Intro to ‘The Gods must be Crazy’

A few of Kranzberg’s ‘Laws’:

• ‘Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.’ What does this mean?
  • It comes from somewhere (embodies certain cultural values)
  • Its diffusion often includes some of this ‘cultural baggage’
• Invention is the mother of necessity.
• Technology comes in packages, big and small.

Intermediate (or appropriate) technology

• capital vs labor
• ecological sustainability
  • Biomimicry lessons: resource efficiency increases, linear to closed loop, fossil fuel to solar economy
• effect on employment
• response to local need
• scale (smaller …)
• some basis in tradition
• Berry’s ‘rules‘ regarding innovation
  

   

  • A new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.
  • It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.
  • It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.
  • It should use less energy than the one it replaces.
  • If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.
  • It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.
  • It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.
  • It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.
  • It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationship

Sociotechnical systems

• We live with them, but they’re often ‘invisible’ until/unless they break down
  • energy (power generation, electricity grid)
  • telecommunications (phone, internet, TV, radio, mass media …)
  • health care
  • drinking water / waste water treatment
  • waste management
  • transportation (roads, air, rail, ship, public transit, etc.)
  • military
  • agriculture/husbandry
  • factory production

Technology and politics

(mostly from Langdon Winner, ‘Do artifacts have politics?’)

• Some technologies require a certain kind of organization–Winner uses the example of nuclear technology, requiring engineering expertise, high security levels, and strict controls over handing (well, in principle …)
• Technologies in themselves can impose certain organizational structures on a society–think of Interstate highways, telecommunications systems, military organization (‘defense’), fossil fuel exploitation
• Technologies can create conditions for greater or less participation in public life, or ability to stay informed–think of media, especially TV, its expense and how this limits access via ownership, and how ownership can limit the kinds of content/programming, as well as dictate how much advertising we’re exposed to.
• Ruling elites can use technology to impose a certain order–Winner discusses the example of Robert Moses and the overpasses that excluded public buses from Long Island. High-value sociotechnical systems are also often now considered ‘terrorist targets,’ and may be accompanied by systems of surveillance and monitoring, and increasingly militarized police force.
• Technology and risk–These sociotechnical systems, because of their complexity, may create conditions for greater risks, sometimes (as is the case with nuclear power) with catastrophic potential. Sociologist Charles Perrow coined the term ‘normal accidents‘ to help explain this phenomenon
• Technology sometimes just happens–Winner points out that sometimes, as with the mechanical tomato harvester, no one set out to displace thousands of tomato pickers in California’s Central Valley. Yet that was an outcome just the same.

Technology in the post-war period–Household Appliance World!

(from Schwartz-Cowan, ‘Less work for mother?’)

• Labor-saving technologies–clothes dryers, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, etc.
• Schwartz-Cowan says research shows these didn’t really reduce work hours of women–why not?
• Decline in domestic work–‘capital substitution’
• Drudgery and technology
• Role of the automobile (especially in suburbanization)
• Health and sanitation (children more likely to stay healthy)–modern medical technologies reduce women’s burden of giving care to family members
• Women in the workforce (two-sided issue)–women so lucky can at least do a ‘double day’ without ‘destroying their health’

Suburbanization

• some history (end of WWII; subdivisions, like Levittown)
• displacement of land uses (which?)–sprawl
• car culture
• energy
• racial discrimination
• social impacts–race, gender
• Levittown, PA
• Baltimore and DC
• Phoenix, AZ
• Soils and urbanization  (as cities expand, prime farmland often gets converted, pushing agriculture onto less productive lands, meaning more acreage to produce the same yields)
• Levittown, NY (looks like Levittown, PA? You don’t say?)
• Smart growth
  • Mixed use development (not so much separation of living and working spaces, connected by roads)
  • affordable housing (warning–might require public subsidies!)
  • design restrictions (easy on the strip malls …)
  • Green space, parks (compare Central Park in NYC with Golden Gate Park in San Francisco (notice any differences? Edward Abbey would have)
  • Pedestrian/bicycle-friendly designs
  • transit-oriented (more public/mass transit)
  • historic preservation