Technology is one of the most pervasive features of modern society, yet the analysis of technology from the "inside" is still in its infancy. For a number of years critics and scholars have been articulating the place of technology in society. But it is only in the last few years that scholars have started to get inside the "black box" of technology, to show how even the very design of the technology (the artifacts themselves, and the social and political arrangements they require) may embody important social assumptions. Such arguments aren't easy to make -- they require a familiarity both with the workings of the technologies themselves and the larger movements of culture, politics, and society; access and insight into specific communities of designers and users often closed to scrutiny; and a commitment to get beyond the commonplace understanding of technology as neutral, unproblematic, and inevitable.

This inside look opens the way to ask a number of questions: Is technological development shaped by society, and if so, how? What do the choices made in the design and deployment of technology reveal about the contexts in which they are produced? Can technology be understood with the same conceptual tools as developed for other areas, e.g., science or culture? Can there be alternative technologies with other assumptions embedded in them? Are technologies complicit in the maintenance of social structures of gender, race, age, and authority?

In this seminar, we will examine some of the recent work by sociologists, historians, feminists, communication scholars, and others who have attempted to provide new insights into the workings of technology. Throughout, our reading of the theoretical arguments will be illustrated by reference to particular technologies. This year, the course will focus specifically on information and communication technologies -- primarily the computer and the Internet -- as both examples and, perhaps, as new challenges to the existing questions and analytical techniques.

Books

Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman, eds., The Social Shaping of Technology, 2nd ed. (1999)
Bruno Latour, Aramis, or the Love of Technology (1996)
Weibe Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch (eds.), The Social Construction of Technological Systems (1987)

A few readings are online; others are from academic journals and can be accessed electronically through the Cornell library's journals database. The rest of the readings are available in the reserve reading room in Olin 601.

Sept 1 -- introduction

Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman, "Introductory Essay" S.S.T.
Wiebe Bijker, Thomas Hughes, and Trevor Pinch, "Introduction" S.C.T.S.

Sept 8 -- social construction of technology

Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker, "The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other" S.C.T.S.
Stewart Russell, "The Social Construction of Artefacts: a Response to Pinch and Bijker" Social Studies of Science v16 (1986) [online journal]
Trevor Pinch and Weibe Bijker, "Science, Relativism, and the New Sociology of Technology: a Reply to Russell" Social Studies of Science v16 (1986) [online journal]
Paul Ceruzzi, "Inventing Personal Computing" S.S.T.

Sept 15 -- philosophy of technology

Langdon Winner, "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" S.S.T.
Joerges, Bernward. "Do Politics Have Artefacts?" Social Studies of Science v29n3 (1999) [online journal]
Michel Foucault, "Panopticism" from Discipline and Punish (1977) [you only need to read pp. 195-217]
Andrew Feenberg "Postindustrial Discourses" in Transforming Technology (2002)
Richard Sclove, "The Nuts and Bolts of Democracy: Democratic Theory and Technological Design" in Langon Winner, ed., Democracy in a Technological Society (1992)

Sept 22 -- technological systems

Thomas Hughes, "The Evolution of Large Technological Systems" S.C.T.S.
Paul A. David, "Clio and the Economics of QWERTY." American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, v75 (1985)
      http://f.staff.umkc.edu/fkfc8/QUERTY.html
Thomas Hughes, "Networking: ARPANET" in Rescuing Prometheus (1998)

Sept 29 -- standards and protocols

Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Chapters 2, 7-9 of The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century (1977)
Amy Slaton and Janet Abbate, "The Hidden Lives of Standards: Technical prescriptions and the Transformation of Work in America" in Michael Thad Allen and Gabrielle Hecht, eds., Technologies of Power (2001)

Oct 6 -- actor-network theory and heterogeneous engineering

John Law, "Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering: The Case of Portuguese Expansion" S.C.T.S.
Bruno Latour, Aramis (Preface + Chs 1-3)

Oct 13 -- fall break

Oct 20 -- networks

Bruno Latour, Aramis (Chs 4-7+epilogue)
Bruno Latour, "On Recalling ANT", in John Law and John Hassard, eds., Actor Network and After (1999)
      http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/stslatour1.html

Oct 27 -- technology and language

Paul Edwards, Chapter 5 of The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (1996)
Bryan Pfaffenberger, "The Social Meaning of the Personal Computer: Or Why the Personal Computer Revolution Was No Revolution" Anthropological Quarterly v6n1 (1988)
Caldwell, John. "Theorizing the Digital Landrush" in John Caldwell, ed. Electronic Media and Technoculture (2000)
Sally Wyatt, "Talking about the Future: Metaphors of the Internet" in Nik Brown, Brian Rappert and Andrew Webster (eds) Contested Futures, A Sociology of Prospective Techno-Science (2000)
Jody Berland, "Cultural Technologies and the 'Evolution' of Technological Cultures" in Andrew Herman and Thomas Swiss, eds., The World Wide Web and Contemporary Cultural Theory (2000)

Nov 3 -- design and engineering culture

Ellen Ullman, "Out of Time: Reflections on the Programming Life" in Brooks and Boal, eds., Resisting the Virtual Life (1995)
Gregory Downey, "Virtual Webs, Physical Technologies, and Hidden Workers" Technology and Culture v42n2
      http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/technology_and_culture/toc/tech42.2.html
Lucy Suchman, "Working Relations of Technology Production and Use" S.S.T.
Eric Raymond, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" First Monday v3n3
      http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_3/raymond/
Lawrence Lessig, "Commons Among the Wired" in The Future of Ideas (2001)
Helen Nissenbaum, "Accountability in a Computerized Society" in Science and Engineering Ethics v2n1 (1996)
      http://www.princeton.edu/~helen/papers/accountability.pdf

Nov 10 -- users and interfaces

Thierry Bardini and August Horvath, "The Social Construction of the Personal Computer User" Journal of Communication v45n3 (1995) [online journal]
Phil Agre, "Conceptions of the User in Computer Systems Design," in Peter J. Thomas, ed., Social and Interactional Dimensions of Human-Computer Interfaces (1995)
Steve Woolgar, "Configuring the User: The Case of Usability Trials" in John Law, ed., A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology, and Domination
Jeannette Hoffmann, "Writers, Texts, and Writing Acts: Gendered User Images in Word Processing Software" S.S.T.

Nov 17 -- technology and gender

Cynthia Cockburn, "The Material of Male Power" S.S.T.
Rachel Weber, "Manufacturing Gender in Military Cockpit Design" S.S.T.
Ruth Schwartz Cowan, "The Industrial Revolution in the Home" S.S.T.
Anne-Jorunn Berg, "A Gendered Socio-technical Construction: the Smart House" S.S.T.
Nelly Oudshoorn, "The Decline of the One-size-fits-all Paradigm, or How Reproductive Scientists Try to Cope with Postmodernity" S.S.T.
Rachel Maines, "Inviting the Juices Downward" in The Technology of Orgasm (1999)

Nov 24 -- [presentations]

Dec 1 -- military and commercial contexts

James Fallows, "The American Army and the M-16 Rifle" S.S.T.
Mary Kaldor, "The Weapons Succession Process" S.S.T.
Janet Abbate, "Cold War and White Heat: The Origins and Meanings of Packet Switching" S.S.T.
David Noble, "Social Choice in Machine Design: The Case of Automatically Controlled Machine Tools" S.S.T.
Dan Schiller, Chapter 1 of Digital Capitalism (1999)