How Technology Influences Public Scientific Discourse and Public Opinions about Scientific Expertise
The Internet provides an ideal lens through which to explore the many ways in which a technology might embody forms of power and authority, and test the validity of STS theory on the subject.
The Politics of Technological Determinism: Authoritarian vs. Democratic
Lewis Mumford’s normative description of authoritarian and democratic technologies immediately falls short: the Net, although system-centered and immensely powerful, it is most decidedly not inherently unstable, as authoritarian technologies are classified; nor is it man-centered and relatively weak, although it is supremely resourceful and durable, as democratic technologies are classified. So Mumford’s dualistic approach to the politics of technology doesn’t pass the prima facie test.
But Mumford was just one voice in the chorus whose refrain is that technological advancement has a democratizing influence. Communications technologies, especially, are widely held to deliver the ideals of freedom and democracy directly into the homes and hearts of the oppressed. It is an idea that can be tested by looking at it from the other end: state censorship and surveillance. In 1978, Boorstein and others espoused the democratizing influence that television would have in all corners of the globe; in 2003, Kalathil and Boas demonstrated how even the most invasive and personal form of mass communication technology has actually bolstered authoritarian rule through surveillance, restricted access, and cultural campaigns that promote self-censorship as a virtue.
The Theory of Technological Politics
So, if it is overly simplistic to accept technological determinism as a driving force in society’s power dynamics, then is it fair to say that technologies are mere artifacts of social and economic systems — (literal) tools of the human agents who use them, and independent of politics or cause (i.e., social determination of technology)? Not quite, according to Winner. There’s a space between — a more practical and thoughtful way to think about the political role of technological artifacts that unites both theories and accounts for their shortcomings: Winner’s theory of technological politics. Technological politics accepts the premise that some artifacts do have a key role to play in the social power structure, but that such a role should not be reduced to its position within that dynamic. It describes the two ways in which technologies can have politics:
- Cases of technological artifacts that facilitate political outcomes; and
- Cases of “inherently political technologies.”
Winner uses Robert Moses’s urban planning devices to illustrate the former, which provides a convenient point of reference against which we can test our technological framework, the “Information Superhighway.” Moses designed and built Long Island’s transit system in such a way that restricted easy access to all but society’s affluent class, and since almost all affluent people at that time were white, this effectively meant that only wealthy white people could commute from and live in Long Island. His design might be an historical footnote by now, except for that he also built it that way. Fifty years of urban planning by Robert Moses created a vast network of critical infrastructure that has long outlived the man and the elitist, racist social norms of mid-century America.
Technologies that Facilitate Politics
If Moses’s bridges were built to deny modes of public transportation entry, how does this compare with the intentional arrangements that went into the design of the Internet? Big Science program decisions require technocratic intervention, as with the NSF plan to transfer its civilian administration of the Internet to the public, which involved a deliberate decision to relinquish control of the Acceptable Use Policy, which had largely prohibited commercial use of the network. By then, the so-called Information Highway had already gone through several phases of development and growth — all intentional, and all designed to restrict access to the most powerful communication tool in history to a privileged group of Ivy League academics, although as Winner would point out, it probably wouldn’t have occurred to anybody at the time that their designs and modifications were anything other than practical engineering solutions. But it might not require brilliant STS scholarship to pierce the veil of the early Internet’s inherent power dynamics; its bias toward authority is built into the very language of its program interface: authorization, password, access, permission, code, administrator, user, webmaster, domain. Such language reflects the military culture that developed the original ARPANET architecture, but it continued to serve later developers, who believed that the technology was too complicated for lay people to understand it, and built firewalls to prevent users from poking around and breaking the delicate shell of software code they had so carefully constructed. We might be tempted to raise a Foucaultian objection against this practice, but the public seems to have a fairly strong preference for deferring to the experts in this case, and for the community of non-expert enthusiasts, there is an open-source alternative for almost every platform that “mainstream” Internet offers.
Once it became commercial and popularized, the intent behind the design of the Internet shifted to rapidly scaling the network so that it could handle exponential growth in access. In both cases — early ARPANET/CSNET/NSFNET and later Internet — the design of the network set the parameters for inclusion into its community, which fits pretty neatly into the first type of technological politics posed by Winner. Further, the capital infrastructure and geopolitical arrangements that have facilitated the World Wide Web have established norms and expectations that are already deeply embedded in culture and law.
Inherently Political Technologies
Winner describes how artifacts of large technological systems may require or be strongly compatible with authoritarian social environments, in opposition to small and/or localized technological systems, which are inherently more democratic as an operational function of their decentralized nature. He uses the atomic bomb as a special and obvious case of a technology that is innately political, and which requires a rigid authoritarian oversight. Simply put: you can’t let the locals have the power to press the proverbial button, but if they want to go solar, it makes more sense to let them figure it out on their own.
Courts in the Political System: Traditional vs. Political Models
Charles Shipan describes two models of the judiciary’s role in the political process : (1)traditional and (2) political. The former holds that the role of the courts is to protect fundamental rights by enforcing private autonomy and ensuring that government does not exceed its authority. The traditional model of the judiciary executes its duties as outlined in the Constitution, acting as an independent branch of government and check on the Executive and Legislative branches. Traditional courts are the ones we learned about in grade school, and function in a relatively staid, straightforward manner. The latter serves political power by establishing procedures that reinforce social stability. The political model of the judiciary is necessarily forward-looking, as it considers the importance of its decisions in the context of policy implications, responsive legislation, and enforcement outcomes. The political model is far more dynamic, and in the 20 years since Shipan wrote about the role of the courts in every day political life, it has become deeply embedded in judiciary practice to the extent that we now have a common term for it when we discuss it in the news and political debates: activist courts. Activist courts operate in the world of special interest litigation, dirty tricks, and Congressional chicanery.
Judicial Review in a Large Technical System: The Open Internet
Recent cases in the net neutrality/Open Internet fight for Internet control provide a contemporary case in point for Shapin’s political model and draw out Winner’s theory of technological politics to its logical legal conclusion: a large-system technology (the Internet) with democratic power dynamics (TCP/IP) serves as a marketplace (Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming services) for an extremely powerful economic interest (Silicon Valley and the telecom industry) regulated by an agency (the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC) that has been authorized by the courts (federal courts to date, Supreme Court in the near future) to control the access rights to that technology and reorganize its marketplace (2015 rule to treat broadband Net differently from mobile Net).
Shipan’s analysis of the judicial review provisions of the 1934 Communications Act anticipated the (inevitable?) court battles over Internet access. As he would point out, procedures and structures matter, and the front end of the policy process has intentionally avoided imposing such matters on the Internet thus far — possibly because the institutional setting of the Internet is so different from all other types of S&T regulation settings, and almost certainly because the Supreme Court confirmed the standing of parties indirectly involved to a dispute. In this case, “the parties” meaning any users who might have their network connection slowed down because they don’t have a Netflix subscription.
Conclusion
In considering the influence that Winner and Shipan’s work might have in public scientific discourse, it seems that advocacy for technological improvements to the Net’s infrastructure would be in order. Referring back to Winner’s example from Plato, contemporary innovations in navigational and autopilot technologies preclude the authoritarian rule necessary for ancient Greek maritime law. To the contrary, it is now perfectly reasonable to consult with and poll crew in making course decisions. With respect to the Internet, the courts have already laid the groundwork to protect the public’s right to “neutral” access, and the best way to preserve that right would be to improve the capacity of the network to deliver content.
