Technology

An instrumentalist view of technology sees computers as neutral tools “subservient to social values established in sphere of politics and culture” (p. 38). The fact that public demand determines the marketplace which in turn informs the production of technology highlights how technology is not neutral (Selber, 2004, p. 39). The social construction of technology perspective (SCOT) focuses how technologies come from social processes and "the choices that designers and developers make as they develop technology are seen as dependant on their social contexts" (Baym, 2010, p. 39).

When technologies are domesticated, they "becomes taken-for-granted parts of everyday life, no longer seen as agents for change" (Baym, 2010, p.24).

Borgmann, Feenberg, Foucault, Selber, and Winner suggest to think of” technologies as systems rather than things” (Selber, 2004, p. 99) because culture, politics, the economy, and social institutions are all bound up in producing and sustaining technology.

According to Selber, Pfaffenberger has created a map of the political dynamic in a technology system which consists of "discourses, actors, and contexts" (p. 100). In order to see this, Pfaffenberger created a theoretical narrative which is composed of three elements: technological regularization, technological adjustment, and technological reconstitution. Technological regularization means that “designers invariably shape artifacts and activities in ways that affect the distribution of power in a social formation” (p. 100). Technological adjustment is attempts to “make artifacts more tolerable to those whose identities have been adversely signified” (p. 100), and technological reconstitution “challenged established technical systems” (p. 100).

"...the concern that communication technologies make us dumber is as old as writing" (Baym, 2010, p. 26).

Many feel that people don't tell the truth when using technology. But truth is has been questioned. Socrates said writing was "not truth, but only the semblance of truth" (Baym, 2010, p. 29).

Jacques Ellul suggests a new society from technology (Bauman & Lyon, 2013, p. 77); our ends are determined by the limitations of (technological) means (p. 85).

According to Lyon, "All technological development is surely the product of cultural, social, and political relationships" (Bauman & Lyon, 2013, p. 95) and is not neutral. According to Gates, "[T]echnologies are are thoroughly cultural forms from the outset, embodying the hopes, dreams, desires, and especially the power relations and ideological conflicts of the societies that produce them (p. 4). When applying distance to technology, Roger Silverstone brings out that many times the idea of moral and geographical are invoked. What is the proper distance morally/socially appropriate and physically? (p. 95-6). Otherwise, "Proximity and proper distance require responsibility" (p. 96).

Social Products

Technologies are "social products, created and implemented within a complex matrix of cultural, political, and economic influences" (Staples, 2000, p. 9).

Technologies of (In)Security - Surveillance

These can't be thought of only as products of information and communication (Bauman & Lyon, 2013, p. 107).

Types of adopters are innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards (Rainie & Wellman, 2012, p. 46).

Centralized/Decentralized

According to Selbers, “In 1980, Herbert Simon discussed the consequences of computers for centralization and decentralization in organizations. He noted the inclination to characterize centralization pejoratively and decentralization positively and cautioned against this binary opposition. Centralization, Simon argued, is commonly equated with bureaucracy or authoritarianism while decentralization equated with autonomy, self-determination, or self-actualization. But the truth of the matter is that certain functions of centralization can be helpful “(p. 118). Think of a moderator in an online chat room limiting the racist remarks that are said.

Tools v. Technology (and Technical Communication)

It is important to understand the difference between tools and a technology. According to Albers (2005), "DreamWeaver is a tool, but all the various Web design tools and how we use them to construct a Web site comprise a technology. How to use styles in Word is tool use; understanding why and how to use styles in a generic sense and realizing that all major word processing and desktop publishing packages support them is understanding a technology" (p. 267).

Albers (2005) work is a good summary that although TC has often focused on writing documents, scholars also widen their scope into interface, interaction, and information design as well as usability and information architecture (p. 266), almost always with an underlying technological base. These technological bases are as much as understanding tools as they are to understanding technology. It is important to not just see a tool like Word as an instrument to get work accomplished but to also understand the larger context of word processing to begin to study similar tools. In this way, technology becomes the medium, not a tool. What drives work isn't working with one particular technology, but seeing what is the best tool in a communicative situation by understanding the larger context. This second part emphasizes the importance of not just context, but also rhetoric.

Technology. “The concepts of legal rhetoric and restorative justice lead to the second aspect of technical communication definitions—that is, writing that relates to technology or a technical subject matter. Like the first aspect, this second part of the definition is often overly narrowed. For example, scholars and practitioners of technical communication often ‘‘conflate the term [technology] with computer technology’’ (Durack, 2004, p. 41). Instead, as Durack argued, the definition of the term technology should include knowledge, actions, and tools—such as ‘‘the knowledge of when and how to irrigate fields, and the entire set of human actions that comprise this method of farming’’ (p. 41). That argument is similar to Dobrin’s (2004) discussion of the term technology: ‘‘Technology’’ is more than an array of tools and procedures. It extends to the way human beings deploy themselves in the use and production of material goods and services. One may speak profitably of an economic strategy or an administrative formation as technology. The idea that by technology we mean a way that people, machines, concepts, and relationships are organized is crucial to the definition . . .. (pp. 118–119) In this sense, the positions offered by Durack (2004) and Dobrin (2004) are similar to Allen’s (2004) stance that technical communication scholars should not exclude one form of communication because it falls outside a strict category like computer technology. Based on such definitions, technical communication should be understood broadly as the communication of knowledge and actions relating to tools, processes, and procedures that occur within and outside of organizations. [emphasis my own]. Similarly, the subject matter of this paper should be viewed not only in terms of writing in the workplace of the Gacaca trial system, but more broadly as writing that relates to the technology (i.e., procedures, relationships, and knowledge) of restoring justice in areas torn apart by genocide, human rights violations, and ethnic strife. By analyzing the documentation of apologies in the Gacaca system, then, scholars can begin to understand ‘‘the process of healing, reconciliation, and reconstruction at both the individual and communal levels’’ (Chirwa, 2000, p. 111) through the inherent negotiations of blame, responsibility, and a shared interpretation of history that take place in the apology process” (Towner, 2013, pp. 288-289).

References:

Albers, Michael J. (2005). The future of technical communication: Introduction to this special issue. Technical Communication, 52(3), 267-272.

Bauman, Z. & Lyon, D. (2013). Liquid surveillance. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Baym, N.K. (2010). Personal Connections in the Digital Age. Cambridge, UK: Polity.

Gates, K A. (2011). Our biometric future: Facial recognition technology and the culture of surveillance. New York: New York UP.

Rainie, H. & Wellman, B. (2012). Networked: The New Social Operating System. Cambridge: MIT.

Selber, S. (2004). Multiliteracies for a digital age. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Staples, W. G. (2000). Everyday surveillance: Vigilance and visibility in postmodern life. 2^nd ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Important works:

According to Gates, James Rule's (1973) Pivate Lives and Public Surveillance is a seminal work comparing the US and UK to Orwell's 1984.