These larger-scale forms of technological development, despite the tremendous impact they have on individuals, are typically seen as being out of the control of individuals. Part of the reason for this is that discourse, using technological development as a referent, tends to be dominated by the notion of inevitability and the assumption that the path of technological development is difficult, if not impossible, to control. Discourse about design is related to individuals and focused on the vocabulary of intention; it appears to be based on the assumption that we have
K. A. Neeley, University of Virginia
H. C. Luegenbiehl, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology reasonable control over the shape of our designs and the consequences that will follow from their use; and it conceptualizes design as a process imbued with ethical considerations.
In this chapter we argue that the notions of openness and choice that are reflected in the discourse of design are much more conducive to ethical awareness, reflection, and responsibility than is the notion of inevitability that characterizes the discourse of technological development. It then follows that, if the discourse about technological development can be changed in the vocabulary of engineers to one focused on design, their ability to engage in ethical reflection will be enhanced.
Our analysis is aimed at suggesting ways to move beyond the discourse of inevitability and toward a framework that emphasizes an ideal of individual ethical responsibility in team-based and large-scale engineering design. Specifically, we argue that supplanting the discourse of inevitability will require:
1. recognizing that the robustness of the discourse of inevitability derives from many sources, including the way it resonates with lived experience and its pervasiveness in the popular media, which gives rise to its perceived simplicity and familiarity.
2. developing a compelling discourse of design that is, in turn, based on a sound philosophy of engineering and philosophy of technology.
3. demonstrating that as humans we have choices about the forms of discourse in which we engage and that those choices have significant societal consequences.
In what follows we take a discourse analysis approach, that is, we carefully examine exactly how the discourse of technological inevitability functions as a way of gaining insight into the sources of its power and how it might be supplanted.
The discourse of inevitability regarding technological development pervades popular culture and public discourse about technology and appears in particularly vigorous form in discussions of information and communication technology. It is clearly reflected in the cover headlines of publications such as Popular Science, PC Magazine, PC World, and Wired, whose covers are replete with exclamation points, “The Super Power Issue: The Impossible Gets Real!” (Wired, August 2003), imperatives, “Go Wireless: It’s Faster & Easier Than Ever” (PC Magazine, May 18, 2004), promises, “Live Forever: 7 Easy Steps to Engineered Immortality” (Popular Science, January 2005), and offers of competitive advantage or empowerment, “PC Secrets! 15 Easy Ways to Make Your System Do More” (PC World, March 2006) and “Build Your Perfect PC: Faster than Dell, Cooler than Apple, Cheaper than Sony” (PC Magazine, March 7, 2006). Kroker and Weinstein (1994) concisely summarize the discourse of inevitability in their book Data Trash: The Theory of the Virtual Class (1994): “adapt or you’re toast.”
Both the covers and the content of these publications make it clear that the discourse of inevitability is first and foremost a marketing strategy, a way of selling what is “new and next,” along with promises and visions of the future. To the extent that the theme of choice is raised at all in these discussions, the choices to be made are typically between various versions of a particular technology, for example, digital cameras, flat screen televisions, personal computers, or software packages, rather than about whether particular technologies should be used at all.
The discourse of inevitability is associated with several metaphors in which technology is conceptualized as a force of nature or an autonomous agent making demands and producing “powerful and inevitable change” (Sasseville, 2004, n.p.). It implies that technology is the primary or sole driver of social evolution and that control over designs and outcomes is either difficult or impossible. The current popular and engineering discourses using the vocabulary of technological development thus reflect a perspective that has been analyzed and critiqued by a number of recent commentators on technology such as Jacques Ellul (1964), Martin Heidegger (1977), Langdon Winner (1977), Arnold Pacey (1983), Thomas Hughes (1987), and Rosalind Williams (2002). Winner begins his discussion by writing: “One symptom of a profound stress that affects modern thought is the prevalence of the idea of autonomous technology - the belief that somehow technology has gotten out of control and follows its own course, independent of human direction. That this notion is (at least on the surface) patently bizarre has not prevented it from becoming a central obsession in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature.” (Winner, 1977, 13) Given the central role of the requirement to make choices in ethics, it is thus not surprising that popular discourse discourages both ethical reflection and individual ethical responsibility by promoting the view that there is nothing an individual can do to affect the course of technological development meaningfully.
Challenging the discourse of inevitability has been one of the major projects of the STS community, an effort that most scholarly analysts see as both successful and largely complete. Having dismissed inevitability within our own professional communities, it is tempting to overlook the extent to which the concept of inevitability still resonates in popular and engineering discourse.
The robustness of the discourse of inevitability derives from many sources, including its simplicity and familiarity and the way in which it resonates with lived experience. Where the more complex narratives of professional historians may more fully capture the subtleties and intricacies of the processes by which technology and society shape each other, the discourse of inevitability appears to provide “an easy and uncomplicated explanation” (Selwyn and Gorard, 2003, 80). There is also a host of assumptions, myths, and predispositions that make people inclined to accept the narrative of inevitability (Pacey, 1983; Martin and Schinzinger, 1989; Frost, 1996).
Perhaps more importantly and persuasively, the discourse of inevitability resonates with lived experience. This point has been developed by several analysts of technology, including Arnold Pacey (1983) and Eric Schlosser (2002), but it is perhaps most clearly delineated by Rosalind Williams in Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change (2002). Williams, herself a historian of technology, analyzes her experience as a university administrator involved in a “Reengineering Project” designed to improve management of her institution’s existing resources.
Drawing on Thomas Hughes’ concept of technological momentum, Williams concludes that “It is easy to refute the logic of technological determinism, but the everyday experience of having to conform to ‘the technology,’ ‘the software,’ or ‘the computer’ cannot be refuted by logic” (2002, 117). The process, Williams argues, begins with what she terms “technological drift,” the tendency to address the aspects of a problem that are most susceptible to a technological solution and where visible results can be accomplished quickly. Once this happens, “The rules that govern the technology start to govern everything else. Technological drift becomes technological momentum, which begins to feel [emphasis added] very much like technological determinism” (2002, 116). What starts out as choice comes to be experienced as inevitability. This resonance with lived experience is one of many reasons why the narratives produced by historians and philosophers of technology and other professional analysts cannot compete with or dominate simpler narratives of inevitability. We believe that the community of professional analysts of technology-society interactions is not likely to disrupt the discourse of inevitability unless we can connect with broad social discourses about technology. We argue that the discourse of design and intention has the potential to make that connection and to elucidate the ethical dimensions of the development of technological systems more fully.