technology guided in several different directions, branched out, forward then backward, to find the most beneficial use - Tools of anticipatory governance: scenario development, public education, public engagement, participatory design (citizen involvement in design), licensing, certification programs, government oversight, scientific testing, treaties, public action, IRB (public consent), portfolio planning |
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Diversity in Science & Technology: race, class, gender, and culture as frames of analysis
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- Race: Scientific views on race and social views on race are interdependent; scientific shifts in perspective often signal a social shift on racial views and vice versa.
- Science behind race is unlikely to overcome the portion of our perception - Ex. Before Civil Rights Movement, most scientists tried to "prove" that white people were genetically better than others, but after social views shifted in support of all races as equal, the general scientific view also changed to reflect this opinion. Scientific views that all races were equal were a major force in the social movement to end racial discrimination - It is important to have diversity in those who create technology; incorporating the ideas of different groups - Class: Sometimes technology is developed for a specific group, but if this is a poor group, for example, they are unlikely to be educated and are usually not given the opportunity to participate and collaborate on projects, but they should because they are experts on their own situation - Gender: Designers often subconsciously input their own self into design ideas without intending to, which affects which users use the product; New Topia and Digital City of Amsterdam (DDS) were created by a group that was comprised mostly of men; their finished product was more geared towards men, even though this was not their intention - Race, culture: ICT development, I-technology (Genevieve Bell), end user development; understanding how a culture functions is critical to determining how a technology can effectively help - Ties into script; designs that engineers implement can end up excluding segments of the population whose "user logic" makes them believe that a technology can never be useful for them - Ex. Matrimonial websites in India, where marriage is a complex affair and brides/grooms are carefully selected by their families with regards to social class, religion, caste, etc.; websites were created to help families select a better spouse so that they may have not known about because of geographical/other limitations - Heterogenous engineers: engineers should understand the social implications of their end products |
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Script (Script logic vs. User logic)
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- Script: semiotic concept (related to signs, symbols, and other aspects of its design) that says technology is designed in such a way that certain behaviors are inherently encouraged, while others are discouraged. Specific ideas can be embedded into a technology's design and affect how the user interacts with this technology
- Script logic: specific ideas that designers of technology consciously or unconsciously put into their designs. These are the ideas, values, and intentions that a product is designed with/to have. This can cause problems when designers of a specific background/identity try to design for everyone, or different groups. They might only use their point of view and values, resulting in an exclusive script technology; technologies are made biased and not be the best for all users - User logic: the way users interpret the scripts that they encounter in technology. These are the conscious and unconscious rationales that users have for the scripts they find in technology - Implications: the scripts put into technology can be responsible for gender or cultural disparities regarding use of certain technologies. This also explains how some technologies get used for unintended purposes - Script logic is how the designer intends for the technology to be used, while user logic is how the user decides how to adapt the technology to their own lives |
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Proactionary vs. Precautionary views of Science & Technology
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- Proactionary: optimistic, considers technology safe until proven otherwise, believes that public skepticism slows the pace of scientific advance, involvement of lay people is limited to educating them to assuage their fears, supports self regulation of scientists policing themselves
- Precautionary: skeptical, believes technology is dangerous until well tested, support public skepticism as a healthy means of guaranteeing the safety of the population, wants to educate citizens so that they can participate in policy formation and understand technology's risks, supports external/governmental regulation |
