History and Past Activities
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History and Past Activities |
Lech W. Zacher
LK Academy of Entrepreneurship and Management
Jagiellonska 59, 01-301 Warsaw, Poland
tel. (4822) 811 3064 fax (4822) 8113068
e-mail:lzacher@wspiz.edu.pl
On technology, education and practical activities
(Discussion on Some Roots of Disintegration)
Technologization of science, economic and other social activities (military, media, entertaintment, sports, communication) and also of social thinking, imagination and human mind is the fact. It is not accompanied however by corresponding technologization in social sciences (theories). Some possible explanations will be discussed as to their relevance. Some seems more, some less obvious. The following list is of course incomplete:
- philosophical tradition (not only West European) historically was not interested much in technology, and was not "technology problematique - friendly". There were not technology - centered philosopies (e.g. some interest was in Marx's works, some in Spengler's). The same concerned literature and arts. In XX century situation somewhat improved (e.g. Habermas and Ellul but not e.g. Sartre or Fromm).
- Historically conditioned humanistic orientation of social sciences and thinking in general (also colloquial, medial, political etc.).
- Education in general was not technologically oriented (except technical schools of all level - rather vocationally and practically biased).
- Engineers' theoretizations were rather weak, if at all existed and influenced other disciplines. More active and influential were for example physicists.
- Theoretizations on technology are rather difficult for non-technicians.
- STS communities (in higher education) are relatively new. They are not really integrated with social sciences. Being interdisciplinary as a rule they are not highly valuated by traditional scientific establishment. Traditional approach in many disciplines are monodisciplinary (what is highly valuated in academic career). So technology is not really considered by such disciplines like e.g. psychology, political science, law, cultural studies, humanities. In some disciplines technology is compartmentalized, not generalized (e.g. philosophy of technology, economic history, sociology of technology, economics of R+D). In economics technology was dominated by "more economic" problems (even in Marx or Schumpeter). Some theoreticians (e.g. Solow, Nordhaus, Freeman) found a niche rather than a general impact. Some economists neglected technology probably implicitly assuming its value (exogenuous for them - e.g. M. Porter in his works on competition). Nobel prize laureates were not interested in technology. Technological considerations were not popular for many other reasons: e.g. aversion to technological determinism (and its theoretical consequences) or to technological optimism or to technological utopias; or to one-agent theory in general.
- Technology was often perceived by public as a danger of at least a discomfort (remember Freud's essay). Negative actual, possible and imagined adverse effects of technology (technological progress) were not seen. However when TA studies emerged and developed (in 70s and later) many social groups were skeptical (e.g. "pure" theoreticians, business people, politicians). Moreover social protesters prefer to fight politically rather then to theorize on the relation of technology and society. Technophoby happens to appear in the history.
- For broad public technology appeared often as a s-f object (i.e. not connected with daily practice). General media report often technological problems in a sensational manner. Public opinion is often critical to some technologies and their applications (e.g. nuclear energy, environment polluting technologies). Politicians, especially elected, rarely understand technological problems (and technology impact). They are bound rather to public fears. They treat sometimes these problems as instruments in political campaign. Of course, some general causes are responsible for the divergence between technologization in theories and in practice. First, technological civilization is still young (XX century) phenomenon, moreover it does not comprise all countries and societies. Its pace however is faster than people's intellectual theorizing (analogy to W. Ogburn thesis concerning human time lag to technological progress). Second, it is notorious gap between theory and practice in general (Habermas tried to do something about it). Third, the most famous and influential thinkers and politicians were and are not technology centered (there are some recent exceptions like Gore).
The problems formulated above should be discussed in the context of emerging information society and its evolution toward knowledge society. Needless to say is that the growing abundance of information may help. On the other side knowledge society has to solve the problems of the debated divergence.
Sociology of Science and Technology NETwork - last update: April 2006