Bestuurskunde (Public Administration)/MISOC: Summary of reading material and
lectures 3.3 - Technology, Policy & Society
Part 1: Perceptions of technology
1) Lecture on perceptions of technology
ICT interacts with our environment in many ways: ICT, after all, interacts with our social life,
our workplace, our political institutions and even with other forms of ICT. We as a society
chose to incorporate ICT because it speeds many things up and offers solutions to certain
problems, although also posing certain risks. For example, an algorithm that predicts river
flooding, keeps us safe, but the margins of error in this algorithm may cause us to make
wrong judgments we would not have made if we weren’t using this algorithm.
The technology debate on the place technology has in our society and how it shapes us
(and vice versa) is quite aged and does not offer any solutions, only the following positions:
● Instrumentalism: technology is given meaning through the way in which we use it.
In other words: technology does what we want it to - both guns and plastic bottles kill
people when we choose to use them as weapons.
● Determinism: technology has right or wrong value in itself and shapes us and
society.
● Constructivism: technology has no inherent meaning, but we as society attribute
meaning to it through a socialization process. After this process, technology may
shape society.
● Information ecology: an ‘evolution’ of the constructivist point of view. Technology
has different meanings in different domains of society (work/social, physical/digital
domains). Technology may be deterministic in one domain, yet instrumentalist in
another. Values, as such, exist in technology both before and after the socialization
process.
Furthermore, the technology debate offers the following four perceptions on the relationship
between technology and society, as well as the use of technology within society:
1. Rational: ICT is used for convenience and to make better decisions, and is
implemented after a careful consideration of pro’s and con’s.1
2. Political: actors have different goals, and use ICT to fight over these goals and to
give meaning to power relations. ICT, as such, is seen as a resource of power.
3. Instrumental: ICT is used to facilitate existing structures and institutions. It fits
existing values and allocates values to existing structures.
4. Cultural: (policy on) ICT is used for sense making, or the allocations of symbols and
meaning to parts of society.
2) Webster, chapter 1: Introduction
Since the start of the age of information, multiple Information Societies have risen up, mostly
in the Global North. In studying these societies, there has been a move away from computer
communication technologies towards social media, and to what people can do with these
1
Due to bounded rationality, this is never a perfectly rational process.
,accessible and adaptable forms of technology. This shift in analysis forms the basis for
Webster’s Theories of the Information Society, with chapter 2 looking at definitional issues,
scrutinizing the concept of Information Societies, and each chapter thereafter describing a
particular thinker alongside their theories in detail. While some theorists discussed in the
book claim a new sort of society has emerged from the old one (Bell), others place emphasis
on continuities within our society (Giddens, Habermas), arguing that the form and function of
information is always a result of existing principles and practices.
3) Webster, chapter 2: Definitions
To many writers, it seems clear enough that we live in an Information Society to not
precisely define this concept. However, in thinking this they fail to establish why and how
exactly information is becoming more central to our society. We can distinguish five
definitions of an Information Society, each presenting criteria for identification. Webster is of
the opinion that all of these are underdeveloped or lack in precision, leaving problematic
notions of what constitutes an Information Society:
1. Technological: new technologies and digitization (ICT, computer communications,
internet, smartphones) have brought about societal change. This has happened in
the past with the agricultural and industrial revolutions, and is happening now with
the information revolution, ushering us in a new epoch, or an ‘Information Age’.
Lately, social media has offered a new turning point, offering interactive, flexible and
transparent forms of internet communication.
● Critique: this definition makes it hard to measure how much societies rely on
information. How much ICT does an Information Society even need? And
what specific forms of technology should we be measuring? 20 years ago,
PC’s were relevant, but now smartphones have more influence on society.
2. Economic: Information Societies exist when the economic growth of informational
activities takes up the greater part of the GNP. Some propose this calculation should
include parts of the economy not aimed primarily at information (such as R&D
divisions of agricultural companies).
● Critique: categorizations of the (information) economy may not be valid. Not
all economic activities aimed at information could be counted as part of the
information economy (for example, building a university laboratory), but not all
parts of what is considered as the information economy may contribute to the
Information Society.
3. Occupational: Bell (whose theories are expanded upon in part 2) proposes that an
Information Society exists when most occupations are found in (the manipulation of)
information, or the service sector of the economy.
● Critique: almost all people work with some form of information. Coal miners
need knowledge and information about their work just as much as
receptionists.
4. Spatial: here, emphasis is placed on the extent to which information networks
(electricity grids, ATM’s, internet) manage to organize and connect time and space,
the resulting change in flow of information affecting how we perceive time-space
relations.
● Critique: this definition is a bit vague. What constitutes a network? Also,
information networks have always existed, at least since services like the
postal network and telegrams were invented.
, 5. Cultural: information circulation has invaded every aspect of our modern lives, with
contemporary culture, politics and social intercourse involving a greater deal of
information than in the past. For example, different hairstyles and forms of make-up
have taken on more explicit and detailed meanings.
● Critique: easily acknowledged, yet hard to measure. Some comment that
information is increasing, yet contains less and less meaning, calling this
phenomenon hyperreality. As signs lose their meaning, people come to take
whatever meaning they like from information.
4) Winner (1980): Do artifacts have politics?
A controversial notion in discussions on technology and society is the one which claims
technological things have inherent values and political qualities, as they embody power and
authority. For example, environmentalists may claim reliance on nuclear power may lead to a
totalitarian state. Television, likewise, was a boon for democracy in its early days, as it
generally made politics more accessible.. At first glance, technological artifacts do not
contain such political virtues in themselves. That is not to say that technology does not
matter in our society, but that such virtues are applied by humans to technology in their
(social) application and use of technologies. This article, however, describes two views on
the way in which technologies can contain political properties:
1. Technology can become a way of settling an issue in a community, making
technical arrangements forms of order. Following sociopolitical biases of the
designer, overpasses may be installed over roads, discouraging the use of buses
often used by people in the lower class. Cities install anti-homeless architecture to
prevent the homeless from sleeping in stations or parks. As such, technology is used
to enhance power and privilege of some over others. This works the other way
around, too: elevators and escalators have improved the status of disabled people in
society. That being said, two factors affect the distribution of power from technology:
● Is the technology readily adopted by society or not?
● Do controversies arise on the specific design (or alterations) of technology
after it has been adopted?
2. Technology can be made inherently political, as it requires or is more or less
compatible with certain political relationships. As we employ technology, we become
subjected to it. Friedrich Engels noted that workers at cotton-spinning mills, due to
the technology used at the workplace, performed different tasks which needed to be
strictly coördinated, resulting in a strict and authoritarian bureaucracy. While such
theories state technology is inherently political, others claim certain technology is
only more or less compatible with certain forms of politics. After all, solar plants need
to be decentralized across an entire country, being more compatible with democracy,
while a nuclear power plant or a coal mine can be centralized by a totalitarian
government in a single, more easily controlled location. Atom bombs need a
centralized and rigidly hierarchical chain of command to keep it’s use safe and
predictable, and to prevent terrorists from stealing the bomb or the nuclear elements
powering it.
● There has been some discussion on whether the above reasoning holds up.
Recent evidence has shown that self-management by workers and other
democratic, decentralised forms of management, have been able to
administer large technological systems like factories.
