NOTA BENE: The following are simply notes I took during the conference - not "authoritative" transcripts in any sense: these notes have neither been approved by the conference lecturers nor endorsed by the conference organizers. They are assembled here solely for the sake of my students. They and other readers should be aware that occasional errors in transcription are not unlikely. -- Charles Ess
Ina Wagner, University of Vienna, opened the Ph.D. course segment of the conference with an overview of her research on telecommuting and its impact on workers, the (re)organization of companies, and on private life. Relying primarily on the frameworks of architecture and theatre design, she likes to use "space" as a metaphor and category for examining these impacts.
The opening address by Francis Sejersted, "Beyond Technological Determinism," (Friday, January 17, 1997, 14:30-15:30) and Andrew Feenburg's "Technology in the Public Sphere," (Friday, January 17, 1997, 17:00-18:00) converge on a new optimism regarding the possibility of democratic control of technology: technological determinism, as both a theory and an ideology shaping debate, while not dead, is giving ground on both theoretical and political fronts. (These notes are especially good for historical overviews of important moments and significant literature.)
Mary Nolan, in her "Productivism and Technology in Historical and Comparative Perspective" (Friday, January 17, 1997, 16:00-17:00) is less optimistic than Feenburg and others, but she begins by pointing out that her view is shaped by her historical focus on labor history, women's history, and German history. She uses "Productivism" and "Taylorism" not only as ideological terms (i.e., terms pointing to a defined ideology, so as to help identify its basic claims and its diffusion in culture over time), but also as "discourses." Her analysis includes a final comment on how technocracy became discredited by its association with Stalinism; this made way for consumerism to take over as a new model of cutting-edge change. Productivism in turn becomes a pre-requisite for mass consumption. For that, productivism is in crisis in America today - where much less is being produced.
Susan Leigh Star, "The Politics Question in Feminist Science and Technology Projects: the queering of infrastructure." (Saturday, January 18, 1997, 11:00-12:00) Star provides a fine overview of what she refers to as her "landscapes," acknowledging that a single, definitive overview may be neither possible nor desirable: these landscapes include the "Commander Data" period of asking the question, "What can be automated and what cannot?" as well as the phase (still active) of asking about the impacts of computers on social organizations and politics. Her lecture was structured around listing both the "Problematics" and the "Politics" of each phase. She calls for a "queering" of the infrastructure of information technologies, by which she means something like radical critique which is not only rationalist (such as philosophers might undertake) but with an attitude of both fun and "in your face" associated by Queer Nation, Act Up!, etc.
Brian Wynne's "Politics, Science and Uncertainty in Risk Society" (Saturday, January 18, 1997, 13:00-14:00) is a critical review of Beck's thesis on reflexive modernization - more precisely, of Wynne's critique of both Becks' thesis and the challenge to that thesis offered by Anthony Giddings. He makes a somewhat subtle but crucial point: "Even when modern institutions do accept responsibility for risks, attempting to resolve conflicts, control environmental issues, etc. - they are propogating models of the human that are fundamentally inadequate. If we use cost-benefit analysis for example - this fails to capture fully our human relationship with nature." His point is that the institutions reinforce models of our subjectivity which we do not recognize or accept - and hence lead to our sense of alienation and powerlessness regarding the political process, irrespective of whether or not physical risk really exists.
The closing session of the Conference included summaries provided by the reporters from each workshops, with a few summary comments by Francis Sejersted. Most centrally, he sees that one of the coherencies tying the quite diverse conference issues and presentations together is the reappearance of human agency in theories about technology and democracy.