This is a draft version. Please cite final as: Feenberg, A. (2003). Democratic Rationalization: Technology, Power, and Freedom.

In R. Scharff & V.
Dusek (Eds.), Philosophy of technology (pp. 652-665). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Originally published 1992.

DEMOCRATIC RATIONALIZATION:
1 On the one hand, the common sense view argues that modern
TECHNOLOGY, POWER AND FREEDOM technology is incompatible with workplace democracy. Democratic
theory cannot reasonably press for reforms that would destroy the
Andrew Feenberg economic foundations of society. For evidence, consider the Soviet
case: although they were socialists, the communists did not democratize
I. The Limits of Democratic Theory industry, and the current democratization of Soviet society extends only
to the factory gate. At least in the ex-Soviet Union, everyone can agree
Technology is one of the major sources of public power in modern on the need for authoritarian industrial management.
societies. So far as decisions affecting our daily lives are concerned,
political democracy is largely overshadowed by the enormous power On the other hand, a minority of radical theorists claim that technology
wielded by the masters of technical systems: corporate and military is not responsible for the concentration of industrial power. That is a
leaders, and professional associations of groups such as physicians and political matter, due to the victory of capitalist and communist elites in
engineers. They have far more to do with control over patterns of struggles with the underlying population. No doubt modern technology
urban growth, the design of dwellings and transportation systems, the lends itself to authoritarian administration, but in a different social
selection of innovations, our experience as employees, patients, and context it could just as well be operated democratically.
consumers, than all the governmental institutions of our society put
together. In what follows, I will argue for a qualified version of this second
position, somewhat different from both the usual Marxist and
Marx saw this situation coming in the middle of the 19th Century. He democratic formulations. The qualification concerns the role of
argued that traditional democratic theory erred in treating the economy technology, which I see as neither determining nor as neutral. I will argue
as an extra-political domain ruled by natural laws such as the law of that modern forms of hegemony are based on the technical mediation
supply and demand. He claimed that we will remain disenfranchised of a variety of social activities, whether it be production or medicine,
and alienated so long as we have no say in industrial decision-making. education or the military, and that, consequently, the democratization
Democracy must be extended from the political domain into the world of our society requires radical technical as well as political change.
of work. This is the underlying demand behind the idea of socialism.
This is a controversial position. The common sense view of technology
Modern societies have been challenged by this demand for over a limits democracy to the state. By contrast, I believe that unless
century. Democratic political theory offers no persuasive reason of democracy can be extended beyond its traditional bounds into the
principle to reject it. Indeed, many democratic theorists endorse it.2 technically mediated domains of social life, its use value will continue to
What is more, in a number of countries socialist parliamentary victories decline, participation will wither, and the institutions we identify with a
or revolutions have brought parties to power dedicated to achieving it. free society will gradually disappear.
Yet today we do not appear to be much closer to democratizing
industrialism than in Marx's time. Let me turn now to the background to my argument. I will begin by
presenting an overview of various theories that claim that insofar as
This state of affairs is usually explained in one of the following two modern societies depend on technology, they require authoritarian
ways. hierarchy. These theories presuppose a form of technological
determinism which is refuted by historical and sociological arguments I directly in Weber's footsteps in rejecting this possibility. I am thinking
will briefly summarize. I will then present a sketch of a non- of Heidegger's formulation of "the question of technology" and Ellul's
deterministic theory of modern society I call "critical theory of theory of "the technical phenomenon."4 According to these theories,
technology." This alternative approach emphasizes contextual aspects we have become little more than objects of technique, incorporated
of technology ignored by the dominant view. I will argue that into the mechanism we have created. As Marshall McLuhan once put it,
technology is not just the rational control of nature; both its technology has reduced us to the "sex organs of machines." The only
development and impact are intrinsically social. I will then show that hope is a vaguely evoked spiritual renewal that is too abstract to inform
this view undermines the customary reliance on efficiency as a criterion a new technical practice.
of technological development. That conclusion, in turn, opens broad
possibilities of change foreclosed by the usual understanding of These are interesting theories, important for their contribution to
technology. opening a space of reflection on modern technology. I will return to
Heidegger’s argument in the conclusion to this paper. But first, to
II. Dystopian Modernity advance my own argument, I will concentrate on the principal flaw of
dystopianism, the identification of technology in general with the
Max Weber's famous theory of rationalization is the original argument specific technologies that have developed in the last century in the
against industrial democracy. The title of this paper implies a West. These are technologies of conquest that pretend to an
provocative reversal of Weber's conclusions. He defined rationalization unprecedented autonomy; their social sources and impacts are hidden. I
as the increasing role of calculation and control in social life, a trend will argue that this type of technology is a particular feature of our
leading to what he called the "iron cage" of bureaucracy.3 "Democratic" society and not a universal dimension of "modernity" as such.
rationalization is thus a contradiction in terms.
III. Technological Determinism
Once traditionalist struggle against rationalization has been defeated,
further resistance in a Weberian universe can only reaffirm irrational life Determinism rests on the assumption that technologies have an
forces against routine and drab predictability. This is not a democratic autonomous functional logic that can be explained without reference to
program but a romantic anti-dystopian one, the sort of thing that is society. Technology is presumably social only through the purpose it
already foreshadowed in Dostoievsky's Notes from Underground and serves, and purposes are in the mind of the beholder. Technology
various back to nature ideologies. would thus resemble science and mathematics by its intrinsic
independence of the social world.
My title is meant to reject the dichotomy between rational hierarchy and
irrational protest implicit in Weber's position. If authoritarian social Yet unlike science and mathematics, technology has immediate and
hierarchy is truly a contingent dimension of technical progress, as I powerful social impacts. It would seem that society's fate is at least
believe, and not a technical necessity, then there must be an alternative partially dependent on a non-social factor which influences it without
way of rationalizing society that democratizes rather than centralizes suffering a reciprocal influence. This is what is meant by "technological
control. We need not go underground or native to preserve threatened determinism." Such a deterministic view of technology is commonplace
values such as freedom and individuality. in business and government, where it is often assumed that progress is
an exogenous force influencing society rather than an expression of
But the most powerful critiques of modern technological society follow changes in culture and values.
 The implications of determinism appear so obvious that it is surprising
The dystopian visions of modernity I have been describing are also to discover that neither of its two theses can withstand close scrutiny.
deterministic. If we want to affirm the democratic potentialities of Yet contemporary sociology of technology undermines the first thesis
modern industrialism, we will therefore have to challenge their of unilinear progress while historical precedents are unkind to the
deterministic premises. These I will call the thesis of unilinear progress, second thesis of determination by the base.
and the thesis of determination by the base. Here is a brief summary of
these two positions. Recent constructivist sociology of technology grows out of new social
studies of science. These studies challenge our tendency to exempt
1) Technical progress appears to follow a unilinear course, a fixed track, scientific theories from the sort of sociological examination to which
from less to more advanced configurations. Although this conclusion we submit non-scientific beliefs. They affirm the "principle of
seems obvious from a backward glance at the development of any symmetry," according to which all contending beliefs are subject to the
familiar technical object, in fact it is based on two claims of unequal same type of social explanation regardless of their truth or falsity.7 A
plausibility: first, that technical progress proceeds from lower to higher similar approach to technology rejects the usual assumption that
levels of development; and second, that that development follows a technologies succeed on purely functional grounds.
single sequence of necessary stages. As we will see, the first claim is
independent of the second and not necessarily deterministic. Constructivism argues that theories and technologies are
underdetermined by scientific and technical criteria. Concretely, this
2) Technological determinism also affirms that social institutions must means two things: first, there is generally a surplus of workable
adapt to the "imperatives" of the technological base. This view, which solutions to any given problem, and social actors make the final choice
no doubt has its source in a certain reading of Marx, is now part of the among a batch of technically viable options; and second, the problem-
common sense of the social sciences.5 Below, I will discuss one of its definition often changes in the course of solution. The latter point is
implications in detail: the supposed "trade-off" between prosperity and the more conclusive but also more difficult of the two.
environmental values.
Two sociologists of technology, Pinch and Bijker, illustrate it with the
These two theses of technological determinism present early history of the bicycle.8 The object we take to be a self-evident
decontextualized, self-generating technology as the unique foundation "black box" actually started out as two very different devices, a
of modern society. Determinism thus implies that our technology and sportsman's racer and a utilitarian transportation vehicle. The high front
its corresponding institutional structures are universal, indeed, planetary wheel of the sportsman's bike was necessary at the time to attain high
in scope. There may be many forms of tribal society, many feudalisms, speeds, but it also caused instability. Equal sized wheels made for a
even many forms of early capitalism, but there is only one modernity safer but less exciting ride. These two designs met different needs and
and it is exemplified in our society for good or ill. Developing societies were in fact different technologies with many shared elements. Pinch
should take note: as Marx once said, calling the attention of his and Bijker call this original ambiguity of the object designated as a
backward German compatriots to British advances: "De te fabula "bicycle," "interpretative flexibility."
narratur"-- of you the tale is told.6
Eventually the "safety" design won out, and it benefited from all the
IV. Constructivism later advances that occurred in the field. In retrospect, it seems as
though the high wheelers were a clumsy and less efficient stage in a
progressive development leading through the old "safety" bicycle to man, he has learnt at his mother's knees." Lord Ashley was outraged to
current designs. In fact the high wheeler and the safety shared the field find that "females not only perform the labour, but occupy the places
for years and neither was a stage in the other's development. The high of men; they are forming various clubs and associations, and gradually
wheeler represents a possible alternative path of bicycle development acquiring all those privileges which are held to be the proper portion of
that addressed different problems at the origin. the male sex....they meet together to drink, sing, and smoke; they use, it
is stated, the lowest, most brutal, and most disgusting language
Determinism is a species of Whig history which makes it seem as imaginable…”
though the end of the story was inevitable from the very beginning by
projecting the abstract technical logic of the finished object back into Proposals to abolish child labor met with consternation on the part of
the past as a cause of development. That approach confuses our factory owners, who regarded the little worker as an "imperative" of the
understanding of the past and stifles the imagination of a different technologies created to employ him. They denounced the
future. Constructivism can open up that future, although its "inefficiency" of using full-grown workers to accomplish tasks done as
practitioners have hesitated so far to engage the larger social issues well or better by children, and they predicted all the usual catastrophic
implied in their method.9 economic consequences--increased poverty, unemployment, loss of
international competitiveness--from the substitution of more costly
V. Indeterminism adult labor. Their eloquent representative, Sir J. Graham, therefore
urged caution: "We have arrived at a state of society when without
If the thesis of unilinear progress falls, the collapse of the notion of commerce and manufactures this great community cannot be
determination by the technological base cannot be far behind. Yet it is maintained. Let us, as far as we can, mitigate the evils arising out of this
still frequently invoked in contemporary political debates. highly artificial state of society; but let us take care to adopt no step that
may be fatal to commerce and manufactures."
I shall return to these debates later in this paper. For now, let us
consider the remarkable anticipation of current attitudes in the struggle He further explained that a reduction in the workday for women and
over the length of the workday and child labor in mid-19th Century children would conflict with the depreciation cycle of machinery and
England. The debate on the Factory Bill of 1844 is entirely structured lead to lower wages and trade problems. He concluded that "in the
around the deterministic opposition of technological imperatives and close race of competition which our manufacturers are now running
ideology. Lord Ashley, the chief advocate of regulation, protests in the with foreign competitors...such a step would be fatal...." Regulation, he
name of familial ideology that "The tendency of the various and his fellows maintained in words that echo still, is based on a "false
improvements in machinery is to supersede the employment of adult principle of humanity, which in the end is certain to defeat itself." One
males, and substitute in its place, the labour of children and females. might almost believe that Ludd had risen again in the person of Lord
What will be the effect on future generations, if their tender frames be Ashley: the issue is not really the length of the workday "but it is in
subjected, without limitation or control, to such destructive agencies?"10 principle an argument to get rid of the whole system of factory labour."
Similar protestations are heard today on behalf of industries threatened
He went on to deplore the decline of the family consequent upon the with what they call environmental "Luddism."
employment of women, which "disturbs the order of nature," and
deprives children of proper upbringing. "It matters not whether it be Yet what actually happened once the regulators succeeded in imposing
prince or peasant, all that is best, all that is lasting in the character of a limitations on the work day and expelling children from the factory?
Did the violated imperatives of technology come back to haunt them? themes of a non-determinist approach to technology. The picture
Not at all. Regulation led to an intensification of factory labor that was sketched so far implies a significant change in our definition of
incompatible with the earlier conditions in any case. Children ceased to technology. It can no longer be considered as a collection of devices,
be workers and were redefined socially as learners and consumers. nor, more generally, as the sum of rational means. These are
Consequently, they entered the labor market with higher levels of skill tendentious definitions that make technology seem more functional and
and discipline that were soon presupposed by technological design. As a less social than in fact it is.
result no one is nostalgic for a return to the good old days when
inflation was held down by child labor. That is simply not an option, (at As a social object, technology ought to be subject to interpretation like
least not in the developed capitalist world). any other cultural artifact but it is generally excluded from humanistic
study. We are assured that its essence lies in a technically explainable
This example shows the tremendous flexibility of the technical system. function rather than a hermeneutically interpretable meaning. At most
It is not rigidly constraining but on the contrary can adapt to a variety humanistic methods might illuminate extrinsic aspects of technology,
of social demands. This conclusion should not be surprising given the such as packaging and advertising, or popular reactions to controversial
responsiveness of technology to social redefinition discussed innovations such as nuclear power or surrogate motherhood.
previously. It means that technology is just another dependent social Technological determinism draws its force from this attitude. If one
variable, albeit an increasingly important one, and not the key to the ignores most of the connections between technology and society, it is
riddle of history. no wonder that technology then appears to be self-generating.

Determinism, I have argued, is characterized by the principles of Technical objects have two hermeneutic dimensions that I call their
unilinear progress and determination by the base; if determinism is social meaning and their cultural horizon.11 The role of social meaning is
wrong, then technology research must be guided by the following two clear in the case of the bicycle introduced above. We have seen that the
contrary principles. In the first place, technological development is not construction of the bicycle was controlled in the first instance by a
unilinear but branches in many directions, and could reach generally contest of interpretations: was it to be a sportsman's toy or a means of
higher levels along more than one different track. And, secondly, transportation? Design features such as wheel size also served to signify
technological development is not determining for society but is
it as one or another type of object.12
overdetermined by both technical and social factors.
It might be objected that this is merely an initial disagreement over
The political significance of this position should also be clear by now.
goals with no hermeneutic significance. Once the object is stabilized,
In a society where determinism stands guard on the frontiers of
the engineer has the last word on its nature, and the humanist
democracy, indeterminism cannot but be political. If technology has
interpreter is out of luck. This is the view of most engineers and
many unexplored potentialities, no technological imperatives dictate the
managers; they readily grasp the concept of "goal" but they have no
current social hierarchy. Rather, technology is a scene of social struggle,
place for "meaning."
a "parliament of things," on which civilizational alternatives contend.
In fact the dichotomy of goal and meaning is a product of functionalist
VI. Interpreting Technology
professional culture, which is itself rooted in the structure of the
modern economy. The concept of "goal" strips technology bare of
In the next sections of this paper, I would like to present several major
social contexts, focussing engineers and managers on just what they
need to know to do their job. The telephone company designed a new type of terminal, the Minitel, to
look and feel like an adjunct to the domestic telephone. The telephonic
A fuller picture is conveyed, however, by studying the social role of the disguise suggested to some users that they ought to be able to talk to
technical object and the lifestyles it makes possible. That picture places each other on the network. Soon the Minitel underwent a further
the abstract notion of "goal" in its concrete social context. It makes redefinition at the hands of these users, many of whom employed it
technology's contextual causes and consequences visible rather than primarily for anonymous on-line chatting with other users in the search
obscuring them behind an impoverished functionalism. for amusement, companionship, and sex.

The functionalist point of view yields a decontextualized temporal Thus the design of the Minitel invited communications applications
cross-section in the life of the object. As we have seen, determinism which the company's engineers had not intended when they set about
claims implausibly to be able to get from one such momentary improving the flow of information in French society. Those
configuration of the object to the next on purely technical terms. But in applications, in turn, connoted the Minitel as a means of personal
the real world all sorts of unpredictable attitudes crystallize around encounter, the very opposite of the rationalistic project for which it was
technical objects and influence later design changes. The engineer may originally created. The "cold" computer became a "hot" new medium.
think these are extrinsic to the device he or she is working on, but they
are its very substance as a historically evolving phenomenon. At issue in the transformation is not only the computer's narrowly
conceived technical function, but the very nature of the advanced
These facts are recognized to a certain extent in the technical fields society it makes possible. Does networking open the doors to the
themselves, especially in computers. Here we have a contemporary Information Age where, as rational consumers hungry for data, we
version of the dilemma of the bicycle discussed above. Progress of a pursue strategies of optimization? Or is it a postmodern technology that
generalized sort in speed, power, and memory goes on apace while emerges from the breakdown of institutional and sentimental stability,
corporate planners struggle with the question of what it is all for. reflecting, in Lyotard's words, the "atomisation of society into flexible
Technical development does not point definitively toward any particular networks of language games?"14 In this case technology is not merely
path. Instead, it opens branches, and the final determination of the the servant of some predefined social purpose; it is an environment
"right" branch is not within the competence of engineering because it is within which a way of life is elaborated.
simply not inscribed in the nature of the technology.
In sum, differences in the way social groups interpret and use technical
I have studied a particularly clear example of the complexity of the objects are not merely extrinsic but make a difference in the nature of
relation between the technical function and meaning of the computer in the objects themselves. What the object is for the groups that ultimately
the case of French videotex.13 Called Teletel, this system was designed decide its fate determines what it becomes as it is redesigned and
to bring France into the Information Age by giving telephone improved over time. If this is true, then we can only understand
subscribers access to data bases. Fearing that consumers would reject technological development by studying the sociopolitical situation of
anything resembling office equipment, the telephone company the various groups involved in it.
attempted to redefine the computer's social image; it was no longer to
appear as a calculating device for professionals but was to become an VII. Technological Hegemony
informational network for all.
In addition to the sort of assumptions about individual technical objects
we have been discussing so far, that situation also includes broader this context.
assumptions about social values. This is where the study of the cultural
horizon of technology comes in. This second hermeneutic dimension Through mechanization, some of the control functions are eventually
of technology is the basis of modern forms of social hegemony; it is transferred from human overseers and parcellized work practices to
particularly relevant to our original question concerning the inevitability machines. Machine design is thus socially relative in a way that Weber
of hierarchy in technological society. never recognized, and the "technological rationality" it embodies is not
universal but particular to capitalism. In fact, it is the horizon of all the
As I will use the term, hegemony is a form of domination so deeply existing industrial societies, communist as well as capitalist, insofar as
rooted in social life that it seems natural to those it dominates. One they are managed from above. (In a later section, I discuss a generalized
might also define it as that aspect of the distribution of social power application of this approach in terms of what I call the "technical
which has the force of culture behind it. code.")

The term "horizon" refers to culturally general assumptions that form If Marcuse is right, it ought to be possible to trace the impress of class
the unquestioned background to every aspect of life.15 Some of these relations in the very design of production technology as has indeed
support the prevailing hegemony. For example, in feudal societies, the been shown by such Marxist students of the labor process as Harry
"chain of being" established hierarchy in the fabric of God's universe Braverman and David Noble.17 The assembly line offers a particularly
and protected the caste relations of the society from challenge. Under clear instance because it achieves traditional management goals, such as
this horizon, peasants revolted in the name of the King, the only deskilling and pacing work, through technical design. Its technologically
imaginable source of power. Rationalization is our modern horizon, and enforced labor discipline increases productivity and profits by
technological design is the key to its effectiveness as the basis of increasing control. However, the assembly line only appears as technical
modern hegemonies. progress in a specific social context. It would not be perceived as an
advance in an economy based on workers' cooperatives in which labor
Technological development is constrained by cultural norms originating discipline was more self-imposed than imposed from above. In such a
in economics, ideology, religion and tradition. We discussed earlier how society, a different technological rationality would dictate different ways
assumptions about the age composition of the labor force entered into of increasing productivity.18
the design of 19th century production technology. Such assumptions
seem so natural and obvious they often lie below the threshold of This example shows that technological rationality is not merely a belief,
conscious awareness. an ideology, but is effectively incorporated into the structure of
machines. Machine design mirrors back the social factors operative in
This is the point of Herbert Marcuse's important critique of Weber.16 the prevailing rationality. The fact that the argument for the social
Marcuse shows that the concept of rationalization confounds the relativity of modern technology originated in a Marxist context has
control of labor by management with control of nature by technology. obscured its most radical implications. We are not dealing here with a
The search for control of nature is generic, but management only arises mere critique of the property system, but have extended the force of
against a specific social background, the capitalist wage system. Workers that critique down into the technical "base." This approach goes well
have no immediate interest in output in this system, unlike earlier forms beyond the old economic distinction between capitalism and socialism,
of farm and craft labor, since their wage is not essentially linked to the market and plan. Instead, one arrives at a very different distinction
income of the firm. Control of human beings becomes all-important in between societies in which power rests on the technical mediation of
social activities and those that democratize technical control and,
correspondingly, technological design. The legitimating effectiveness of technology depends on
unconsciousness of the cultural-political horizon under which it was
VIII. Double Aspect Theory designed. A recontextualizing critique of technology can uncover that
horizon, demystify the illusion of technical necessity, and expose the
The argument to this point might be summarized as a claim that social relativity of the prevailing technical choices.
meaning and functional rationality are inextricably intertwined
dimensions of technology. They are not ontologically distinct, for IX. The Social Relativity of Efficiency
example, with meaning in the observer's mind and rationality in the
technology proper. Rather they are "double aspects" of the same These issues appear with particular force in the environmental
underlying technical object, each aspect revealed by a specific movement today. Many environmentalists argue for technical changes
contextualization. that would protect nature and in the process improve human life as
well. Such changes would enhance efficiency in broad terms by
Functional rationality, like scientific-technical rationality in general, reducing harmful and costly side effects of technology. However, this
isolates objects from their original context in order to incorporate them program is very difficult to impose in a capitalist society. There is a
into theoretical or functional systems. The institutions that support this tendency to deflect criticism from technological processes to products
procedure, such as laboratories and research centers, themselves form a and people, from apriori prevention to aposteriori clean-up. These
special context with their own practices and links to various social preferred strategies are generally costly and reduce efficiency under the
agencies and powers. The notion of "pure" rationality arises when the horizon of the given technology. This situation has political
work of decontextualization is not itself grasped as a social activity consequences.
reflecting social interests.
Restoring the environment after it has been damaged is a form of
Technologies are selected by these interests from among many possible collective consumption, financed by taxes or higher prices. These
configurations. Guiding the selection process are social codes approaches dominate public awareness. This is why environmentalism
established by the cultural and political struggles that define the horizon is generally perceived as a cost involving trade-offs, and not as a
under which the technology will fall. Once introduced, technology rationalization increasing over-all efficiency. But in a modern society,
offers a material validation of the cultural horizon to which it has been obsessed by economic well-being, that perception is damning.
pre-formed. I call this the "bias" of technology: apparently neutral, Economists and businessmen are fond of explaining the price we must
functional rationality is enlisted in support of a hegemony. The more pay in inflation and unemployment for worshipping at Nature's shrine
technology society employs, the more significant is this support. instead of Mammon's. Poverty awaits those who will not adjust their
social and political expectations to technology.
As Foucault argues in his theory of "power\knowledge" modern forms
of oppression are not so much based on false ideologies as on the This trade-off model has environmentalists grasping at straws for a
specific technical "truths" which form the basis of the dominant strategy. Some hold out the pious hope that people will turn from
hegemony and which reproduce it.19 So long as the contingency of the economic to spiritual values in the face of the mounting problems of
choice of “truth” remains hidden, the deterministic image of a industrial society. Others expect enlightened dictators to impose
technically justified social order is projected. technological reform even if a greedy populace shirks its duty. It is
difficult to decide which of these solutions is more improbable, but
both are incompatible with basic democratic values.20 X. The Technical Code

The trade-off model confronts us with dilemmas--environmentally That these conflicts over social control of technology are not new can
sound technology vs. prosperity, workers' satisfaction and control vs. be seen from the interesting case of the "bursting boilers."22 Steamboat
productivity, etc.--where what we need are syntheses. Unless the boilers were the first technology regulated in the United States. In the
problems of modern industrialism can be solved in ways that both early 19th-century the steamboat was a major form of transportation
enhance public welfare and win public support, there is little reason to similar to the automobile or airlines today. Steamboats were necessary
hope that they will ever be solved. But how can technological reform be in a big country without paved roads and lots of rivers and canals. But
reconciled with prosperity when it places a variety of new limits on the steamboats frequently blew up when the boilers weakened with age or
economy? were pushed too hard. After several particularly murderous accidents in
1816, the city of Philadelphia consulted with experts on how to design
The child labor case shows how apparent dilemmas arise on the safer boilers, the first time an American governmental institution
boundaries of cultural change, specifically, where the social definition of interested itself in the problem. In 1837, at the request of Congress the
major technologies is in transition. In such situations, social groups Franklin Institute issued a detailed report and recommendations based
excluded from the original design network articulate their on rigorous study of boiler construction. Congress was tempted to
unrepresented interests politically. New values the outsiders believe impose a safe boiler code on the industry but boilermakers and
would enhance their welfare appear as mere ideology to insiders who steamboat owners resisted and government hesitated to interfere with
are adequately represented by the existing designs. private property.

This is a difference of perspective, not of nature. Yet the illusion of It took from that first inquiry in 1816 to 1852 for Congress to pass
esssential conflict is renewed whenever major social changes affect effective laws regulating the construction of boilers. In that time 5000
technology. At first, satisfying the demands of new groups after the fact people were killed in accidents on steamboats. Is this many casualties or
has visible costs and, if it is done clumsily, will indeed reduce efficiency few? Consumers evidently were not too alarmed to continue traveling
until better designs are found. But usually better designs can be found by riverboat in ever increasing numbers. Understandably, the ship
and what appeared to be an insuperable barrier to growth dissolves in owners interpreted this as a vote of confidence and protested the
the face of technological change. excessive cost of safer designs. Yet politicians also won votes
demanding safety.
This situation indicates the essential difference between economic
exchange and technique. Exchange is all about trade-offs: more of A The accident rate fell dramatically once technical changes such as
means less of B. But the aim of technical advance is precisely to avoid thicker walls and safety valves were mandated. Legislation would hardly
such dilemmas by elegant designs that optimize several variables at have been necessary to achieve this outcome had it been technically
once. A single clevery conceived mechanism may correspond to many determined. But in fact boiler design was relative to a social judgment
different social demands, one structure to many functions.21 Design is about safety. That judgment could have been made on strictly market
not a zero-sum economic game but an ambivalent cultural process that grounds, as the shippers wished, or politically, with differing technical
serves a multiplicity of values and social groups without necessarily results. In either case, those results constitute a proper boiler. What a
sacrificing efficiency. boiler "is" was thus defined through a long process of political struggle
culminating finally in uniform codes issued by the American Society of any technical object and account for each of its elements in terms of the
Mechanical Engineers. goals it meets, whether it be safety, speed, reliability, etc., but in practice
no one is interested in opening the "black box" to see what is inside.
This example shows just how technology adapts to social change. What
I call the "technical code" of the object mediates the process. That code For example, once the boiler code is established, such things as the
responds to the cultural horizon of the society at the level of technical thickness of a wall or the design of a safety valve appear as essential to
design. Quite down-to-earth technical parameters such as the choice the object. The cost of these features is not broken out as the specific
and processing of materials are socially specified by the code. The "price" of safety and compared unfavorably with a more efficient but
illusion of technical necessity arises from the fact that the code is thus less secure version of the technology. Violating the code in order to
literally "cast in iron," at least in the case of boilers.23 lower costs is a crime, not a trade-off. And since all further progress
takes place on the basis of the new safety standard, soon no one looks
Conservative anti-regulatory social philosophies are based on this back to the good old days of cheaper, insecure designs.
illusion. They forget that the design process always already incorporates
standards of safety and environmental compatibility; similarly, all Design standards are only controversial while they are in flux. Resolved
technologies support some basic level of user or worker initiative. A conflicts over technology are quickly forgotten. Their outcomes, a
properly made technical object simply must meet these standards to be welter of taken-for-granted technical and legal standards, are embodied
recognized as such. We do not treat conformity as an expensive add-on, in a stable code, and form the background against which economic
but regard it as an intrinsic production cost. Raising the standards actors manipulate the unstable portions of the environment in the
means altering the definition of the object, not paying a price for an pursuit of efficiency. The code is not varied in real world economic
alternative good or ideological value as the trade-off model holds. calculations but treated as a fixed input.

But what of the much discussed cost/benefit ratio of design changes Anticipating the stabilization of a new code, one can often ignore
such as those mandated by environmental or other similar legislation? contemporary arguments that will soon be silenced by the emergence of
These calculations have some application to transitional situations, a new horizon of efficiency calculations. This is what happened with
before technological advances responding to new values fundamentally boiler design and child labor; presumably, the current debates on
alter the terms of the problem. But all too often, the results depend on environmentalism will have a similar history, and we will someday mock
economists' very rough estimates of the monetary value of such things those who object to cleaner air as a "false principle of humanity" that
as a day of trout fishing or an asthma attack. If made without prejudice, violates technological imperatives.
these estimates may well help to prioritize policy alternatives. But one
cannot legitimately generalize from such policy applications to a Non-economic values intersect the economy in the technical code. The
universal theory of the costs of regulation. examples we are dealing with illustrate this point clearly. The legal
standards that regulate workers' economic activity have a significant
Such fetishism of efficiency ignores our ordinary understanding of the impact on every aspect of their lives. In the child labor case, regulation
concept which alone is relevant to social decision-making. In that helped to widen educational opportunities with consequences that are
everyday sense, efficiency concerns the narrow range of values that not primarily economic in character. In the riverboat case, Americans
economic actors routinely affect by their decisions. Unproblematic gradually chose high levels of security and boiler design came to reflect
aspects of technology are not included. In theory one can decompose that choice. Ultimately, this was no trade-off of one good for another,
but a non-economic decision about the value of human life and the of being and hence subordinate at some deeper level to an ontological
responsibilities of government. dispensation beyond human control. But the overall effect of his
critique is to condemn human agency, at least in modern times, and to
Technology is thus not merely a means to an end; technical design confuse essential differences between types of technological
standards define major portions of the social environment, such as development.
urban and built spaces, workplaces, medical activities and expectations,
life patterns, and so on. The economic significance of technical change Heidegger distinguishes between the ontological problem of technology,
often pales beside its wider human implications in framing a way of life. which can only be addressed by achieving what he calls "a free relation"
In such cases, regulation defines the cultural framework of the economy; to technology, and the merely ontic solutions proposed by reformers
it is not an act in the economy. who wish to change technology itself. This distinction may have seemed
more interesting in years gone by than it does today. In effect,
XI. Heidegger's "Essence" of Technology Heidegger is asking for nothing more than a change in attitude toward
the selfsame technical world. But that is an idealistic solution in the bad
The theory sketched here suggests the possibility of a general reform of sense, and one which a generation of environmental action would seem
technology. But dystopian critics object that the mere fact of pursuing decisively to refute.
efficiency or technical effectiveness already does inadmissible violence
to human beings and nature. Universal functionalization destroys the Confronted with this argument, Heidegger's defenders usually point out
integrity of all that is. As Heidegger argues, an "objectless" world of that his critique of technology is not merely concerned with human
mere resources replaces a world of "things" treated with respect for attitudes but with the way being reveals itself. Roughly translated out of
their own sake as the gathering places of our manifold engagements Heidegger's language, this means that the modern world has a
with "being."24 technological form in something like the sense in which, for example,
the medieval world had a religious form. Form is no mere question of
This critique gains force from the actual perils with which modern attitude but takes on a material life of its own: power plants are the
technology threatens the world today. But my suspicions are aroused by gothic cathedrals of our time. But this interpretation of Heidegger's
Heidegger's famous contrast between a dam on the Rhine and a Greek thought raises the expectation that he will offer criteria for a reform of
chalice. It would be difficult to find a more tendentious comparison. technology. For example, his analysis of the tendency of modern
No doubt modern technology is immensely more destructive than any technology to accumulate and store up nature's powers suggests the
other. And Heidegger is right to argue that means are not truly neutral, superiority of another technology that would not challenge nature in
that their substantive content affects society independent of the goals Promethean fashion.
they serve. But I have argued here that this content is not essentially
destructive; rather, it is a matter of design and social insertion. Unfortunately, Heidegger's argument is developed at such a high level
of abstraction he literally cannot discriminate between electricity and
However, Heidegger rejects any merely social diagnosis of the ills of atom bombs, agricultural techniques and the Holocaust. In a 1949
technological societies and claims that the source of their problems lecture, he asserted: "Agriculture is now the mechanized food industry,
dates back at least to Plato, that modern societies merely realize a telos in essence the same as the manufacturing of corpses in gas chambers
immanent in Western metaphysics from the beginning. His originality and extermination camps, the same as the blockade and starvation of
consists in pointing out that the ambition to control being is itself a way nations, the same as the production of hydrogen bombs.”25 All are
merely different expressions of the identical enframing which we are
called to transcend through the recovery of a deeper relation to being. Similarly, modern management has replaced the traditional collegiality
And since Heidegger rejects technical regression while leaving no room of the guilds with new forms of technical control. Just as vocational
for a better technological future, it is difficult to see in what that investment in work continues in certain exceptional settings, so
relation would consist beyond a mere change of attitude. collegiality survives in a few professional or cooperative workplaces.
Numerous historical studies show that these older forms are not so
XII. History or Metaphysics much incompatible with the "esssence" of technology as with capitalist
economics. Given a different social context and a different path of
Heidegger is perfectly aware that technical activity was not technical development, it might be possible to recover these traditional
"metaphysical" in his sense until recently. He must therefore sharply technical values and organizational forms in new ways in a future
distinguish modern technology from all earlier forms of technique, evolution of modern technological society.
obscuring the many real connections and continuities. I would argue,
on the contrary, that what is new about modern technology can only be Technology is an elaborate complex of related activities that crystallizes
understood against the background of the traditional technical world around tool making and using in every society. Matters such as the
from which it developed. Furthermore, the saving potential of modern transmission of techniques or the management of its natural
technology can only be realized by recapturing certain traditional consequences are not extrinsic to technology per se but are dimensions
features of technique. Perhaps this is why theories that treat modern of it. When, in modern societies, it becomes advantageous to minimize
technology as a unique phenomenon lead to such pessimistic these aspects of technology, that too is a way of accomodating it to a
conclusions. certain social demand, not the revelation of its pre-existing "esssence."
In so far as it makes sense to talk about an essence of technology at all,
Modern technology differs from earlier technical practices through it must embrace the whole field revealed by historical study, and not
significant shifts in emphasis rather than generically. There is nothing only a few traits ethnocentrically privileged by our society.
unprecedented in its chief features, such as the reduction of objects to
raw materials, the use of precise measurement and plans, the technical There is an interesting text in which Heidegger shows us a jug
control of some human beings by others, large scales of operation. It is "gathering" the contexts in which it was created and functions. This
the centrality of these features that is new, and of course the image could be applied to technology as well, and in fact there is one
consequences of that are truly without precedent. brief passage in which Heidegger so interprets a highway bridge.
Indeed, there is no reason why modern technology cannot also "gather"
What does a broader historical picture of technology show? The its multiple contexts, albeit with less romantic pathos than jugs and
privileged dimensions of modern technology appear in a larger context chalices. This is in fact one way of interpreting contemporary demands
that includes many currently subordinated features that were defining for such things as environmentally sound technology, applications of
for it in former times. For example, until the generalization of medical technology that respect human freedom and dignity, urban
Taylorism, technical life was essentially about the choice of a vocation. designs that create humane living spaces, production methods that
Technology was associated with a way of life, with specific forms of protect workers' health and offer scope for their intelligence, and so on.
personal development, virtues, etc. Only the success of capitalist What are these demands if not a call to reconstruct modern technology
deskilling finally reduced these human dimensions of technique to so that it gathers a wider range of contexts to itself rather than reducing
marginal phenomena. its natural, human and social environment to mere resources?
 can achieve a new type of technological society that can support a
Heidegger would not take these alternatives very seriously because he broader range of values. Democracy is one of the chief values a
reifies modern technology as something separate from society, as an redesigned industrialism could better serve.
inherently contextless force aiming at pure power. If this is the
"essence" of technology, reform would be merely extrinsic. But at this What does it mean to democratize technology? The problem is not
point Heidegger's position converges with the very Prometheanism he primarily one of legal rights but of initiative and participation. Legal
rejects. Both depend on the narrow definition of technology that, at forms may eventually routinize claims that are asserted informally at
least since Bacon and Descartes, has emphasized its destiny to control first, but the forms will remain hollow unless they emerge from the
the world to the exclusion of its equally essential contextual experience and needs of individuals resisting a specifically technological
embeddedness. I believe that this definition reflects the capitalist hegemony.
environment in which modern technology first developed.
That resistance takes many forms, from union struggles over health and
The exemplary modern master of technology is the entrepreneur, safety in nuclear power plants to community struggles over toxic waste
singlemindedly focussed on production and profit. The enterprise is a disposal to political demands for regulation of reproductive
radically decontextualized platform for action, without the traditional technologies. These movements alert us to the need to take
responsibilities for persons and places that went with technical power in technological externalities into account and demand design changes
the past. It is the autonomy of the enterprise that makes it possible to responsive to the enlarged context revealed in that accounting.
distinguish so sharply between intended and unintended consequences,
between goals and contextual effects, and to ignore the latter. Such technological controversies have become an inescapable feature of
contemporary political life, laying out the parameters for official
The narrow focus of modern technology meets the needs of a particular "technology assessment."26 They prefigure the creation of a new public
hegemony; it is not a metaphysical condition. Under that hegemony sphere embracing the technical background of social life, and a new
technological design is unusually decontextualized and destructive. It is style of rationalization that internalizes unaccounted costs born by
that hegemony that is called to account, not technology per se, when we "nature," i.e., some-thing or -body exploitable in the pursuit of profit.
point out that today technical means form an increasingly threatening Here respect for nature is not antagonistic to technology but enhances
life environment. It is that hegemony, as it has embodied itself in efficiency in broad terms.
technology, that must be challenged in the struggle for technological
reform. As these controversies become commonplace, surprising new forms of
resistance and new types of demands emerge alongside them.
XIII. Democratic Rationalization Networking has given rise to one among many such innovative public
reactions to technology. Individuals who are incorporated into new
For generations faith in progress was supported by two widely held types of technical networks have learned to resist through the net itself
beliefs: that technical necessity dictates the path of development, and in order to influence the powers that control it. This is not a contest for
that the pursuit of efficiency provides a basis for identifying that path. I wealth or administrative power, but a struggle to subvert the technical
have argued here that both these beliefs are false, and that furthermore, practices, procedures and designs structuring everyday life.
they are ideologies employed to justify restrictions on opportunities to
participate in the institutions of industrial society. I conclude that we The example of the Minitel can serve as a model of this new approach.
In France, the computer was politicized as soon as the government communication these movements represent is so fundamental that it
attempted to introduce a highly rationalistic information system to the can serve as a touchstone for the adequacy of our concept of politics to
general public. Users "hacked" the network in which they were inserted the technological age.
and altered its functioning, introducing human communication on a
vast scale where only the centralized distribution of information had These resistances, like the environmental movement, challenge the
been planned. horizon of rationality under which technology is currently designed.
Rationalization in our society responds to a particular definition of
It is instructive to compare this case to the movements of AIDS technology as a means to the goal of profit and power. A broader
patients.27 Just as a rationalistic conception of the computer tends to understanding of technology suggests a very different notion of
occlude its communicative potentialities, so in medicine, caring rationalization based on responsibility for the human and natural
functions have become mere side effects of treatment, which is itself contexts of technical action. I call this "democratic rationalization"
understood in exclusively technical terms. Patients become objects of because it requires technological advances that can only be made in
this technique, more or less "compliant" to management by physicians. opposition to the dominant hegemony. It represents an alternative to
The incorporation of thousands of incurably ill AIDS patients into this both the ongoing celebration of technocracy triumphant and the
system destabilized it and exposed it to new challenges. gloomy Heideggerian counterclaim that "Only a God can save us" from
techno-cultural disaster.28
The key issue was access to experimental treatment. In effect, clinical
research is one way in which a highly technologized medical system can Is democratic rationalization in this sense socialist? There is certainly
care for those it cannot yet cure. But until quite recently access to room for discussion of the connection between this new technological
medical experiments has been severly restricted by paternalistic concern agenda and the old idea of socialism. I believe there is significant
for patients' welfare. AIDS patients were able to open up access continuity. In socialist theory, workers' lives and dignity stood for the
because the networks of contagion in which they were caught were larger contexts modern technology ignores. The destruction of their
parallelled by social networks that were already mobilized around gay minds and bodies on the workplace was viewed as a contingent
rights at the time the disease was first diagnosed. consequence of capitalist technical design. The implication that socialist
societies might design a very different technology under a different
Instead of participating in medicine individually as objects of a technical cultural horizon was perhaps given only lip service, but at least it was
practice, they challenged it collectively and politically. They "hacked" formulated as a goal.
the medical system and turned it to new purposes. Their struggle
represents a counter tendency to the technocratic organization of We can make a similar argument today over a wider range of contexts
medicine, an attempt at a recovery of its symbolic dimension and caring in a broader variety of institutional settings with considerably more
functions. urgency. I am inclined to call such a position socialist and to hope that
in time it can replace the image of socialism projected by the failed
As in the case of the Minitel, it is not obvious how to evaluate this communist experiment.
challenge in terms of the customary concept of politics. Nor do these
subtle struggles against the growth of silence in technological societies More important than this terminological question is the substantive
appear significant from the standpoint of the reactionary ideologies that point I have been trying to make. Why has democracy not been
contend noisily with capitalist modernism today. Yet the demand for extended to technically mediated domains of social life despite a
century of struggles? Is it because technology excludes democracy, or Technology Might Benefit Each Other," Social Studies of Science, no. 14,
because it has been used to suppress it? The weight of the argument 1984.
supports the second conclusion. Technology can support more than
one type of technological civilization, and may someday be 9. See Langdon's Winner's blistering critique of the characteristic
incorporated into a more democratic society than ours. limitations of the position, entitled, "Upon Opening the Black Box and
Finding it Empty: Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of
NOTES Technology," The Technology of Discovery and the Discovery of Technology:
Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of the Society for Philosophy and
1. This paper expands a presentation of my book, Critical Theory of Technology (Blacksburg, Va.: The Society for Philosophy and
Technology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), delivered at the Technology, 1991).
American Philosophical Association, Dec. 28, 1991, and first published
in an earlier version in Inquiry 35: 3 / 4, 1992. 10. Hansard's Debates, Third Series: Parliamentary Debates 1830-1891, vol.
LXXIII, 1844 (Feb. 22-Apr. 22). The quoted passages are found
2. See, for example, Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, On Democracy: between pp. 1088 and 1123.
Toward a Transformation of American Society (Harmondsworth, England:
Penguin, 1983); Frank Cunningham, Democratic Theory and Socialism 11. A useful starting point for the development of a hermeneutics of
(Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987). technology is offered by Paul Ricoeur in "The Model of the Text:
Meaningful Action Considered as a Text," P. Rabinow and W. Sullivan,
3. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, T. Parsons, eds., Interpretive Social Science: A Reader (Berkeley: Univ. of California,
trans. (New York: Scribners, 1958), pp. 181-82. Press, 1979).

4. Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, W. Lovitt, trans. 12. Michel de Certeau used the phrase "rhetorics of technology" to
(New York: Harper and Row, 1977); Jacques Ellul, The Technological refer to the representations and practices that contextualize
Society, J. Wilkinson, trans. (New York: Vintage, 1964). technologies and assign them a social meaning. De Certeau chose the
term "rhetoric" because that meaning is not simply present at hand but
5. Richard W. Miller, Analyzing Marx: Morality, Power and History communicates a content that can be articulated by studying the
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1984), pp. 188-195. connotations technology evokes. See the special issue of Traverse, no.
26, Oct. 1982, entitled Les Rhetoriques de la Technologie, and, in that issue,
6. Karl Marx, Capital (New York: Modern Library, 1906), p. 13. especially Marc Guillaume's article, Telespectres, pp. 22-23.

7. See, for example, David Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery (Chicago: 13. See chapter 7, "From Information to Communication: The French
Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 175-79. For a general presentation of Experience with Videotex," in Andrew Feenberg, Alternative Modernity
constructivism, see Bruno Latour, Science in Action (Cambridge, Mass.: (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995).
Harvard Univ. Press, 1987.
14. Jean-Francois Lyotard, La Condition Postmoderne (Paris: Editions de
8. Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker, "The Social Construction of Facts Minuit, 1979), p. 34.
and Artefacts: or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of
15. For an approach to social theory based on this notion (called, systems. For more on the concept of standpoint epistemology, see
however, doxa, by the author), see Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Sandra Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? (Ithaca: Cornell Univ.
Practice, R. Nice, trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977), pp. Press, 1991).
164-70.
24. The texts by Heidegger discussed here are, in order, "The Question
16. Herbert Marcuse, "Industrialization and Capitalism in the Work of Concerning Technology," op. cit.; "The Thing," and “Building Dwelling
Marx Weber," in Negations, trans. J. Shapiro, (Boston: Beacon, 1968). Thinking” in Poetry, Language, Thought, A. Hofstadter, trans. (New York:
Harper & Row, 1971).
17. Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly
Review, 1974); David Noble, Forces of Production (New York: Oxford 25. Quoted in T. Rockmore, On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy
University Press, 1984). (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 241.

18. Bernard Gendron and Nancy Holstrom, "Marx, Machinery and 26. Alberto Cambrosio and Camille Limoges, "Controversies as
Alienation," Research in Philosophy and Technology, vol. 2, 1979. Governing Processes in Technology Assessment," in Technology Analysis
& Strategic Management, vol. 3, no. 4, 1991.
19. Foucault's most persuasive presentation of this view is Surveiller et
Punir (Paris: Gallimard, 1975). 27. For more on the problem of AIDS in this context, see Andrew
Feenberg, "On Being a Human Subject: Interest and Obligation in the
20. See, for example, Robert Heilbroner, An Inquiry into the Human Experimental Treatment of Incurable Disease," The Philosophical Forum,
Prospect (New York: Norton, 1975). For a review of these issues in some vol. xxiii, no. 3, Spring 1992.
of their earliest formulations, see Andrew Feenberg, "Beyond the
Politics of Survival," Theory and Society, no. 7, 1979. 28. "Only a God Can Save Us Now," Martin Heidegger interviewed in
Der Spiegel, translated by D. Schendler, Graduate Philosophy Journal, vol. 6,
21. This aspect of technology, called "concretization," is explained in no. 1, Winter 1977.
Gilbert Simondon, Du Mode d'Existence des Objets Techniques (Paris:
Aubier, 1958), chap. 1.

22. John G. Burke, "Bursting Boilers and the Federal Power," M.

Kranzberg and W. Davenport, eds. Technology and Culture (New York:
New American Library, 1972).

23. The technical code expresses the "standpoint" of the dominant

social groups at the level of design and [Link] is thus relative to
a social position without for that matter being a mere ideology or
psychological disposition. As I will argue in the last section of this
paper, struggle for socio-technical change can emerge from the
subordinated standpoints of those dominated within technological