Langdon Winner

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Langdon Winner

Langdon Winner (born August 7, 1944 in San Luis Obispo , California ) is an American technical philosopher and professor at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy , New York . Winner gained notoriety through publications such as Autonomous Technology (1977), The Whale and the Reactor (1986) and his essay Do Artifacts Have Politics? (1980).

Winner supports the thesis that technical objects, called artifacts in the philosophy of technology , have an inherent political power. The development of technical artefacts can neither be explained solely as a result of human decisions, that is, socially constructivistically , nor are the social, political and cultural adaptations they bring about exclusively determined by them, i.e. technically determined .

Life

Langdon Winner was born and raised in San Luis Obispo, California. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Winner wrote articles for Rolling Stone music magazine . In 1966, Winner earned a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley , a master’s degree in 1967 and a Ph.D. in 1973. Degree in Political Science . This was followed by various positions at universities in the USA and Europe , including the University of Leiden , the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the New School for Social Research .

Since 1990, Winner has been Professor of Political Science in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy , New York . From 1991 to 1993, Winner was President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology . At the moment (2016) Winner is working on a publication on sustainable technology and the political dimensions of design decisions.

Winner lives in Valatie , New York with his wife, Gail P. Stuart, and their three children .

Political dimensions of technology

Linking "politics" and "technology"

Langdon Winner's essay Do Artifacts Have Politics? to the technical discourse of the time, which he summarized in the extent to which technical artifacts or technologies , such as atomic energy , had an impact on the political system and society . In this context, artifact generally means a technical object made by humans. Quoting Edmund Husserl's saying “To the things themselves”, Winner appeals to the political effectiveness of artefacts and technologies, as emanates from them, before considering the social relationships on which they are based. By “technology” , Winner understands “all modern, practical skill”, by “politics” “arrangements of power and authority within social associations” and their effects.

As an example of the embodiment of a political structure, Winner cites the example of bridge constructions over the Wantagh Parkway by the architect Robert Moses . With these bridges, Moses created social inequalities by building his bridges so low that no public buses could use this street, which meant that local public transport was restricted in favor of cars . However, Winner emphasizes that it is not just an explicitly political intention that makes technical artefacts a political issue; their “ design ” can also be unconsciously politically charged. In addition, Winner outlines the case of a harvesting machine that has increasingly displaced the classic harvest workers and favored large-scale agricultural cultivation areas. However, the university that developed the machine did not intend these consequences. These phenomena suggest that technology itself is the embodiment of power and order structures that structure society and increasingly cement this structure.

Historical analysis

Although Winner admits that the specific structure of a technology with its political consequences can also be designed flexibly, the question arises for him as to whether certain technologies require certain power and order structures. Plato had already dealt with this question and, using the example of a ship, made it clear that even in the state , effective governance is only possible on the basis of strong authority. This idea is continued with Friedrich Engels , according to which the work organization for the operation of a windmill , a railway or a ship necessarily consists of hierarchical structures around authority and subordination, because the technologies themselves make them necessary. On the other hand, Karl Marx sees technology as the basis for revolting against authority and capitalism . All previous socialist revolutions were characterized by this ideological tension, so Winner's final comment.

Work organization and social repercussions

Based on the historical retrospect, Winner summarizes two theses that are represented in research with regard to forms of work organization and technology: One thesis states that a certain technology “requires” a certain work organization that guarantees the functioning of this technology. Another thesis is that there are certain technologies that are at least very “compatible” with a certain work organization. While nuclear power plants are managed in a strictly hierarchical manner, a democratic work organization is also an option for solar systems in order to guarantee their operation without this form being absolutely necessary. In addition, Winner differentiates between theses that relate solely to the inner core of work organization (“internal”) and those that place them in context with social circumstances outside of technology (“external”) .

Winner deepens this topic by examining the question of whether the respective form of work organization actually always stems from the technology itself or is the product of an economic or state elite . While Winner admits that the atom bomb, as an inherently political artefact, necessarily requires authoritarian, state control, he points out elsewhere that the management of factories , railway companies, etc. does not necessarily require a strictly hierarchical structure, but can also be organized democratically . But in order to be able to answer the question of whether technology requires a certain work organization, moral aspects have to be taken into account, which, according to Winner, are often overshadowed by a concept of utility. The moral and political correlates of this way of thinking would have to be exposed and weighed against other moral and political questions about equality and justice .

The fact that crisis situations, instead of decentralization, are usually responded to with calls for strong political leadership, analogous to a strictly hierarchical corporate structure, speaks in favor of a retroactive effect of corporate structure and work organization on society . Especially since Winner fears that civil rights will increasingly be curtailed for the price of economic efficiency . With the establishment of a technology, social structures also adapt to it, the negative consequences of which for society must therefore be calculated with foresight before this process takes action. According to Winner, not every technology has the flexibility to be retrospectively aligned with social standards through political decisions. The social consequences that arise from fixed, unchangeable properties of a technology are mediated by work organization and general social framework conditions in which a technology is operated. The adjustment of the various technical parameters, however, only allows a gradual shift, not a categorical relocation of a technology and its field of activity in the social sphere.

Context dependency and political awareness

The contextual dimension of technology must therefore be given greater consideration. Winner illustrates this with the ship example already mentioned. At sea a captain should be essential as the central authority with obedient seafarers, while on land the ship can easily be maintained by a single person. Therefore, the full scope of a technical design is only revealed when it is embedded in a specific social or functional context. Nowadays there is also a tendency - and Winner warns against this - to tacitly accept radical changes in everyday life in the form of technical innovations , while comparable changes as a result of a political decision would trigger great resistance. Winner sums up that it is now a matter of sharpening society's awareness of the political content of technical artifacts.

reception

In his review of Autonomous Technology for Technology and Culture magazine , Stanley R. Carpenter found Langdon Winner's arguments "convincing" in 1978. In addition, the work is "the best introduction to technology studies available today" . In 1997 Pascal G. Zachary described Winner in the Wall Street Journal as "the leading academic on the politics of technology" .

Mark Elam rejects Langdon Winner's anti-constructivism and in return accuses him of moral arrogance.

Bernward Joerges criticizes Winner's example of the deep bridges built by Robert Moses. Joerges not only doubts Moses' political intention, but also the finality of the effects of technology and, based on Bruno Latour's actor-network theory , pleads for such a contingency of technology, the effects of which are not limited to the political level. Joerges illustrates with an example from Latour that technology does not inherently contain political violence: an automatic door locking device “discriminates” small and old people, movers and people in general who carry parcels. This results in discrimination against the entire lower and middle class, insofar as they cannot afford a butler who can remove the sometimes annoying locking mechanism of the door. With this deliberately absurd example, Joerges would like to make it clear that a technology is not politically or socially effective in every situation. It is therefore the relationships ("associations") in which the technology stands that constitute its effects. The contingency of technology therefore lies in the contingency of the relationships that have been established and to be established, which constantly redefine the field of action of technology.

Publications (selection)

Essays

  • Do Artifacts Have Politics? In: Daedalus. Volume 109, No. 1, 1980, pp. 121-136 ( PDF file; 5.5 MB ).
  • Technologies as Forms of Life. In: Robert S. Cohen, Marx W. Wartofsky (Ed.): Epistemology, Methodology, and the Social Sciences (= Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Volume 71). Springer, Dordrecht 1983, pp. 249–263 ( PDF file, 764 kB ).
  • Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding It Empty: Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Technology. In: Science, Technology, & Human Values. Volume 18, No. 3, 1993, pp. 362-378 ( PDF file; 1.6 MB ).
  • How Technology Reweaves the Fabric of Society. In: The Chronicle of Higher Education. Volume 39, No. 48, 1993, pp. B1-B3.
  • Information Technology and Educational Amnesia. In: Policy Futures in Education. Volume 7, No. 6, 2009, pp. 587-591 ( PDF file; 81.3 kB ).
  • Ortega's Tragicomedy of Technology: Our Starring Role. In: International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society. Volume 7, No. 4, 2011, pp. 109-118.

Monographs

  • Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought. MIT Press, Cambridge / London 1977, ISBN 978-0-262-73049-5 .
  • The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago / London 1986, ISBN 978-0-226-90211-1 .

Editing

  • Democracy in a Technological Society (= Philosophy and Technology. Volume 9). Kluwer, Dordrecht 1992, ISBN 978-90-481-4210-1 .

Web links

literature

  • Martijntje Smits: Langdon Winner: Technology as a Shadow Constitution . In Hans Achterhuis (Ed.): American Philosophy of Technology: The Empirical Turn. Indiana University Press, Bloomington (IN) 2001, ISBN 0-253-33903-0 , pp. 147-170

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ SNAC, accessed July 26, 2020
  2. ↑ a b Maarten J. Verkerk, Jan Hoogland, u. a. (Ed.): Philosophy of Technology. An Introduction for Technology and Business Students. Routledge, London / New York 2016, ISBN 978-1-138-90438-5 , p. 211 ( preview on Google Books ), accessed May 24, 2016.
  3. ↑ a b Langdon Winners page at the RPI , accessed May 24, 2016.
  4. ↑ a b Langdon Winners Homepage: "Curriculum Vitae" , accessed on May 24, 2016.
  5. ↑ Langdon Winner: Do Artifacts Have Politics? In: Daedalus. Volume 109, No. 1, 1980, pp. 121–123 ( PDF file; 5.5 MB ), accessed on May 24, 2016.
  6. ^ Winner, Do Artifacts Have Politics? 1980, p. 124.
  7. ^ Winner, Do Artifacts Have Politics? 1980, pp. 125-126.
  8. ^ Winner, Do Artifacts Have Politics? 1980, pp. 127-128.
  9. ^ Winner, Do Artifacts Have Politics? 1980, pp. 128-130.
  10. ^ Winner, Do Artifacts Have Politics? 1980, p. 130.
  11. ^ Winner, Do Artifacts Have Politics? 1980, pp. 131-133.
  12. ^ Winner, Do Artifacts Have Politics? 1980, pp. 133-135.
  13. ^ Winner, Do Artifacts Have Politics? 1980, p. 135.
  14. ^ Stanley R. Carpenter: Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Book Review). In: Technology and Culture. Volume 19, No. 1, 1978, pp. 142-145, accessed May 24, 2016.
  15. ^ Pascal G. Zachary: Not So Fast: Neo Luddites Say an Unexamined Cyberlife is a Dangerous One. In: The Wall Street Journal. June 16, 1997, p. 18, accessed May 24, 2016.
  16. ^ Mark Elam: Anti Anticonstructivism or Laying the Fears of a Langdon Winner to Rest. In: Science, Technology & Human Values. Volume 19, No. 1, 1994, pp. 101-106 ( PDF file; 303 kB ), accessed on May 24, 2016.
  17. ↑ Bernward Joerges: Do Politics Have Artefacts? In: Social Studies of Science. Volume 29, No. 3, 1999, p. 414 ( PDF file; 2.3 MB ), accessed on May 24, 2016.
  18. ^ Joerges, Do Politics Have Artefacts? , P. 414.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on May 26, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Winner, Langdon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American philosopher of technology
DATE OF BIRTH August 7, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH San Luis Obispo , California