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
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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)
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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.
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