Analyzing Change continued – October 28, 2002

Overview of lecture:

Are we really observing SIGNIFICANT change? What/who is generating the change?
1. Review of previous theories
2. Four questions to ask about “change” and technologies

1. Review of previous theories:
---> Sproull and Kiesler found that using a technic/technology (specifically information technology) did change the work environment:
workers: pay attention to different things
have contact with different people
depend on one another differently

(but this change is not what analysts looking at efficiency effects (1st level) notice)

---> Tenner found that we expect change: the use of a technic/technology will bring ++ effects to our lives—but, the changes are not what we expected (didn’t realize the latent effects) AND they are frequently –- effects.

---> Others argue that things haven’t really changed. (See Selfe’s analysis of computer ads.)

2. Another perspective: 4 interrelated issues about computers and social change: (according to Johnson, Computer Ethics, 3rd Edition, 2001)

1. What is meant revolutionary change? (as opposed to evolutionary change)

- Information Revolution compared to effects of Industrial Revolution in 19c.
- it's deep change as opposed to superficial change: in a political revolution you expect a change in political structure, in who holds power
- “Is it the comprehensiveness of the change, the speed, or the type of change?”
- avoid saying all technological change leads to social change
- examples of significant change: horse and buggyàautomobile
- examples of technics NOT leading to social change: ink pens to ballpoint pens
- also need to consider cases where there is resistance to technological change: (e.g., resistance to nuclear energy)

2. Do computers reproduce social patterns that already exist? (rather than cause social change)
(look at specific cases)

1. Is banking revolutionized?
...has it changed fundamentally as a result of moving to a system in which funds can be transferred electronically?

YES: now it isn't real money --it's electronic impulses-- therefore, the meaning of money has changed.

NO: the intent is still to accumulate "value": whether that value is represented by tangible coin or by electronic impulse, is insignificant.

2. Is the workplace revolutionized?

YES: knowledge needed to work has changed from being EMBODIED to INTELLECTIVE (see Zuboff, 1988).

embodied = when work involves a person interacting with what he/she is making"when the feel and smell aid in the process.

intellective = workers now interacting with symbols on screen, using analytical skills, having little direct contact with the product.

NO:
---> businesses are still interested in profits, --->bosses are still telling workers what to do, --->bosses can consolidate power through work surveillance/dataveillance--->employees are still trying to earn a living.

3. Is it computers or something else that cause social change? (Or a combination of factors?)

1st perspective: “technological determinism” (see Perrolle, 2.3.1.1.)

“technology is the MAJOR cause of social change”

2nd perspective: it’s the users’ needs that drive change

- e.g., competition in our market economy drives the development of computers not computers themselves
- males’ sex drives:
"New media is always adapted by young males. Each time, the content that has driven that adaptation is sex. That is what has sold it. If you look at the on-line sex market, it has state-of- the-art e-commerce, secure transaction and it caters to a user need in the privacy of the home. This is big business."

---> the VCR: "in its introduction 20 years ago, about 30% of videotapes sold were porn/soft-porn. VCR sales drove the pornography industry, and porn drove VCR sales, since the machine allowed for home viewing of porn in privacy." (Toronto Star, Nov. 10, 1998)

3rd perspective: “technology shapes society; technology is shaped by its social context.”

4. Do technics have built-in biases that facilitate only certain kinds of changes or only change in a certain direction?" (value-neutral vs. value-laden)

e.g, the gun:

to say that "Guns don't kill people, people do," you claim the technic itself is neutral; it's just how people use it that determines its value.

Nope, the bias of the gun is built into the gun.

e.g., the computer:

I has a built-in bias as a "number cruncher" (the root of the word "computer" means "to calculate")

- what does "number crunching" favour? quantitative social science research since statistical programs can be run to "test" hypotheses, or assess correlational relationships between data.
- even if it isn’t used for quantitative research purposes, the very fact of the easy collection and retrieval of the data suggests an orientation that favours that which can be collected and stored in databases.

This bias suggest that what we are using this technic for is to access information of a certain type.

--> What doesn't the computer store as information?

According to Johnson, the computer is not a neutral tool: the values of its developers are built in.

See second-term: Adams’s article on the built-in male assumptions in the expert system called CYC.