What if technology is really a way of thinking, being and doing?

What if technology is really a way of thinking, being and

doing?

Holistic technologies:

• Each worker is in control of their product

• Specialization is by product, not by process

• a potter who is involved in all aspects of the making of the pot, from selecting the clay through to firing and finishing it

Prescriptive technologies:

• Specialization by process

• One person may have control over the process, but they do not possess the skills necessary to complete it on their own

Ding vessel, Zhou, 120 cms

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Reference for the previous slide

• The Great Bronze Age of China: An Exhibition from the People's Republic of China

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY



http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/webcourse/cm/cm_1.htm

“in political terms, prescriptive technologies are designs for

compliance.”

Ursula Franklin, The Real World of Technology, Anansi Press 1990

Advantages of prescriptive technologies:

• Efficiency

• Quality control

• Makes mass production possible

• Applicable to the production of materials, to administration, to governance

Disadvantages to prescriptive technologies:

• Can stifle creativity, only one way to do the task

• People become used to conformity (behaviour, organization, products)

technological determinism is the belief that technological change

is the primary force behind social change

Reductionism: reduces a complex whole to the effects of one part (or

parts) upon another part (or parts) (Chandler)

Reification: “to treat an abstraction as a material

thing” (Chandler)

Andrew Feenberg, “From Essentialism to Constructivism: Philosophy of Technology at the Crossroads.” Technology and the Good Life? Chicago University

Press, 2000.

What if technology is really a way of thinking, being and doing?

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