CHAPTER 1
Defining technology and technological progress
It is primarily through the growth of science and technology that man has acquired those attributes which distinguish him from the animals, which have indeed made it possible for him to become human.
Arthur Holly Compton
This book is about technology injustice. It shows that the way we govern access to, development, and use of technology is unfair and, ultimately, unsustainable. It is also about how a principle of Technology Justice offers a different way of looking at technology and insight into how technology could be used to create a sustainable and equitable future for everyone. Before those ideas can be explored in depth, it is necessary to clarify what is meant by the term 'technology' in this book. It is also important to describe briefly some of the debates around the notion of what constitutes technological progress, how it occurs, and the social dimensions of technology, in order to understand how conventional views of technological progress as both inevitable and progressive may not be helpful.
Defining technology
The word 'technology' is open to wide interpretation. Today it seems to be most often used to refer to electronic gadgets, mobile phones, and the internet. A quick analysis of the topics of articles on the online technology pages of four major news agencies on the day of writing this chapter (Figure 1.1) supports this assertion.
This book takes the view that technology extends far beyond this limited field to include traditional indigenous technologies and knowledge as well as the vast array of technology and technical knowledge that underpins the high standard of living achieved in the developed world today.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica has the following to say about the origins of the word:
The term 'technology', a combination of the Greek techne ('art' or 'craft') with logos ('word' or 'speech'), meant in ancient Greece a discourse on the arts, both fine and applied. When it first appeared in English in the 17th century, it was used to mean a discussion of the applied arts only, and gradually these 'arts' themselves came to be the object of the designation. By the early 20th century, the term embraced a growing range of means, processes, and ideas in addition to tools and machines. By mid-century, technology was defined by such phrases as 'the means or activity by which man seeks to change or manipulate his environment'. (Buchanan, 2014)
As the encyclopaedia notes, such a broad definition fails to distinguish between technological activity and scientific inquiry. It also has the potential to incorporate forms of organization such as political systems and markets. This may be why there has been a narrowing in how the term is generally used, at least in common speech, in recent decades. Use of the term 'high technology' was first noted in English in the early 1960s to refer to the practical applications of modern science and, by the early 1970s, this had been shortened to 'high-tech' (Harper, 2015). It is probably as a result of the usage and connotations of 'high-tech' that the word 'technology' is today more likely to be associated with information and communication technologies – computers, telephones, applications of the internet, and so on – as Figure 1.1 confirms.
In this book, by contrast, the word 'technology' is taken to refer to the tools, machinery, artefacts, and systems of technical knowledge that humans use to interact with the natural environment and each other. This encompasses technology based on recent science and, equally, tools, practices, or techniques based on traditional knowledge, for example: a horse-drawn plough, an Archimedes screw, and traditional techniques for the selection and breeding of seeds or the control of soil erosion. To provide some practical limits to the subject, though, the definition used here does not extend to what could be described as non-technical systems of knowledge, such as political or managerial systems and practices.
The idea of technological progress
Technology is often presented in the media and everyday discussion in the abstract – the rational outcome of the application of the latest science to a real-world problem. A common view of the relationship between humans and technology is of a historical and linear progression with humanity constantly inventing and innovating to achieve ever higher levels of wellbeing. This idea that modernization comes about or is evolved through access to ever more sophisticated levels of technology has, together with the concept of economic growth, underpinned ideas of development for the last century.
Reality is a bit messier than this. Technology is a product of human interactions and the use and innovation of technology inevitably reflects the political, social, and cultural nature of the societies from which it emerges. Moreover, human beings shape and, in turn, are themselves shaped by technology. That 'messiness' means that, in reality, technological progress is not as linear or inevitable as we might like to believe and its social impact not as easy to predict as we would wish.
Questioning technological determinism and the inevitability of technological progress
In his book Science and Technology for Development the Edinburgh-based academic Professor James Smith traces how views of development through technological progress have changed over the years. In the 1960s, one school of thought saw development in terms of a linear process of modernization, whereby countries pass through a five-stage model from 'traditional society' via industrialization to an 'age of mass consumption' with 'widespread affluence, urbanisation and the consumption of consumer durables'. More recently, the alternative idea of 'technological catch-up', whereby countries can develop their skills base and use new technologies to leapfrog stages of the linear model to catch up or even overtake richer, 'leader' countries, has been something 'that many countries aspire to' (Smith, 2009: 14–17). The mobile phone is often cited as an example of technological leapfrog, with many developing countries virtually abandoning the costly extension of landline services into rural areas in favour of the more flexible and less capital-intensive mobile phone, but the idea could equally apply to leapfrogging whole stages of industrialization.
This vision of constant technological progression can lead to a sense of technological determinism – a belief that certain inventions have within them the seed of an inexorable chain of events. For example, that the efficiency of the wheel must inevitably lead to its universal adoption, that the development of the gun must lead to the abandonment of spears and swords, or that the introduction of the combustion engine must spell the end of horse-drawn transport and ploughs. Many social scientists, however, do not see technological 'progress' as such a linear or inevitable affair. David Nye, for instance, cites three counterfactuals to the above examples:
• The Japanese abandoning guns for cultural reasons after adopting them from Portuguese traders in the middle of the 16th century, not picking them up again until the mid-19th century (the Samurai preferred swords and arrows, which had more symbolic meaning for them).
• The present-day Amish community's rejection of modern transport and agricultural technology in favour of the horse-drawn cart and plough in the USA.
• Evidence that the Mayans and the Aztecs knew of the wheel (they put them on toys and ceremonial objects) but that they did not use wheels in construction or transportation.
Nye goes on to suggest that it is cultural choices rather than any inherent logic or usefulness of particular technologies that determine whether or not they are adopted: 'in short, awareness of particular tools or machines does not automatically force a society to adopt them or to keep them' (Nye, 2006: 18–20).
This view of culture shaping technological choices is echoed more recently in rejections of programmes for childhood vaccination against polio in parts of Nigeria and Pakistan, culminating in the murder of 26 polio workers in Pakistan and 10 in Nigeria in 2013. The reasons behind this rejection appear complex and while, in some cases, doubt over the efficacy of the vaccine itself seems to be part of the rationale for parents refusing to have their children vaccinated, other factors also play a part. These include suspicion of a programme addressing a disease not viewed locally as a health priority and, in areas of conflict and active insurgency, a boycott of the programme being a means to assert power and challenge government authority (Baron and Magone, 2014).
The impact of culture can also be seen in the regular use of multiple fuels and stoves for cooking, known as 'fuel stacking' in the developing world. Many households routinely use two or more fuels. Studies in Latin America show that even households that have switched to liquefied petroleum gas for most of their cooking still rely on less efficient and more polluting stoves or even open fires to cook certain foods, for example the daily staple tortilla. Similar patterns of use have been documented in Asia and Africa. Although some of this behaviour can be linked to household income and the cost of fuel for the improved cook-stoves, cultural issues associated with preferred cooking practices or taste are also cited as reasons for not adopting the cleaner, healthier, and more efficient cook-stoves for all cooking tasks (SE4All, 2013).
Culture can be seen as an influence not only on the behaviour of consumers, determining what technologies are adopted and used, but also on technology producers and investors, determining what technologies are offered for adoption in the first place. Social relationships and ties between producers and financiers in a market, for example, can play a more important role than the efficacy of a technology itself in determining what technologies are brought to market. Jamie Cross's exploration of the history of the development and large-scale uptake of a simple solar lantern manufactured under the brand of 'd.light' is a good example of this (Cross, 2013). The d.light is aimed at poor consumers in the developing world who have no access to mains electricity. It is a low-cost and robust electric light with an LED bulb and a built-in rechargeable battery and solar panel. Founded in 2006, the d.light company had sold over 6 million units by 2014, outstripping most other solar lantern manufacturers in the process (d.light, 2014). According to Cross, the success of the d.light lamp was not due to technical superiority over other similar lamps already on the market in countries such as India. It owed more to thecompany's ability to raise investments from venture capitalists to scale up its operations. This ability stemmed mainly from two facts:
• The founder members of the company were all alumnae of an 'Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability' course at Stanford University and were able to trade on their university's name and utilize the extensive social network associated with the institution to gain access to potential investors.
• The company was able to create a compelling narrative around the product for potential investors, largely based on the chief executive's personal experience of living off-grid in Benin for four years as a Peace Corps volunteer and his stories of the hardship and danger that the d.light could help alleviate.
Views of how technological progression happens have changed over time. The idea of societies needing to go through set stages of technological development has given way to the possibility of 'leapfrogging' over stages in certain circumstances to achieve technological catch-up. Notable exceptions have been found to the deterministic view of new technologies inevitably muscling out older and less effective ones, as the examples given here show. The shortcomings of technological determinism in explaining the adoption of new technology are important to note, however, given the influence of that line of thought in early economic theories on the impact of technological progress on growth (which is looked at in more depth in Chapter 6). They are also important to remember when critically reflecting on the rhetoric around emerging technologies today. Research in genomics and nanotechnology, for example, 'has been shown to carry highly optimistic promises of major social and industrial transformation, suggesting a need ... to instil some form of responsibility in disentangling present hype from future reality' (Stilgoe et al., 2013: 1571).
The unpredictability of the social impact of technology
Technological determinism can also take the form of assuming that adoption of a technology will necessarily lead to a certain social outcome or impact. Take as an example the idea that access to the internet will inevitably lead to a more open and democratic society as people are exposed to global news sources and despots can no longer hide the truth from their people. Or that the adoption of latrines as a safe form of sanitation will automatically lead to a reduction in diarrhoeal disease.
Again these ideas often do not stand up to scrutiny. Although it is argued that social media was used to support the bid for greater self-expression and democracy during the Arab Spring in 2011 (Howard et al., 2011), the internet is also being used today to garner support for the formation of an Islamic fundamentalist proto-Caliphate in Iraq and Syria under ISIS (Channel 4, 2014). And while a resident of a slum in Dhaka might build and use a latrine, the prime motivation for doing so may not be health but a desire for increased privacy instead of having to defecate in the open. Such a motivation may not also lead to the adoption of the necessary additional hygiene behaviours (hand-washing after defecation and before eating, hygienic storage of water and food in the home, etc.) that would, alongside safe disposal of faeces in a latrine, result in the prevention of diarrhoeal disease.
Given that technology and culture are inextricably entwined, gendered roles bestowed on men and women by society also play a part in shaping the development and use of technology. This can be seen in the way technology itself has become gendered. It is argued, for example, that during the latter half of the 19th century technology increasingly became associated with the rise of mechanical and civil engineering disciplines – professions dominated by men – thereby diminishing the link with women's knowledge and expertise in the process. Technology became 'male machines rather than female fabrics' (Wajcman, 2009). This inherent masculinity of technology can be viewed as a barrier to both women's access to technology and their power to shape its design and evolution.
The link between gender-ascribed roles in work and the introduction of technology is an important one. The application of new technology can positively affect women's lives by reducing the physical effort or the adverse health impacts of gender-ascribed roles: piped water supplies reducing the burden of water collection or more efficient cook-stoves reducing exposure to harmful indoor air pollution, for example. But not all impacts, even from well-intentioned efforts, are positive for women. The introduction of new technologies can also result in the transfer of tasks or activities from the domestic realm to the commercial realm and lead to a shift of employment opportunities from women to men. In Bangladesh, the husking and polishing of rice by hand was a traditional source of income for women from the poorest rural households who were employed by richer neighbours. With the introduction of mechanical rice mills, not only did better-off households prefer to take their rice to the mill, but also the (fewer) new employment opportunities generated by the mechanization process were filled predominantly by men (Begum, 1983). This is not a new phenomenon. English legal records show that, in the 13th and 14th centuries, women were the chief brewers of ale, the common drink of the rural population. When brewing later became commercialized, control of the process shifted to men (Nye, 2006: 13).
Furthermore, some feminist writers see the potential for new digital technologies to blur the lines between humans and machines and between men and women, pointing to the use of alternative identities by people on digital media and the potential for genetic engineering, biotechnology, and cybernetics to eliminate some of the physical differences between the sexes. This demonstrates that, as well as social relations shaping technology, it is also possible for technology to shape social relations (Wajcman, 2009).
Just as it is not inevitable that new technologies will squeeze out older and less effective ones, so it is not inevitable that access to new technologies will lead to the positive social impacts initially intended by them. In both cases a whole range of factors, including affordability, social relations, motivations, and gendered and cultural norms and preferences, influence whether a technology is adopted and whether its adoption has the intended social consequences.
