I've got to disagree with Pearce when he argues that technologies are not neutral; while Pam makes a good point about technologies having limitations, having been created with specific purposes in mind, these positions ignore the fact that technologies are as dynamic and adaptive as those who wield them. There is always an ongoing relationship between the tool and the technician; Audre Lourde's statement that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" sounds fine in abstract, but every time I build a fire (technology) in my fireplace, I watch it with care to make sure that it does not burn my house down. In this case, my relationship to the fire is as cautious and distrustful as Pearce's attitude toward technology. But on the other hand, I'm far more certain and comfortable with fire when it's used in a different context--for example, when it is combusting gasoline in my car's engine so that I can make it to class on time when I'm running late. Gee is correct in asserting that the context of a technology is the only place where it has any effects; in other words, the technology only exists when it is put to use (Gee 21). What are the effects, good or bad, of the ballista? Virtually none; we don't use that technology anymore.
To elaborate further on the adaptive relationship between people and technology, consider Pam's example that "I can't print out this blog from my microwave": while this might be literally true, microwave technology can be adapted to allow my cell phone to display her blog, and can even be adapted to allow my 'puter to print her blog to my wireless printer. True, the tools themselves have limitations--a microwave oven is a far different tool than a printer or personal computer--but they only represent particular technologies, which are themselves abstract knowledges rather than physical objects that only manifest in tools created for specific contexts (this too is a mistake that Gee makes in explaining how television can have different contexts--he equates technology with tools). A more pertinent distinction is that between language and words; as signs, words may be tools, but it is only through their use (technological context) that they become a language.
So while technologies may originally be created to make tools that have a "bad" purpose, that relationship between tool and technician allows for adaptation by the technician. For example, while the technology of the blog may have originally been created for the purpose of allowing angst-filled teenagers to rant and create some of the world's worst poetry (at least, that's the only original purpose that I can discern), they also allow for the kind of interaction and discussion that Monroe argues is valuable to our pedagogy (Monroe 112). By hijacking these technologies for use in teaching, we adapt the technology to a new context that furthers a different purpose than its original intent. Technology created for a "bad" purpose does not suffer from some kind of technological original sin; it morphs and changes its character and virtues depending on the context in which it is put to use. The only values that it carries are those that we assign to it.
Moving on, I have a few (somewhat) unrelated thoughts about home literacies. While Gee examines the uses of literacies in pre-4th grade children, and Monroe examines some excellent uses of tween literacies, I--as a college instructor working with students well beyond these ages (and possibly already damaged by the 4th grade slump, the racial/socioeconomic gap in test scores, or who have just been chewed up and smacked around by the American K-12 educational system and other factors)--wonder how I can use students' home literacies to help them survive and succeed in the university. While I always remind my students that one of my core pedagogical assumptions is that they bring a plethora of distinct literacies and knowledges to class with them, what I struggle with is how to integrate and share these treasures with their classmates in the course. While I feel as if I've had some success in using some of these abilities in the classroom, I feel as if there's so much more I can--and need--to do to utilize their home literacies, and especially how I can encourage them to use these literacies and discourses in conjunction with academic discourse when they may have already been trained or discouraged from doing so by their previous educational experiences.
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You say I “ignore the fact that technologies are as dynamic and adaptive as those who wield them.” If you can convince me that an H-bomb is somehow not as destructive in the hands of one country over another, then you’re point is valid. But because an AK-47, to take another example, is a killing machine in the hands of a terrorist or a counter terrorist it is secondary to my point to consider what side we take, or what values we assign to that technology. Let’s take your example.
ReplyDeleteYour point about the blog being created for one purpose and being “hijacked” from bad poetry to academic discourse (or whatever discourse for that matter) is true only if we are talking about it’s content. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m concerned with the basic medium used to translate the content. I’m talking about the fact that we cannot separate the medium from the content. So Pam is right that her microwave cannot be used as a printer. You said it could be “adapted,” which is true, but again misses my point that by the nature of that adaptation you have changed the medium. I am not distrustful of technology; I’m a cyborg with the best of them, but at the same time I am aware of how technology changes me.
And to say technology is bad or good is to present an anthropomorphic fallacy. We assign virtues. They are not somehow natural to any object; my argument is not about subjective judgments. It is about an inability to change the nature of the medium. The medium of the H-Bomb is much different from the values we assign to it. In other words, your point is correct in assuming that “the only values that it [technology] carries are those that we assign to it,” but it misses the basic assumptions I am making about the medium.
To recap: I’m saying, “an AK kills.” You’re saying, “the values of an AK are...[whatever we assign to it].” So your argument is not at stasis with my point (and McLuhan’s) that the medium is the message.
p.s. Lourde's statement that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" is not just an abstraction-- it has serious social and political ramifications. It also is not solely referring to technology. I was broaching the subject of “becoming,” redefinition, and identity through Lorde’s quote, which basically means that the reason why the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house is because when we use the his tools (the tools of patriarchy) we are reifying his authority by giving him the ability to determine which tools are effective. That is to say, each act of "dismantling" also rebuilds his power. And this is different from Haraway’s “seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other.” Again, some of these tools may be indeed be technologies; I just wanted to clarify the original meaning of the quote.
Pearce,
ReplyDeleteFirst up, I took it that you were using Lourde's quote literally (and therefore out of context); so that's why I did too.
As for your question about the H-bomb, I remember a couple of uses it was imaginatively put to from "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact"--if not an actual H-bomb, they used something very similar in principle. "First Contact" also had a pretty imaginative use for an ICBM, though I only mention that because I've been watching Star Trek all weekend. The fact that we can imagine other, possibly more positive, uses for an H-bomb demonstrates that it could conceivably be put to uses that are not destructive to humans, especially in the hands of entities or organizations (yes, even countries) that choose to use them in a positive way.
But my argument is mainly about the distinction between a tool and a technology: the tool is the medium, and the technology is the abstract. In a way, I'm adapting the language of Plato's forms to our discussion. So while I agree that the medium--the context of the technology--is limited and shaped by our values, the technology is not. The technology remains neutral--free of values--while the tool is mired in purpose and intent.
I assumed you knew about the context surrounding the Lourde quote, just wanted to make sure.
ReplyDeleteYou’re saying that it’s not the machine (H Bomb or AK), but what one does with the machine that is its meaning, or content. You would probably say that it’s impossible for anything to exist without a message. I would disagree by simply saying that a medium can exist without a message.
Again to side with McLuhan, the ‘content’ of any medium is always another medium. In other words “The electric light is pure information….Whether the light is being used for brain surgery or night baseball is a matter of indifference….The content or uses of such media are as diverse as they are ineffectual in shaping the form of human association. Indeed, it is only too typical that the "content" of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium.”
My point is that you are purely noticing the content, or what is really another medium, and not the light.
On to the other issue.
To summarize your distinction: The tool is the medium, or context of the technology, shaped by values, mired in purpose and intent. The technology is an abstract and neutral Platonic Form, not shaped by values. This is confusing 1) because you argue for relativism by evoking Platonic forms, and 2) because it forgets what old man Jameson says, “Always historicize!”
The (Greek) root of Technology is tekhne, art of craft. It is rhetoric.
To contextualize. Aristotle’s Rhetoric was a treatise on civic rhetoric as tekhne. In the 17th century, it described the systematic study of the arts (or its jargon). By the 19th century, its meaning became isolated to the “practical arts” (as opposed to rhetorical theory, for instance). In other words, the meaning of technology, despite these various iterations, is a system of means and methods.
It seems that what you’re calling a “tool” is really a rhetorical “technique” in the sense that it is relative to a particular social, cultural, historical construction, context, or method. In this sense, the distinction between them is non-necessary.