notes on rammert's pragmatic theory of technicization
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Rammert describes a pragmatic theory of technicization in which the relations of technology and media are analysed and supplant modern understandings of subject/object or nature/culture. Useful for studying Ihde, Haraway, Latour, Winner, Foucault, Deleuze, Heidegger, Habermas and of course Dewey.TRANSCRIPT
Notes on “Relations that constitute technology and media that make a difference: toward a social pragmatic theory of technicization?” by Werner Rammert 1. What is Technology? It encompasses instrumental practices, an ensemble of material and nonmaterial technofacts, and aligned with the institutional needs it serves. Since Aristotle, technologies are constituted by stuff or material, form or shape, end or use for which it is determined and finally, the actions of tool using human (Heidegger 62). How to construct a theory of technology that avoids the fallacies of essentialism, constructivism, objectivism and subjectivism? Materialists create a separate ontological sphere. Form is coupled to function leaving no space for flexibility. The anthropocentrism of man the toolmaker does not admit material agency for multiple functions/uses or users. In the history of thinking about technology, “technology has always been defined by differences in relation to something, at first to nature and life, then to culture and now to society.” These analytical devices are ‘unsuited to catch the character of contemporary technologies and the emergence of ‘techno-‐structures’ that is society. (Boehme 92, Rammert 97) What is a relational approach to technology? Rather than simple fixed order or visible instrumentalist relations, Rammert advances a process view of technologies continuously reconstructed in concrete complexity. Technology is shaped by our various conceptual models; by the specifics of projects and creators; and by the practices of users, consumers. Finally, the stuff out of which technologies are made has a mediating function in relation to different practices rather than essentialist. Rammert calls for a ‘media turn’ in the theory of technology, substituting the form-‐media relation for the means-‐end relation. 2. Technological Difference; From Substance to Function. The nature/technology difference has persisted since Aristotle, hinging on the self-‐organising capacity of nature as opposed to the artificial human construction of technology. Our understanding of nature now is experimental and instrumentalist, heavily constructed. The life/technology difference is also increasingly contaminated by technological intervention in biology/organics, like patented lab mice. Materiality is no longer sufficiently distinguishable. Likewise the difference between culture and technology has had many forms of criticism. Rammert points to Wittgenstein who demonstrated that the most rigorous symbolic science rested on language games while ethno methodologists/sociologists demonstrate rules underpinning the most trivial of conversations. “The materiality of signs and the formality of rules enrich the concept of classical technology that focused on material tools, machines and mechanisms.” Critics of technological rationalism like Winner unwittingly endorse the society/technology difference. Even politicised views of technology tend to simplify their relations in contrast to multiple lines of negotiation of the social. The analytic differences of technique/praxis, work/interaction and system/lifeworld (?Ihde? Habermas 87) reproduce this division. Society cannot be grasped without its technical mediation (Latour 94). “The technologies of
production constitute the range of economic and political opportunities of societies”. [R] “The technical media of communication constitute the spatial expansion of communities and the temporal intensity of social life” [R] No political or social or economic decision is unmediated by technology, similarly all these practices are inscribed into the technology. Society is in the machine. So technology cannot be extracted from the realms above, of nature, life, culture and society. If the ontological spheres are not clear-‐cut, can a relational definition be found? Does technology perform a function across all differences? Here is a review of philosophies of the relational form, process and performance of technology. 3. Technisization and technical practice: Relations that constitute technology. Cassirer (30) proposed that both language and technology grasp reality by constructing it. Husserl (36) described a pathological technisization as increasing efficiency at the price of loss of meaning, abstracting rules from experience. At this point, technicization is a schematic relation between cause and effect, independent of the communication of meaning. This exists regardless of mechanical or human components (think of a soldier). “The difference between technicized and non-‐technicized relations is a gradual, not a substantial, one.” Its techniques include simplification, specialization, abstraction, repetition, encapsulating and ‘black boxing’. The subjectivist idea that a self can use a thing as an instrument to affect change in the outer world is a Cartesian bias. “Technics is a symbiosis of artefact and user within a human action” (Ihde 90) Humans and the world have a symbiotic and mediated relation, not an instrumental and divided one. This lead to the opposite fallacy of technological determinism, the objectivist view. Ihde’s ‘alterity relations’ (90) with different intensities and grades of agency can be seen as distributed between humans and non-‐humans. Currently agency is not reserved to human subjects but they are the only ones who reflect on it. Humans cannot reflect on the relations from outside with a satellite view but must have a navigational view, inside. A third fallacy concerns hermeneutic relations, whereby a functionalist couples form and function and an intentionalist goes for the goal. However, artefacts in use cannot be reduced to the function or one of many intents from concept to production/consumption. Dewey’s pragmatism or philosophy of praxis denies function and intention and rejects the rigid subject-‐object divide. Technology has no existence or function outside of its use. The use-‐relations create object as tool and manipulating gesture as technological practice. (Flusser 91) A technological object differs from a non-‐technical in the prestructural interrelation between objects and operations. This IS technology, which Rammert calls ‘interobjectivity’. The interrelationship is revealed in the technical practise and its use-‐relations, not the properties of the things or the intentions of the humans. Pickering (95) metaphorically describes this process as ‘the mangle of praxis’, in which the effects of technicization are equally evident in the human yet embodied human relations that are essential for the production of the most
rigorous technical operation in a ‘dance of agency’. New technologies are engaged in evaluative relations, either in competition or compatibility with other existing or emerging. There is neither a pristine birth, an evolutionary process nor a triumph of efficiencies. Schumpeter describes a relation of ‘creative destruction’ (42). There is no neutral universal procedure. Foucault and Derrida’s concept of archive transferred into technology by Groys (92,97). By definition innovation breaks established rules of evaluation but mechanisms to elevate, and authenticate new practises exist in the archive or collection. ‘Profane’ technologies are elevated at science fairs and expos, and recognised in publications. Legitimate technologies are continually created through archival practices of institutionalization, publication, collection, and codification. In Sum, technology viewed from a relational not substantive perspective, a process not ensemble of artefacts. The impossibility of disembedded technology was interwoven with a gradual view instead of divisions. The subject-‐object divide was tackled by Ihde’s interpretation of Heidegger and a mediated symbiotic relationship. Dewey’s pragmatism rejected functional and intentional views for process. Finally the archive concept demonstrates a relational evaluative approach to technology over a substantial one. Rammert identifies 3 types of relations constituting technologies; causal, hermeneutic and evaluative relations. Causal relations are agents and objects mangled in tightly couple ways. Hermeneutic relations (of comprehension) emerge with use, not intent. Evaluative relations connect technical practices with each other and regulate. 4. The Difference of Media: The stuff technology is made of. Although technology is a certain form of practise, stuff is required to be formed. This stuff must combine ease of shaping with durability and repeatability to function as mediator in the technical process. Media is not restricted to communications media. The stuff must have the right qualities for its function. To be a medium depends on the context of use. Relating to Popper’s’ three worlds (72) Rammert proposes three types of stuff; human bodies (action, perception, social world), physical things (interobjective or natural world) and symbolic signs (intersubjective or cultural world). Technology emerges if all conditions, use-‐relations (hermeneutics), causal or interobjective relations, and evaluative relations, are found. Human bodies, physical matter and symbolic signs are all required. Rammert allows all threes individually to be technicized as habituation, mechanization and algorithmization – the abstraction of symbolic rules of process. This is the most precise and least compatible with physical. (However, he earlier describes the tight coupling of complex systems in the practise of technology, so the separation into mediums is initially confusing.) 5. Features and Preferences of a social pragmatic concept of Technology. Technology is a form that makes a difference not something essentially divided from life, nature, culture or society. It is a gradual concept, a more or less tightly linked, mediated experience. Technology is constituted by three relations, use-‐relations, causal or interobjectivity relations and evaluative relations, or archives. Beyond the schematization of form and the defining relations, there are differences in media, human, physical and symbolic. “This media-‐form relation
opens more analytical opportunities. We can combine the classic machine of transformation and the cybernetic system of communication and ask where and how agency is distributed in our technologically mediated social life”.