Why this site won’t be going down to protest SOPA

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Ben Brucato

News is spreading about a protest by leading websites that plan to shut down in response to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Hundreds, maybe thousands are following suit. This will not be one of them.

Many suffer the delusion that the internet is or can be a wonderland for democratic activity.

I say this is delusional because it neglects practical and technical aspects of the internet. In practice, the internet is a source of cognitive strain and disengagement from political life. To punctuate the latter point, consider that adult websites receive 10,000 times the traffic of political websites (see The Myth of Digital Democracy). Technically, the internet depends upon highly centralized protocols that allow for controls like SOPA to function in the first place. I have read expressions of the idea that SOPA is antithetical to the principles embedded in the internet (one of the better examples is from Cory Doctorow) and this legislation will effectively “break the internet.” This is pure fantasy, a fool’s paradise. It might be antithetical to this fool’s paradise, but not to the internet’s technical and socio-political realities. Continue reading →

On Technology and Human Agency

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Ben Brucato

A perennial debate in technology studies is over the question of agency and determinism. Does technology drive history? Is technology socially constructed? Who or what exercises agency in sociotechnical development? In this blog, I summarize and analyze the ideas that have emerged from this debate that I find most useful. Specifically, I touch on the work of Jacques Ellul and Langdon Winner.

For Ellul, “when technique enters into every area of life, including the human, it ceases to be external to man and becomes his very substance.”[1] Donna Haraway has taken this point to the extreme, suggesting that humans are cyborgs, inextricably linked to their devices, not only to participate in social life, but in their conceptions of self.[2] “This transformation, so obvious in modern society,” wrote Ellul, “is the result of the fact that technique has become autonomous.”[3] By autonomous, Ellul meant that “technique pursues its own course more and more independently of man.”[4] Humans are directed to technical ends by their reliance upon its means for every aspect of their lives, whereby humans are “reduced to the level of a catalyst…”[5] It is not technology alone that requires this relationship, but the role of technology in society. “When technique enters into the realm of social life, it collides ceaselessly with the human being to the degree that the combination of man and technique is unavoidable, and that technical action necessarily results in a determined result.”[6] This characterization has led some to dismiss Ellul’s philosophy as “technological determinism.” Winner rejects that Ellul commits to determinism, and finds utility in this approach – that of autonomous technology – when he presents Ellul’s vision “that technology is somehow out of control by human agency.”[7] In this view, “far from being controlled by the desired and rational ends of human beings, technology in a real sense now governs its own course, speed, and destination.”[8] Ellul argued that “there can be no human autonomy in the face of technical autonomy.”[9] Continue reading →

Techno-utopians, then and now

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Ben Brucato

“the wealth of networks is just as concentrated as financial wealth.”

Techno-utopianism has a history that extends beyond the widespread use of the personal computer. The champions of the PC itself have a past that extend into the 1960s counterculture. In this blog, I examine the relationship of the Whole Earth Network to the techno-utopianism of today.

The Whole Earth Network emerged not only out of 1960s counterculture, but also out of new modes of work and organization that emerged during and after WWII. These modes stressed collaboration, flexibility, and, at times, decentralization. “[M]embers of the Whole Earth network helped reverse the political valence of information and information technology and turn computes into emblems of countercultural revolution,” writes Turner. “At the same time, however, they legitimated a metamorphosis within – and a widespread diffusion of – the core cultural styles of military-industrial-academic technocracy that their generation had sought to undermine” (2006, p. 238). This network, which Turner refers to as the New Communalists,” began with “the bohemian artists of cold war Manhattan and San Francisco, and later the hippies of Haight-Ashbury and the youthful back-to-the-landers,” which later in the 1980s and 1990s became the pioneers of internet culture. Contrary to the New Left, the New Communalists “in fact embraced technocentric optimism, the information theories, and the collaborative work style of the research world” (p. 240). Continue reading →

Review: Questioning Technology by Andrew Feenberg

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Ben Brucato

Questioning Technology by Andrew Feenberg is both deeply important and fundamentally flawed. It would take me a couple hundred pages to appropriately respond to this text, and such a response would be worthwhile. As such, these reactions are intended to provoke more than to explain. In this brief review, I will touch on three aspects that I find troubling in this text.

Democracy as process in confronting “the field”…

Feenberg confronts a problem many proponents of egalitarianism and democracy before him have: the existing technical infrastructures have been developed through a repressive process and reproduce domination, and “the field is taken.” Like most others before him, he constructs a philosophy and politics of technology that demand an evaluative and practical response. And like most of them, he considers the field before him, taken by so many systems that are integrated with daily life, and caters the politics to the maintenance of the degree of technical development to which Western industrial societies have become accustomed. In doing so, he has softened the requirements for egalitarianism and democracy to a degree to which they are weakened or contradictory forms. Direct, localized democracy is indeed incompatible with many – indeed most – existing technologies. He is correct to consider the field as taken by so many technologies that prohibit popular engagement, and perceive Sclove’s requirements for a democratic assessment to negate most of them. So, Feenberg abandons the prospect for direct, local democracy in favor of a representative and guild system. I find this choice to be fatal to Feenberg’s own politics of technology. Continue reading →

Members of Occupy Albany Radical Caucus Arrested

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Ben Brucato

On Friday, 26 members of Occupy Albany were arrested, and another 13 on Saturday. Eight of those arrested were members of the Radical Caucus.

The following “Statement by the Members of Occupy Albany’s Radical Caucus Arrested Saturday and Sunday Evenings in Lafayette Park” was released today:

On Saturday evening 26 people were arrested and on Sunday evening 13 were arrested for remaining in Lafayette Park past a curfew. This curfew did not exist until days before the first General Assembly in Lafayette Park. Among each night’s arrestees were 8 members of the Occupy Albany Radical Caucus. While we took part in this action, we would like to make it known we are not of the view that occupying public spaces and appealing to the Bill of Rights is sufficient action for the creation of a just society. No government can grant us rights; they can merely take away our autonomy. This was demonstrated last night when we were arrested.

The privatization of public space and resources must be thoughtfully and effectively resisted. We feel it is essential to defend against this offensive by the 1% and their lapdogs such as Andrew Cuomo. But we also recognize that it will be necessary to challenge the property rights system which forms the legal basis for many of the material injustices done upon the 99%. Eviction of persons from their homes by banks and landlords, the idling and off-shoring of our productive capacity, falling wages for those who remain employed, and the elimination of an already miserly social safety net are all methods by which the wealth of our nation is being consolidated to the richest 1%. This extraction can only be ended by moving beyond a system which affirms the property rights of owners to act with profit driven self-interest and towards a system that holds people accountable for the shared costs they impose on society.

Continue reading →

STSers, we have work to do!

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Ben Brucato

A colleague of mine, David Banks, pointed out an article written by Naomi Klein called “Capitalism vs. The Climate”. “Naomi Klein keeps doing our job and I don’t appreciate it,” he complained. By “our,” he means those of us in the field of science and technology studies. And by “our job,” I’m presuming he means usefully articulating deep structural problems combined with a meaningful call to action. But, of course, we might be skeptical of terms like “economic Armageddon,” and we certainly wouldn’t end an article, writing “a very different worldview can be our salvation.” How silly and sophomoric! How moralistic!

I pointed to a similar article published by al-Jazeera. By similar, I mean that it points to deep structural problems that must be changed in order to significantly impact climate change. This article, “Nature is the 99%, too” wouldn’t make it past the cursory glance of the average STSer: don’t they know that ‘nature’ doesn’t exist! It’s a mere social construction!

I decided to do a quick search on Google to see if I could identify a ripe area for career-building as a smug academic who prefers semantic games rather than civic engagement. I stumbled upon an opportunity!

Autonomous Technics & Civilization: Mumford and Winner in conversation

Posted on November 9, 2011 by Ben Brucato

In Technics & Civilization, among Mumford’s other work, he develops a rich historical account of technological development. Being “the last generalist,” I would imagine unfamiliar readers today might be surprised by Mumford’s ability to eloquently transcend disciplinary boundaries among sociology, anthropology and history. He was particularly skilled at conveying nuance and the important interactions among environment, artifacts, techniques, human organization, labor, infrastructure and so forth. Additionally, Mumford articulates an approach to ‘social construction’ that avoids the solipsistic idealism now popular. Instead, technics and society are constantly engaged in remaking one another – and confining and constraining one another. Certain innovations are either promoted with vigor and others stalled or abandoned because technics serves the worldview and values of the society that shapes it. Simultaneously, existing technics transform how we see and relate to ourselves, one another and our environment. This process is shaped by values, as specific paths are chosen among others because they fit the ethics and motives of those steering innovation, but also as the material, machinic and organizational demands of existing technics. Winner’s discussion of autonomous technology carries a similar theme to the latter point, addressing specifically how existing technical systems create demands of their users and the society in which they are embedded. Social reproduction in a highly complex technological society generates a considerable momentum for increasing the role of technology in social and individual life, an apparently out-of-control juggernaut. Mumford demonstrates that this has deep historical roots, particularly over the last 1,000 years. This is not the experience of industrial society, but the experience of civilization in toto. Continue reading →

Stage One: Occupy Public Space. What Next?

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Ben Brucato

Stage One: Occupy Public Space.

Occupy Together, an outgrowth of Occupy Wall Street, has seen tens of thousands of people in cities all over the world reclaiming public spaces.

Stage Two: Occupy Unused Property.

Occupy Oakland, perhaps the most radical — and perhaps most effective — of the occupations has moved on to the logical “next stage,” and movements everywhere should take note.

This is not without precedent in this movement and those that inspired it. Last week in Madrid, a hotel was occupied and opened up to people evicted in foreclosures:

The abandoned Hotel Madrid, which was taken over by an unknown number of squatters on October 16 after a mass rally in the capital organized by the 15-M movement, opened its doors on Monday to the first person to take up the group’s stated strategy of “freeing up spaces for common use.”

Continue reading →

What are we saying when we call for diversity in the Occupy movement?

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Ben Brucato

I appreciate the need to call attention to the overabundance of messages in the Occupy movement that have greater relevance to white people, the middle class, men and so on. I appreciate that we need to always push to challenge the privileges attached to the people and the politics involved. I also know that we need to open up safe spaces, and listen to the voices of a diversity of speakers. We also need to embrace a diversity of tactics, targets, and strategies.

Occupy Albany: “Let’s Start” from Bhawin Suchak on Vimeo. Continue reading →

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