Critical Theory of Technology

Review: Columba Peoples, 2010. Justifying Ballistic Missile Defence: Technology, Security and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

by Jonas Hagmann

Forthcoming in: Peace Review, 2012

Technology figures as a prominent residual category in many contemporary accounts of international security. Be it the... more Technology figures as a prominent residual category in many contemporary accounts of international security. Be it the machine gun, nuclear warheads, or unmanned aircraft – levels of military technology are regularly drawn upon to explain international politics when other models fail to provide conclusive answers. This distinct quality notwithstanding, the various roles played by technology as such are rarely analysed in more depth. In focusing on American ballistic missile defence, Columba Peoples directs attention to this situation. Looking at how local understandings of that technology have been articulated and reformulated over time, he seeks to problematize the functions of technology in international security: Does technology determine national foreign and security policies, or is the relationship inverse and technology better understood as being controlled by politics?

(De)formación en línea: acerca de las desventajas de la educación virtual

by Marcelo Vieta

Co-authored with Laureano Ralón & María Lucía Vásquez de Prada. (2004, March). Comunicar: Scientific Journal of Media Education. 12(22), pp. 171-176.

En la medida en que la «aldea global» continúe organizándose de acuerdo a los principios de eficiencia y practicalidad... more En la medida en que la «aldea global» continúe organizándose de acuerdo a los principios de eficiencia y practicalidad dictados por la mano invisible del mercado, el cambio hacia lo virtual será progresivo y cada vez más presente en el ocio, el trabajo, la educación y en otros muchos entornos. Esta tendencia, iniciada con la llegada de Internet, fue recibida con aplausos en el nombre del progreso, pero poco se ha dicho de sus desventajas. Este trabajo examina las desventajas del formato on-line en el campo de la educación en general, y al ámbito universitario en particular.

Herbert Marcuse's Critique of Technological Rationality: An Exegetical Reading

by Marcelo Vieta

(2006, March). Unpublished paper.

In this paper I set out to exegetically work through Marcuse’s dialectically enfolded and historically-materialist... more In this paper I set out to exegetically work through Marcuse’s dialectically enfolded and historically-materialist concept of “technological rationality” as it is presented in his 1964 book, One-Dimensional Man. In the process, I first outline what Marcuse means by “technological rationality” and clarify how he situates the concept within his broader critique of the ideology and practices of advanced industrial society. Second, I sketch out Marcuse’s complex dialectical sojourns that diagnose how we have become “preconditioned” to think one-dimensionally (Marcuse, 1964, p. 8) and how this technologically rationalized preconditioning both differs from its roots in “pre-technological rationality” and yet is presupposed by this genealogical inheritance. And lastly, I attempt to articulate how Marcuse’s “post-technological rationality” envisions civilizational change not only depending on redirecting the goals and ends of technological systems but, more vitally, on transforming the very rationality that permeates technology’s logic and advanced industrial society’s technological base.

Hope for Our Technological Inheritance? From Substantive Critiques of Technology to Marcuse’s Post-Technological Rationality

by Marcelo Vieta

(2010). Strategies of Critique. 1(2), pp. 1-20.

In this paper I seek to revisit Herbert Marcuse’s radical, dialectical, and materialist critique of technology in... more In this paper I seek to revisit Herbert Marcuse’s radical, dialectical, and materialist critique of technology in light of the other, more utopian side to his critiques of technological rationality. My principle aim in doing so is to begin to reclaim his vision of a “post-technological rationality” for contemporary radical left politics. Specifically, in this paper I first very briefly present the substantivist view of technology exemplified by the negative side of Marcuse’s technology critique, and Heidegger’s, Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s related critiques of technology (Marcuse’s main philosophical reference points on the theme). I then explore Marcuse’s “other side” to his two-folded theory of technological rationality. This other, more positive view of technology is rooted in Marcuse's “ambivalence theory of technology,” laying out the more efficacious possibilities it offers us for re-valuing the technological base of advanced capitalist society within rematerialized values of love, joy, refusal, and sensuousness. I will ultimately make the argument that as a conceptual framework for diagnosing and moving beyond today’s conjuncture of free market triumphalism, Marcuse helps us fundamentally see that our technology does not have to be guided by the values of productivism, ecological domination, total control, or profit. Underscoring the continued relevance of Marcuse’s analysis for today’s radical left, I conclude the paper by presenting six key historical conjunctural moments in Marcuse’s writings on technology that prefigure some contemporary examples of technological liberation within the newest global social justice movements, examples that in many ways illustrate Marcusean-like re-rationalized technological re-appropriations by those struggling against global capital from below.

Gandhi's Technoscience: Sustainability and Technology as Themes of Politics

by Anup Sam Ninan

Sustainable Development Volume 17, Issue 3, Date: May/June 2009, Pages: 183-196

Based on an in-depth examination of the original writings of Mohandas Gandhi, spanning over 98 volumes, and the... more Based on an in-depth examination of the original writings of Mohandas Gandhi, spanning over 98 volumes, and the compendium of works by his associates J. C. Kumarappa and Vinoba Bhave, this article explores the technoscientific notions of the Gandhian school of thought to broaden the technology-sustainability discussions. Premised on the idea of nature, the varying nature-human definitions were crucial for Gandhians in pursuing their political activities. Positing nature methodologically as an unproblematic abstract category, Gandhians formulated, redefined and appropriated technoscientific spaces; thereby facilitating their technological choices and artefacts to embody the values of sustainability, decentralized autonomy and labour-intensiveness. They engaged science and technology as a contextually contingent social process and integrated it into a mass political movement by identifying technoscience as a site of political action. This article adds to the STS discussions on democratization of technology, and the socially embedded nature of scientific ingenuity and multivalency of technological choices.

The Influences of Technology: Understanding How Technology Contributes to Who We Are Online

by Marcus Leaning