1. What Is Philosophy of Technology?

Andrew Feenberg

Introduction
In this chapter I will attempt to answer the question posed in my title from two
standpoints, first historically and then in terms of contemporary options in the field, the
various different theories that are currently under discussion.1 But before I begin, I would like
to clear up a common misunderstanding: philosophy of technology is not closely related to
philosophy of science. Science and technology share a similar type of rationality based on
empirical observation and knowledge of natural causality, but technology is concerned with
usefulness rather than truth. Where science seeks to know, technology seeks to control.
However, this is by no means the whole story.
Our image of premodernity is shaped by the struggles between science and religion in
the early modern period. From those struggles we derive the notion that traditional societies
restrict questioning of their basic customs and myths. In the premodern West, the principle of
authority was the basis not just for church doctrine, but for knowledge of the world as well.
Modern societies emerge from the release of the power of questioning against such traditional
forms of thought. The 18th century Enlightenment demanded that all customs and institutions
justify themselves as useful for humanity. Under the impact of this demand, science and
technology become the new basis for belief. Eventually, technology becomes omnipresent in
everyday life and scientific-technical modes of thought predominate over all others.2 In a
mature modern society, technology is taken for granted much as were the customs and myths
of traditional society. Scientific-technical rationality has become a new culture.
This culture is clearly useful in all its details in the sense the Enlightenment demanded,
but it is now so all encompassing that larger questions can be asked about its value. We judge
our technological civilization as more or less worthy, more or less ethically justified, more or
less fulfilling. Modernity itself authorizes, even demands such judgment. We need to
understand ourselves today in the midst of technology and neither scientific nor technical
knowledge can help us. Insofar as our society is technological at its basis, philosophy of
technology is its theoretical self-awareness. Philosophy of technology teaches us to reflect on
what we take for granted most of all, that is, the rationality of modernity. The importance of
this perspective cannot be over-estimated.
Greek Origins
The question of technology is raised at the very origins of Western philosophy, not as we
pose it today of course, but at a metaphysical level. Philosophy begins in ancient Greece by
interpreting the world in terms of the fundamental fact that humanity is a laboring animal
constantly at work transforming nature. This fundamental fact shapes the basic distinctions
that prevail throughout the tradition of Western philosophy.3
The first of these is the distinction between what the Greeks called physis and poisis.
Physis is usually translated as nature. For the Greeks, nature creates itself, emerges from out
of itself. But there are other things in the world, things which depend on humans to come into
being. Poisis is the practical activity of human production. We call the beings so created
artifacts and include among them the products of art, craft, and social convention.
1
This short chapter can give only a hint of the richness of the field. For a thorough account, see Mitcham
(1994).
2
This is a summary of ideas developed in Habermas (1984). While the usual contrast of premodern
dogmatism with modern reflexivity is no doubt overdrawn, this is hardly the moment to drop it entirely. For a
critique of this position see Latour (1991).
3
The discussion in this section is loosely derived from Heideggers (1973) history of being.

1
 The word techn in ancient Greek signifies the knowledge or the discipline associated
with a form of poisis. For example, sculpture is a techn that creates out of stone; carpentry
is a techn that builds from wood. Each techn includes a purpose and a meaning for its
artifacts. For the Greeks, technai show the right way to do things in a very strong, even an
objective sense. Although artifacts depend on human activity, the knowledge contained in the
technai is no matter of opinion or subjective intention. Even the purposes of artifacts share in
this objectivity insofar as they are defined by the technai.
The second fundamental distinction is that between existence and essence. Existence
answers the question whether something is or is not. Essence answers the question what the
thing is. That it is and what it is appear to be two independent dimensions of being. In the
tradition of Western philosophy, existence has been a rather hazy concept. We know the
difference between what exists and what does not, for example, as immediate presence or
absence, but there is not much more to say. Most of the attention is given to essence and its
successor concepts as developed by the sciences because this is the content of knowledge.
These distinctions are self-evident. They form the basis of all philosophical thought in
the West. But the relation between them is puzzling. The source of the puzzle is the Greek
understanding of techn, the ancestor of modern technology. Strange though it seems, they
conceived nature on the model of the artifacts produced by their own technical activity.
To show this, I will analyze the relation between the two basic distinctions that I've
introduced, physis and poisis, and existence and essence. The difference between existence
and essence in poisis is real and obvious. The thing is present first as an idea and only later
comes into existence through human making. For the Greeks the idea is not arbitrary or
subjective but rather belongs to a techn. Each techn contains the essence of the thing to be
made prior to the act of making. The idea, the essence of the thing is a reality independent of
the thing and its maker. Although humans make artifacts, they do so according to a plan and
for a purpose that is an objective aspect of the world.
But the corresponding distinction between existence and essence is not obvious for
natural things. The thing and its essence arise together and exist together. The essence does
not have a separate existence. The flower emerges along with what makes it a flower: that it
is and what it is happen, in a sense, simultaneously. We can define a concept of the flower,
but this is our notion, not something essential to the flower as a concept or plan is to artifacts.
Indeed, the very idea of an essence of the things of nature is our construction. Unlike the
knowledge that is active in techn, which participates in bringing into existence the objects it
defines, the essences identified by epistem, the science of nature, appear to be purely human
doings to which nature itself would be indifferent. Or is it? Here is where the story gets
interesting.
Although essences quite obviously relate differently to physis than to poisis, since
Greek times philosophers have struggled to efface that difference in a unified theory. For
Plato, who started the tradition on this path, the concept of the thing, its idea, exists in some
sense prior to the thing itself and allows it to exist and us to know it. This is exactly the
pattern familiar from techn, but Plato does not reserve his theory for artifacts; rather, he
applies it to all being. He relies on the structure of techn to explain not only artifacts, but
nature as well.
Plato understands nature as divided into existence and essence just as are artifacts and
this becomes the basis for Greek ontology. In this ontology there is no radical discontinuity
between technical making and natural self-production because they both share the same
structure. Techn includes a purpose and a meaning for artifacts. The Greeks import these
aspects of techn into the realm of nature and view all of nature in teleological terms. The
world is thus a place full of meaning and intention. This conception of the world calls for a
corresponding understanding of man. We humans are not the masters of nature but realize its

2
potentialities in bringing a meaningful world to fruition. Our knowledge of that world and our
action in it is not arbitrary but is in some sense the completion of what lies hidden in nature.
What conclusion follows from these historical considerations on ancient Greek
philosophy? I will be provocative and say that the philosophy of technology begins with the
Greeks and is in fact the foundation of all Western philosophy. It was the Greeks who first
interpreted being as such through the concept of technical making. This is ironic. Technology
has a low status in the high culture of modern societies but it was actually there at the origin
of that culture and, if we believe the Greeks, contains the key to the understanding of being as
such.

Modern Alternatives

I will now leave these historical considerations and turn to the status of philosophy of
technology in our era. At its inception, Descartes promised that we would become the
masters and possessors of nature through the cultivation of the sciences, and Bacon
famously claimed that Knowledge is power. Here technology no longer fulfills natures
potentialities as it did for the Greeks, but rather it realizes human plans. Clearly we are in a
different world from the Greeks. And yet we share with them the fundamental distinctions
between essence and existence, and between the things that make themselves, nature, and the
things that are made, artifacts. But our understanding of these distinctions is different from
theirs. This is especially true of the concept of essence. For us essences are conventional
rather than real. The meaning and purpose of things is something we create not something we
discover. The gap between man and world widens accordingly. We are not at home in the
world, we conquer the world. This difference is related to our basic ontology. The question
we address to being is not what it is but how it works. Science answers this question rather
than revealing essences in the Greek sense of the term.
Note that technology is still the model of being in this modern conception. This was
particularly clear in the Enlightenment when philosophers and scientists challenged the
medieval successors to Greek science with the new mechanistic worldview. Eighteenth
century physical science identified the workings of the universe with a clockwork
mechanism. Thus strange though it may seem, the underlying structure of Greek ontology
survived the defeat of its concept of essence.
In the modern context technology does not realize objective essences inscribed in the
nature of the universe as does techn. It now appears as purely instrumental, as value free. It
does not respond to inherent purposes, but is merely a means serving subjective goals. For
modern common sense, means and ends are independent of each other: Guns don't kill
people, people kill people. Guns are a means independent of the users ends, whether it be
to rob a bank or to enforce the law. Technology, we say, is neutral, meaning that it has no
preference as between the various possible uses to which it can be put. This instrumentalist
philosophy of technology is a spontaneous product of our civilization, assumed unreflectively
by most people.
Technology in this scheme of things encounters nature as raw materials, not as a world
that emerges out of itself, a physis, but rather as passive stuff awaiting transformation into
whatever we desire. This world is there to be controlled and used without any inner purpose.
The West has made enormous technical advances on this basis. Nothing restrains us in our
exploitation of nature. Everything is exposed to an analytic intelligence that decomposes it
into usable parts. Under this assumption, our means have become ever more efficient and
powerful. In the 19th century it became commonplace to view modernity as an unending
progress toward the fulfillment of human needs through technological advance.
But for what ends? The goals of our society can no longer be specified in a knowledge

3
of some sort as they were for the Greeks. The Greeks lived in harmony with the world
whereas we are alienated from it by our very freedom to define our purposes as we wish. So
long as no great harm could be attributed to technology, this situation did not lead to serious
doubts beyond small circles of intellectuals. But as the 20th century proceeds from world wars
to concentration camps to environmental catastrophes, it becomes more and more difficult to
ignore the strange aimlessness of modernity. This has led to a crisis of civilization from
which there seems no escape: we know how to get there but we do not know why we are
going or even where. It is because we are at such a loss that so many 20 th century
philosophers of technology became critics of modernity.
I want now to present the various alternatives so far discussed and others as well in a
chart that puts order in the discussion.4

Technology is: Autonomous Humanly Controlled

Neutral Determinism Instrumentalism

(complete separation (e.g. modernization (liberal faith in

of means and ends) theory) progress)

Value-laden Substantivism Critical Theory

(means form a way of (means and ends (choice of alternative

life that includes ends) linked in systems) means-ends systems)

Technology is defined here along two axes reflecting its relation to values and agency.
The vertical axis offers two alternatives: either technology is value neutral, as we typically
assume in modern times, or it is value-laden as the Greeks believed and, we will see, as some
philosophers of technology believe today. The choice between these views is not obvious.
From a common sense perspective a technical device is simply a concatenation of causal
mechanisms. No amount of scientific study will find anything like a purpose in it. But
perhaps common sense misses the point. After all, no scientific study will find money in a
$100 bill. Not everything is a physical or chemical property of matter. Perhaps technologies,
like bank notes, have a way of containing value in themselves as social entities.
On the horizontal axis technologies are signified as either autonomous or humanly
controllable. To say that technology is autonomous is not of course to say that it acts alone.
Human beings are involved, but the question is, do they actually have the freedom to decide
how technology will be applied and develop? Is the next step in the evolution of the technical
system up to human decision-makers or do they act according to a logic inscribed in the very
nature of technology? In the latter case technology can rightly be said to be autonomous. On
the other hand, technology would be humanly controllable if we could determine the next
step in its evolution in accordance with intentions elaborated without reference to the
imperatives of technology.
The intersection of these two axes defines four types of theories.
Instrumentalism, the occupant of the box in which human control and value neutrality
intersect, has been discussed above. This is the standard modern view according to which
technology is a tool or instrument of the human species as a whole. As noted in the chart, this
4
This chart is drawn from Feenberg (1999: 9).

4
view corresponds to the liberal faith in progress which was such a prominent feature of
mainstream Western thought until fairly recently.
Technology, on the determinist account, is rooted on the one side in knowledge of nature
and on the other in generic features of the human species. This is why it can be described as
neutral, as a rationally constructed tool serving universal human needs. Some determinists
argue that technologies simply extend human faculties: the automobile extends our feet while
computers extend our brains. It is not up to us to adapt technology to our whims but on the
contrary, we must adapt to technology as the most significant expression of our humanity.
Determinism is a widely held view in social science where it supports the pretensions to
universality of both capitalist and communist societies.
Substantivists attribute substantive values to technology in contrast with instrumentalism
and determinism which view technology as neutral. The contrast here is actually more
complex than it seems at first sight. The neutrality thesis to which instrumentalists and most
determinists subscribe does admit that technology embodies a value but it is a merely formal
value, efficiency. Using technology for this or that purpose would not be a specific value
choice in itself, but just a more efficient way of realizing a pre-existing value of some sort. A
substantive value on the contrary involves a commitment to a specific conception of the
good. According to substantivism, the values embodied by technology are the pursuit of
power and domination. These values track technology like a shadow and show up in
everything it touches. If technology embodies these value, it is not merely instrumental and
cannot be used for the various purposes of individuals or societies with different ideas of the
good. According to substantivism, insofar as we use technology we are committed to a
technological way of life.
There are obvious relations between substantive theory of technology and determinism.
In fact most substantive theorists are determinists as well. But the position I have
characterized as determinism is optimistic and progressive. Both Marx (in the commonplace
interpretations) and the modernization theorists of the post-war era believed that technology
would save humanity. Substantive theory is not so optimistic and regards autonomous
technology as threatening if not malevolent rather than benign. Once unleashed technology
becomes more and more imperialistic, taking over one domain of social life after another. In
the most extreme imagination of substantivism, a Brave New World such as Huxley describes
in his famous novel converts human beings into mere cogs in the machinery. This is not
utopiathe no place of an ideal society, but dystopiaa world in which human
individuality has been completely suppressed. Here people become, as Marshall McLuhan
once said, the sex organs of the machine world (McLuhan, 1964: 46).
Martin Heidegger was the most famous substantive theorist. He argued that the essence
of modernity is the triumph of technology over every other value. He noted that Greek
philosophy had already based its understanding of being on technical making and argued that
this starting point culminates in modern technology. Where the Greeks took techn as the
model of being in theory, we have transformed beings technically in practice. Our
metaphysics is not in our heads but consists in the real technical conquest of the earth. This
conquest transforms everything into raw materials and system components, including human
beings themselves (Heidegger, 1977a). Not only are we constantly obeying the dictates of the
many technical systems in which we are enrolled, we tend to see ourselves more and more as
devices regulated by medical, psychological, athletic, and other functional disciplines. Our
bookstores are full of operating manuals for every aspect of life: love, sex, divorce,
friendship, raising children, eating, exercise, making money, having fun, and so on and so
forth. We are our own machines.
But, Heidegger argues, although we may control the world through our technology, we
do not control our own obsession with control. Something lies behind technology, a mystery

5
we cannot unravel from our technological standpoint. Where we are headed is a mystery too.
The West has reached the end of its rope. Heideggers last interview concludes that Only a
God can save us (Heidegger, 1977b).
Heideggers views contrast sharply with critical theory of technology. Critical theory
agrees with substantivism that technology is not the unmixed blessing welcomed by
instrumentalists and determinists. It recognizes the catastrophic consequences of
technological development but still sees a promise of greater freedom in a possible future.
The problem is not with technology as such but with our failure so far to devise appropriate
institutions for exercising human control over it. We could tame technology by submitting it
to a more democratic process of design and development.
The economy offers an encouraging parallel to this view of technology. A century ago
mainstream political and academic thought conceived the economy as an autonomous power
operating according to inflexible laws. Today we know the contrary, that we can influence
the direction of economic development through democratic institutions. Critical theory of
technology argues that the time has come to extend democracy to technology as well. It thus
attempts to save the Enlightenment values that have guided progress for the last several
hundred years without ignoring the resulting problems.
As can be seen from the chart, critical theory shares traits with both instrumentalism and
substantivism. Like instrumentalism critical theory argues that technology is in some sense
controllable, but it also agrees with substantivism that technology is value-laden. This seems
a contradictory position since, in the substantivist view, precisely what cannot be controlled
are the values embodied in technology such as efficiency and domination. If this is true, the
choices within our power would be like those we make in the supermarket between different
brands of soap, i.e. trivial and delusory. How then can we conceive the value-ladenness of
technology such that human control matters?
The Critical Theorist, Herbert Marcuse, sketched an answer I have tried to develop in
what I call a critical theory of technology. According to critical theory the values embodied in
technology are socially specific and are not adequately represented by such abstractions as
efficiency or control. Technology can frame not just one way of life but many different
possible ways of life, each of which determines a different choice of designs and a different
range of technological mediation. Does this mean that technology is neutral, as
instrumentalism believes? Not quite: modern societies must all aim at efficiency in those
domains where they apply technology, but to claim that they can realize no other significant
values besides efficiency is to overlook the tremendous social impact of differing design
choices. What is worse, it obscures the difference between the current miserable state of
technological societies and a better condition we can imagine and for which we can struggle.
One must look down on mankind from a very great height indeed not to notice the difference
between efficient weapons and efficient medicines, efficient propaganda and efficient
education, efficient exploitation and efficient research! This difference is socially and
ethically significant and so cannot be discounted as thinkers who share Heideggers
Olympian view sometimes claim.
Nevertheless, the substantivist critique of instrumentalism does demonstrate that
technologies are not neutral tools. Means and ends are connected. Thus even if some sort of
human control of technology is possible, it cannot be understood on the same terms as
instrumental control of particular devices. In critical theory technologies are not seen as mere
tools but also as frameworks for ways of life. Thus we cannot agree with the instrumentalist
that Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Supplying people with guns creates a social
world quite different from the world in which people are disarmed. We can choose which
world we wish to inhabit through legislation.
This is not the sort of control over technology instrumentalism generally claims we have.

6
Its model of control is based on a restricted notion of use of individual devices, not choices
between whole technological systems with different social consequences. This is a meta-
choice, a choice at a higher level determining which values are to be embodied in the
technical framework of our lives. Critical theory of technology opens up the possibility of
reflecting on such choices and submitting them to more democratic controls. We do not have
to wait for a god to save us as Heidegger expostulated but can hope to save ourselves through
democratic interventions into technology.
But critical theory is not nave about the difficulties that stand in the way of democracy.
Technology gradually subverts the capacity for democracy even as it destroys the objective
world. Thus the practical difference between substantivism and critical theory is not as great
as it seems at first.5 Critical theory is relatively skeptical about the capacity of human beings
to get technological civilization under reasonable control, but at least it does not exclude the
possibility in principle as does substantivism. This is why it is necessary to talk not in terms
of a utopian democracy of technique but more modestly of democratic interventions into
technology.
What is meant by the concept of democratic interventions? Clearly, it would not make
sense to hold an election between competing devices or designs. The voting public is not
sufficiently concerned, involved, and informed to choose good politicians, much less good
technologies. So, in what sense can democracy be extended to technology under current
conditions? People affected by technological change ever more frequently protest or
innovate. Where it used to be possible to silence all opposition to technical projects by
appealing to Progress with a capital p, today communities mobilize to make their wishes
known, for example, in opposition to nuclear power plants or toxic waste dumps in their
neighborhood. In a different vein the computer has involved us in technology so intimately
that our activities have begun to shape its development. Email, the most used function of the
Internet, was introduced by skilled users and did not originally figure in the plans of the
designers at all. Similar examples can be adduced from medicine, urban affairs, and many
other domains where technology shapes human activity.
Critical theory of technology detects a trend toward greater participation in decisions
about design and development in examples such as these. The public sphere appears to be
opening slowly to encompass technical issues that were formerly viewed as the exclusive
preserve of experts. Can this trend continue to the point where citizenship will include the
exercise of human control over the technical framework of our lives? We must hope so for
the alternative is likely to be the eventual failure of the experiment in industrial society under
the pressure of untrammeled competition and national rivalries. If people are able to conceive
and pursue their intrinsic interest in peace and fulfillment through the political process, they
will inevitably address the question of technology along with many other questions that hang
in suspense today. We can only hope this will happen sooner rather than later.

References

Feenberg, Andrew (1999). Questioning Technology. New York: Routledge.

-- (2005). Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History. New York:
Routledge.
Habermas, J. (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action. Boston: Beacon Press.
Heidegger, Martin (1973). The End of Philosophy. Trans. J. Stambaugh. New York: Harper
and Row.
-- (1977a). The Question Concerning Technology, W. Lovitt, trans. New York: Harper and
Row.
5
For a comparison of Heidegger and Critical Theory, see Feenberg (2005).

7
-- (1977b). "Only a God Can Save Us Now," trans. D. Schendler. Graduate Faculty
Philosophy Journal, 6(1).
Latour, Bruno (1993). We Have Never Been Modern. Trans. C. Porter. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
McLuhan, Marshall (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York:
McGraw Hill.
Mitcham, Carl (1994). Thinking Through Technology: The Path Between Engineering and
Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

8
2. SUBVERSIVE RATIONALIZATION: TECHNOLOGY, POWER AND
DEMOCRACY1

by Andrew Feenberg
Philosophy Department
San Diego State University

I. The Limits of Democratic Theory

Technology is one of the major sources of public power in modern societies. So far as
decisions affecting our daily lives are concerned, political democracy is largely
overshadowed by the enormous power wielded by the masters of technical systems:
corporate and military leaders, and professional associations of groups such as physicians and
engineers. They have far more to do with control over patterns of urban growth, the design of
dwellings and transportation systems, the selection of innovations, our experience as
employees, patients, and consumers, than all the governmental institutions of our society put
together.
Marx saw this situation coming in the middle of the 19th Century. He argued that
traditional democratic theory erred in treating the economy as an extra-political domain ruled
by natural laws such as the law of supply and demand. He claimed that we will remain
disenfranchised and alienated so long as we have no say in industrial decision-making.
Democracy must be extended from the political domain into the world of work. This is the
underlying demand behind the idea of socialism.
Modern societies have been challenged by this demand for over a century.
Democratic political theory offers no persuasive reason of principle to reject it. Indeed, many
democratic theorists endorse it.2 What is more, in a number of countries socialist
parliamentary victories or revolutions have brought parties to power dedicated to achieving it.
Yet today we do not appear to be much closer to democratizing industrialism than in Marx's
time.
This state of affairs is usually explained in one of the following two ways.
On the one hand, the common sense view argues that modern technology is
incompatible with workplace democracy. Democratic theory cannot reasonably press for
reforms that would destroy the economic foundations of society. For evidence, consider the
Soviet case: although they were socialists, the communists did not democratize industry, and
the current democratization of Soviet society extends only to the factory gate. At least in the
ex-Soviet Union, everyone can agree on the need for authoritarian industrial management.
On the other hand, a minority of radical theorists claim that technology is not
responsible for the concentration of industrial power. That is a political matter, due to the
victory of capitalist and communist elites in struggles with the underlying population. No
doubt modern technology lends itself to authoritarian administration, but in a different social
context it could just as well be operated democratically.
In what follows, I will argue for a qualified version of this second position, somewhat
different from both the usual Marxist and democratic formulations. The qualification
concerns the role of technology, which I see as neither determining nor as neutral. I will
argue that modern forms of hegemony are based on the technical mediation of a variety of
social activities, whether it be production or medicine, education or the military, and that,
consequently, the democratization of our society requires radical technical as well as political
change.
This is a controversial position. The common sense view of technology limits
democracy to the state. By contrast, I believe that unless democracy can be extended beyond
its traditional bounds into the technically mediated domains of social life, its use value will

9
continue to decline, participation will wither, and the institutions we identify with a free
society will gradually disappear.
Let me turn now to the background to my argument. I will begin by presenting an
overview of various theories that claim that insofar as modern societies depend on
technology, they require authoritarian hierarchy. These theories presuppose a form of
technological determinism which is refuted by historical and sociological arguments I will
briefly summarize. I will then present a sketch of a non-deterministic theory of modern
society I call "critical theory of technology." This alternative approach emphasizes
contextual aspects of technology ignored by the dominant view. I will argue that technology
is not just the rational control of nature; both its development and impact are intrinsically
social. I will then show that this view undermines the customary reliance on efficiency as a
criterion of technological development. That conclusion, in turn, opens broad possibilities of
change foreclosed by the usual understanding of technology.

II. Dystopian Modernity

Max Weber's famous theory of rationalization is the original argument against
industrial democracy. The title of this paper implies a provocative reversal of Weber's
conclusions. He defined rationalization as the increasing role of calculation and control in
social life, a trend leading to what he called the "iron cage" of bureaucracy.3 "Subversive"
rationalization is thus a contradiction in terms.
Once traditionalist struggle against rationalization has been defeated, further
resistance in a Weberian universe can only reaffirm irrational life forces against routine and
drab predictability. This is not a democratic program but a romantic anti-dystopian one, the
sort of thing that is already foreshadowed in Dostoievsky's Notes from Underground and
various back to nature ideologies.
My title is meant to reject the dichotomy between rational hierarchy and irrational
protest implicit in Weber's position. If authoritarian social hierarchy is truly a contingent
dimension of technical progress, as I believe, and not a technical necessity, then there must be
an alternative way of rationalizing society that democratizes rather than centralizes control.
We need not go underground or native to preserve threatened values such as freedom and
individuality.
But the most powerful critiques of modern technological society follow directly in
Weber's footsteps in rejecting this possibility. I am thinking of Heidegger's formulation of
"the question of technology" and Ellul's theory of "the technical phenomenon."4 According
to these theories, we have become little more than objects of technique, incorporated into the
mechanism we have created. As Marshall McLuhan once put it, technology has reduced us to
the "sex organs of machines." The only hope is a vaguely evoked spiritual renewal that is too
abstract to inform a new technical practice.
These are interesting theories, but I have time to do little more than pay tribute to
their contribution to opening a space of reflection on modern technology. Instead, to advance
my own argument, I will concentrate on their principal flaw, the identification of technology
in general with the specific technologies that have developed in the last century in the West.
These are technologies of conquest that pretend to an unprecedented autonomy; their social
sources and impacts are hidden. I will argue that this type of technology is a particular feature
of our society and not a universal dimension of "modernity" as such.

III. Technological Determinism

Determinism rests on the assumption that technologies have an autonomous
functional logic that can be explained without reference to society. Technology is presumably
social only through the purpose it serves, and purposes are in the mind of the beholder.

10
Technology would thus resemble science and mathematics by its intrinsic independence of
the social world.
Yet unlike science and mathematics, technology has immediate and powerful social
impacts. It would seem that society's fate is at least partially dependent on a non-social factor
which influences it without suffering a reciprocal influence. This is what is meant by
"technological determinism."
The dystopian visions of modernity I have been describing are deterministic. If we
want to affirm the democratic potentialities of modern industrialism, we will therefore have
to challenge their deterministic premises. These I will call the thesis of unilinear progress,
and the thesis of determination by the base. Here is a brief summary of these two positions.
1) Technical progress appears to follow a unilinear course, a fixed track, from less to
more advanced configurations. Although this conclusion seems obvious from a backward
glance at the development of any familiar technical object, in fact it is based on two claims of
unequal plausibility: first, that technical progress proceeds from lower to higher levels of
development; and second, that that development follows a single sequence of necessary
stages. As we will see, the first claim is independent of the second and not necessarily
deterministic.
2) Technological determinism also affirms that social institutions must adapt to the
"imperatives" of the technological base. This view, which no doubt has its source in a certain
reading of Marx, is now part of the common sense of the social sciences.5 Below, I will
discuss one of its implications in detail: the supposed "trade-off" between prosperity and
environmental ideology.
These two theses of technological determinism present decontextualized, self-
generating technology as the unique foundation of modern society. Determinism thus implies
that our technology and its corresponding institutional structures are universal, indeed,
planetary in scope. There may be many forms of tribal society, many feudalisms, even many
forms of early capitalism, but there is only one modernity and it is exemplified in our society
for good or ill. Developing societies should take note: as Marx once said, calling the attention
of his backward German compatriots to British advances: "De te fabula narratur"-- of you the
tale is told.6

IV. Constructivism
The implications of determinism appear so obvious that it is surprising to discover
that neither of its two theses can withstand close scrutiny. Yet contemporary sociology of
technology undermines the first thesis of unilinear progress while historical precedents are
unkind to the second thesis of determination by the base.
Recent constructivist sociology of technology grows out of new social studies of
science. These studies challenge our tendency to exempt scientific theories from the sort of
sociological examination to which we submit non-scientific beliefs. They affirm the
"principle of symmetry," according to which all contending beliefs are subject to the same
type of social explanation regardless of their truth or falsity.7 A similar approach to
technology rejects the usual assumption that technologies succeed on purely functional
grounds.
Constructivism argues that theories and technologies are underdetermined by
scientific and technical criteria. Concretely, this means two things: first, there is generally a
surplus of workable solutions to any given problem, and social actors make the final choice
among a batch of technically viable options; and second, the problem-definition often
changes in the course of solution. The latter point is the more conclusive but also more
difficult of the two.

11
 Two sociologists of technology, Pinch and Bijker, illustrate it with the early history of
the bicycle.8 The object we take to be a self-evident "black box" actually started out as two
very different devices, a sportsman's racer and a utilitarian transportation vehicle. The high
front wheel of the sportsman's bike was necessary at the time to attain high speeds, but it also
caused instability. Equal sized wheels made for a safer but less exciting ride. These two
designs met different needs and were in fact different technologies with many shared
elements. Pinch and Bijker call this original ambiguity of the object designated as a "bicycle,"
"interpretive flexibility."
Eventually the "safety" design won out, and it benefited from all the later advances
that occurred in the field. In retrospect, it seems as though the high wheelers were a clumsy
and less efficient stage in a progressive development leading through the old "safety" bicycle
to current designs. In fact the high wheeler and the safety shared the field for years and
neither was a stage in the other's development. The high wheeler represents a possible
alternative path of bicycle development that addressed different problems at the origin.
Determinism is a species of Whig history which makes it seem as though the end of
the story was inevitable from the very beginning by projecting the abstract technical logic of
the finished object back into the past as a cause of development. That approach confuses our
understanding of the past and stifles the imagination of a different future. Constructivism can
open up that future, although its practitioners have hesitated so far to engage the larger social
issues implied in their method.9

V. Indeterminism
If the thesis of unilinear progress falls, the collapse of the notion of determination by
the technological base cannot be far behind. Yet it is still frequently invoked in contemporary
political debates.
I shall return to these debates later in this paper. For now, let us consider the
remarkable anticipation of current attitudes in the struggle over the length of the workday and
child labor in mid-19th Century England. Factory owners and economists denounced
regulation as inflationary; industrial production supposedly required children and the long
workday. One member of parliament declared that regulation is "a false principle of
humanity, which in the end is certain to defeat itself." He went on to argue that the new rules
were so radical as to constitute "in principle an argument to get rid of the whole system of
factory labor."10 Similar protestations are heard today on behalf of industries threatened with
what they call environmental "Luddism."
Yet what actually happened once the regulators succeeded in imposing limitations on
the work day and expelling children from the factory? Did the violated imperatives of
technology come back to haunt them? Not at all. Regulation led to an intensification of
factory labor that was incompatible with the earlier conditions in any case. Children ceased
to be workers and were redefined socially as learners and consumers. Consequently, they
entered the labor market with higher levels of skill and discipline that were soon presupposed
by technological design. As a result no one is nostalgic for a return to the good old days when
inflation was held down by child labor. That is simply not an option.
This example shows the tremendous flexibility of the technical system. It is not
rigidly constraining but on the contrary can adapt to a variety of social demands. This
conclusion should not be surprising given the responsiveness of technology to social
redefinition discussed previously. It means that technology is just another dependent social
variable, albeit an increasingly important one, and not the key to the riddle of history.
Determinism, I have argued, is characterized by the principles of unilinear progress
and determination by the base; if determinism is wrong, then technology research must be
guided by the following two contrary principles. In the first place, technological development

12
is not unilinear but branches in many directions, and could reach generally higher levels
along more than one different track. And, secondly, technological development is not
determining for society but is overdetermined by both technical and social factors.
The political significance of this position should also be clear by now. In a society
where determinism stands guard on the frontiers of democracy, indeterminism cannot but be
political. If technology has many unexplored potentialities, no technological imperatives
dictate the current social hierarchy. Rather, technology is a scene of social struggle, a
"parliament of things," on which civilizational alternatives contend.

VI. Interpreting Technology

In the remainder of this paper, I would like to present several major themes of a non-
determinist approach to technology. The picture sketched so far implies a significant change
in our definition of technology. It can no longer be considered as a collection of devices, nor,
more generally, as the sum of rational means. These are tendentious definitions that make
technology seem more functional and less social than in fact it is.
As a social object, technology ought to be subject to interpretation like any other
cultural artifact but it is generally excluded from humanistic study. We are assured that its
essence lies in a technically explainable function rather than a hermeneutically interpretable
meaning. At most humanistic methods might illuminate extrinsic aspects of technology, such
as packaging and advertising, or popular reactions to controversial innovations such as
nuclear power or surrogate motherhood. Technological determinism draws its force from this
attitude. If one ignores most of the connections between technology and society, it is no
wonder that technology then appears to be self-generating.
Technical objects have two hermeneutic dimensions that I call their social meaning
and their cultural horizon.11 The role of social meaning is clear in the case of the bicycle
introduced above. We have seen that the construction of the bicycle was controlled in the first
instance by a contest of interpretations: was it to be a sportsman's toy or a means of
transportation? Design features such as wheel size also served to signify it as one or another
type of object.12
It might be objected that this is merely an initial disagreement over goals with no
hermeneutic significance. Once the object is stabilized, the engineer has the last word on its
nature, and the humanist interpreter is out of luck. This is the view of most engineers and
managers; they readily grasp the concept of "goal" but they have no place for "meaning."
In fact the dichotomy of goal and meaning is a product of functionalist professional
culture, which is itself rooted in the structure of the modern economy. The concept of "goal"
strips technology bare of social contexts, focussing engineers and managers on just what they
need to know to do their job.
A fuller picture is conveyed, however, by studying the social role of the technical
object and the lifestyles it makes possible. That picture places the abstract notion of "goal" in
its concrete social context. It makes technology's contextual causes and consequences visible
rather than obscuring them behind an impoverished functionalism.
The functionalist point of view yields a decontextualized temporal cross-section in the
life of the object. As we have seen, determinism claims implausibly to be able to get from
one such momentary configuration of the object to the next on purely technical terms. But in
the real world all sorts of unpredictable attitudes crystallize around technical objects and
influence later design changes. The engineer may think these are extrinsic to the device he or
she is working on, but they are its very substance as a historically evolving phenomenon.
These facts are recognized to a certain extent in the technical fields themselves,
especially in computers. Here we have a contemporary version of the dilemma of the bicycle
discussed above. Progress of a generalized sort in speed, power, and memory goes on apace

13
while corporate planners struggle with the question of what it is all for. Technical
development does not point definitively toward any particular path. Instead, it opens
branches, and the final determination of the "right" branch is not within the competence of
engineering because it is simply not inscribed in the nature of the technology.
I have studied a particularly clear example of the complexity of the relation between
the technical function and meaning of the computer in the case of French videotex.13 Called
Teletel, this system was designed to bring France into the Information Age by giving
telephone subscribers access to data bases. Fearing that consumers would reject anything
resembling office equipment, the telephone company attempted to redefine the computer's
social image; it was no longer to appear as a calculating device for professionals but was to
become an informational network for all.
The telephone company designed a new type of terminal, the Minitel, to look and
feel like an adjunct to the domestic telephone. The telephonic disguise suggested to some
users that they ought to be able to talk to each other on the network. Soon the Minitel
underwent a further redefinition at the hands of these users, many of whom employed it
primarily for anonymous on-line chatting with other users in the search for amusement,
companionship, and sex.
Thus the design of the Minitel invited communications applications which the
company's engineers had not intended when they set about improving the flow of information
in French society. Those applications, in turn, connoted the Minitel as a means of personal
encounter, the very opposite of the rationalistic project for which it was originally created.
The "cold" computer became a "hot" new medium.
At issue in the transformation is not only the computer's narrowly conceived technical
function, but the very nature of the advanced society it makes possible. Does networking
open the doors to the Information Age where, as rational consumers hungry for data, we
pursue strategies of optimization? Or is it a postmodern technology that emerges from the
breakdown of institutional and sentimental stability, reflecting, in Lyotard's words, the
"atomisation of society into flexible networks of language games?"14 In this case technology
is not merely the servant of some predefined social purpose; it is an environment within
which a way of life is elaborated.
In sum, differences in the way social groups interpret and use technical objects are not
merely extrinsic but make a difference in the nature of the objects themselves. What the
object is for the groups that ultimately decide its fate determines what it becomes as it is
redesigned and improved over time. If this is true, then we can only understand technological
development by studying the sociopolitical situation of the various groups involved in it.

VII. Technological Hegemony

In addition to the sort of assumptions about individual technical objects we have been
discussing so far, that situation also includes broader assumptions about social values. This is
where the study of the cultural horizon of technology comes in. This second hermeneutic
dimension of technology is the basis of modern forms of social hegemony; it is particularly
relevant to our original question concerning the inevitability of hierarchy in technological
society.
As I will use the term, hegemony is a form of domination so deeply rooted in social
life that it seems natural to those it dominates. One might also define it as that aspect of the
distribution of social power which has the force of culture behind it.
The term "horizon" refers to culturally general assumptions that form the
unquestioned background to every aspect of life.15 Some of these support the prevailing
hegemony. For example, in feudal societies, the "chain of being" established hierarchy in the
fabric of God's universe and protected the caste relations of the society from challenge. Under

14
this horizon, peasants revolted in the name of the King, the only imaginable source of power.
Rationalization is our modern horizon, and technological design is the key to its effectiveness
as the basis of modern hegemonies.
Technological development is constrained by cultural norms originating in
economics, ideology, religion and tradition. We discussed earlier how assumptions about the
age composition of the labor force entered into the design of 19th century production
technology. Such assumptions seem so natural and obvious they often lie below the
threshhold of conscious awareness.
This is the point of Herbert Marcuse's important critique of Weber.16 Marcuse
shows that the concept of rationalization confounds the control of labor by management with
control of nature by technology. The search for control of nature is generic, but management
only arises against a specific social background, the capitalist wage system. Workers have no
immediate interest in output in this system, unlike earlier forms of farm and craft labor, since
their wage is not essentially linked to the income of the firm. Control of human beings
becomes all-important in this context.
Through mechanization, some of the control functions are eventually transferred from
human overseers and parcellized work practices to machines. Machine design is thus socially
relative in a way that Weber never recognized, and the "technological rationality" it embodies
is not universal but particular to capitalism. In fact, it is the horizon of all the existing
industrial societies, communist as well as capitalist, insofar as they are managed from above.
(In a later section, I discuss a generalized application of this approach in terms of what I call
the "technical code.")
If Marcuse is right, it ought to be possible to trace the impress of class relations in the
very design of production technology as has indeed been shown by such Marxist students of
the labor process as Harry Braverman and David Noble.17 The assembly line offers a
particularly clear instance because it achieves traditional management goals, such as
deskilling and pacing work, through technical design. Its technologically enforced labor
discipline increases productivity and profits by increasing control. However, the assembly
line only appears as technical progress in a specific social context. It would not be perceived
as an advance in an economy based on workers' cooperatives in which labor discipline was
more self-imposed than imposed from above. In such a society, a different technological
rationality would dictate different ways of increasing productivity.18
This example shows that technological rationality is not merely a belief, an ideology,
but is effectively incorporated into the structure of machines. Machine design mirrors back
the social factors operative in the prevailing rationality. The fact that the argument for the
social relativity of modern technology originated in a Marxist context has obscured its most
radical implications. We are not dealing here with a mere critique of the property system, but
have extended the force of that critique down into the technical "base." This approach goes
well beyond the old economic distinction between capitalism and socialism, market and
plan. Instead, one arrives at a very different distinction between societies in which power
rests on the technical mediation of social activities and those that democratize technical
control and, correspondingly, technological design.

VIII. Double Aspect Theory

The argument to this point might be summarized as a claim that social meaning and
functional rationality are inextricably intertwined dimensions of technology. They are not
ontologically distinct, for example, with meaning in the observer's mind and rationality in the
technology proper. Rather they are "double aspects" of the same underlying technical object,
each aspect revealed by a specific contextualization.
Functional rationality, like scientific-technical rationality in general, isolates objects

15
from their original context in order to incorporate them into theoretical or functional systems.
The institutions that support this procedure, such as laboratories and research centers,
themselves form a special context with their own practices and links to various social
agencies and powers. The notion of "pure" rationality arises when the work of
decontextualization is not itself grasped as a social activity reflecting social interests.
Technologies are selected by these interests from among many possible
configurations. Guiding the selection process are social codes established by the cultural and
political struggles that define the horizon under which the technology will fall. Once
introduced, technology offers a material validation of the cultural horizon to which it has
been preformed. I call this the "bias" of technology: apparently neutral, functional rationality
is enlisted in support of a hegemony. The more technology society employs, the more
significant is this support.
As Foucault argues in his theory of "power\knowledge" modern forms of oppression
are not so much based on false ideologies as on the multiplicity of technical "truths" among
which the dominant hegemony selects the means to reproduce the system.19 So long as that
act of choice remains hidden, the deterministic image of a technically justified social order is
projected.
The legitimating effectiveness of technology depends on unconsciousness of the
cultural-political horizon under which it was designed. A recontextualizing critique of
technology can uncover that horizon, demystify the illusion of technical necessity, and
expose the relativity of the prevailing technical choices.

IX. The Social Relativity of Efficiency

These issues appear with particular force in the environmental movement today.
Many environmentalists argue for technical changes that would protect nature and in the
process improve human life as well. Such changes would enhance efficiency in broad terms
by reducing harmful and costly side effects of technology. However, this program is very
difficult to impose in a capitalist society. There is a tendency to deflect criticism from
technological processes to products and people, from apriori prevention to aposteriori clean-
up. These preferred strategies are generally costly and reduce efficiency under the horizon of
the given technology. This situation has political consequences.
Restoring the environment after it has been damaged is a form of collective
consumption, financed by taxes or higher prices. These approaches dominate public
awareness. This is why environmentalism is generally perceived as a cost involving trade-
offs, and not as a rationalization increasing over-all efficiency. But in a modern society,
obsessed by economic well-being, that perception is damning. Economists and businessmen
are fond of explaining the price we must pay in inflation and unemployment for worshipping
at Nature's shrine instead of Mammon's. Poverty awaits those who will not adjust their social
and political expectations to technology.
This trade-off model has environmentalists grasping at straws for a strategy. Some
hold out the pious hope that people will turn from economic to spiritual values in the face of
the mounting problems of industrial society. Others expect enlightened dictators to bite the
bullet of technological reform even if a greedy populace shirks its duty. It is difficult to
decide which of these solutions is more improbable, but both are incompatible with basic
democratic values.20
The trade-off model confronts us with dilemmas--environmentally sound technology
vs. prosperity, workers' satisfaction and control vs. productivity, etc.--where what we need
are syntheses. Unless the problems of modern industrialism can be solved in ways that both
enhance public welfare and win public support, there is little reason to hope that they will
ever be solved. But how can technological reform be reconciled with prosperity when it

16
places a variety of new limits on the economy?
The child labor case shows how apparent dilemmas arise on the boundaries of cultural
change, specifically, where the social definition of major technologies is in transition. In such
situations, social groups excluded from the original design network articulate their
unrepresented interests politically. New values the outsiders believe would enhance their
welfare appear as mere ideology to insiders who are adequately represented by the existing
designs.
This is a difference of perspective, not of nature. Yet the illusion of esssential conflict
is renewed whenever major social changes affect technology. At first, satisfying the demands
of new groups after the fact has visible costs and, if it is done clumsily, will indeed reduce
efficiency until better designs are found. But usually better designs can be found and what
appeared to be an insuperable barrier to growth dissolves in the face of technological change.
This situation indicates the essential difference between economic exchange and
technique. Exchange is all about trade-offs: more of A means less of B. But the aim of
technical advance is precisely to avoid such dilemmas by elegant designs that optimize
several variables at once. A single clevery conceived mechanism may correspond to many
different social demands, one structure to many functions.21 Design is not a zero-sum
economic game but an ambivalent cultural process that serves a multiplicity of values and
social groups without necessarily sacrificing efficiency.

X. The Technical Code

That these conflicts over social control of technology are not new can be seen from
the interesting case of the "bursting boilers."22 Steamboat boilers were the first technology
the U.S. Government subjected to safety regulation. Over 5000 people were killed or injured
in hundreds of steamboat explosions from 1816, when regulation was first proposed, to 1852,
when it was actually implemented. Is this many casualties or few? Consumers evidently were
not too alarmed to continue traveling by riverboat in ever increasing numbers.
Understandably, the ship owners interpreted this as a vote of confidence and protested the
excessive cost of safer designs. Yet politicians also won votes demanding safety.
The accident rate fell dramatically once technical improvements were mandated.
Legislation would hardly have been necessary to achieve this outcome had it been technically
determined. But in fact boiler design was relative to a social judgment about safety. That
judgment could have been made on strictly market grounds, as the shippers wished, or
politically, with differing technical results. In either case, those results constitute a proper
boiler. What a boiler "is" was thus defined through a long process of political struggle
culminating finally in uniform codes issued by the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers.
This example shows just how technology adapts to social change. What I call the
"technical code" of the object mediates the process. That code responds to the cultural
horizon of the society at the level of technical design. Quite down-to-earth technical
parameters such as the choice and processing of materials are socially specified by the code.
The illusion of technical necessity arises from the fact that the code is thus literally "cast in
iron" or "set in concrete" as the case may be.23
Conservative anti-regulatory social philosophies are based on this illusion. They
forget that the design process always already incorporates standards of safety and
environmental compatibility; similarly, all technologies support some basic level of user or
worker initiative. A properly made technical object simply must meet these standards to be
recognized as such. We do not treat conformity as an expensive addd-on, but regard it as an
intrinsic production cost. Raising the standards means altering the definition of the object, not
paying a price for an alternative good or ideological value as the trade-off model holds.

17
 But what of the much discussed cost/benefit ratio of design changes such as those
mandated by environmental or other similar legislation? These calculations have some
application to transitional situations, before technological advances responding to new values
fundamentally alter the terms of the problem. But all too often, the results depend on
economists' very rough estimates of the monetary value of such things as a day of trout
fishing or an asthma attack. If made without prejudice, these estimates may well help to
prioritize policy alternatives. But one cannot legitimately generalize from such policy
applications to a universal theory of the costs of regulation.
Such fetishism of efficiency ignores our ordinary understanding of the concept which
alone is relevant to social decision-making. In that everyday sense, efficiency concerns the
narrow range of values that economic actors routinely affect by their decisions.
Unproblematic aspects of technology are not included. In theory one can decompose any
technical object and account for each of its elements in terms of the goals it meets, whether it
be safety, speed, reliability, etc., but in practice no one is interested in opening the "black
box" to see what is inside.
For example, once the boiler code is established, such things as the thickness of a wall
or the design of a safety valve appear as essential to the object. The cost of these features is
not broken out as the specific "price" of safety and compared unfavorably with a more
efficient but less secure version of the technology. Violating the code in order to lower costs
is a crime, not a trade-off. And since all further progress takes place on the basis of the new
safety standard, soon no one looks back to the good old days of cheaper, insecure designs.
Design standards are only controversial while they are in flux. Resolved conflicts
over technology are quickly forgotten. Their outcomes, a welter of taken-for-granted
technical and legal standards, are embodied in a stable code, and form the background against
which economic actors manipulate the unstable portions of the environment in the pursuit of
efficiency. The code is not varied in real world economic calculations but treated as a fixed
input.
Anticipating the stabilization of a new code, one can often ignore contemporary
arguments that will soon be silenced by the emergence of a new horizon of efficiency
calculations. This is what happened with boiler design and child labor; presumably, the
current debates on environmentalism will have a similar history, and we will someday mock
those who object to cleaner air as a "false principle of humanity" that violates technological
imperatives.
Non-economic values intersect the economy in the technical code. The examples we
are dealing with illustrate this point clearly. The legal standards that regulate workers'
economic activity have a significant impact on every aspect of their lives. In the child labor
case, regulation helped to widen educational opportunities with consequences that are not
primarily economic in character. In the riverboat case, Americans gradually chose high levels
of security and boiler design came to reflect that choice. Ultimately, this was no trade-off of
one good for another, but a non-economic decision about the value of human life and the
responsibilities of government.
Technology is thus not merely a means to an end; technical design standards define
major portions of the social environment, such as urban and built spaces, workplaces, medical
activities and expectations, life patterns, and so on. The economic significance of technical
change often pales beside its wider human implications in framing a way of life. In such
cases, regulation defines the cultural framework of the economy; it is not an act in the
economy.

XI. The Consequences of Technology

The theory sketched here suggests the possibility of a general reform of technology.

18
But dystopian critics object that the mere fact of pursuing efficiency or technical
effectiveness already does inadmissible violence to human beings and nature. Universal
functionalization destroys the integrity of all that is. As Heidegger argues, an "objectless"
world of mere resources replaces a world of "things" treated with respect for their own sake
as the gathering places of our manifold engagements with "being."24
This critique gains force from the actual perils with which modern technology
threatens the world today. But my suspicions are aroused by Heidegger's famous contrast
between a dam on the Rhine and a Greek chalice. It would be difficult to find a more
tendentious comparison. No doubt modern technology is immensely more destructive than
any other. And Heidegger is right to argue that means are not truly neutral, that their
substantive content affects society independent of the goals they serve. But this content is not
essentially destructive; rather, it is a matter of design and social insertion.
In another text, Heidegger shows us a jug "gathering" the contexts in which it was
created and functions. There is no reason why modern technology cannot also "gather" its
multiple contexts, albeit with less romantic pathos. This is in fact one way of interpreting
contemporary demands for such things as environmentally sound technology, applications of
medical technology that respect human freedom and dignity, urban designs that create
humane living spaces, production methods that protect workers' health and offer scope for
their intelligence, and so on. What are these demands if not a call to reconstruct modern
technology so that it gathers a wider range of contexts to itself rather than reducing its
natural, human and social environment to mere resources?
Heidegger would not take these alternatives very seriously because he reifies modern
technology as something separate from society, as an inherently contextless force aiming at
pure power. If this is the "essence" of technology, reform would be merely extrinsic. But at
this point Heidegger's position converges with the very Prometheanism he rejects. Both
depend on the narrow definition of technology that, at least since Bacon and Descartes, has
emphasized its destiny to control the world to the exclusion of its equally essential
contextual embeddedness. I believe that this definition reflects the capitalist environment in
which modern technology first developed.
The exemplary modern master of technology is the entrepreneur, singlemindedly
focussed on production and profit. The enterprise is a radically decontextualized platform for
action, without the traditional responsibilities for persons and places that went with technical
power in the past. It is the autonomy of the enterprise that makes it possible to distinguish so
sharply between intended and unintended consequences, between goals and contextual
effects, and to ignore the latter.
The narrow focus of modern technology meets the needs of a particular hegemony; it
is not a metaphysical condition. Under that hegemony technological design is unusually
decontextualized and destructive. It is that hegemony that is called to account, not technology
per se, when we point out that today technical means form an increasingly threatening life
environment. It is that hegemony, as it has embodied itself in technology, that must be
challenged in the struggle for technological reform.

XII. The "Essence" of Technology

Heidegger rejects any merely social diagnosis of the ills of technological societies and
claims that the source of their problems dates back at least to Plato, that modern societies
merely realize a telos immanent in Western metaphysics from the beginning. His originality
consists in pointing out that the ambition to control being is itself a way of being and hence
subordinate at some deeper level to an ontological dispensation beyond human control.
Heidegger's demand for a new response to the challenge of this dispensation is so shrouded in
obscurity that no one has ever been able to give it a concrete content. The overall effect of his

19
critique is to condemn human agency, at least in modern times, and to confuse essential
differences between types of technological development.
This confusion has a historical aspect. Heidegger is perfectly aware that technical
activity was not "metaphysical" in his sense until recently. He must therefore sharply
distinguish modern technology from all earlier forms of technique, obscuring the many real
connections and continuities. I would argue, on the contrary, that what is new about modern
technology can only be understood against the background of the traditional technical world
from which it developed. Furthermore, the saving potential of modern technology can only be
realized by recapturing certain traditional features of technique. Perhaps this is why theories
that treat modern technology as a unique phenomenon lead to such pessimistic conclusions.
Modern technology differs from earlier technical practices through significant shifts
in emphasis rather than generically. There is nothing unprecedented in its chief features, such
as the reduction of objects to raw materials, the use of precise measurement and plans, the
technical control of some human beings by others, large scales of operation. It is the
centrality of these features that is new, and of course the consequences of that are truly
without precedent.
What does a broader historical picture of technology show? The privileged
dimensions of modern technology appear in a larger context that includes many currently
subordinated features that were defining for it in former times. For example, until the
generalization of Taylorism, technical life was essentially about the choice of a vocation.
Technology was associated with a way of life, with specific forms of personal development,
virtues, etc. Only the success of capitalist deskilling finally reduced these human dimensions
of technique to marginal phenomena.
Similarly, modern management has replaced the traditional collegiality of the guilds
with new forms of technical control. Just as vocational investment in work continues in
certain exceptional settings, so collegiality survives in a few professional or cooperative
workplaces. Numerous historical studies show that these older forms are not so much
incompatible with the "esssence" of technology as with capitalist economics. Given a
different social context and a different path of technical development, it might be possible to
recover these traditional technical values and organizational forms in new ways in a future
evolution of modern technological society.
Technology is an elaborate complex of related activities that crystallizes around tool
making and using in every society. Matters such as the transmission of techniques or the
management of its natural consequences are not extrinsic to technology per se but are
dimensions of it. When, in modern societies, it becomes advantageous to minimize these
aspects of technology, that too is a way of accomodating it to a certain social demand, not the
revelation of its pre-existing "esssence." In so far as it makes sense to talk about an essence of
technology at all, it must embrace the whole field revealed by historical study, and not only a
few traits ethnocentrically privileged by our society.

XIII. Conclusion: Subversive Rationalization

For generations faith in progress was supported by two widely held beliefs: that
technical necessity dictates the path of development, and that the pursuit of efficiency
provides a basis for identifying that path. I have argued here that both these beliefs are false,
and that furthermore, they are ideologies employed to justify restrictions on opportunities to
participate in the institutions of industrial society. I conclude that we can achieve a new type
of technological society that can support a broader range of values. Democracy is one of the
chief values a redesigned industrialism could better serve.
What does it mean to democratize technology? The problem is not primarily one of
legal rights but of initiative and participation. Legal forms may eventually routinize claims

20
that are asserted informally at first, but the forms will remain hollow unless they emerge from
the experience and needs of individuals resisting a specifically technological hegemony.
That resistance takes many forms, from union struggles over health and safety in
nuclear power plants to community struggles over toxic waste disposal to political demands
for regulation of reproductive technologies. These movements alert us to the need to take
technological externalities into account and demand design changes responsive to the
enlarged context revealed in that accounting.
Such technological controversies have become an inescapable feature of
contemporary political life, laying out the parameters for official "technology assessment."25
They prefigure the creation of a new public sphere embracing the technical background of
social life, and a new style of rationalization that internalizes unaccounted costs born by
"nature," i.e., some-thing or -body exploitable in the pursuit of profit. Here respect for nature
is not antagonistic to technology but enhances efficiency in broad terms.
As these controversies become commonplace, surprising new forms of resistance and
new types of demands emerge alongside them. Networking has given rise to one among
many such innovative public reactions to technology. Individuals who are incorporated into
new types of technical networks have learned to resist through the net itself in order to
influence the powers that control it. This is not a contest for wealth or administrative power,
but a struggle to subvert the technical practices, procedures and designs structuring everyday
life.
The example of the Minitel can serve as a model of this new approach. In France, the
computer was politicized as soon as the government attempted to introduce a highly
rationalistic information system to the general public. Users "hacked" the network in which
they were inserted and altered its functioning, introducing human communication on a vast
scale where only the centralized distribution of information had been planned.
It is instructive to compare this case to the movements of AIDS patients.26 Just as a
rationalistic conception of the computer tends to occlude its communicative potentialities, so
in medicine, caring functions have become mere sideffects of treatment, which is itself
understood in exclusively technical terms. Patients become objects of this technique, more or
less "compliant" to management by physicians. The incorporation of thousands of incurably
ill AIDS patients into this system destabilized it and exposed it to new challenges.
The key issue was access to experimental treatment. In effect, clinical research is one
way in which a highly technologized medical system can care for those it cannot yet cure.
But until quite recently access to medical experiments has been severly restricted by
paternalistic concern for patients' welfare. AIDS patients were able to open up access because
the networks of contagion in which they were caught were parallelled by social networks that
were already mobilized around gay rights at the time the disease was first diagnosed.
Instead of participating in medicine individually as objects of a technical practice,
they challenged it collectively and politically. They "hacked" the medical system and turned
it to new purposes. Their struggle represents a counter tendency to the technocratic
organization of medicine, an attempt at a recovery of its symbolic dimension and caring
functions.
As in the case of the Minitel, it is not obvious how to evaluate this challenge in terms
of the customary concept of politics. Nor do these subtle struggles against the growth of
silence in technological societies appear significant from the standpoint of the reactionary
ideologies that contend noisily with capitalist modernism today. Yet the demand for
communication these movements represent is so fundamental that it can serve as a touchstone
for the adequacy of our concept of politics to the technological age.
These resistances, like the environmental movement, challenge the horizon of
rationality under which technology is currently designed. Rationalization in our society

21
responds to a particular definition of technology as a means to the goal of profit and power. A
broader understanding of technology suggests a very different notion of rationalization based
on responsibility for the human and natural contexts of technical action. I call this
"subversive rationalization" because it requires technological advances that can only be made
in opposition to the dominant hegemony. It represents an alternative to both the ongoing
celebration of technocracy triumphant and the gloomy Heideggerian counterclaim that "Only
a God can save us" from techno-cultural disaster.27
But is subversive rationalization in this sense socialist? There is certainly room for
discussion of the connection between this new technological agenda and the old idea of
socialism. I believe there is significant continuity. In socialist theory, workers' lives and
dignity stood for the larger contexts modern technology ignores. The destruction of their
minds and bodies on the workplace was viewed as a contingent consequence of capitalist
technical design. The implication that socialist societies might design a very different
technology under a different cultural horizon was perhaps given only lip service, but at least
it was formulated as a goal.
We can make a similar argument today over a wider range of contexts in a broader
variety of institutional settings with considerably more urgency. I am inclined to call such a
position socialist and to hope that in time it can replace the image of socialism projected by
the failed communist experiment.
More important than this terminological question is the substantive point I have been
trying to make. Why has democracy not been extended to technically mediated domains of
social life despite a century of struggles? Is it because technology excludes democracy, or
because it has been used to block it? The weight of the argument supports the second
conclusion. Technology can support more than one type of technological civilization, and
may someday be incorporated into a more democratic society than ours.

22
 NOTES
1. This paper expands a presentation of my book, Critical Theory of Technology
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), delivered at the American Philosophical
Association, Dec. 28, 1991.

2. See, for example, Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, On Democracy: Toward a
Transformation of American Society (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1983); Frank
Cunningham, Democratic Theory and Socialism (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987).

3. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, T. Parsons, trans.
(New York: Scribners, 1958), pp. 181-82.

4. Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, W. Lovitt, trans. (New

York: Harper and Row, 1977); Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, J. Wilkinson, trans.
(New York: Vintage, 1964).

5. Richard W. Miller, Analyzing Marx: Morality, Power and History (Princeton:

Princeton Univ. Press, 1984), pp. 188-195.

6. Karl Marx, Capital (New York: Modern Library, 1906), p. 13.

7. See, for example, David Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery

23
 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 175-79. For a general presentation of
constructivism, see Bruno Latour, Science in Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ.
Press, 1987.
8. Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker, "The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts:
or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each
Other," Social Studies of Science, no. 14, 1984.

9. See Langdon's Winner's blistering critique of the characteristic limitations of the

position, entitled, "Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding it Empty: Social
Constructivism and the Philosophy of Technology," The Technology of Discovery and the
Discovery of Technology: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of the Society
for Philosophy and Technology (Blacksburg, Va.: The Society for Philosophy and
Technology, 1991).

10. Hansard's Debates, Third Series: Parliamentary Debates 1830-1891, vol. LXXIII,
1844 (Feb. 22-Apr. 22), pp. 1123 and 1120.

11. A useful starting point for the development of a hermeneutics of technology is

offered by Paul Ricoeur in "The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a
Text," P. Rabinow and W. Sullivan, eds., Interpretive Social Science: A Reader (Berkeley:
Univ. of California,

24
 Press, 1979).

12. Michel de Certeau used the phrase "rhetorics of technology" to refer to the
representations and practices that contextualize technologies and assign them a social
meaning. De Certeau chose the term "rhetoric" because that meaning is not simply present at
hand but communicates a content that can be articulated by studying the connotations
technology evokes. See the special issue of Traverse, no. 26, Oct. 1982, entitled Les
Rhetoriques de la Technologie, and, in that issue, especially Marc Guillaume's article,
Telespectres, pp. 22-23.

13. Andrew Feenberg, "From Information to Communication: The French Experience

with Videotex," Martin Lea, ed., The Social Contexts of Computer Mediated Communication
(London: Harvester-Wheatsheaf, 1992).

14. Jean-Francois Lyotard, La Condition Postmoderne (Paris: Editions de Minuit,

1979), p. 34.

15. For an approach to social theory based on this notion (called, however, doxa, by
the author), see Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, R. Nice, trans. (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977), pp. 164-70.

25
 16. Herbert Marcuse, "Industrialization and Capitalism in the Work of Marx Weber,"
in Negations, trans. J. Shapiro, (Boston: Beacon, 1968).

17. Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review,
1974); David Noble, Forces of Production (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984).

18. Bernard Gendron and Nancy Holstrom, "Marx, Machinery and Alienation,"
Research in Philosophy and Technology, vol. 2, 1979.

19. Foucault's most persuasive presentation of this view is Discipline and Punish, A.
Sheridan, trans. (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).

20. See, for example, Robert Heilbroner, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect (New
York: Norton, 1975). For a review of these issues in some of their earliest formulations, see
Andrew Feenberg, "Beyond the Politics of Survival," Theory and Society, no. 7, 1979.

21. This aspect of technology, called "concretization," is explained in Gilbert

Simondon, La Mode d'Existence des Objets Techniques (Paris: Aubier, 1958), chap. 1.

26
 22. John G. Burke, "Bursting Boilers and the Federal Power," M. Kranzberg and W.
Davenport, eds. Technology and Culture (New York: New American Library, 1972).

23. The technical code expresses the "standpoint" of the dominant social groups at the
level of design and engineering.It is thus relative to a social position without for that matter
being a mere ideology or psychological disposition. As I will argue in the last section of this
paper, struggle for socio-technical change can emerge from the subordinated standpoints of
those dominated within technological systems. For more on the concept of standpoint
epistemology, see Sandra Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? (Ithaca: Cornell
Univ. Press, 1991).

24. The texts by Heidegger discussed here are, in order, "The Question Concerning
Technology," op. cit.; and "The Thing," Poetry, Language, Thought, A. Hofstadter, trans.
(New York: Harper & Row, 1971).

25. Alberto Cambrosio and Camille Limoges, "Controversies as Governing Processes

in Technology Assessment," in Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, vol. 3, no. 4,
1991.

26. For more on the problem of AIDS in this context, see Andrew

27
 Feenberg, "On Being a Human Subject: Interest and Obligation in the Experimental
Treatment of Incurable Disease," The Philosophical Forum, vol. xxiii, no. 3, Spring 1992.

27. "Only a God Can Save Us Now," Martin Heidegger interviewed in Der Spiegel,
translated by D. Schendler, Graduate Philosophy Journal, vol. 6, no. 1, Winter 1977.

28
3. [Forthcoming in Tailor-Made BioTechnologies, vol. 1, no. 1, April-May 2005.]

Critical Theory of Technology: An Overview

Andrew Feenberg
feenberg@sfu.ca

Abstract: Critical theory of technology combines insights from philosophy of

technology and constructivist technology studies. A framework is proposed for
analyzing technologies and technological systems at several levels, a primary level at
which natural objects and people are decontextualized to identify affordances,
complemented by a secondary level of recontextualization in natural, technical and
social environments. Technologies have distinctive features as such while also
exhibiting biases derived from their place in society. The technical code is the rule
under which technologies are realized in a social context with biases reflecting the
unequal distribution of social power. Subordinate groups may challenge the technical
code with impacts on design as technologies evolve. Examples are discussed from
biotechnology and computing.

Technology and Finitude

What makes technical action different from other relations to reality? This question is
often answered in terms of notions such as efficiency or control which are themselves internal
to a technical approach to the world. To judge an action as more or less efficient is already to
have determined it to be technical and therefore an appropriate object of such a judgment.
Similarly, the concept of control implied in technique is technical and so not a
distinguishing criterion.
There is tradition in philosophy of technology that resolves this problem by invoking the
concept of impersonal domination first found in Marxs description of capitalism. This
tradition, associated with Heidegger and the Frankfurt School, remains too abstract to satisfy
us today but it does identify an extraordinary feature of technical action (Feenberg, 2004a). I
formulate this feature in systems theoretic terms, distinguishing the situation of a finite actor
from a hypothetical infinite actor capable of a do from nowhere.6 The latter can act on its
object without reciprocity. God creates the world without suffering any recoil, side effects, or
blowback. This is the ultimate practical hierarchy establishing a one way relation between
actor and object. But we are not gods. Human beings can only act on a system to which they
themselves belong. This is the practical significance of embodiment. As a consequence, every
one of our interventions returns to us in some form as feedback from our objects. This is
obvious in everyday communication where anger usually evokes anger, kindness kindness,
and so on.
Technical action represents a partial escape from the human condition. We call an action
technical when the actors impact on the object is out of all proportion to the return
feedback affecting the actor. We hurtle two tons of metal down the freeway while sitting in
comfort listening to Mozart or the Beatles. This typical instance of technical action is
purposely framed here to dramatize the independence of actor from object. In the larger
scheme of things, the driver on the freeway may be at peace in his car but the city he inhabits
with millions of other drivers is his life environment and it is shaped by the automobile into a
type of place that has major impacts on him. So the technical subject does not escape from
6
The implied reference is to the concept of a godlike view from nowhere. If it were not too cute, one
might rephrase the point here as a do from knowhere, i.e. action understood as just as indifferent to its objects
as detached knowing.

29
the logic of finitude after all. But the reciprocity of finite action is dissipated or deferred in
such a way as to create the space of a necessary illusion of transcendence.
Heidegger and Marcuse understand this illusion as the structure of modern experience.
According to Heideggers history of being, the modern revealing is biased by a tendency to
take every object as a potential raw material for technical action. Objects enter our experience
only in so far as we notice their usefulness in the technological system. Release from this
form of experience may come from a new mode of revealing but Heidegger has no idea how
revealings come and go.
Like Marcuse, I relate the technological revealing not to the history of being, but to the
consequences of persisting divisions between classes and between rulers and ruled in
technically mediated institutions of all types. Technology can be and is configured in such a
way as to reproduce the rule of the few over the many. This is a possibility inscribed in the
very structure of technical action which establishes a one way direction of cause and effect.
Technology is a two-sided phenomenon: on the one hand the operator, on the other the
object. Where both operator and object are human beings, technical action is an exercise of
power. Where, further, society is organized around technology, technological power is the
principle form of power in the society. It is realized through designs which narrow the range
of interests and concerns that can be represented by the normal functioning of the technology
and the institutions which depend on it. This narrowing distorts the structure of experience
and causes human suffering and damage to the natural environment.
The exercise of technical power evokes resistances of a new type immanent to the one-
dimensional technical system. Those excluded from the design process eventually suffer the
undesirable consequences of technologies and protest. Opening up technology to a wider
range of interests and concerns could lead to its redesign for greater compatibility with the
human and natural limits on technical action. A democratic transformation from below can
shorten the feedback loops from damaged human lives and nature and guide a radical reform
of the technical sphere.
Instrumentalization Theory
Much philosophy of technology offers very abstract and unhistorical accounts of the
essence of technology. These accounts appear painfully thin compared to the rich complexity
revealed in social studies of technology. Yet technology has the distinguishing features
sketched above and these have normative implications. As Marcuse argued in One-
Dimensional Man, the choice of a technical rather than a political or moral solution to a
social problem is politically and morally significant. The dilemma divides technology studies
into two opposed branches. Most essentialist philosophy of technology is critical of
modernity, even anti-modern, while most empirical research on technologies ignores the
larger issue of modernity and thus appears uncritical, even conformist, to social critics
(Feenberg 2003).
I find it difficult to explain my solution to this dilemma as it crosses lines we are used to
standing behind. These lines cleanly separate the substantivist critique of technology as we
find it in Heidegger from the constructivism of many contemporary historians and
sociologists. These two approaches are usually seen as totally opposed. Nevertheless, there is
something obviously right in both. I have therefore attempted to combine their insights in a
common framework which I call instrumentalization theory.
Instrumentalization theory holds that technology must be analyzed at two levels, the
level of our original functional relation to reality and the level of design and implementation.
At the first level, we seek and find affordances that can be mobilized in devices and systems
by decontextualizing the objects of experience and reducing them to their useful properties.
This involves a process of de-worlding in which objects are torn out of their original contexts
and exposed to analysis and manipulation while subjects are positioned for distanced control.

30
Modern societies are unique in de-worlding human beings in order to subject them to
technical actionwe call it managementand in prolonging the basic gesture of de-worlding
theoretically in technical disciplines which become the basis for complex technical networks.
At the second level, we introduce designs that can be integrated with other already
existing devices and systems and with various social constraints such as ethical and aesthetic
principles. The primary level simplifies objects for incorporation into a device while the
secondary level integrates the simplified objects to a natural and social environment. This
involves a process which, following Heidegger, we can call disclosure or revealing of a
world. Disclosing involves a complementary process of realization which qualifies the
original functionalization by orienting it toward a new world involving those same objects
and subjects.
These two levels are analytically distinguished. No matter how abstract the affordances
identified at the primary level, they carry social content from the secondary level in the
elementary contingencies of a particular approach to the materials. Similarly, secondary
instrumentalizations such as design specifications presuppose the identification of the
affordances to be assembled and concretized. This is an important point. Cutting down a tree
to make lumber and building a house with it are not the primary and secondary
instrumentalizations respectively. Cutting down a tree decontextualizes it, but in line with
various technical, legal and aesthetic considerations determining what kinds of trees can
become lumber of what size and shape and are salable as such. The act of cutting down the
tree is thus not simply primary but involves both levels as one would expect of an analytic
distinction.
The theory is complicated, however, by the fact that technical devices and systems are
built up from simple elements that have a wide variety of potentialities. The process in which
these elements are combined consists in successive impositions of limitations on the
materials. The secondary instrumentalizations play an increasingly important role as this
process advances. Consider again the example of the tree and the house. Although the output
of the logger is constrained to some extent by secondary instrumentalizations, it is far less so
than the work of the carpenter who uses the logs after they are turned into boards to build the
house. The logger need not know anything about the building codes, family structures, and
architectural fashions that will eventually constrain the carpenter's work. Thus there is a
dynamic process in which the materials and simpler technical elements are mediated ever
more thoroughly.
This dynamic is especially developed in differentiated modern societies. Some of the
functions of the secondary instrumentalization get distinguished institutionally in particularly
striking ways. Thus the aesthetic function, an important secondary instrumentalization, may
be separated out and assigned to a corporate "design division." Artists will then work in
parallel with engineers. This partial institutional separation of the levels of
instrumentalization encourages the belief that they are completely distinct. This obscures the
social nature of every technical act, including the work of engineers liberated from aesthetic
considerations, if not from many other social influences, by their corporate environment.
Analysis at the first level is inspired by categories introduced by Heidegger and other
substantivist critics of technology. However, because I do not ontologize those categories,
nor treat them as a full account of the essence of technology, I believe I am able to avoid
many of the problems associated with substantivism, particularly its anti-modernism.
Analysis at the second level is inspired by empirical study of technology in the constructivist
vein. I focus especially on the way actors perceive the meanings of the devices and systems
they design and use. But again, I am selective in drawing on this tradition. I do not accept its
exaggerated and largely rhetorical empiricism and its rejection of the categories of traditional
social theory. Instead, I attempt to integrate its methodological insights to a more broadly

31
conceived theory of modernity.
Culture
In determinist and instrumentalist accounts of technology, efficiency serves as the unique
principle of selection between successful and failed technical initiatives. On these terms
technology appears to borrow the virtues generally attributed to scientific rationality.
Philosophy of technology demystifies these claims to the necessity and universality of
technical decisions. In the 1980s, the constructivist turn in technology studies offered a
methodologically fruitful approach to demonstrating this in a wide range of concrete cases.
Constructivists show that many possible configurations of resources can yield a working
device capable of efficiently fulfilling its function. The different interests of the various
actors involved in design are reflected in subtle differences in function and preferences for
one or another design of what is nominally the same device. Social choices intervene in the
selection of the problem definition as well as its solution. Efficiency is thus not decisive in
explaining the success or failure of alternative designs since several viable options usually
compete at the inception of a line of development. Technology is underdetermined by the
criterion of efficiency and responsive to the various particular interests and ideologies that
select among these options. Technology is not rational in the old positivist sense of the
term but socially relative; the outcome of technical choices is a world that supports the way
of life of one or another influential social group. On these terms the technocratic tendencies
of modern societies could be interpreted as an effect of limiting the groups intervening in
design to technical experts and the corporate and political elites they serve.
In my formulation of this thesis, I argue that the intervention of interests and ideologies
does not necessarily reduce efficiency, but biases its achievement according to a broader
social program. I have introduced the concept of "technical code" to articulate this
relationship between social and technical requirements. A technical code is the realization of
an interest or ideology in a technically coherent solution to a problem. Although some
technical codes are formulated explicitly by technologists themselves, I am seeking a more
general analytic tool that can be applied even in the absence of such formulations. More
precisely, then, a technical code is a criterion that selects between alternative feasible
technical designs in terms of a social goal. "Feasible" here means technically workable. Goals
are "coded" in the sense of ranking items as ethically permitted or forbidden, or aesthetically
better or worse. or more or less socially desirable. These types of codes reflect the secondary
instrumentalizations of the instrumentalization theory, such as ethical and aesthetic
mediations. "Socially desirable" refers not to some universal criterion but to a hegemonic
value such as health or the nuclear family. Such values are formulated by the social theorist
as technical codes in ideal-typical terms, i.e. as a simple rule or criterion. A prime example in
the history of technology is the imperative requirement to deskill labor in the course of
industrialization rather than preserving or enhancing skills.
Where such codes are reinforced by individuals perceived self-interest and law, their
political import usually passes unnoticed. This is what it means to call a certain way of life
culturally secured and a corresponding power hegemonic. Just as political philosophy
problematizes cultural formations that have rooted themselves in law, so philosophy of
technology problematizes formations that have successfully rooted themselves in technical
codes.
Operational Autonomy
For many of critics of technological society, Marx is now irrelevant, an outdated critic of
capitalist economics. I disagree. I believe Marx had important insights for philosophy of
technology. He focused so exclusively on economics because production was the principal
domain of application of technology in his time. With the penetration of technical mediation

32
into every sphere of social life, the contradictions and potentials he identified in technology
follow as well.
In Marx the capitalist is ultimately distinguished not so much by ownership of wealth as
by control of the conditions of labor. The owner has not merely an economic interest in what
goes on within his factory, but also a technical interest. By reorganizing the work process, he
can increase production and profits. Control of the work process, in turn, leads to new ideas
for machinery and the mechanization of industry follows in short order. This leads over time
to the invention of a specific type of machinery which deskills workers and requires
management. Management acts technically on persons, extending the hierarchy of technical
subject and object into human relations in pursuit of efficiency. Eventually professional
managers represent and in some sense replace owners in control of the new industrial
organizations. Marx calls this the impersonal domination inherent in capitalism in
contradistinction to the personal domination of earlier social formations. It is a domination
embodied in the design of tools and the organization of production. In a final stage, which
Marx did not anticipate, techniques of management and organization and types of technology
first applied to the private sector are exported to the public sector where they influence fields
such as government administration, medicine, and education. The whole life environment of
society comes under the rule of technique. In this form the essence of the capitalist system
can be transferred to socialist regimes built on the model of the Soviet Union.7
The entire development of modern societies is thus marked by the paradigm of
unqualified control over the labor process on which capitalist industrialism rests. It is this
control which orients technical development toward disempowering workers and the
massification of the public. I call this control "operational autonomy," the freedom of the
owner or his representative to make independent decisions about how to carry on the business
of the organization, regardless of the views or interests of subordinate actors and the
surrounding community. The operational autonomy of management and administration
positions them in a technical relation to the world, safe from the consequences of their own
actions. In addition, it enables them to reproduce the conditions of their own supremacy at
each iteration of the technologies they command. Technocracy is an extension of such a
system to society as a whole in response to the spread of technology and management to
every sector of social life. Technocracy armors itself against public pressures, sacrifices
values, and ignores needs incompatible with its own reproduction and the perpetuation of its
technical traditions.
The technocratic tendency of modern societies represents one possible path of
development, a path that is peculiarly truncated by the demands of power. Technology has
other beneficial potentials that are suppressed under the capitalism and state socialism that
could emerge along a different developmental path. In subjecting human beings to technical
control at the expense of traditional modes of life while sharply restricting participation in
design, technocracy perpetuates elite power structures inherited from the past in technically
rational forms. In the process it mutilates not just human beings and nature, but technology as
well. A different power structure would innovate a different technology with different
consequences.
Is this just a long detour back to the notion of the neutrality of technology? I do not
believe so. Neutrality generally refers to the indifference of a specific means to the range of
possible ends it can serve. If we assume that technology as we know it today is indifferent
with respect to human ends in general, then indeed we have neutralized it and placed it

7
How Marx could overlook this possible outcome, along with most 19 th Century radicals thinkers, is
discussed in Feenberg (2004b) through a comparison of Edward Bellamys utopian novel Looking Backward
and Huxleys famous dystopia, Brave New World, which each exemplify a different conception of the
boundaries of technique.

33
beyond possible controversy. Alternatively, it might be argued that technology as such is
neutral with respect to all the ends that can be technically served. But neither of these
positions make sense. There is no such thing as technology as such. Today we employ this
specific technology with limitations that are due not only to the state of our knowledge but
also to the power structures that bias this knowledge and its applications. This really existing
contemporary technology favors specific ends and obstructs others.
The larger implication of this approach has to do with the ethical limits of the technical
codes elaborated under the rule of operational autonomy. The very same process in which
capitalists and technocrats were freed to make technical decisions without regard for the
needs of workers and communities generated a wealth of new values, ethical demands
forced to seek voice discursively. Most fundamentally, democratization of technology is
about finding new ways of privileging these excluded values and realizing them in the new
technical arrangements.
A fuller realization of technology is possible and necessary. We are more and more
frequently alerted to this necessity by the threatening side effects of technological advance.
Technology bites back, as Edward Tenner reminds us, with fearful consequence as the
deferred feedback loops that join technical subject and object become more obtrusive (Tenner
1996). The very success of our technology in modifying nature insures that these loops will
grow shorter as we disturb nature more violently in attempting to control it. In a society such
as ours, which is completely organized around technology, the threat to survival is clear.
Resistance
What can be done to reverse the tide? Only the democratization of technology can help.
This requires in the first instance shattering the illusion of transcendence by revealing the
feedback loops to the technical actor. The spread of knowledge by itself is not enough to
accomplish this. For knowledge to be taken seriously, the range of interests represented by
the actor must be enlarged so as to make it more difficult to offload feedback from the object
onto disempowered groups. But only a democratically constituted alliance of actors,
embracing those very groups, is sufficiently exposed to the consequences its own actions to
resist harmful projects and designs at the outset. Such a broadly constituted democratic
technical alliance would take into account destructive effects of technology on the natural
environment as well as on human beings.
Democratic movements in the technical sphere aim to constitute such alliances. But this
implies restoring the agency of those treated as objects of management in the dominant
technical code. How to understand this transformation? It will not work to simply multiply
the number of managers. Subordinate actors must intervene in a different way from dominant
ones.
Michel de Certeau offers an interesting interpretation of Foucault's theory of power
which can be applied to this problem (de Certeau 1980). He distinguishes between the
strategies of groups with an institutional base from which to exercise power and the tactics of
those subject to that power and who, lacking a base for acting continuously and legitimately,
maneuver and improvise micropolitical resistances. Note that de Certeau does not personalize
power as a possession of individuals but articulates the Foucauldian correlation of power and
resistance. This works remarkably well as a way of thinking about immanent tensions within
technically mediated organizations, not surprisingly given Foucaults concern with
institutions based on scientific-technical regimes of truth.
Technological systems impose technical management on human beings. Some manage,
others are managed. These two positions correspond to de Certeaus strategic and tactical
standpoints. The world appears quite differently from these two positions. The strategic
standpoint privileges considerations of control and efficiency and looks for affordances,
precisely what Heidegger criticizes in technology. My most basic complaint about Heidegger

34
is that he himself adopts unthinkingly the strategic standpoint on technology in order to
condemn it. He sees it exclusively as a system of control and overlooks its role in the lives of
those subordinate to it.
The tactical standpoint of those subordinates is far richer. It is the everyday lifeworld of
a modern society in which devices form a nearly total environment. In this environment, the
individuals identify and pursue meanings. Power is only tangentially at stake in most
interactions, and when it becomes an issue, resistance is temporary and limited in scope by
the position of the individuals in the system. Yet insofar as masses of individuals are enrolled
in technical systems, resistances will inevitably arise and can weigh on the future design and
configuration of the systems and their products.
Consider the example of air pollution. So long as those responsible for it could escape
the health consequences of their actions to green suburbs, leaving poor urban dwellers to
breath filthy air, there was little support for technical solutions to the problem. Pollution
controls were seen as costly and unproductive by those with the power to implement them.
Eventually, a democratic political process sparked by the spread of the problem and protests
by the victims and their advocates legitimated the externalized interests. Only then was it
possible to assemble a social subject including both rich and poor able to make the necessary
reforms. This subject finally forced a redesign of the automobile and other sources of
pollution, taking human health into account. This is an example of a politics of design that
will lead ultimately to a more holistic technological system.
An adequate understanding of the substance of our common life cannot ignore
technology. How we configure and design cities, transportation systems, communication
media, agriculture and industrial production is a political matter. And we are making more
and more choices about health and knowledge in designing the technologies on which
medicine and education increasingly rely. Furthermore, the kinds of things it seems plausible
to propose as advances or alternatives are to a great extent conditioned by the failures of the
existing technologies and the possibilities they suggest. The once controversial claim that
technology is political now seems obvious.
Recontextualizing Strategies
There was a time not so long ago when general condemnation of technology seemed
plausible to many social critics. The attitude lingers and inspires a certain haughty disdain for
technology among intellectuals who nevertheless employ it constantly in their daily lives.
Increasingly, however, social criticism has turned to the study and advocacy of possible
reconfigurations and transformations of technology to accommodate it to values excluded
from the original design networks. This approach emerged first in the environmental
movement which was successful in modifying the design of technologies through regulation
and litigation. Today the approach continues in proposals for transforming biotechnologies
and computing. The instrumentalization theory suggests a general account of the strategies
employed in such movements.
The primary instrumentalization involves decontextualization, which shatters pre-
existing natural arrangements, often of great complexity. Of course no decontextualization
can be absolute. The process is always conditioned by secondary instrumentalizations which
offer a partial recontextualization of the object in terms of various technical and social
requirements. As in the example of logging and construction discussed above, so in every
case where objects are stripped of their natural connections, new technical and social
connections are implicit in the very manner of their reduction and simplification for technical
employment.
Constructive criticism of technology takes aim precisely at the deficiencies in this
recontextualization process for it is here that the bias of design is introduced. This is
particularly clear under capitalism, where successful business strategies often involve

35
breaking free of various social constraints on the pursuit of profits. Thus the favored
recontextualizations tend to be minimal and to ignore the values and interests of many of the
human beings who are involved in capitalist technical networks, whether they be workers,
consumers, or members of a community hosting production facilities. In the case of logging it
has been difficult to convince corporations to pay attention to the health of forests and the
beauty of nature, goods that may appeal to communities in the vicinity and to
environmentalists although neither are invited to participate in the design of logging projects.
Real world ethical controversies involving technology such as this often turn on the
supposed opposition of current standards of technical efficiency and values. But this
opposition is factitious; current technical methods or standards were once discursively
formulated as values and at some time in the past translated into the technical codes we take
for granted today. This point is quite important for answering the usual so-called practical
objections to ethical arguments for social and technological reform. It seems as though the
best way to do the job is compromised by attention to extraneous matters such as health or
natural beauty. But the division between what appears as a condition of technical efficiency
and what appears as a value external to the technical process is itself a function of social and
political decisions biased by unequal power. All technologies incorporate the results of such
decisions and thus favor one or another actors values or in the best of cases combine the
values of several actors in clever combinations that achieve multiple goals.
This latter strategy involves technical concretizations, the multiplication of the
functions served by the structure of the technology.8 In this way wider or neglected contexts
can be brought to bear on technological design without loss of efficiency. A refrigerator
equipped to use an ozone-safe refrigerant achieves environmental goals with the same
structures that keep the milk cold. What goes for devices may be even more true of living
things and human beings enrolled in technical networks. For example, industrial animal
husbandry can be reorganized in ways that respect the needs of animals while employing
their spontaneous behaviors in an improved environment to protect their health and hence the
efficiency of the operation (Bos, Koerkamp and Groenestein, 2003; Bos 2004).
Larger issues of social policy are raised by contemporary genomics in its relation to
agriculture. New developments responsive to the technical code promoted by agribusiness
enhance the operational autonomy of the firm while disempowering farmers with
consequences for their identity as technical actors and in some cases for the productivity of
their fields as well. Alternative research strategies are feasible in which local knowledge and
situations play a larger role, preserving also the role of the farmer in actively deciding on
significant technical aspects of production (Ruivenkamp, 2003). Where the headquarters of
agribusiness firms are located in the developed world and the farmers in the impoverished
periphery, it is possible to speak of technological imperialism without irrationalist
implications. Here struggles over technical design have a clear political content.
Terminal Subjects
I want to conclude these reflections with an example with which I am personally familiar,
which I hope will illustrate the fruitfulness of my approach. I have been involved with the
evolution of communication by computer since the early 1980s both as an active participant
in innovation and as a researcher. I came to this technology with a background in modernity
theory, specifically Heidegger and Marcuse, but it quickly became apparent that they offered
little guidance in understanding computerization. Their theories emphasized the role of
technologies in dominating nature and human beings. Heidegger dismissed the computer as
the pure type of modernitys machinery of control. Its de-worlding power reaches language
itself which is reduced to the mere position of a switch (Heidegger 1998, 140).
8
The concept of concretization was introduced by Gilbert Simondon (1958). For further discussion of this
concept see Feenberg (1999, chap. 9).

36
 But what we were witnessing in the early 1980s was something quite different, the
contested emergence of the new communicative practices of online community.
Subsequently, we have seen cultural critics inspired by modernity theory recycle the old
approach for this new application, denouncing, for example, the supposed degradation of
human communication on the Internet. Albert Borgmann argues that computer networks de-
world the person, reducing human beings to a flow of data the user can easily control
(Borgmann 1992, 108). The terminal subject is basically an asocial monster despite the
appearance of interaction online. But that critique presupposes that computers are actually a
communication medium, if an inferior one, precisely the issue twenty years ago. The prior
question that must therefore be posed concerns the emergence of the medium itself. Most
recently the debate over computerization has touched higher education, where proposals for
automated online learning have met determined faculty resistance in the name of human
values. Meanwhile, actual online education is emerging as a new kind of communicative
practice (Feenberg 2002 chap. 5).
The pattern of these debates is suggestive. Approaches based on modernity theory are
uniformly negative and fail to explain the experience of participants in computer
communication. But this experience can be analyzed in terms of instrumentalization theory.
The computer simplifies a full blown person into a user in order to incorporate him or her
into the network. Users are decontextualized in the sense that they are stripped of body and
community in front of the terminal and positioned as detached technical subjects. At the same
time, a highly simplified world is disclosed to the user which is open to the initiatives of
rational consumers. They are called to exercise choice in this world.
The poverty of this world appears to be a function of the very radical de-worlding
involved in computing. However, we will see that this is not the correct explanation.
Nevertheless, the critique is not entirely artificial; there are types of online activity that
confirm it and certain powerful actors do seek enhanced control through computerization. But
most modernity theorists overlook the struggles and innovations of users engaged in
appropriating the medium to create online communities or legitimate educational innovations.
In ignoring or dismissing these aspects of computerization, they fall back into a more or less
disguised determinism.
The posthumanist approach to the computer inspired by commentators in cultural
studies suffers from related problems. This approach often leads to a singular focus on the
most dehumanizing aspects of computerization, such as anonymous communication, online
role playing, and cybersex (Turkle 1995). Paradoxically, these aspects of the online
experience are interpreted in a positive light as the transcendence of the centered self of
modernity (Stone 1995). But such posthumanism is ultimately complicit with the humanistic
critique of computerization it pretends to transcend in that it accepts a similar definition of
the limits of online interaction. Again, what is missing is any sense of the transformations the
technology undergoes at the hands of users animated by more traditional visions than one
would suspect from this choice of themes (Feenberg and Barney 2004; Kirkpatrick, 2004).
The effective synthesis of these various approaches would offer a more complete picture
of computerization than any one of them alone. In my writings in this field I have tried to
accomplish this. I set out not from a hypothesis about the essence of the computer, for
example, that it privileges control or communication, humanist or posthumanist values, but
rather from an analysis of the way in which such hypotheses influence the actors themselves,
shaping design and usage.
The lifeworld of technology is the medium within which the actors engage with the
computer. In this lifeworld, processes of interpretation are central. Technical resources are
not simply pregiven but acquire their meaning through these processes. As computer
networks developed, communication functions were often introduced by users rather than

37
treated as normal affordances of the medium by the originators of the systems. In Latours
language, the collective is re-formed around the contested constitution of the computer as
this or that type of mediation responsive to this or that actors program (Latour, 1999). To
make sense of this history, the competing visions of designers and users must be introduced
as a significant shaping force. The contests between control and communication, humanism
and posthumanism must be the focus of the study of innovations such as the Internet.
Online Education
Consider the case of the current struggle over the future of online education (Feenberg
2002, chap. 5). In the late 1990s, corporate strategists, state legislators, top university
administrators, and futurologists lined up behind a vision of online education based on
automation and deskilling. Their goal was to replace (at least for the masses) face-to-face
teaching by professional faculty with an industrial product, infinitely reproducible at
decreasing unit cost, like CDs, videos, or software. The overhead of education would decline
sharply and the education business would finally become profitable. This is
modernization with a vengeance.
In opposition to this vision, faculty mobilized in defense of the human touch. This
humanistic opposition to computerization takes two very different forms. There are those
who are opposed in principle to any electronic mediation of education. This position has no
effect on the quality of computerization but only on its pace. But there are also numerous
faculty who favor a model of online education that depends on human interaction on
computer networks. On this side of the debate, a very different conception of modernity
prevails. In this alternative conception, to be modern is to multiply opportunities for and
modes of communication. The meaning of the computer shifts from a coldly rational
information source to a communication medium, a support for human development and
online community. This alternative can be traced down to the level of technical design, for
example, the conception of educational software and the role of asynchronous discussion
forums (Hamilton and Feenberg, 2005).
These approaches to online education can be analyzed in terms of the model of de-
worlding and disclosing introduced above. Educational automation decontextualizes both the
learner and the educational product by breaking them loose from the existing world of the
university. The new world disclosed on this basis confronts the learner as technical subject
with menus, exercises, and questionnaires rather than with other human beings engaged in a
shared learning process.
The facultys model of online education involves a much more complex secondary
instrumentalization of the computer in the disclosure of a much richer world. The original
positioning of the user is similar: the person facing a machine. But the machine is not a
window onto an information mall but rather opens up onto a social world that is morally
continuous with the social world of the traditional campus. The terminal subject is involved
as a person in a new kind of social activity and is not limited by a set of canned menu options
to the role of individual consumer. The corresponding software opens the range of the
subject's initiative far more widely than an automated design. This is a more democratic
conception of networking that engages it across a wider range of human needs.
The analysis of the dispute over educational networking reveals patterns which appear
throughout modern society. In the domain of media, these patterns involve playing off
primary and secondary instrumentalizations in different combinations that privilege either a
technocratic model of control or a democratic model of communication. Characteristically, a
technocratic notion of modernity inspires a positioning of the user that sharply restricts
potential initiative, while a democratic conception enlarges initiative in more complex virtual
worlds. Parallel analyses of production technology, biotechnology, medical technology and

38
environmental problems would reveal similar patterns that could be clarified by reference to
the actors perspectives in similar ways.

Conclusion
Philosophy of technology has come a long way since Heidegger and Marcuse. Inspiring
as are these thinkers, we need to devise our own response to the situation in which we find
ourselves. Capitalism has survived its various crises and now organizes the entire globe in a
fantastic web of connections with contradictory consequences. Manufacturing flows out of
the advanced countries to the low wage periphery as diseases flow in. The Internet opens
fantastic new opportunities for human communication, and is inundated with commercialism.
Human rights proves a challenge to regressive customs in some countries while providing
alibis for new imperialist ventures in others. Environmental awareness has never been
greater, yet nothing much is done to address looming disasters such as global warming.
Nuclear proliferation is finally fought with energy in a world in which more and more
countries have good reasons for acquiring nuclear weapons.
Building an integrated and unified picture of our world has become far more difficult as
technical advances break down the barriers between spheres of activity to which the division
between disciplines corresponds. I believe that critical theory of technology offers a platform
for reconciling many apparently conflicting strands of reflection on technology. Only through
an approach that is both critical and empirically oriented is it possible to make sense of what
is going on around us now. The first generation of Critical Theorists called for just such a
synthesis of theoretical and empirical approaches.
Critical Theory was above all dedicated to interpreting the world in the light of its
potentialities. Those potentialities are identified through serious study of what is. Empirical
research can thus be more than a mere gathering of facts and can inform an argument with
our times. Philosophy of technology can join together the two extremes potentiality and
actuality norms and facts in a way no other discipline can rival. It must challenge the
disciplinary prejudices that confine research and study in narrow channels and open
perspectives on the future.

Bibliography
Borgmann, Albert,. Crossing the Postmodern Divide. (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1992).
Bos, Bram, Een kwestie van beheersing. (Amsterdam: Academisch Proefschrift,
Vrije Universiteit, 2003).
Bos, Bram, Peter Koerkamp, Karin Groenestein, A novel design approach for
livestock housing based on recursive controlwith examples to reduce
environmental pollution, Livestock Production Science 84 (2003), 157-170.
de Certeau, Michel. L'Invention du Quotidien (Paris: UGE, 1980).
Feenberg, Andrew, Critical Theory of Technology (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1991).
Building a Global Network: The WBSI Experience, in L. Harasim, ed., Global
Networks: Computerizing the International Community (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 1993), pp. 185-197.
Alternative Modernity: The Technical Turn in Philosophy and Social Theory (Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1995).
Questioning Technolog.( London and New York: Routledge, 1999).
Transforming Technology: A Critical Theory Revisited (New York: Oxford,
2002).

39
 Feenberg, Andrew Modernity Theory and Technology Studies: Reflections on
Bridging the Gap. In Misa, T., P. Brey, and A. Feenberg, eds., Modernity and
Technology. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003).
Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of Technology (New
York: Routledge, 2004a).
Looking Forward, Looking Backward: Reflections on the 20 th Century, in D.
Tabachnick and T. Koivukoski, eds., Globalization, Technology and Philosophy
(Albany: SUNY, 2004b).
Feenberg, Andrew and Darin Barney. Community in the Digital Age. (Lanham:
Rowman and Littlefield, 2004.)
Hamilton, Edward, Andrew Feenberg, The Technical Codes of Online Education,
E-Learning, forthcoming, 2005.
Kirkpatrick, Graeme. Critical Technology: A Social Theory of Personal Computing.
(Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2004.)
Latour, Bruno. Politiques de la Nature: Comment faire entrer les sciences en
dmocratie. (Paris: La Dcouverte, 1999).
Marcuse, Herbert, One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).
Beitrge zu einer Phnomenologie des Historischen Materialismus, in
Herbert Marcuse Schriften: Band I (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1978).
Heidegger, Martin. Traditional Language and Technological Language, trans.
W. Gregory, Journal of Philosophical Research XXIII, 1998.
Ruivenkamp, Guido, Tailor-made biotechnologies for endogenous developments
and the creation of new networks and knowledge means, Biotechnology and
Development Monitor, no. 50, March 2003.
Simondon, Gilbert. Du Mode dExistence des Objets Techniques. (Paris: Aubier,
1958).
Tenner, Edward. Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of
Unintended Consequences (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996).
Stone, Allurque Rosanne. The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the
Mechanical Age. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995.)
Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1995.)

40
4. FROM INFORMATION TO COMMUNICATION: THE FRENCH EXPERIENCE WITH
VIDEOTEX

Information or Communication?

Notions like "postindustrial society" and the "information age" are forecasts--social
science fictions--of a social order based on knowledge (Bell, 1973). The old world of coal,
steel and railroads will evaporate in a cloud of industrial smoke as a new one based on
communications and computers is born. The popularizers of this vision put a cheerful spin on
many of the same trends deplored by dystopian critique, such as higher levels of organization
and integration of the economy and the growing importance of expertise.
Computers play a special role in these forecasts because the management of social
institutions and individual lives depends more and more on swift access to data. Not only can
computers store and process data, they can be networked to distribute it as well. In the
postindustrial future, computer mediated communication (CMC) will penetrate every aspect
of daily life and work to serve the rising demand for information.
In the past decade, these predictions have been taken up by political and business leaders
with the power to change the world. One learns a great deal about a vision from attempts to
realize it. When, as in this case, the results stray far from expectations, the theories that
inspired the original forecast are called into question. This chapter explores the gap between
theory and practice in a particularly important case of mass computerization, the introduction
of videotex in France.
Videotex is the CMC technology best adapted to the rapid delivery of data. Videotex is an
on-line library that stores "pages" of information in the memory of a host computer accessible
to users equipped with a terminal and modem. Although primarily designed for consultation
of material stored on the host, some systems also give users access to each other through
electronic mail, "chatting," or classified advertisements. This, then, is one major
technological concretization of the notion of a postindustrial society.
The theory of the information age promised an emerging videotex marketplace.
Experience with videotex, in turn, tested some of that theory's major assumptions in practice.
Early predictions had most of us linked to videotex services long ago (Dordick, 1981). By
the end of the 1970s, telecommunications ministries and corporations were prepared to meet
this confidently predicted future with new interactive systems. But today most of these

41
experiments are regarded as dismal failures.
This outcome may be due in part to antitrust rulings which prevented giant telephone and
computer companies from merging their complementary technologies in large scale public
CMC systems. The FCC's failure to set a standard for terminals aggravated the situation.
Lacking the resources and know-how of the big companies, their efforts uncoordinated by
government, it is not surprising that smaller entertainment and publishing firms were unable
to make a success of commercial videotex (Branscomb, 1988).
Disappointing results in the United States have been confirmed by all foreign experiments
with videotex, with the exception of the French Teletel system. The British, for example,
pioneered videotex with Prestel, introduced three years before the French came on the scene.
Ironically, the French plunged into videotex on a grand scale in part out of fear of lagging
behind Britain!
Prestel had the advantage of state support which no American system could boast. But it
also had a corresponding disadvantage: over-centralization. At first information suppliers
could not connect remote hosts to the system, which severely limited growth in services.
What is more, Prestel relied on users to buy a decoder for their television sets, an expensive
piece of hardware that placed videotex in competition with television programming. The
subscriber base grew with pathetic slowness, rising to only 76,000 in the first five years
(Charon, 1987: 103-106; Mayntz and Schneider, 1988: 278).
Meanwhile, the successful applications of CMC were all organized by and for private
businesses, universities or computer hobbyists. The general public still has little or no access
to the networks aimed at these markets and no need to use such specialized on-line services
as bibliographic searches and software banks. Thus after a brief spurt of postindustrial
enthusiasm for videotex, CMC is now regarded as suitable primarily for work, not for
pleasure; it serves professional needs rather than leisure or consumption (Ettema, 1989).
As I will explain below, the Teletel story is quite different. Between 1981, the date of the
first tests of the French system, and the end of the decade, Teletel became by far the largest
public videotex system in the world with thousands of services, millions of users, and
hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues. Today Teletel is the brightest spot in the
otherwise unimpressive commercial videotex picture.
This outcome is puzzling. Could it be that the French are different from everyone else?
That rather silly explanation became less plausible as Compuserve and the Sears/IBM
Prodigy system grew to a million subscribers. While the final evaluation of these systems is
not yet in, their sheer size tends to confirm the existence of a home videotex market. How,

42
then, can we account for the astonishing success of Teletel, and what are its implications for
the information age theory that inspired its creation?
Teletel is particularly interesting because it employs no technology not readily available in
all those other countries where videotex was tried and failed. Its success can only be
explained by identifying the social inventions that aroused widespread public interest in
CMC. A close look at those inventions shows the limitations not only of prior experiments
with videotex, but also of the theory of the information age (Feenberg, 1991: chap. 5).

The Emergence of a New Medium

While Teletel embodies generally valid discoveries about how to organize public videotex
systems, it is also peculiarly French. Much that is unique about it stems from the confluence
of three factors: 1) a specifically French politics of modernization; 2) the bureaucracy's
voluntaristic ideology of national public service; and 3) a strong oppositional political
culture. Each of these factors contributed to a result no single group in French society would
willingly have served in the beginning. Together they opened the space of social
experimentation that Teletel made technically possible.
Modernization
The concept of modernity is a live issue in France in a way that is difficult to imagine in
the United States. Americans experience modernity as a birthright; America does not strive
for modernity, it defines modernity. For that reason, the United States does not treat its own
modernization as a political issue but relies on the creative chaos of the market.
France, on the other hand, has a long tradition of theoretical and political concern with
modernity as such. In the shadow of England at first and later of Germany and the U.S.,
France has struggled to adapt itself to a modern world it has always experienced at least to
some extent as an external challenge. This is the spirit of the famous Nora-Minc Report
which President Giscard d'Estaing commissioned from two top civil servants to define the
means and goals of a concerted policy of modernization for French society in the last years of
the century (Nora and Minc, 1978).
Nora and Minc called for a technological offensive in "telematics," the term they coined to
describe the marriage of computers and communications. The telematic revolution, they
argued, will change the nature of modern societies as radically as the industrial revolution.

43
But, they added, "'Telematics', unlike electricity, does not carry an inert current, but rather
information, that is to say, power" (1978: 11). "Mastering the network is therefore an
essential goal. Its framework must therefore be conceived in the spirit of public service"
(1978: 67). In sum, just as war is too important to be left to the generals, so postindustrial
development is too important to be left to businessmen and must become a political affair.
Nora and Minc paid particular attention to the need to win public acceptance of the
telematic revolution and to achieve success in the new international division of labor through
targeting emerging telematic markets (1978: 41-42). They argued that a national videotex
service could play a central role in achieving these objectives. This service would sensitize
the still backward French public to the wonders of the computer age while creating a huge
protected market for computer terminals. Leveraging the internal market, France would
eventually become a leading exporter of terminals and so benefit from the expected
restructuring of the international economy instead of falling further behind (1978: 94-95).
These ideas lay at the origin of the Teletel project which, as a peculiar mix of propaganda and
industrial policy, had a distinctly statist flavor from the very beginning.
Voluntarism
So conceived, the project fell naturally into the hands of the civil service. This choice,
which seems strange to Americans contemptuous of bureaucratic ineptness, makes perfect
sense in France where business has an even more negative image than government.
When it is the bureaucracy rather than the corporation that spearheads modernization, the
esprit de corps of the civil service leaves its mark on the outcome. In France this is not such a
bad thing. French bureaucrats define the nation in terms of the uniform provision of services
such as mail, phone, roads, schools, and so on. Delivering these services is a moral mission
predicated on "republican" ideals such as egalitarianism. The French call this bureaucratic
approach "voluntaristic" because, for better or worse, it ignores local situations and economic
constraints to serve a universal public interest.
One must keep this voluntaristic sense of mission in mind to understand how the French
telephone company, charged with developing Teletel, could have conceived and
implemented a national videotex service without any guarantee of profitable operation. In
fact, Teletel was less a money making scheme than a link in the chain of national identity. As
such, it was intended to reach every French household as part of the infrastructure of national
unity, just like the telephone and the mails (Nora and Minc, 1978: 82).
To achieve this result, the telephone company proceeded to distribute millions of free
terminals, called "Minitels." Although early advertising was mainly directed at prosperous

44
neighborhoods, anyone could request a Minitel. Eventually all phone subscribers were to be
equipped. France would leapfrog out of its position as the industrial country with the most
backward telephone system right into the technology of the next century.
An American telephone company would certainly have charged for such an elaborate
upgrade of the users' equipment. Even the French PTT was a bit worried about justifying this
unprecedented bounty. The excuse it came up with was the creation of a national electronic
phone directory, accessible only by Minitel, but in fact the main point of the exercise was
simply to get a huge number of terminals out the door as quickly as possible (Marchand,
1987: 32-34). Free distribution of terminals preceded the development of a market in
services, which it was supposed to bring about. Just as roadside businesses follow highways,
so telematic businesses were expected to follow the distribution of Minitels.
The first 4000 Minitels were delivered in 1981 (Marchand, 1987: 37); ten years later over
5,000,000 have been distributed. The speed and scale of this process are clues to the
economics of the great telematic adventure. The telephone company's ambitious
modernization program had made it the largest single customer for French industry in the
1970s. The daring telematic plan was designed to take up the slack in telephone production
that was sure to follow the rapid saturation of that market, thereby avoiding the collapse of a
major industrial sector.

Opposition
As originally conceived, Teletel was designed to bring France into the information age by
providing a wide variety of services. But is more information what every household needs
(Iwaasa, 1985: 49)? And who is qualified to offer information services in a democracy
(Marchand, 1987: 40ff)? These questions received a variety of conflicting answers in the
early years of French videotex.
Modernization through national service defines the program of a highly centralized and
controlling state. To make matters worse, the Teletel project was initiated by a conservative
government. This combination at first inspired widespread distrust of videotex and awakened
the well known fractiousness of important sectors of opinion. The familiar pattern of central
control and popular "resistance" was repeated once again with Teletel, a program that was
"parachuted" on an unsuspecting public and soon transformed by it in ways its makers had
never imagined.
The press led the struggle against government control of videotex. When the head of the
telephone company announced the advent of the paperless society (in Dallas of all places),

45
publishers reacted negatively out of fear of losing advertising revenues and independence.
The dystopian implications of a computer ruled society did not pass unnoticed. One irate
publisher wrote, "He who grasps the wire is powerful. He who grasps the wire and the screen
is very powerful. He who will someday grasp the wire, the screen, and the computer will
possess the power of God the Father Himself" (Marchand, 1987: 42).
The press triumphed with the arrival of the socialist government in 1981. To prevent
political interference with on-line "content," the telephone company was allowed to offer
only its electronic version of the telephone directory. The doors to Teletel were opened wide
by the standards of the day: anyone with a government issued publishers' license could
connect a host to the system. In 1986 even this restriction was abandoned; today anyone with
a computer can hook up to the system, list a phone number in the directory, and receive a
share of the revenues the service generates for the phone company.
Because small host computers are fairly inexpensive and knowledge of videotex as rare in
large as in small companies, these decisions had at first a highly decentralizing effect.
Teletel became a vast space of disorganized experimentation, a "free market" in on-line
services more nearly approximating the liberal ideal than most communication markets in
contemporary capitalist societies.
This example of the success of the market has broad implications, but not quite so broad
as the advocates of deregulation imagine. The fact that markets sometimes mediate popular
demands for technical change does not make them a universal panacea. The conditions that
make such a use of markets possible are quite specific. Frequently, for example where large
corporations sell well established technologies, they use markets to stifle the demands
existing products cannot meet or rechannel them into domains where basic technical change
need not occur. Nevertheless, consumers do occasionally re-open the design process through
the market. This is certainly a reason to view markets as ambivalent institutions with a
potentially dynamic role to play in the development of new technology.
Communication
Surprisingly, although phone subscribers were now equipped for the information age, they
made relatively little use of the wealth of data available on Teletel. They consulted the
electronic directory regularly, but not much else. Then, in 1982, hackers transformed the
technical support facility of an information service called Gretel into a messaging system
(Bruhat, 1984: 54-55). After putting up a feeble (perhaps feigned) resistance, the operators of
this service institutionalized the hackers' invention and made a fortune. Other services
quickly followed with names like "Dsiropolis," "La Voix du Parano," "SM," "Sextel."

46
"Pink" messaging became famous for spicy pseudononymous conversations in which users
sought like-minded acquaintances for conversation or encounters.
Once messaging took off on a national scale, small telematic firms reworked Teletel into a
communication medium. They designed programs to manage large numbers of simultaneous
users emitting rather than receiving information, and they invented a new type of interface.
On entering these systems, users are immediately asked to choose a pseudonym and to fill out
a brief C.V., (curriculum vitae, or carte de visite). They are then invited to survey the C.V.'s
of those currently on-line to identify like minded conversational partners. The new programs
employ the Minitel's graphic capabilities to split the screen, assigning each of as many as a
half dozen communicators a separate space for their messages. This is where the creative
energies awakened by telematics went in France, and not into meeting obscure technical
challenges dear to the hearts of government bureaucrats such as insuring French influence on
the shape of the emerging international market in data bases (Nora and Minc, 1978: 72).
The original plans for Teletel had not quite excluded human communication, but they
certainly underestimated its importance relative to the dissemination of data, on-line
transactions, and even video games (Marchand, 1987: 136). Messaging is hardly mentioned
in early official documents on telematics. (E.g., Pigeat, et. al, 1979.) The first experiment
with Teletel, at Vlizy, revealed an unexpected enthusiasm for communication. Originally
conceived as a feedback mechanism linking users to the Vlizy project team, the messaging
system was soon transformed into a general space for free discussion (Charon and Cherky,
1983: 81-92; Marchand, 1987: 72). Even after this experience no one imagined that human
communication would play a major role in a mature system. But that is precisely what
happened.
In the summer of 1985, the volume of traffic on Transpac, the French packet switching
network, exceeded its capacities and the system crashed. The champion of French high tech
was brought to its knees as banks and government agencies were bumped off-line by
hundreds of thousands of users skipping from one messaging service to another in search of
amusement. This was the ultimate demonstration of the new telematic dispensation
(Marchand, 1987: 132-134). Although only a minority of users were involved, by 1987 40%
of the hours of domestic traffic were spent on messaging (Chabrol and Perin, 1989: 7).
"Pink" messaging may seem a trivial result of a generation of speculation on the
information age, but the case can be made for a more positive evaluation. Most importantly,
the success of messaging changed the generally received connotations of telematics, away
from information toward communication. This in turn encouraged--and paid for--a wide

47
variety of experiments in domains such as education, health, and news (Marchand, 1987;
Bidou, et. al., 1988). Here are some examples:
* television programs advertise services on Teletel where viewers can obtain
supplementary information or exchange opinions, adding an interactive element to the one-
way broadcast;
* politicians engage in dialogue with constituents on Teletel, and political movements
open messaging services to communicate with their members;
* educational experiments have brought students and teachers together for electronic
classes and tutoring, for example at a Paris Medical School;
* a psychological service offers an opportunity to discuss personal problems and seek
advice.
Perhaps the most interesting experiment occurred in 1986 when a national student strike
was coordinated on the messaging service of the newspaper, Libration. The service offered
information about issues and actions, on-line discussion groups, hourly news updates, and a
game mocking the Minister of Education. It quickly received 3000 messages from all over
the country (Marchand, 1987: 155-158).
These applications reveal the unsuspected potential of the medium for creating surprising
new forms of sociability. Rather than imitating the telephone or writing, they play on the
unique capacity of telematics to mediate highly personal, anonymous communication. These
experiments prefigure a very different organization of public and private life in advanced
societies (Feenberg, 1989a: 271-275; Jouet and Flichy, 1991.)
The System
Although no one planned all its elements in advance, eventually a coherent system
emerged from the play of these various forces. Composed of rather ordinary elements, it
formed a unique whole that finally broke the barriers to general public acceptance of CMC
technology. The system is characterized by five basic principles:
1. Scale. Only a government or a giant corporation has the means to initiate an experiment
such as Teletel on a large enough scale to insure a fair test of the system. Smaller pilot
projects all founder on a chicken and egg dilemma: to build a market in services one needs
users, but users cannot be attracted without a market in services. The solution, demonstrated
in France, is to make a huge initial investment in transmission facilities and terminals in order
to attract enough new and occasional users at an early stage to justify the existence of a
critical mass of services.
2. Gratuity. Perhaps the single most revolutionary feature of the system was the free

48
distribution of terminals. The packet switching network and the terminals were treated as a
single whole, in contradistinction to every other national computer network. Gratuity dictated
wise decisions about terminal quality: durability and simple graphics. It also insured service
providers a large base to work from very early on, long before the public would have
perceived the interest of the unfamiliar system and invested in a costly terminal or
subscription.
3. Standardization. The monopoly position of the French telephone company and the free
distribution of Minitel terminals insures uniformity in several vital areas. Equipment and
sign-on procedures are standardized, and service is offered from a single national phone
number at a single price, independent of location. (There is now a slightly more complex
price structure.) The phone company employs its billing system to collect all charges, sharing
the income with service providers.
4. Liberalism. The decision to make it easy to hook up host computers to the packet
switching network must have gone against the telephone company's ingrained habit of
controlling every aspect of its technical system. However, once this decision was made, it
opened the doors to a remarkable flowering of social creativity. Although the Minitel was
designed primarily for information retrieval, it can be used for many other purposes. The
success of the system owes a great deal to the mating of a free market in services with the
flexible terminal.
5. Identity. The system acquired a public image through its identification with a project of
modernization and through the massive distribution of distinctive terminals. A unique
telematic image was also shaped by the special phone directory, the graphic style associated
with Teletel's alphamosaic standard, the adoption of videotex screen management instead of
scrolling displays, and the social phenomenon of the "pink" messaging.

The Conflict of Codes

This interpretation of Teletel contradicts the deterministic assumptions about the social
impact of computers that inspired Nora, Minc and many other theorists of postindustrialism.
The logic of technology simply did not dictate a neat solution to the problem of
modernization in this case; instead, a very messy process of conflict, negotiation, and
innovation produced a socially contingent result. What are these social factors and how did

49
they influence the development of CMC in France?
Social Constructivism
Teletel's evolution confirms the social constructivist approach introduced in chapter 1.
Unlike determinism, social constructivism does not rely exclusively on the technical
characteristics of an artifact to explain its success. According to the "principle of symmetry,"
there are always alternatives that might have been developed in the place of the successful
one. What singles out an artifact is not some intrinsic property such as "efficiency" or
"effectiveness" but its relationship to the social environment.
As we have seen in the case of videotex, that relationship is negotiated among inventors,
civil servants, businessmen, consumers, and many other social groups in a process that
ultimately defines a specific product adapted to a specific mix of social demands. This
process is called "closure;" it produces a stable "black box," an artifact that can be treated as a
finished whole. Before a new technology achieves closure, its social character is evident, but
once it is well established, its development appears purely technical, even inevitable to a
naive backward glance. Typically, later observers forget the original ambiguity of the
situation in which the "black box" was first closed (Latour, 1987: 2-15).
Pinch and Bijker illustrate their method with the example of the bicycle. In the late 19th
Century, before the present form of the bicycle was fixed, design was pulled in several
different directions. Some customers perceived bicycling as a competitive sport, while others
had an essentially utilitarian interest in transportation. Designs corresponding to the first
definition had high front wheels that were rejected as unsafe by the second type of rider.
They preferred designs with two equal sized low wheels. Eventually, the low wheelers won
out and the entire later history of the bicycle down to the present day stems from that line of
technical development. Technology is not determining in this example; on the contrary, the
"different interpretations by social groups of the content of artefacts lead via different chains
of problems and solutions to different further developments" (Pinch and Bijker, 1984: 423).
This approach has several implications for videotex:
* First, the design of a system like Teletel is not determined by a universal criterion of
efficiency but by a social process that differentiates technical alternatives according to a
variety of criteria.
* Second, that social process is not about the application of a predefined videotex
technology, but concerns the very definition of videotex and the nature of the problems to
which it is addressed.
* Third, competing definitions reflect conflicting social visions of modern society

50
concretized in different technical choices.
These three points indicate the need for a revolution in the study of technology. The first
point widens the range of social conflict to include technical issues which, typically, have
been treated as the object of a purely "rational" consensus. The other two points imply that
meanings enter history as effective forces not only through cultural production and political
action, but also in the technical sphere. To understand the social perception or definition of a
technology one needs a hermeneutic of technical objects.
Technologies are meaningful objects. From our everyday common sense standpoint, two
types of meanings attach to them. In the first place, they have a function and for most
purposes their meaning is identical with that function. However, we also recognize a
penumbra of "connotations" that associate technical objects with other aspects of social life
independent of function (Baudrillard, 1968: 16-17). Thus automobiles are means of
transportation, but they also signify the owner as more or less respectable, wealthy, sexy, etc.
In the case of well established technologies, the distinction between function and
connotation is usually clear. There is a tendency to project this clarity back into the past and
to imagine that the technical function preceded the object and called it into being. The social
constructivist program argues, on the contrary, that technical functions are not pregiven but
are discovered in the course of the development and use of the object. Gradually certain
functions are locked in by the evolution of the social and technical environment, as for
example the transportation functions of the automobile have been institutionalized in low-
density urban designs that create the demand automobiles satisfy. Closure thus depends in
part on building tight connections in a larger technical network.
In the case of new technologies, there is often no clear definition of function at first. As a
result, there is no clear distinction between different types of meanings associated with the
technology: a bicycle built for speed and a bicycle built for safety are both functionally and
connotatively different. In fact connotations of one design may be functions viewed from the
angle of the other. These ambiguities are not merely conceptual since the device is not yet
"closed" and no institutional lock-in ties it decisively to one of its several uses. Thus
ambiguities in the definition of a new technology must be resolved through technical
development itself. Designers, purchasers and users all play a role in the process by which the
meaning of a new technology is finally fixed.
Technological closure is eventually consolidated in a technical code. Technical codes
define the object in strictly technical terms in accordance with the most general social
meanings it has acquired. For bicycles, this was achieved in the 1890s. A bicycle safe for

51
transportation could only be produced by conforming to a code which dictated a seat
positioned well behind a small front wheel. When consumers encountered a bicycle produced
according to this code, they immediately recognized it for what it was: a "safety" in the
terminology of the day. That definition in turn connoted women and older riders, trips to the
grocery store, and so on, and negated associations with young sportsman out for a thrill.
Technical codes are interpreted with the same hermeneutic procedures used to interpret
texts, works of art, and social actions (Ricoeur, 1979). But the task gets complicated when
codes become the stakes in significant social disputes. Then ideological visions are
sedimented in technical design. It is this which explains the "isomorphism, the formal
congruence between the technical logics of the apparatus and the social logics within which it
is diffused" (Bidou, et. al., 1988: 18). These patterns of congruence explain the impact of the
larger socio-cultural environment on the mechanisms of closure (Pinch and Bijker, 1984:
409). Videotex is a striking case in point. In what follows I will trace the pattern from the
highest level of worldviews down to the lowest level of technical design.
A Technocratic Utopia
The issue in this case is the very nature of a postindustrial society. The "information" age
was originally conceived as a scientized society, a vision that legitimated the technocratic
ambitions of states and corporations. The rationalistic assumptions about human nature and
society that underlie this fantasy have been familiar for a century or more as a kind of
positivist utopia.
Its principal traits are familiar. Scientific-technical thinking becomes the logic of the
whole social system. Politics is merely a generalization of the consensual mechanisms of
research and development. Individuals are integrated to the social order not through
repression but through rational agreement. Their happiness is achieved through technical
mastery of the personal and natural environment. Power, freedom and happiness are thus all
based on knowledge.
This global vision supports the generalization of the codes and practices associated with
engineering and management. One need not share an explicit utopian faith to believe that the
professional approaches of these disciplines are useful even outside the organizational
contexts in which they are customarily applied. The spread of ideas of social engineering
based on systems analysis, rational choice theory, risk/benefit analysis, and so on testifies to
this new advance in the rationalization of society. Similar assumptions influenced the
sponsors of Teletel, not surprisingly given the cult of engineering in the French bureaucracy.
At the microlevel, these assumptions are at work in the traditional computer interface, with

52
its neat hierarchies of menus consisting of one-word descriptors of "options." A logical space
consisting of such alternatives correlates with an individual "user" engaged in a personal
strategy of optimization. Projected onto society as a whole in the form of a public information
service, this approach implies a certain world.
In that world, "freedom" is the more or less informed choice among preselected options
defined by a universal instance such as a technocratic authority. That instance claims to be a
neutral medium, and its power is legitimated precisely by its transparency: the data is
accurate and logically classified. But it does not cease to be a power for that matter.
Individuals are caught up in just such a system as this in their interactions with corporate,
government, medical and scholastic institutions. Videotex streamlines this technocratic
universe. In fact some of the most successful utilitarian services on Teletel offer information
on bureaucratic rules, career planning, or examination results. These services play on the
"anxiety effect" of life in a rational society: individuality as a problem in personal self-
management (Bidou, et. al., 1988: 71). But the role of anxiety reveals the darker side of this
utopia. The system appears to embody a higher level of social rationality, but it is a nightmare
of confusing complexity and arbitrariness to those whose lives it shapes. This is the "Crystal
Palace" so feared and hated in Dostoievsky's "underground," or Alphaville where the
computer's benign rule is the ultimate dehumanizing oppression.
The Spectral Subject
Teletel was caught up in a dispute over which sort of postindustrial experience would be
projected technologically through domestic computing. As we have seen, the definition of
interactivity in terms of a rationalistic technical code encountered immediate resistance from
"users" who ignored the informational potential of the system and instead employed it for
anonymous human communication and fantastic encounters.
These unexpected applications revealed another whole dimension to everyday experience
in postindustrial societies masked by the positivist utopia. As the gap between individual
person and social role widens, and individuals are caught up in the "mass," social life is
increasingly reorganized around impersonal interactions. The individual slips easily between
roles, and identifies fully with none of them, falls in and out of various masses daily, and
belongs wholly to no community. The solitude of the "lonely crowd" consists in a multitude
of trivial and ambiguous encounters. Anonymity plays a central role in this new social
experience, and gives rise to fantasies of sex and violence that are represented in mass culture
and, to a lesser extent, realized in the individuals' lives.
Just as videotex permits the individual to personalize an anonymous query to a career

53
planning agency or a government bureaucracy, so the hitherto inarticulate relationship to
erotic texts can now achieve personality, even reciprocity, thanks to the telephonic link
supplied by the Minitel. The privacy of the home takes on functions previously assigned
public spaces like bars and clubs, but with an important twist: the blank screen serves not
only to link the interlocutors but also to shield their identities.
As with newspaper "personals," individuals have the impression that the Minitel gives
them full command of all the signals they emit, unlike risky face-to-face encounters where
control is uncertain at best. Enhanced control through written self-presentation makes
elaborate identity games possible. "Instead of identity having the status of an initial given
(with which the communication usually begins), it becomes a stake, a product of the
communication" (Baltz, 1984: 185).
The experience of pseudononymous communication calls to mind Erving Goffman's
double definition of the self as an "image" or identity, and as a "sacred object" to which
consideration is due: "the self as an image pieced together from the expressive implications
of the full flow of events in an undertaking; and the self as a kind of player in a ritual game
who copes honorably or dishonorably, diplomatically or undiplomatically, with the
judgemental contingencies of the situation" (1982: 31). By increasing control of image while
diminishing the risk of embarrassment, messaging alters the sociological ratio of the two
dimensions of selfhood and opens up a new social space.
The relative desacralization of the subject weakens social control. It is difficult to bring
group pressure to bear on someone who cannot see frowns of disapproval. CMC thus
enhances the sense of personal freedom and individualism by reducing the "existential"
engagement of the self in its communications. "Flaming"--the expression of uncensored
emotions on-line--is viewed as a negative consequence of this feeling of liberation. But the
altered sense of the reality of the other may also enhance the erotic charge of the
communication (Bidou, et. al., 1988: 33).
Marc Guillaume (1982: 23) has introduced the concept of "spectrality" to describe these
new forms of interation between individuals who are reduced to anonymity in modern social
life, and yet succeed in using that anonymity to shelter and assert their identities.

Teletechnologies, considered as a cultural sphere, respond to a massive and

unconfessed desire to escape partially and momentarily both from the symbolic
constraints which persist in modern society and from totalitarian functionality. To
escape not in the still ritualized form of those brief periods of celebration or disorder

54
 permitted by traditional societies, but at the convenience of the subject, who pays for
this freedom by a loss. He becomes a spectre...in the triple sense of the term: he fades
away in order to wander freely like a phantom in a symbolic order which has become
transparent to him.
Social advance appears here not as the spread of technocratic elements throughout daily
life, but as the generalization of the commutative logic of the telephone system. To fully
understand this alternative, it is once again useful to look at the technical metaphors that
invade social discourse. National computer networks are based on the X.25 standard, which
enables host computers to serve distant "clients" through the telephone lines. Although the
network can link all its hosts much as the telephone system links all subscribers, that is not
what it was originally designed to do. Rather, it was supposed to enable clusters of users to
share time on particular hosts. In the usual case, neither the users nor the hosts are in
communication with each other.
Teletel was designed as an ordinary X.25 network in which the user is a point in a star
shaped interaction, hierarchically structured from a center, the host computer. But in the
practice of the system the user became an agent of general horizontal interconnection
(Guillaume, 1989: 177ff). This shift symbolizes the emergence of "networking" as an
alternative to both formal organization and traditional community. The computer system
provides a particularly favorable environment in which to experiment with this new social
form.
In CMC the pragmatics of personal encounter are radically simplified, reduced, in fact, to
the protocols of technical connection. Correspondingly, the ease of passage from one social
contact to another is greatly increased, again following the logic of commutation. "Pink"
messaging is merely a symptom of this transformation, punctuating a gradual process of
change in society at large.
A whole rhetoric of liberation accompanies the generalized breakdown of the last rituals
blocking the individuals in the redoubt of the traditional self. Personal life becomes an affair
of network management as family and other stable structures collapse. The new postmodern
individuals are described as supple, adaptable, capable of staging their personal performances
on many and changing scenes from one day to the next. The network multiplies the power of
its members by joining them in temporary social contracts along coaxial pathways of mutual
confidence. The result is a postmodern "atomisation of society into flexible networks of
language games" (Lyotard, 1979: 34).
CMC profoundly alters the spatio-temporal coordinates of daily life, accelerating the

55
individual beyond the speed of paper which is still the maximum velocity achieved by
shuffling corporate and political dinosaurs. One achieves thereby a relative liberation: if you
cannot escape the postindustrial nightmare of total administration, at least multiply the
number of connections and contacts so that their point of intersection becomes a rich and
juicy locus of choice. To be is to connect.
The struggle over the definition of the postindustrial age has only just begun.

The Social Construction of the Minitel

As we have seen, the peculiar compromise that made Teletel a success was the resultant of
these forces in tension. I have traced the terms of that compromise at the macrolevel of the
social definition of videotex in France, but its imprint can also be identified in the technical
code of the system interface.
Wiring the Bourgeois Interior
The Minitel is a sensitive index of these tensions. Those charged with designing it feared
public rejection of anything resembling a computer, typewriter, or other professional
apparatus, and worked to fit it into the social context of the domestic environment. They
carefully considered the "social factors" as well as the human factors involved in persuading
millions of ordinary people to admit a terminal into their home (Feenberg, 1989b: 29).
This is a design problem with a long and interesting history. Its presupposition is the
separation of public and private, work and home, which begins, according to Walter
Benjamin, under the July Monarchy:

For the private person, living space becomes, for the first time, antithetical to the
place of work. The former is constituted by the interior; the office is its complement.
The private person who squares his accounts with reality in his office demands that
the interior be maintained in his illusions (Benjamin, 1978: 154).
The history of design shows these intimate illusions gradually shaped by images drawn
from the public sphere through the steady invasion of private space by public activities and
artifacts. Everything from gas lighting to the use of chrome in furniture begins life in the
public domain and gradually penetrates the home (Schivelbusch, 1988; Forty, 1986: chap. 5).
The telephone and the electronic media intensify the penetration by decisively shifting the
boundaries between the public and the private sphere.

56
 The final disappearance of what Benjamin calls the "bourgeois interior" awaits the
generalization of interactivity. The new communications technologies promise to attenuate
and perhaps even to dissolve the distinction between the domestic and the public sphere.
Telework and telemarketing are expected to collapse the two worlds into one. "The home can
no longer pretend to remain the place of private life, privileging non-economic relations,
autonomous with respect to the commercial world" (Marchand, 1984: 184).
The Minitel is a tool for accomplishing this ultimate deterritorialization. Its modest design
is a compromise on the way toward a radically different type of interior. Earlier videotex
systems had employed very elaborate and expensive dedicated terminals, television adapters,
or computers equipped with modems. So far, outside France, domestic CMC has only
succeeded where it is computer based, but its spread has been largely confined to a hobbyist
subculture. No design principles for general distribution can be learned from these hobbyists,
who are not bothered by the incongruous appearance of a large piece of electronic equipment
on the bedroom dresser or the dining room table. Functionally, the Minitel is not even a
computer in any case. It is just a "dumb terminal," that is, a video screen and keyboard with
minimal memory and processing capabilities and a built-in modem. Such devices have been
around for decades, primarily for use by engineers to operate mainframe computers.
Obviously designs suitable for that purpose would not qualify as attractive interior
decoration.
The Minitel's designers broke with all these precedents and connoted it as an enhancement
of the telephone rather than as a computer or a new kind of television, the two existing
models (Giraud, 1984: 9). Disguised as a "cute" telephonic device, the Minitel is a kind of
Trojan horse for rationalistic technical codes.
It is small, smaller even than a MacIntosh, with a keyboard that can be tilted up and locked
to cover the screen. At first it was equipped with an alphabetical keypad to distinguish it from
a typewriter. That keypad pleased neither non-typists nor typists and was eventually replaced
with a standard one, however, the overall look of the Minitel remained unbusinesslike
(Marchand, 1987: 64; Norman, 1988: 147). Most important, it has no disks and disk drives,
the on-off switch on its front is easy to find, and no intimidating and unsightly cables
protrude from its back, but just an ordinary telephone cord.
The domesticated Minitel terminal adopts a telephonic rather than a computing approach
to its users' presumed technical capabilities. Computer programs typically offer an immense
array of options, trading off ease of use for power. Furthermore, until the success of
Windows, most programs had such different interfaces that each one required a special

57
apprenticeship. Anyone who has ever used early DOS communications software, with its
opening screens for setting a dozen obscure parameters, can understand just how
inappropriate it would be for general domestic use. The Minitel designers knew their
customers well and offered an extremely simple connection procedure: dial up the number on
the telephone, listen for the connection, press a single key.
The design of the function keys also contributed to ease of use. These were intended to
operate the electronic telephone directory. At first there was some discussion of giving the
keys highly specific names suited to that purpose, e.g., "City," "Street," and so on. It was
wisely decided instead to assign the function keys general names, such as "Guide," "Next
Screen," "Back," rather than tying them to any one service (Marchand, 1987: 65). As a result,
the keyboard imposes a standard and very simple user interface on all service providers,
something achieved in the computing world by Windows, but only with much more elaborate
equipment.
The Minitel testifies to the designers original scepticism with regard to communication
applications of the system: the function keys are defined for screen-oriented interrogation of
data banks, and the keypad, with its unsculptured chiclet keys, is so clumsy it defies attempts
at touch typing. Here the French paid the price of relying on a telephonic model: captive PTT
suppliers ignorant of consumer electronics markets, delivered a telephone-quality keypad
below current international standards for even the cheapest portable typewriter. Needless to
say, export of such a terminal has been difficult.
Ambivalent Networks
So designed, the Minitel is a paradoxical object. Its telephonic disguise, thought necessary
to its success in the home, introduces ambiguities into the definition of telematics and invites
communications applications not anticipated by the designers (Weckerl, 1987: I, 14-15). For
them the Minitel would always remain a computer terminal for gathering data, but the
domestic telephone, to which the Minitel is attached, is a social, not an informational
medium. The official technical definition of the system thus enters into contradiction with the
telephonic practices that immediately colonize it once it is installed in the home (Weckerl,
1987: I, 26).
To the extent that the Minitel did not rule out human communication altogether, as have
many videotex systems, it could be subverted from its intended purpose despite its
limitations. For example, although the original function keys were not really designed for
messaging applications, they could be incorporated into messaging programs, and users
adapted to the poor keyboard by typing in a kind of on-line shorthand rich in new slang and

58
inventive abbreviations. The Minitel thus became a communication device.
The walls of Paris were soon covered with posters advertising messaging services. A
whole new iconography of the reinvented Minitel replaced the sober modernism of official
PTT propaganda. In these posters, the device is no longer a banal computer terminal, but is
associated with blatant sexual provocation. In some ads, the Minitel walks, it talks, it
beckons; its keyboard, which can flap up and down, becomes a mouth, the screen becomes a
face. The silence of utilitarian telematics is broken in a bizarre cacophony.
In weakening the boundaries of private and public, the Minitel opens a two way street. In
one direction, households become the scene of hitherto public activities, such as consulting
train schedules or bank accounts. But in the other direction, telematics unleashes a veritable
storm of private fantasy on the unsuspecting public world. The individual still demands, in
Benjamin's phrase, that the "interior be maintained in his illusions." But now those illusions
take on an aggressively erotic form and are broadcast over the network.
The technical change in the Minitel implied by this social change is invisible but essential.
It was designed as a client node, linked to host computers, and was not intended for use in a
universally switched system which, like the telephone network, allows direct connection of
any subscriber with any other. Yet as its image changed, the PTT responded by creating a
universal electronic mail service, called Minicom, which offers an electronic mailbox to
everyone with a Minitel. The Minitel has finally been fully integrated to the telephone
network.
Despite the revenues earned from these communications applications, the PTT grumbles
that its system is being misused. Curiously, those who introduced the telephone a century ago
fought a similar battle with users over its definition. The parallel is instructive. At first the
telephone was compared to the telegraph, and advertised primarily as an aid to commerce.
There was widespread resistance to social uses of the telephone, and an attempt was made to
define it as a serious instrument of business (Fischer, 1988a; Attali and Stourdze, 1977). In
opposition to this "masculine" identification of the telephone, women gradually incorporated
it into their daily lives as a social instrument (Fischer, 1988b). As one telephone company
official complained in 1909:
The telephone is going beyond its original design, and it is a positive
fact that a large percentage of telephones in use today on a flat
rental basis are used more in entertainment, diversion, social
intercourse and accomodation to others than in actual cases of

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 business or household neccesity (quoted in Fischer, 1988a: 48).
In France erotic connotations clustered around these early social uses of the telephone. It
was worrisome that outsiders could intrude in the home while the husband and father were
away at work. "In the imagination of the French of the Belle Epoque, the telephone was an
instrument of seduction" (Bertho, 1981: 243). So concerned was the phone company for the
virtue of its female operators that it replaced them at night with males, presumably proof
against temptation (Bertho, 1981: 242-243).
Despite these difficult beginnings, by the 1930s sociability had become an undeniable
referent of the telephone in the United States. (In France the change took longer.) Thus the
telephone is a technology which, like videotex, was introduced with an official definition
rejected by many users. And like the telephone, the Minitel too acquired new and unexpected
connotations as it became a privileged instrument of personal encounter. In both cases, the
magic play of presence and absence, of disembodied voice or text, generates unexpected
social possibilities inherent in the very nature of mediated communication.

The Future of the Communication Society

In its final configuration, Teletel was largely shaped by the users' preferences (Charon,
1987: 100). The picture that emerges is quite different from initial expectations. What are the
lessons of this outcome? The rationalistic image of the information age did not survive the
test of experience unchanged. Teletel today is not just an information marketplace.
Alongside the expected applications, users invented a new form of human communication to
suit the need for social play and encounter in an impersonal, bureaucratic society. In so doing,
ordinary people overrode the intentions of planners and designers and converted a
postindustrial informational resource into a postmodern social environment.
The meaning of videotex technology has been irreversibly changed by this experience.
But beyond the particulars of this example, a larger picture looms. In every case, the human
dimension of communication technology only emerges gradually from behind the cultural
assumptions of those who originate it and first signify it publicly through rationalistic codes.
This process reveals the limits of the technocratic project of postindustrialism.

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 5. The Factory or the City: Which Model for Online Education?9

Andrew Feenberg

Technology and Modernity

Much recent discussion of the Internet emphasizes its promise of epoch making changes in
our lives. In no domain are these anticipated changes more radical than in education. We are
told that the substantive content of instruction can now be delivered better by computers than
by teachers. Are we on the verge of a fundamental transformation of all our assumptions
about education as we enter a postindustrial information age, or are we instead witnessing
significant but more modest changes in education as we know it? As a participant in the early
development of online education, I hope to be able to bring a touch of realism to the debate.
The debate is not limited to education, which is simply one among several fronts in the
struggle to define the society of the future. The meaning of modernity is at stake in this
struggle. One possible outcome is a society reflecting in all its institutions the logic of
modern production, obsessed by efficiency achieved through mechanization and
management. The Internet could serve this technocratic project in hitherto protected domains
such as education. But one can also envisage a very different outcome modeled not on the
factory but on another modern institution, the city.
The city is the place of cosmopolitan interactions and enhanced communication. Its god is
not efficiency but freedom. It is not dedicated to the rigid reproduction of the same, the one
best way, but to the flexible testing of possibilities and the development of the new. Not
hierarchical control but unplanned horizontal contacts. Not simplification and standardization
but variety and the growth of the capacities required to live in a more complex world.10 The
Internet extends this urban logic in a radically new way.
The question implied in the debate over educational technology is therefore: Which model,
the factory or the city, will shape the future of education? Online education can serve either
strategy in different technical configurations. Automated education is certainly possible
although at the price of a redefinition of education itself. The generalization on the Internet of
a more traditional concept of education centered on human interaction would facilitate
participation by under-served groups and might raise the cultural level of the population at
large.
This latter prospect recalls a significant precedent. It is clear that the gradual
disappearance of child labor and the consequent establishment of universal education has
transformed modern societies and shapes the kind of people who inhabit them. To the extent
that we are capable of understanding the complex technologized world around us and acting
independently within it, this is owing to the extended time for learning modern societies
allow.
However, there is strong link between education and the division of labor, with the latter
determining the former over long periods. Where deskilled production governs educational
expectations, cultural levels remain relatively low. Marx saw no escape from this situation so
long as capitalism survived to impose its division of labor. But capitalism is alive and well
long after the demand for skill has risen to encompass a significant fraction of the labor force.
The consequence has been tremendous educational dynamism. Adult education, for example,
9
This paper draws on recent work I have done in the field of online education and in particular on several
public debates over automating higher education in which I participated.
10
For accounts of the centrality of the city to modern life, see Sennet (1978) and Berman (1988).

61
now embraces more than half the students in American college programs, a reflection of the
shortage of competencies in the labor pool.
Yet one wonders how far this trend can go under capitalism. In the first place, the growing
demand for educated labor in the advanced capitalist world is accompanied by the export of
manufacturing to poor countries. While skilled and unionized manufacturing workers suffer
steep declines in income and job security in the advanced countries, old fashioned patterns of
industrialization appear everywhere else. The net effect may well be a global increase in
deskilled work despite the contrary appearance in places such as Silicon Valley. Second,
business leaders appear to be increasingly alarmed by the high cost of education which is
now the largest budget item in practically every advanced capitalist nation. In the US, the
promise of the Internet has inspired an ideological offensive in favor of automating and
deskilling education. These problems suggest the continuing relevance of critical theory to
educational policy.

The Meanings of the Internet

One of the first educational technologies was writing, and like every subsequent
educational technology, it had its critics. Plato denounced the medium for its inability to
recreate the give and take of spoken discourse. Writing is analogous to painting, he has
Socrates argue in The Phaedrus (a text that, fittingly, depicts an intimate conversation
between teacher and student).
The painters products stand before us as though they were alive, but if you question them, they
maintain the most majestic silence. It is the same with written words; they seem to talk to you as
though they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say, from a desire to be
instructed, they go on telling you just the same thing forever (Plato, 1961: 521).
In short, Plato holds that the technology of writing has the power to destroy the dialogic
relationship that ought to join teacher and student. Technology in the form of writing is the
enemy of the human touch, a position familiar from critics of modern life today. How often
have we heard that technology alienates, enframes and dehumanizes, that technical systems
intrude on human relations, depersonalizing social life and neutralizing its normative
implications? Could it be that the humanistic bias against the computer can be traced back to
Plato?
Ironically, Plato used a written text as the vehicle for his critique of writing, setting a
precedent that we continue to follow in present-day debates about educational technology:
many of the most vociferous attacks on web-based media circulate on the Internet (Noble,
1997).
As Plato sees it, the medium in which we communicate determines the quality of our
interactions. But this is a deeply flawed view, as we have seen in the case of the Internet.
Rather, the social impact of technology depends on how it is designed and used. Writing can
lend itself to ongoing dialogues between teachers and students, and speech can easily become
one-sided.
However, while Platos condemnation of writing was unfair, he alerts us to a real issue:
whenever a new educational technology is introduced, arguments emerge for substituting
interaction with the technology for the process of intellectual exchange. But there is
something about dialogue, and the active involvement of the teacher, that is fundamental to
the educational process and that should be woven into the design of every new instructional
tool. Any break with this assumption would amount to an epochal change in the
communication between the generations. Ultimately, then, the question comes down to
whether we can still defend an understanding of education like Platos or whether the
Internet, a more powerful technology than writing, has finally rendered his conception
obsolete. Neither television nor stand-alone computers ever managed to accomplish this feat,

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but many believe that such possibilities await us just a few miles down the information
superhighway.
The optimism of these advocates of automated education fuels long-standing humanistic
distrust of computers. The computer appears as the very emblem of the modern experiment in
total rational control. It is this image of the computer that inspires much of the current
rhetoric of online education, both for and against.
To the extent that social thinkers fear or anticipate an automated society, they loath or
admire the computer. While technocrats hail the power of the computer to render social life
transparent and controllable, humanists foresee the domination of man by the machine. In
1962, Heidegger offered a typical example of this pessimistic view. He explains the
difference between language as saying, as revealing the world by showing and pointing, and
language as mere sign, transmitting a message, a fragment of already constituted information.
The perfection of speech is poetry, which opens language to being. The perfection of the sign
is the unambiguous position of a switch, on or off, as in Morse code or the memory of a
computer. Heidegger writes,
The construction and the effectiveness of mainframe computers rests on the basis of the techno-
calculative principles of this transformation of language as saying into language as message and as the
mere production of signs. The decisive point for our reflection is that the technical possibilities of the
machine prescribe how language can and should be language. The type and style of language is
determined according to the technical possibilities of the formal production of signs, a production
which consists in executing a continuous sequence of yes-no decisions with the greatest possible
speed....The mode of language is determined by technique (Heidegger, 1998: 140, translation
modified).
And Heidegger goes on to announce the end of Man under the impact of the computer.
Lyotard concurred in his 1979 book on The Postmodern Condition. Here is his account:
Knowledge cannot enter these new [computer] channels...unless it is capable of being
translated into quantities of information. It is predictable that everything belonging to
the constituted body of knowledge that is not so translatable will be abandoned, and
that the orientation of new research will be subordinated to the condition that the
eventual results be translatable into machine language...Consequently, one can expect
that knowledge will be rigorously externalized with respect to the knower (Lyotard,
1979: 13).
Lyotard foresees the disappearance of humanistic culture and the complete commodification
of knowledge in a postmodern society (Feenberg, 1995: chap. 6).
These thinkers bring out the difference between knowledge considered as pure data, mere
information, and knowledge as a living process of discovery, growth, and communication
between human beings. A critique of automated education could be built on this basis, but it
would be far too encompassing. Heidegger and Lyotard blame the problem on the structure of
the computer as such and not on particular designs or applications. If they are right there can
be no alternative realizations of the technology with different social consequences. It is
digitization itself which is the villain.
All this makes fun reading for philosophers, but it is embarrassingly wide of the mark.
What has actually happened to language in a world more and more dominated by computers?
Has it in fact been reified into a technical discourse purified of human significance? On the
contrary, the Internet now carries a veritable tidal wave of saying, of language used for
expression as always in the past.11 Of course, we may not be interested in much of this online
talk, but that is another story. The simple fact of the case is that these philosophical
reflections on the computer were wrong. They not only failed to foresee the transformation of

11
For discussions of the technical code of the Internet, see Flanigan, et al. (2000) and Feenberg and
Bakardjieva (2001).

63
the computer into a communication medium, but they precluded that possibility for essential
reasons.
It was only in the 1980s that electronic communication by computer exploded, moving
beyond the corporate settings to which it had been largely confined up to then and entering
the home. The first breakthrough occurred in France, where the Minitel system quickly
attracted millions of users. Within a decade the Internet was to forever change the image of
the computer. It was mainly nonprofessionals (or professionals not associated with the design
and management of the systems) who pioneered these unexpected uses of the new
technologies. And they succeeded because ordinary people wanted computers to serve
personal goals and not just the official functions emphasized by experts. In the process they
refuted widespread deterministic assumptions about the rationalizing implications of the
computer and revealed its communicative potential.
The Minitel was the first large scale domestic computing network. In the early 1980s, the
French telephone company distributed six million terminals connected to a packet switching
network to which servers could be easily hooked up. This was a national anticipation of what
the Internet became on a global scale. The system was designed by telephone company
technocrats who conceived it as a means of modernizing French society through improving
citizen access to information resources. Human communication over computer networks was
not originally part of the design or, where it was mentioned in early documents, it was far
down on the list of priority functionalities. As a result, hardware and software were biased
against human communication, although it was not technically impossible. Very quickly,
hackers opened the network to human communication which soon became one of its central
functionalities (Feenberg, 1995: chap. 7). This case is emblematic of the democratic
transformation of technical networks by the human actors they enroll, innovating novel social
forms.
But is this transformation really significant from a democratic point of view? Isnt this just
a market rationalization responding to commercial motivations? After all, most of the
online communication supported by the Minitel system, as later with the Internet, is of no
public significance. But transpose the case to a university campus and the point is clear.
Suppose that the Chancellor promulgated a new rule forbidding all unofficial conversation on
campus. That would surely be perceived as undemocratic, indeed, as positively totalitarian.
And why? For two reasons: first, because it would reduce complex living persons to the
simple functions they serve inside a specific institution; and second, because it would make it
nearly impossible to articulate complaints that might lead to changes in the institution.
Absurd as this example must seem, it may well apply to virtual campuses in which automated
learning systems are substituted for human contact.
In any case, this analogy illuminates the Minitel case. The doubling of real social space by
the virtual space of computer networks opens new communicative possibilities for everyone.
Limiting interaction to an official subset, such as business and government communication,
has undemocratic implications online just as it would on campus. Fortunately, such limits
have not been imposed.
In the similar case of the Internet, the stakes reach well beyond the Minitel example.
Corporate and government organizations globalize on the Internet today without restraint.
Obstacles to human communication on computer networks, had they been introduced, would
have prevented a comparable globalization of citizen critique. Events such as the World
Trade Organization protests would have been that much less likely in an environment where
business was ever more cosmopolitan and citizens still provincial in their contacts and
attitudes. This is of course not to say that the Internet causes or determines anything in
particular on either side of the lines of battle drawn in Seattle. But the exclusion of ordinary

64
human communication from the Internet would certainly have had undemocratic
consequences.
This is the context in which to evaluate the opening of the networks by users to innovative
communicative applications. Wise after the fact, we look back on the history of computing
with the certainty that it was always meant to facilitate human contacts and then complain
that it doesnt do as good a job as it should. If we follow the actors, as Bruno Latour
advocates, we discover a very different picture in which the networks are invented and
reinvented by users as places of human encounter.
Just twenty years ago, few imagined what the future would hold for apparently trivial
applications such as email. But it seems obvious today that the computer is a vital medium of
communication, and not just a calculating and information storage device. Its definition has
changed in a direction determined by a social process. And the story is not yet over. The
computer is not yet a finished product. It is still in flux, its evolution subject to a wide range
of social influences and demands. But this fact also means that to the extent we depend on
computers the very definition of modern life is still up for grabs.
As universities move into online education, they are becoming one of the most significant
fronts in this struggle over the meaning of modernity. The new computer-based initiatives
polarize around two alternative understandings of the computer as an educational technology.
Is it an engine of control or a medium of communication? This choice which faced Minitel
and Internet users decades ago returns today as a live option in the world of education. The
automation of education relies on the first option, an informating solution that incorporates
human-to-human teaching relies on the second. In the remainder of this paper, I will argue for
that second solution as a progressive technical alternative.

Automating Education
Why would one want to automate highly skilled educational tasks? Some may argue that
technology can deliver education more effectively than can faculty, empowering the learner
who is presumed to be oppressed or at the least badly served by the teacher. Others would
claim that automated instruction offers consumer-friendly options for working adults.
Automated education is said to foster postindustrial virtues such as temporal and spatial
flexibility, individualized products, and personal control. But in the final analysis, the main
reason for automating is obvious: to cut costs.
Costs, of course, are the concern of administrators and for too many of them the big issues
in online education are not educational but financial. They hope to use new technology to
finesse the coming crisis in higher education spending, and to accommodate exploding
enrollments of young people and returning students. Automated online education is supposed
to improve quality while cutting costs of delivery. Students in virtual classrooms need no new
parking structures. What is more, courses can be packaged and marketed, generating a
continuous revenue stream without further investment.
All this should have a familiar ring since it describes traditional correspondence schools.
These schools fed written documents or TV and radio broadcasts to isolated students
studying in their homes. Compared to classroom education, the economies of scale in the
production of documents and broadcasts yield tremendous cost savings. Labor costs approach
zero as the school acquires a body of reusable materials and substitutes low wage graders for
professional teachers.
The Internet can raise the level of correspondence education inexpensively by improving
the materials available to the student. To the extent that earlier attempts at replacing teachers
failed for purely technical reasons, the Internet does show promise. In its ability to transmit
graphically exciting materials and programs, as well as text, it represents a considerable
advance over the correspondence schools of the past. It can even offer crude imitations of

65
teacher-intensive tasks, such as answering questions using FAQs (Frequently Asked
Question lists) and Ask the Expert help programs. Intelligent agents can adapt computer-
based programs to students learning styles (Kearsley, 1993). And, incredibly enough, it may
even be possible to automate the grading of some types of essay tests, as Peter Foltz and
Thomas Landauer claim in describing their Intelligent Essay Assessor, based on a
technique called Latent Semantic Analysis (Foltz, 1996). According to a Coopers &
Lybrand white paper, this kind of software will soon have a radical impact upon the daily
realities of higher education. [A] mere 25 courses of packaged instructional software could
handle 80% of enrollment in core undergraduate courses; a 24-hour help desk would add a
personal touch (Coopers & Lybrand, 1997).
The key to automation is to separate out informational content from process. A small
number of well paid content experts will work as star performers, while the delivery
process is deskilled so that inexpensive tutors can handle interaction with students. In a really
low cost solution, discussion can be replaced by automated exercises. Eventually it will be
possible to dispense with campuses altogether. Students will pick out courses at an
educational equivalent of Blockbuster and do college at home without ever meeting a
faculty member or fellow student (Agre, 1999).
Strategies of automation go way back. Skilled workers are expensive, and automation is a
time-honored strategy for cutting costs. The story begins in the early 19th century, when
textile manufacturers in northern England discovered that they could replace skilled with
unskilled labor by mechanizing. The whole history of the Industrial Revolution is dominated
by this strategy.
Here is how the 19th century philosopher of manufactures Andrew Ure described the
goal in 1835:
By the infirmity of human nature it happens, that the more skillful the workman, the more self-willed
and intractable he is apt to become, and, of course, the less fit a component of a mechanical system, in
which, by occasional irregularities, he may do great damage to the whole. The grand object therefore of
the modern manufacturer is, through the union of capital and science, to reduce the task of his work-
people to the exercise of vigilance and dexterity (Ure, 1835: 18).
Is such a gloomy version of the future of education really plausible? Is it likely that self-
willed and intractable professors will disappear as have weavers, shoemakers, and
typesetters? Probably not, but whether technology is about to deskill the professoriate is less
important than the fact that this idea occupies a key place in the imagination of many
educational reformers.
The idea of replacing teachers by computers is an old one, but until recently few
educational technologists and administrators were convinced. The ideal of automated
education is no doubt still a minority view, but it has gained sufficient plausibility from
advances in computing and the Internet to occupy a considerable space in public discourse.
Other current buzz words such as self-paced individualized instruction feed into this trend.
The essential idea is that in a future virtual university, accomplishment will no longer depend
on contact hours, indeed, on contact with professors.
Much of todays reform rhetoric, with its appeals to the revolutionary potential of virtual
universities and competency-based degrees, hints at the obsolescence of the traditional
campus and its teaching methods, arousing suspicion among faculty that technology will be
used against them. In the longer run, should teachers really be expelled from the classroom,
we would truly enter a new era. One fundamental project of modern societies, the substitution
of technical control for traditional methods and devices for social arrangements, here
overflows the sphere of production to which it has been largely confined up to now and enters
the realm of social reproduction. In this model the disembedding of the educational
process, its disconnection from the local setting of the campus, is also its depersonalization. If
human contacts are no longer central in so fundamental a growth process as education, then

66
surely we are headed for a very different ideal of adulthood and a very different kind of
modern society from the one we live in at present. But is this a necessary consequence of
modernization?
Ironically, contemporary theory (if not practice) in the business world has left behind the
industrial eras fascination with deskilling. Starting with Peters and Watermans 1982 best
seller In Search of Excellence, Frederick Taylors old model of deskilled labor and
hierarchical management was blamed for everything that ailed American business. Since then
the lesson has been hammered home in dozens of similar books devoted to exploring a third
way, an alternative to the old opposition of man versus machine.
Shoshanna Zuboffs contribution to this literature emphasizes the complementarity of
human and computer capabilities. While humans are best at dealing with unexpected
situations and responding to novelty, computers can organize the vast amount of data
required by modern production. A similar complementarity is at work in education: the
teacher manages the complex and unpredictable communication process of the classroom,
while data is delivered in textbooks (and now by computers as well).
The specifics of the business literature do not always apply to colleges and universities,
but Zuboffs emphasis on technological choice is relevant. Unfortunately, though, higher
education hasnt quite gotten the message. Many college presidents continue to sell their
constituents on the inevitability of computerization, as though the very existence of these new
devices sets the reform agenda in some clear-cut and unambiguous way. And there still exists
plenty of faculty opposition to the supposed consequences of the new media, as though their
impact were predetermined (Feenberg, 1999; Farber, 1998).
Higher education has a $200 billion budget and employs and services many millions of
people. The shape of the educational future is the shape of our society, and increasingly it is
corporate rather than professional models that prevail. The erosion of traditional faculty
status continues apace in innovative institutions serving adult learners, now half the students
in higher education. Even the older universities that now teach a declining fraction of
students employ more and more part-timers in the search for flexibility. And it is becoming
more difficult to resist arguments against tenure which carry conviction with the public if not
with most members of the university community.
This explains why there is so much faculty resistance to new technology. Faculty detect
continuity in administration enthusiasm for cost-cutting at the expense of traditional
educational roles and values. Between 1970 and 1995, the number of full-time faculty
increased by about half, while over the same period part-time faculty multiplied two and one
half times. If the trend continues, part-timers will overtake full-time faculty on college
campuses in several years. At community colleges, part-time faculty are already in the
majority.
This worrying trend parallels the growth of the nontraditional or returning student
population. These students require different course schedules than the traditional ones to
which faculty are attached. Largely because of this, adult education has developed outside the
standard academic departments and procedures under direct administrative control. As a
result, a vast parallel system of higher education has emerged in which faculty have low
status and less power. Since it serves adult learners--precisely the students most likely to be
open to distance learning--this parallel system has a free hand to experiment even if
traditional universities resist.
These trends set a precedent for administration strategies which, many fear, are moving
from deprofessionalization to deskilling. The replacement of full-time by part-time faculty is
merely the opening act in the plan to replace the faculty as such by CD ROMs. A new
economic model of education is being sold under the guise of a new technological model.

67
This is the route to what David Noble calls digital diploma mills. Understandably, this is
not a route many faculty wish to travel.
The issue of educational technology must therefore be framed in a broader context because
it is not primarily a technical issue. It reflects the changing relation of management and
professionalism, which in turn concerns issues of career patterns, standardization, quality,
and control. The resolution of these issues and the evolution of educational technology will
go hand in hand. In short, there exists a great temptation to think of technology as a
managerial tool for centralizing the university. Something like this may actually happen in
the confusing environment created by technological change. Once in place, bad decisions will
be locked in technically and difficult to reverse.

Informating Education
Technologies are not mere means to ends; they also shape worlds. What kind of world is
instituted by the Internet? The basic fact about computer networks is scarcity of bandwidth.
This limitation can be overcome now to the point where audio and video can be distributed
on the Internet. That possibility inspires plans for automated education.
But writing is the oldest technology we have for dealing with a narrow bandwidth. Plato
was no doubt right to complain that writing cannot reproduce the actual experience of living
human interaction. On the other hand, we now have a rich experience of written dialogue
online. And we have discovered in that context that writing is not just a poor substitute for
speech and physical presence but another fundamental medium with its own properties and
powers. It is not impersonal, as is sometimes supposed. We know how to present ourselves as
persons through written correspondence. Nor is it harder to write about ideas than to talk
about them; most people can formulate difficult ideas more easily in written form than in
speech in front of an audience.
These considerations on writing hold the key to the informating of online education. The
online environment is essentially a written world (Feenberg, 1989). In this section I will
argue that electronic networks can be appropriated by educational institutions with this in
mind, and not turned into automated teaching machines or poor copies of the face-to-face
classroom which they cannot adequately reproduce.
Wherever education takes place, the basic medium must be carefully distinguished from
the enhancements and their roles distributed correctly. Speech is the basic medium in the
classroom, supplemented with labs, movies, slides, text books, computer demonstrations, and
so on. Similar enhancements to written interaction are possible on networks. No doubt these
enhancements will continue to improve and perhaps someday change the nature of online
education. But for many years to come, writing will continue to be the basic medium of
online expression, the skeleton around which other technologies and experiences must be
organized to build a viable learning environment.
Confusing the medium with the supplementary enhancements leads to the pedagogical
absurdity of teacherless education. To replace online written interaction with the
enhancements makes no more sense than to replace the teacher in the face-to-face classroom
with labs, movies, slides, text books, and computer demonstrations. That was tried long ago
with educational television and computer-aided instruction without success.
Despite the promise of automation, the ideal of dialogue has inspired some educational
technologists since the early 1980s, and considerable progress has been made in using online
education to support new forms of interaction among teachers and students (Harasim, et al.,
1995: chap. 3; Berge, 1999). In 1981 I worked with the design team that created the first
online educational program. This was the School of Management and Strategic Studies at the
Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in La Jolla, California (Feenberg, 1993). Our goal was
to enable busy executives to participate in a humanistic educational experience despite job

68
demands that made it impossible for them to attend regular university classes. The only way
to do this at that time was the old-fashioned correspondence course, the reputation of which
had fallen so low in the US we did not envisage it. Instead, we opted for computer
networking, a still experimental technology available primarily in a few large computer
companies and universities, and on small publicly accessible servers such as the Electronic
Information Exchange System (EIES) at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. These were
the obscure forerunners of the Internet as we know it today. We succeeded in placing our
school on EIES, and for nearly ten years I helped with its operation, trained teachers, and
myself taught courses in it.
When we started out online education was essentially untried. The equipment was
expensive and primitive. We used Apple IIEs with 48K of memory and 300 baud modems.
(Multiply by 1000 and 100 respectively to get current averages.) The complexity of basic
computer operations in those days was such that it took a full page of printed instructions just
to connect. The only available electronic mediation was asynchronous computer
conferencing, which allows private groups to form online and share messages. Current online
educational software such as Blackboard or Web CT continues to perform many of the
functions of these early conferencing programs.
None of us had ever been a student in an online class or seen one in operation, and we did
not know the answers to the most elementary pedagogical questions, such as how to start a
class, how long or short messages should be, and how often the teacher should sign on and
respond to the students. We soon discovered that computer conferencing was not very useful
for delivering lectures, and of course it could not support any graphical contents, even the
simple drawings teachers like to scribble on the blackboard. After considerable trial and
many errors, we discovered how to sustain a Socratic pedagogy based on virtual classroom
discussion. The school soon grew to include over 150 students in 26 countries around the
world and inspired other experiments in online education. The field grew slowly and quietly
on this original dialogic basis throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.
Using email and computer conferencing, faculty in many American universities have for
years now been reproducing the excitement of classroom discussion online. For the
instantaneous back and forth of real-time discussion, a slower but still engaging day to day
rhythm is substituted. With time to reflect and compose questions and answers, students who
might never have participated in a face-to-face setting bring forward their ideas. The use of
writing imposes a discipline and helps focus thinking. Faculty learn to grasp students ideas
at a much deeper level as they engage with them online. Innovative pedagogical techniques
such as collaborative learning have been adapted to the Internet and new forms of interaction
invented (Harasim, et al., 1995: chapter 6). In successful experiments, small classes are the
rule: twenty is a good working number. There is little doubt that competent teachers under
these conditions are able to reproduce a true equivalent of classroom interaction.12
At WBSI, the emphasis was on human communication. Our version of online education
was conceived in a break with the correspondence school model. We gave up the use of
elaborate prepackaged materials in exchange for living interaction. That choice is no longer
necessary. The Internet can now do more than merely improve the materials available in the
traditional correspondence course; it can also add human contact to an educational model that
has always been relatively impersonal. Using email and discussion forums, groups of students
can be assembled in online communities where they can participate in classroom discussion
with teachers on a regular basis. The gap between correspondence education and online
learning as we implemented it twenty years ago can now be erased.

12
For an up to date review of the issues by a select faculty group at the University of Illinois, see Teaching
at an Internet Distance (2000).

69
 An automated system of online education does not take advantage of this new potential of
the Internet but perpetuates the old correspondence school model. It simply extends the
economies of scale associated with the distribution of written materials into the wide range of
media supported by the Internet (Agre, 1999). But the social condition for the cost savings
achieved by correspondence schools, whether traditional or web-based, is the isolation of the
student. On the other hand a system that also includes live interaction does so at a price: a
qualified teacher must be in attendance at every iteration of the course. Institutions may save
money on building costs but not on educational labor, the single largest item in most
university budgets.
What does this say about the ambition to replace campuses with virtual universities? Large
markets for distance learning will undoubtedly emerge, and this will be a blessing for many
students who cannot attend college classes. This trend has important implications not only for
working adults in the advanced capitalist world but for residents of rural areas in poorer
countries. But if higher education is cut loose from the traditional university and its values,
the blessing will turn into a disaster. The best way to maintain the connection is through
insuring that distance learning is delivered not just by CD ROMs, but by living teachers,
qualified to teach and interested in doing so online.
Then prepackaged materials will be seen to replace not the teacher but the lecture and the
textbook. Interaction with the professor will continue to be the centerpiece of education, no
matter what the medium. And of course for most people that interaction will continue to take
place on campus if they have the means and the mobility to attend a college.

Conclusion: The Future of Educational Technology

Today we are confronted with two very different directions of development for democratic
societies, one of which defines citizenship in terms of the functions individuals serve in
systems such as markets, workplaces, and administrations, while the other conceives of the
individuals as bearers of a range of potentialities that surpass any particular functional
realization. The definition of those potentialities occurs in aesthetic experimentation, ethical
and political debate, and technical controversies. The first view characterizes modernity as
we know it. The tendency of this modernity is to replace human communication wherever
possible by technical or bureaucratic systems that enhance the power of the few in the name
of efficiency. Education, from this point of view, should be narrowly specialized and tightly
controlled, both in terms of costs and content. Automated systems in which communication is
restricted to the delivery of data and programs could serve this project.
The second view holds out the possibility of an alternative modernity realizing human
potentials ignored or suppressed in the present society. Many of those potentials are
specifically communicative and depend on the very practices being eliminating under the
present dispensation. Furthermore, those potentials can only express themselves in a
communicatively open environment. This vision implies a broad education for citizenship
and personal development, as well as the acquisition of technical skills.
Educational technology will not determine which of these paths is followed. On the
contrary, the politics of the educational community interacting with national political trends
will steer the future development of the technology. And this is precisely why it is so very
important for a wide range of actors to be included in technological design (Wilson, 1999).
Students and faculty bring a number of considerations to the table, including the desire to
create tools that support human interaction, a desire that has already manifested itself
forcefully in the earlier evolution of the computer.
Systems designed by administrations working with corporate suppliers will be quite
different. Automating the classroom feeds directly into a preference for video, which seems
to offer the closest equivalent to real life and a lot more entertainment. We are not talking

70
about the old fashioned talking head video broadcast on TV networks, but a new kind of
computer mediated video capable of much more elaborate presentations. This has
implications for course design. Automated products will tend to be quite elaborate since they
must rely entirely on the computer to dramatize their message and motivate the student.
Courseware designers and producers will manage the work of star faculty who can offer
polished performances in the new medium. Predictably, educational technology will evolve
to Hollywood levels of complexity.
When they actually engage with the new teaching technology, faculty sense immediately
that it is not mature. In the actual experience of online education, technology is not a
predefined thing at all, but an environment, an empty space faculty must inhabit and enliven.
They have a craft relation to the technologies rather than a development strategy. They try to
get the feel of it and figure out how to animate it, to project their voice in it. In doing so
they are acting out of an ancient tradition which assigns education to human relations rather
than devices.
This difference is reflected in different technological emphases. While it would be nice to
be a star professor in an automated virtual class, most faculty do not aspire to that exalted
status. Live video, with its complicated and intimidating apparatus, holds little attraction for
either teachers or students. Of course this may change as high-speed access over the Internet
becomes commonplace, but we are many years away from achieving this in campus settings
much less in the home. The graphical capabilities of computers are better compared to
blackboards than to classrooms; they are supplements to, rather than replacements for,
teaching.
These considerations govern the design of online courses animated by a live professor.
They will generally be created under his or her control in relatively simple and flexible
formats. No computer professionals need be involved. As in the conventional classroom,
much of the interest will lie in the interaction among students and between students and
teachers. As far as techniques of presentation are concerned, a certain healthy amateurism is
to be expected. Prepackaged computer-based materials will not replace the teacher but
supplement his or her efforts, much as do textbooks today. Software designers will pursue
user-friendliness and simplicity to serve faculty needs.
Although neither video conferencing nor automated learning have caught on with faculty,
there is a long history of interactive text based applications such as the experiment at WBSI
described above. These experiences go back to a time when there were no more elaborate
alternatives; it is widely assumed that the introduction of image and sound renders earlier
approaches obsolete. But perhaps that is a mistake. The latest equipment is not always the
best for the task. Could it be that our earliest experiences with computer conferencing were
not merely constrained by the primitive equipment then available, but also revealed
something important about electronically mediated education? I believe this to be the case.
Even after all these years the exciting online pedagogical experiences still involve human
interactions and for the most part these continue to be text based.
But here is the rub: interactive text based applications lack the pizzazz of video
alternatives and cannot promise automation, nor can they be packaged and sold. They do not
conform to the fantasy of total central control over a flexible, disseminated system defying
spatial and temporal boundaries. On the contrary, they are labor intensive and will probably
not cut costs very much. Hence the lack of interest from corporations and administrators, and
the gradual eclipse of these technological options in public discussion (if not on campus) by
far more expensive ones. But unlike the fancy alternatives, interactive text based systems
actually accomplish legitimate pedagogical objectives faculty and students recognize and
respect.

71
 To resist the automating trend in education is not simply to wallow in an old-fashioned
Mr. Chips sentimentality. Rather, it is a question of different civilizational projects with
different institutional bases. The traditional conception of education must be preserved not
out of uncritical worship of the past but for the sake of the future. I have tried to show here
that the educational technology of an advanced society might be shaped by educational
dialogue rather than the production oriented logic of automation. Should a dialogic approach
to online education prevail on a large enough scale, it could be a factor making for
fundamental social change.

References
Agre, Philip (1998). "The Distances of Education: Defining the Role of Information
Technology in the University," Academe, September.
Berge, Zane (1999). "Interaction in Post-Secondary Web-based Learning," Educational
Technology, vol. 39, no. 1.
Berman, Marshall (1988). All That is Solid Melts into Air. New York: Penguin.
Coopers & Lybrand (1997). "The Transformation of Higher Education in the Digital Age."
Report based on the Learning Partnership Roundtable, Aspen Institute, Maryland, July
1997.
Farber, Jerry (1998). "The Third Circle: On Education and Distance Learning," Sociological
Perspectives, Vol. 41, No. 4, 1998.
Feenberg, Andrew (1991). Critical Theory of Technology. New York: Oxford.
Feenberg, Andrew (1993). "Building a Global Network: The WBSI Experience," in L.
Harasim, ed., Global Networks: Computerizing the International Community.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Feenberg, Andrew (1995). Alternative Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Feenberg, Andrew (1999). Questioning Technology. London and New York: Routledge.
Foltz, P. W. (1996) Latent Semantic Analysis for Text-based Research. Behavior Research
Methods, Instruments and Computers, vol. 28, no. 2.
Harasim, Linda, S. R. Hiltz, L. Teles, and M. Turoff (1995). Learning Networks: A Field
Guide to Teaching and Learning Online. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Heidegger, Martin (1990). Langue de Tradition et Langue Technique, trans. M. Haar.
Brussels: Lebeer-Hossmann.
Kearsley, G. (1993). "Intelligent Agents and Instructional Systems: Implications of a New
Paradigm," Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Education, vol. 4, no. 4.
Noble, David (1997). "Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education,"
http://classweb.moorhead.msus.edu/teach/noble.htm.
Pinch, Trevor, Hughes, Thomas, and Bijker, Wiebe (1989). The Social Construction of
Technological Systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Plato (1961), Collected Dialgoues. New York: Pantheon Books.
Report of the University of Illinois. Teaching at an Internet Distance. Seminar, December,
1999. http://www.vpaa.uillinois.edu/tid/report/
Sennet, Richard (1978). The Fall of Public Man. New York: Vintage.
Ure, Andrew (1835). The Philosophy of Manufactures. London: Charles Knight.
Wilson, Brent (1999). "Adoption of Learning Technologies: Toward New Frameworks for
Understanding the Link Between Design and Use, " Educational Technology, vol. 39,
no. 1.
Zuboff, Shoshana (1988). In the Age of the Smart Machine. New York: Basic Books.

72
6. Do We Need a Critical Theory of
Technology?
6.1. Whose Technology? Whose Modernity?:
Questioning Feenberg's Questioning
Technology 13
By Tyler Veak

In his trilogy of books on the philosophy of technology, Andrew Feenberg has provided
one of the most sophisticated theories of the technology/society nexus. In his most recent
work--Questioning Technology--Feenberg demonstrates forcefully the shortcomings of
traditional theories of technology, which either characterize technology as neutral, or
essentialize technology as some kind of autonomous, deterministic, and homogenizing force
acting on society. In short, as Feenberg claims, there is no "essence" of technology.
Technology is defined contextually and locally by the particular technology/society
relationship. Feenberg, in agreement with Don Ihde, claims that technology can never be
removed from a context, and therefore can never be neutral (99: 213). Technological design
is inherently political. Consequently, the observed constraint on design choice is not some
"essence" of technology, but can be explained by the hegemonic control of the design process
by privileged actors.

He suggests that a "radical democratic politics of technology" can thwart this hegemony
and open up space to steer the face of modernity from within. The design choice process must
be liberated by what he calls "democratic rationalization," where subjugated actors intervene
in the technological design process to shape it toward their own ends. Of particular note is
Feenberg's claim that environmentalists' struggles with technology represent "the single most
important domain of democratic intervention into technology" (1999, 93).

I take no issue with Feenberg's criticism of essentialist philosophies of technology, nor

his claim that technological design is political. However, I want to challenge the efficacy of
his proposal for a "democratic rationalization" of the design process. In focusing on the
"micro-politics" of local struggles over technological design, he largely ignores the broader
context of the global market system, and how the "logic" of the market always seems to
prevail.

In addition, Feenberg's claim that "environmentalism" will lead the charge in this
transformation can not substantiated. History indicates that his optimism is unfounded.
Grassroots resistances typically become either overcome by the context of global-fluid
capital, or co-opted by the bureaucratic machine (where environmentalism becomes
mainstreamed). I argue that any attempt to merge philosophy of technology and
environmentalism must address our increasing embeddedness in technological systems (i.e.,
second nature), or conversely the increasing disembodiedness from the material world (i.e.,
first nature).1
13
Symposium on questioning technology by Andrew Feenberg
11th Biennial Conference of the Society for Philosophy and Technology, San Jose,
California, 1999. Science, Technology and Human Values, Spring 2000, 238-242.

73
 Feenberg's Radical Democratic Politics of technology

Before moving on to Feenberg's proposal for a radical democratic politics of technology,

it is first necessary to briefly layout his critique of traditional theories of technology. Little
needs to be said concerning the "neutrality" of technology. Since the social-political nature of
the design process has been exposed by Langdon Winner and others, few adhere to the
neutrality of technology thesis (Winner 1985). "Essentialist" philosophies of technology, on
the other hand, still hold much credence and therefore must be addressed.2

Feenberg argues that scholarly interpretations of the social construction of technology3

have established convincingly that the technology-society relationship is not unilinear (99:
78--83). These theorists have demonstrated through their analysis of particular technological
artifact designs that the design process is not deterministic.4 There is a significant degree of
contingency, difference, or, as Feenberg terms it, "ambivalence" in society's relationship with
technology (99: 76). The essentialist characterization of technology as an autonomous
rationalizing force acting on society is thereby vitiated by social constructivist studies of
technology development.

While constructivism offers a serious challenge to essentialist philosophies of

technology, Feenberg rightly points out its deficiencies, namely, that it is too narrowly
focused on the development of particular technological artifacts/systems (99: 11). The
problem that constructivism ignores is the larger question of how particular design choices
are made over other choices, which, as Feenberg argues, is an inherently political question.

To formulate his politics of technology, Feenberg offers a two level critique: one
focusing on the local level of technological design, and the second focusing on the meta-level
of cultural worldview, or hermeneutic (i.e., the of presuppositions and biases inherent in our
present relations with technology) (1999, 202). This two-level analysis by Feenberg seems
appropriate--he is not alone in arguing that local movements, whether environmental,
technological, or other, must be coupled with overarching meta-level critiques of
culture/society.

In addition to drawing on the constructivists mentioned above, Feenberg also borrows

from Critical Theory, specifically Habermas and Marcuse, to arrive at his proposal--a
"democratic rationality" of technology. According to Feenberg, Marcuse was right in arguing
that technology is largely socially determined, as the social constructivists of technology have
amply confirmed. Nevertheless, Feenberg agrees with Habermas' criticism of Marcuse; that
is, Marcuse appeals to a romantic myth of "outsiders" as the basis for transforming society
(99: 153). Marcuse argues that those caught-up in the "one-dimensional" society are too
inundated by instrumental rationality to provide a means of escape, hence the change must
come from the "outside," either through an aesthetic dimension, or through marginalized
groups that are not part of the one-dimensional society (Marcuse, 1964) Feenberg, on the
other hand, argues that the goal is "not to destroy the system by which we are enframed but to
alter its direction of development through a new kind of technological politics" (Feenberg,
1995: 35). In other words, steer the system from within through subtle hybridizations not
mass revolution.

Feenberg adopts Habermas' conception of the democratic community as the context for
liberating technological design choice from hegemonic constraints. However, he makes
significant modifications to Habermas' theory of communicative action. Habermas argues

74
that technology is neutral, but dominated by instrumental rationality and therefore a
hindrance to communicative action. The best that can be hoped for, according to Habermas,
is to hold technology's instrumental rationality at bay so that communication may continue
unabated within the democratic community (Habermas, 1968).

Feenberg argues that Habermas is mistaken in his conception of technology as neutral

and instrumental. Again, the neutrality of technology is no longer debatable--technology can
not be separated from a cultural context. In regard to Habermas' claim that technology
equates to instrumental rationality, the constructivist studies of technology have demonstrated
that actors are able to successfully shape design choice for their own non-instrumental ends.
However, since the struggle over design choice is centered around technology, Feenberg
claims that it is "rational"--but not instrumentally rational (99: 105). Feenberg, therefore,
brings rationality into Habermas' vision of a democratic community to arrive at his suggested
"democratic rationality." The possibility exists to choose rationally more liberating
technological designs that further the various interests of the community of actors, as
Feenberg states "there are ways of rationalizing society that democratize rather than
centralize control" (1999, 76).

There is, however, an obvious tension between the contingency observed in the design
choice process, and the constraints placed on this process by the larger cultural-political
milieu. Feenberg characterizes this tension as the "ambivalence" of technology, which he
conveys in the following two principles (1999, 76):

1.Conservation of hierarchy: social hierarchy can generally be preserved and

reproduced as new technology is introduced. This principle explains the extraordinary
continuity of power in advanced capitalist societies over the last several generations,
made possible by technocratic strategies of modernization despite enormous technical
changes.
2.Democratic rationalization: new technology can also be used to undermine the
existing social hierarchy or to force it to meet needs it has ignored. This principle
explains the technical initiatives that often accompany the structural reforms pursued
by union, environmental, and other social movements.
Feenberg admits that it is "undeniable that advanced societies exhibit the great
concentrations of power in technologically mediated organizations" and that "despite
occasional resistance the design of technical institutions disqualifies modern men and woman
for meaningful political participation" (1999, 101). Nevertheless, he is optimistic that
democratic rationalization can overthrow this entrenched power: "the tensions in the
industrial system can be grasped on a local basis from "within," by individuals immediately
engaged in technically mediated activities and able to actualize ambivalent potentialities
suppressed by the prevailing technological rationality" (1999, 105). The crux of the issue, in
terms of Feenberg's proposal, is the degree to which democratic rationalization can override
capitalism's conservation of hierarchy. The key to this overthrow, according to Feenberg, is
to expose the hegemony constraining design choice through what he calls a reflexive
"hermeneutic technology."

Feenberg draws on a number of intellectual traditions--hermeneutics from Heidegger,

cultural theorists such as Foucault and Baudrillard, and critical theory--to reveal how the
interests of certain actors achieve and maintain control of the design choice process. 5
According to Feenberg, control over design choice is not necessarily economically motivated
as many have argued. That is, the utilitarian efficiency of the market is not always the

75
motivating factor. Frequently, the aim is to either de-skill workers, or for management to
maintain operational autonomy (95: 87). These "strategic" actors, as Feenberg calls them, are
able to concretize their particular biases as the given technological code (99: 113). And
because they intentionally choose technological designs that maintain operational autonomy
the centralized-hierarchical power structure is perpetuated. Feenberg, therefore, admits that
although technocratic power is foundationless and contingent, it nevertheless has a
"unidirectional tendency" (1995: 92). Subjugated--tactical--actors are thereby excluded from
the design choice process unless resistance is successful, which Feenberg obviously believes
is possible.

What is needed, according Feenberg, is a theory of cultural change: "A new culture is
needed to shift patterns of investment and consumption and to open up the imagination to
technical advances that transform the horizon of economic action" (1999, 98). However,
transformation is no longer simply about transfer of the ownership of capital, because of the
"technological inheritance" of hierarchical control (Feenberg, 1991: 39). Feenberg believes
that "environmentalism," as it brings other values to bear on the technological design process,
is one of the most promising terrains for evoking this change (1999, 92).

Critique

On the one hand, Feenberg acknowledges that economics (i.e., capitalism) is the greatest
hindrance to a more liberatory politics of technology: "Technological design must be freed
from the profit system" (1999, 57). Nevertheless, he argues that this hindrance can be
overcome through the struggle of various local movements over technology. To illustrate, he
provides several examples of these "democratic rationalizations" of technology, such as the
struggle over the Internet, and AIDS activist's successful attempt to reshape the FDA drug
approval process.

Contra Albert Borgmann, Feenberg frames the Internet as an example of a successful

attempt to steer technology toward more democratic ends--e.g., enhanced communication
(99: 191). And no doubt, the Internet has brought many formerly disparate groups and
individuals together. Nevertheless, in the larger context of the market system we can see that
the design space created by the Internet is well on its way to becoming colonized as just
another place to consume--the Bill Gates, Microsoft's bullying of Sun Systems, advertising
on virtually every web page, junk email. How long before the logic of the market prevails, or
has it already? The Internet is still in its infancy, but it is rapidly gaining technological
momentum6 (to use Thomas P. Hughes term), and every step taken narrows the playing field,
in terms of which actors will have a stake in shaping its future.

Even if we concede that it is possible to thwart the plans of the Microsofts and somehow
make the Internet a continuing sight of liberation,7 how democratic is the Internet? That is,
can anyone enter the game? The answer is no. It costs $2000 plus to step up to the table, and
another $20+/month to stay in. Then there is the perpetual need for costly upgrades because
your $2000 machine becomes obsolete within two years. The technological obsolescence
built into our new virtual world puts the old program of planned obsolesce from Detroit to
shame.8

Economics aside, how many really have the technical expertise to hack into the Internet
or some other burgeoning virtual technology and "steer" it toward their own ends? In many
ways the Internet has been a source of democratization, but at the end of the day how

76
democratic is a technological system that has built-in obsolescence, is based ever increasingly
around consumption, and requires dependence on a cadre of techno-elites9 to manage the
"problems"--and they are numerous as many of you have experienced.

Another example of demoncratic rationalization offered by Feenberg is AIDS activism.

Granted, AIDS activism did result in altering the direction of AIDS research and the drug
approval process. However, in his history of AIDS activism, Steven Epstein tells a tale of co-
optation and fragmentation. Because of the extreme amount of expertise involved in AIDS
research, activists were dependent on their adversaries, the scientists. They could only gain
credibility and authority by becoming experts themselves (Epstein, 351). The problem,
however, is that this emphasis on expertise created a hierarchy among activists and
consequently a fragmentation. There were the "insiders"--the activists that worked directly
with the scientists, and the "outsiders" (i.e., all the rest) (Epstein, 287). Moreover, because of
the immense amount of disagreement over the direction of AIDS research, not all voices
could be heard. Epstein concludes from his analysis of AIDS activism that for any significant
change to occur "efforts...must be carried out in conjunction with other social struggles that
challenge other, entrenched systems of domination" (Epstein, 352). As history indicates, this
is easier said than done.

Even if we grant that some of these movements have been successful, to whatever
degree, Is there a danger in celebrating these important, but nevertheless local, victories? In
this regard, Feenberg appears to fall into the same trap as the constructivists, who he rightly
criticizes. He seems to argue that if a particular design process is "democratic," then it is
good. Bracketing technological design in this way makes his optimism understandable. 10
There is an implied "progressionism" in his attitude toward technology--that is, technological
advancement is fine as long as it is democratic (as defined by him). However, focusing on
"particular" relations with technology obscures the fact that most of the local "victories"
become co-opted in the larger context of global capitalism. 11 In the long run this emphasis on
the local obfuscates the hegemony that, on the one hand, Feenberg acknowledges, but, on the
other, offers no real strategy for addressing other some vague notion of a "reflexive
technological hermeneutic." Can the technological hermeneutic ask questions deep enough to
undermine the prevailing attitude of "technology equates to economic progress"? In short, it
is difficult to understand Feenberg's optimism when he admits capitalism's "unidirectional
tendency" toward "conserving hierarchical structures" through technological design.

Although not completely pervasive, it appears that in the long run the logic of the market
does seem to prevail. Thomas P. Hughes' history of the electrical utility industry is one such
example where initially a large amount of contingency existed in the design process. He
compares the development of electrical systems in Chicago, London, and Berlin, and shows
how each context transfigured the shape of the electrical system. Chicago was dominated by
laissez-faire economics, Berlin by heavy government regulation, and London by
parochialism--each giving, initially, a unique face to "electricity." London held out the
longest against standardization with its extremely fragmented and non-standardized
conglomerate of electrical systems. Nevertheless, Hughes claims that by the 1930s all three
systems were homogenized by the market demands of utilitarian efficiency (Hughes).12

As in the case of the Internet, "electricity" was hailed as a liberatory technology--

emancipating the common person from the drudgery of everyday life. But in the end, we find
ourselves more deeply embedded in a system in which we have no control over and no way
out of--that is, short of dropping out completely. Like London, we are all forced to capitulate

77
to the standard (e.g., Microsoft) of the present (Internet) system. Why should the Internet be
any different? The larger context of the global market system has only intensified, since the
birth of the electrical industry. Hence, unless the broader context is adequately addressed,
there is no reason to believe things will be any different for the Internet, or any other
"hopeful" technologies.

Granted, there may be occasional successes in shaping modernity as Feenberg suggests,

but the larger train of capitalism on which modernity is securely fastened rolls on:

Since the mid-1970s, the top 1 percent of households have doubled their share of the
national wealth. The top 1 percent of U.S. households now have more wealth than the
entire bottom 95 percent.
The top 1 percent of households control 40 percent of the wealth. Financial wealth is
even more concentrated. The top one percent control nearly half of all financial
wealth (net worth minus equity in owner-occupied housing).
Microsoft CEO Bill Gates owns more wealth than the bottom 45 percent of American
households combined. By the fall of 1998, Gates' $60 billion [now closer to 100
billion] was worth more than the GNPs of Central America plus Jamaica and Bolivia.
Average weekly wages for workers in 1998 were 12 percent below 1973, adjusting for
inflation. Productivity grew nearly 33 percent in the same period. (Mokhiber and
Weissman, 1999.)
350 individuals own as much wealth as the bottom half altogether. (Luke, 1997)
The hegemonic control of technology by capitalism has played a major role in increasing
the disparity between the haves and the have-nots.13 Even today, while much of the world is
in a recession, the United States is reveling in a techno-fetish induced economic high. In a
world where 20% of the population consumes 80% of the energy and resources, consumption
must be addressed (Boff, 18). It can not be denied that much of this disparity in consumption
is a result of the wasteful energy systems in which we are embedded.

The increasing embeddedness in technological supersystems, with their associated

consumptive lifeworlds, lies at the root of the increasing disparity (Mellor). What does a
more democratic Internet mean to a rural Nigerian with no electricity whose main concern is
obtaining clean water, food, and fuel? Or the FDA approval process to Africans suffering
from AIDS? Nothing. As we carry on with efforts to "democratize" the virtual world, we
leave the rest of the real world further and further behind. Feenberg argues that the design
process can be democratized by including subjugated knowledges, but many of the
subjugated can not even step up to the table and make their voices heard. And while the
freight train of technology rolls on, these marginalized groups become further and further
distanced from any chance of being heard. Obviously, technology must be questioned, but
more importantly the fuel that drives the train of technology--capitalism--must be questioned.

What is needed is not a technological hermeneutic, but a sustained critique of the global
market system in conjunction with an ecological politics sympathetic to this critique.14
Workers cannot democratically resist attempts to de-skill, or protest poor working conditions
when a corporation can simply move to another country and continue to exploit without
resistance. In the long run, the logic of the market still carries the day. Flexible-fluid capital
must be addressed, if there is to be any possibility for significant transformation.

This is the primary reason why Feenberg's faith in environmental resistance movements
is unfounded. He states that "as a new century begins, democracy appears poised for a further

78
advance. With the environmental movement in the lead, technology is now about to enter the
expanding democratic circle" (1999, vii). The history of environmentalism tells a less
optimistic tale. Andrew Hurley's history of the steel mill community of Gary, Indiana clearly
portrays the problems inherent in sustaining grassroots environmental movements in the
context of global capitalism. Hurley's analysis demonstrates how cooperative efforts are
thwarted. Although initially the movement had some success, the steel industry used the
rhetoric of "economic downturns" and job loses to disregard environmental and safety
reform. This kind of rhetoric, as evidenced, quickly drives a wedge in solidarity, because it
reduces everyone to a "catch-as-catch-can" mentality (Hurley).

In addition, Robert Gottleib's comprehensive history of environmental activism indicates

that grassroots movements ultimately are either squashed by corporate capitalism or co-opted
by the Washington bureaucratic machine--big payrolls, Washington lobbyists, and long lists
of members who do nothing but write a check once a year. (Gottlieb).

I am not saying that these movements are never successful. They have done a
tremendous amount of good, but for whom? In other words, whose "democratic circle" is
being expanded, and at whose expense? My point is that, because the larger context (i.e.,
global capitalism) is not being adequately addressed , the problems have simply been moved
out of sight, and consequently out of mind (e.g., The creation of tariff free Export Zones
throughout the Third World, and NAFTA's opening up the southern border so that Multi-
National Corporations can freely shop for the best place to exploit labor.).

Granted, the successful democratization of technological design in one instance does not
necessarily mean that someone in the Third World loses out. In other words, I am not
foolishly suggesting that the West/North should throw away one-hundred plus years of
social-political reform, or cease striving for additional reform because the rest of the world
has not yet experienced it. Rather, I am arguing that focusing on the micro-level politics of
particular relations with technology, as Feenberg does, can be detrimental if those particular
technologies are part of a larger context that is increasing the disparity between the haves
and the have nots. In short, Feenberg does not sufficiently "question" technology, which is
inextricably linked to a system that inherently increases disparity.

Conclusions

In spite of my criticisms Feenberg's analysis remains extremely valuable. His critique of

essentialist philosophies of technology alone is a significant step toward clarifying the future
direction of the philosophy of technology. Moreover, his blending of constructivism, critical
theory and cultural studies brings some of the most sophisticated theories to bear on
technology studies, and has opened up new ways of perceiving the technology/society
relationship.

Although Feenberg does offer examples of the "democratic rationalization" of

technology (i.e., where actors have been able to steer technological design toward their own
interests), I would argue that he has exaggerated the significance of these victories in light of
the larger context of global capitalism. Given time and space the logic of the market remains
the prevailing force shaping the face of modernity.

This is not to say that modernity cannot be significantly changed for the better. Nor am I
suggesting that the "successes" of the developed world directly result in the oppression and

79
exploitation of the non-developed world. My point is that emphasizing the local successes of
technology relations (which are in themselves questionable) will not only leave us far short of
the goal of a more democratic-egalitarian modernity, it may, in fact, blind us to the head-long
plunge into an ever increasing disparity that is the plight of so many in the world today. Even
more significant, in celebrating the "democratization" of technology in these limited contexts,
Feenberg largely ignores the fact that we are becoming increasingly embedded in
technological systems (which are characterized by fetishized consumerism) that remove us
further and further from the real world in which many still face crucial life threatening
problems.

References

Bijker, Wiebe E., Thomas P. Hughes and Trevor J. Pinch (eds). 1987. The Social
Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of
Technology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Bijker, Wiebe E., and John Law (eds.). 1992. Shaping Society/Building Society: Studies
in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Boff, Leonardo. 1993. Ecology and Liberation: A New Paradigm. Translated by John
Cumming. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books.

Epstein, Steven. Impure Science: Aids, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge.
Berkeley: University of California Press.

Feenberg, Andrew. 1991. Critical Theory of Technology. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

Feenberg, Andrew. 1995. Alternative Modernity: The Technical Turn in Philosophy and
Social Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Feenberg, Andrew. 1999. Questioning Technology. London: Routledge.

Gottlieb, Robert. 1993. Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American
Environmental Movement. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.

Habermas, Jrgen. 1968. "Technology and Science as "Ideology"" in Toward a Rational

Society. Trans. by Jeremy J. Shapiro. London: Heinemann Educational Books, Ltd.

Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. 1972. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. by

John Cummings. New York: Continuum Publishing Co.

Hurley, Andrew. 1995. Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race, and Industrial

Pollution in Gary, Indiana, 1945--1980. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Luke, Timothy W. 1997. Ecocritique: Contesting the Politics of Nature, Economy, and
Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

Marcuse, Herbert. 1964. One-dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon Press.

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 Mokhiber, Russell and Robert Weissman. 1999. Corporate Predators: The Hunt for
MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy. Common Courage Press.

Winner, Langdon. 1985. "Do artifacts have Politics?" In The Social Shaping of
Technology. Edited by Donald Mackenzie and Judy Wajcman. Philadelphia: Open University
Press.

6.2. Reply to Tyler Veak 14

by Andrew Feenberg

Let me begin by thanking Tyler Veak for his sharp critique of Questioning Technology. I
am particularly interested in what he has to say as he has attacked my argument from the
Left, a position I had hoped to occupy myself with a critical theory of technology.

Veak's criticism comes down to the charge that in focusing on local struggles for the
democratization of particular technologies, I forget the larger framework of the world market
which absorbs everything it touches into consumer capitalism. What is the point of
democratizing this or that small corner of the vast human catastrophe that is global
capitalism? Why criticize technology, when economics controls our destiny? Veak concludes
that what we need is not a critical theory of technology but a critique of economic
globalization.

So baldly stated, the principal flaw in Veak's position is obvious: these are all false
dichotomies and nothing compels us to choose between them. Nowhere in my book do I
propose that a critical theory of technology can replace all other forms of social criticism. In
fact, as Veak himself is compelled to admit, I am no more enthusiastic about capitalism than
he is. One whole chapter is devoted to the French May Events of 1968 and the demand for
self-managing socialism that inspired that movement. Another chapter discusses Barry
Commoner's early socialist environmentalism. I argue that these were among the many
movements and debates that politicized the question of technology in the late '60s and early
'70s, to which we owe our current critical consciousness of technology.

In the Preface to the book, I also acknowledge the importance of patriarchy, racism, and
other forms of oppression that existed long before modern techology and survive within our
society today. I do suggest that technology criticism is under-represented on the Left despite
the fact that technology issues are increasingly central to many different types of protest.
Surely this position is not harmful to progressive social movements! Why then the harsh
critique?

Could it be that it is my lack of moral outrage that bothers Veak? It is a fact that although
I mention many of the issues he considers important, I do not respond to them as he would
like. I do not target Bill Gates as a villain, nor do I highlight the absolute misery of the
poorest of the poor. Differences such as these have more to do with intended audience than
14
Symposium on questioning technology by Andrew Feenberg
11th Biennial Conference of the Society for Philosophy and Technology, San Jose,
California, 1999. Science, Technology and Human Values, Spring 2000, 238-242.

81
substantive disagreement. Questioning Technology was not written with any pretention to
value-free scientific objectivity, but I have tried to expose my commitments without
bludgeoning my readers. I would like to be read by students and scholars interested in
technology studies regardless of their politics.

These readers are certainly aware of the fall of the Soviet Union and share the
widespread disillusionment with the type of socialism it represented. However critical they
may be of multinational enterprise, they see no alternative. Denounciation of world
capitalism is easier than providing a credible solution to the problems it causes. The call for a
global oppositional strategy leaves many skeptical in the absence of significant global
struggles. Verbal gesturing is no substitute for a politics, although it is quite popular on the
academic Left.

Veak's gestures are no doubt honorable, but they are also particularly desperate.
Everything is co-optable in his view. Even the most hopeful struggles, like that of AIDS
patients for access to experimental treatment, ultimately fail.15 The Internet will soon be
totally commercialized.16 Environmentalism has already been converted from a social
movement into a marketing ploy. And so on. If all this is true, our choices are limited: we can
either join the tragic struggle against the inevitable alongside the wretched of the earth, or
watch the global disaster in the relative comfort of the Western academy.

As I write this, a little bell rings in my memory. I am transported back to the early '70s
when some radicals denounced the peoples of the West for benefiting from world capitalism
at the expense of the Third World. Reforms in the advanced countries were useless, serving
only to strengthen an oppressive system. The true agent of the revolution was to be found in
Africa, Latin America, Asia, where consumer society had not yet corrupted all classes of
society.

Veak says this is not his position, but goes on to claim--inconsistently, it seems to me--
that technical democratizations are "detrimental if those particular technologies are part of a
larger context that is increasing the disparity between the haves and the have nots." My worst
fears are confirmed when Veak condemns electricity for failing to achieve the liberation
promised at its inception. No wonder he has doubts about the Internet! How can we accept
Veak's pro forma assurances that he is in favor of local reforms when he seems so
enthusiastic about condemning them for masking global problems? So despite his many
disclaimers, I feel Veak drawing me back to the discredited politics of the old New Left.

Questioning Technology starts out from entirely different assumptions and problems.
Veak would like us to turn to political economy for the serious business of social critique, but
a great many fundamental questions of civilization cut across the distinction between
economic regimes. Feminists and race theorists have made the point that equality is always
an issue. Abolishing discrimination under capitalism will not abolish economic inequality,
but it is just as true that a socialist reform of the economy can leave discrimination intact.
Reforms dismissed as trivial distractions by some dogmatic revolutionaries have made a
difference. And that process is far from over. The civil rights movement, women's
movements, movements of the disabled, environmental movements continue to have impacts
one would be foolish to discount.

The problems with Veak's uncompromising position extend further, to the model of
socialism itself. The alternative to a process oriented politics based on reformist social

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movements is the old statist model of total transformation. In the Soviet Union, revolution,
nationalization of capital, and economic planning did indeed abolish key state institutions and
markets, but that was not sufficient to create a humane society. Authoritarian techniques of
management and administration imitated from the West, combined with ferocious political
and police oppression, turned out to be far more significant than ideological and economic
innovations both for the daily life of individuals and for the long term prospects of the
regime. Presumably, a similar disaster would follow the abolition of the global capitalism in
favor of Soviet style socialism on a world scale. Who would want that?

If Veak is representative, it is time to refocus the discussion among radical theorists.

Technology studies can contribute to that task. After all, Marx may be considered the first
serious student of modern technology. He observed that the technical mediation of work
accelerated economic growth but also created new social hierarchies and devastating
economic crises. At the same time, Marx argued, technology had brought into being a new
kind of lower class capable of democratizing the economy and resolving its problems. Over a
century later, we see technical mediation reaching far beyond the domain of production into
every aspect of social life, whether it be medicine, education, child rearing, law, sports,
music, the media, etc. And, while the economic instability of market capitalism has been
reduced significantly, everywhere technology goes, centralized, hierarchical social structures
follow. In this context, the issue of domination through technology has come to the fore in
many domains.

Struggles against the arbitrary exercise of technocratic power have been going on since
the 1960s, beginning in the universities and extending to other insitutions, but often it is
difficult to classify the resulting movements. Similarly, social movements have challenged
specific technical designs in fields such as computers and medicine without waiting for the
blessing of the Left. Technology studies has contributed to our understanding of these
unprecedented movements. Steven Epstein's book on AIDS, Impure Science, shows how
much we can learn from research on social conflict over the technical framework of our lives.

Questioning Technology is situated in this context. It is an attempt to make sense of the

political consequences of generalized technical mediation. The book argues that technology is
emerging as a public issue out of a variety of struggles in something like the way in which
environmentalism emerged at an earlier date from hitherto separate issues such as population
control, pollution control, nuclear protests, and so on. The enlargement of the public sphere to
encompass technology marks a radical change from an earlier consensus which held that
technical issues should be decided by technical experts without lay interference.

Is it unrealistically optimistic to hope for positive developments from this change?

Perhaps, but I make fairly modest claims for what has been accomplished thus far. The point
is not that struggles over technology will do the work of world revolution, but that they exist
at all. Veak is the optimist if he thinks that we are ready to take on the capitalist world
market. I am concerned with something more basic, the survival of agency in technocratic
societies, and more particularly, the ability of modern men and women to act as agents in the
technical sphere from which the technocracy draws its force.

Contrary to Veak's claims, this approach does not privilege local struggles at the expense
of global ones. As of now, there are no global struggles around technology, if by "global" one
means the sort of total challenge we associate with the socialist opposition to capitalism.
There is no reason to assume that feminists trying to improve childbirth procedures or

83
protesters opposed to nuclear power detract from the fight against multinational oil
companies in Nigeria, assuming, as Veak appears to, that the latter can be considered more
"global" than the former.

Technical politics today involves a variety of struggles and innovations with significant
consequences for the structure of major technical institutions and the self-understanding of
ordinary people. We need to develop theory to account for the increasing weight of public
actors in technological development. That world capitalism will survive this or that technical
change should no more surprise us than its ability to survive the women's movement or the
civil rights movement.

Nevertheless, there is a difference and it is perhaps this difference that explains the
vehemence of Veak's challenge and his interest in my work despite sharp disagreements.
Although capitalism and socialism perpetuate to one degree or another such pre-existing
phenomena as racism and sexism, they can--and we hope they will--learn to live without
these abberations. But modern technology is essential to their existence. Hence any major
change in technology raises fundamental questions of economic organization.

Capitalism is still about extracting surplus labor from a work force with no interest in
generating profits for capitalists. To the extent that that inherently conflictual situation is
stabilized through specific technical choices, other technical choices can destabilize
capitalism. In recent years, technocratic ideology and management have emerged as an
effective approach to maintaining subordinate masses under the rule of capital. By the same
token, to be worthy of our continuing interest in the post-Soviet era, an alternative to
capitalism must be about democratizing technical adminstration and technical choices under
economic conditions which permit the extension of democracy to the world of work.

The core institutions of modern societies are thus at stake in technical development. A
broad democratizing trend that undermined technocratic ideology in society at large would
weaken capitalist hegemony and block Stalinist backsliding on the part of the Left. If a
critical theory of technology contributes to this trend, surely that should suffice to justify its
existence even to the most politically committed of critics.

References

Epstein, Steven (1996). Impure Science: AIDS, Activisim, and the Politics of Knowledge.
Berkeley: University of California.

Hughes, Thomas (1983). Networks of Power. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.

1
First and second nature are terms used, primarily by Critical Theorists, to distinguish
between the humanly constructed world of culture and technology and the material world.
Granted, as Marx himself admitted, there is no true "first" nature left, hence we are talking
about degrees.
2
Essentialist philosophies of technology originated with Heidegger and were further
developed by the Frankfurt Schoolers: Adorno and Horkheimer, and Marcuse.
3
which he broadly conceives to include social constructivists, contextualist historians of
technology such as Hughes, and actor-network theorists, such as Callon and Latour

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 4
See Bijker, et al, 1987; and Bijker and Law, 1992 for expositions on the various schools
of constructivist studies of technology, and of particular studies of design processes.
5
In addition, Feenberg explains how "essentialist" philosophies of technology have
argued mistakenly for an essence of technology, because of their exclusive focus on the meta-
level of culture. If one ignores the contingency evidenced at the secondary level of design, as
essentialist theories of technology do, it is easy to see how technology can be misconstrued as
being an autonomous-rational-deterministic force. Feenberg rightly argues that it is not
"technology" per se that evinces this at times unilinear trajectory, but the interests of
particular actors.
6
Or becoming "concretized" to use Feenberg's term.
7
Microsoft has successfully defended itself against two anti-trust lawsuits to date, and
others are still pending.
8
Not to mention the economic road block in getting people living in non-developed
countries, where the cost of a computer is frequently two or three times their annual income,
"on-line."
9
For a discussion of the emerging "techno-elite," see , Timothy W. Luke. Capitalism,
Democracy, and Ecology: Departing from Marx. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1999).
10
I believe Feenberg's unfounded optimism is largely due to his reliance on Habermas'
conception of a democratically ideal community that is limited both temporally and
geographically.
11
I am in no way discounting the achievements of social reform movements over the last
one-hundred plus years. My point of contention is primarily concerned with Feenberg's
emphasis, which I discuss in more detail below.
12
While Hughes admits that "load factor" was a technological limitation driving the
direction of the electrical utility industry, he also concedes that the industry would look
considerably different in a society that did not count "capital cost"--i.e., if the industry was
driven by values other than utilitarian efficiency and the "bottom-line" of the market (463).
13
In the face of the growing affluence of the few, nearly 20% of Americans now live
below the poverty line (CNN, July 11, 1999)
14
See the works of Timothy W. Luke, David Harvey, and David Pepper as examples that
both critique capitalism and attempt to formulate some kind of environmental politics. In
addition, a number of eco-feminist (i.e., of the socialist brand) authors have also made similar
arguments: see for example the works of Mary Mellor, or Carolyn Merchant.
15
Veak attributes this view of Steven Epstein, who in fact draws a contrary conclusion.
See Epstein, 1996 (353).
16
Veak invokes Thomas Hughes's study of electric utilities in support of this point, but
the analogy is weak as there is nothing resembling load factor on the Internet. See Hughes,

85
1983 (chap. XV). Furthermore, there continue to be innovations on the Internet that
contradict Veak's dire predictions, such as the emergence of support for online communities
on portals.

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 7. From Essentialism to Constructivism: Philosophy of Technology at the Crossroads

by Andrew Feenberg

Introduction
What Heidegger called The Question of Technology has a peculiar status in the
academy today. After World War II, the humanities and social sciences were swept by a
wave of technological determinism. If technology was not praised for modernizing us, it was
blamed for the crisis of our culture. Whether interpreted in optimistic or pessimistic terms,
determinism appeared to offer a fundamental account of modernity as a unified phenomenon.
This approach has now been largely abandoned for a view that admits the possibility of
significant difference, i.e. cultural variety in the reception and appropriation of modernity.
Yet the breakdown of simplistic determinism has not led to quite the flowering of research in
philosophy of technology one might hope for.
It is true that cultural studies and constructivist sociology and history have placed
particular technologies on the agenda in new ways, but curiously, the basic questions of
modernity posed by an earlier generation of theorists are rarely addressed in terms of the
general problematic of technology. Where the old determinism over-estimated the
independent impact of the artifactual on the social world, the new approaches have so
disaggregated the question of technology as to deprive it of philosophical significance. It has
become matter for specialized research.15 And for this very reason, most scholars in the
humanities and social sciences now feel safe in ignoring technology altogether, except of
course when they turn the key in the ignition. Meanwhile, those who continue the earlier
interrogation of technology have hesitated to assimilate the advances of the new technology
studies.
This is an unfortunate state of affairs. The currently fashionable multiculturalism cannot
simply be taken for granted so long as the earlier traditions expectation of convergence in a
singular model of modernity is not persuasively refuted. According to that tradition
technology will continue to affect more and more of social life, and less and less will remain
free of its influence to constitute a cultural difference. Thus the demonstration, in the course
of endlessly repeated case histories, that modern scientific-technical rationality is not the
trans-cultural universal it was thought to be may advance the argument, but does not settle the
question. The persistance of cultural particularity in this or that domain is not especially
significant. Perhaps the Japanese and the Americans will disagree on the relative merits of
sushi and hamburgers for generations to come, but if that is all that remains of cultural
difference it has really ceased to matter.
The new picture emerging from social studies of science and technology gives us excellent
reasons for believing that rationality is a dimension of social life more similar than different
from other cultural phenomena. Nevertheless, it is implausible to dismiss it as merely a
Western myth and to flatten all the distinctions which so obviously differentiate modern from
premodern societies.16 There is something distinctive about modern societies captured in
notions such as modernization, rationalization, and reification. Without such concepts,
derived ultimately from Marx and Weber, we can make no sense of the historical process of
the last few hundred years. Yet these are totalizing concepts that seem to lead back to a

15
See, for examples, Pinch, Hughes, and Bijker (1989).
16
Latour seems to want to have it both ways. On the one hand, he claims we have never been modern
because modernity is an impossible notion, and on the other hand, he attempts to reconstruct on his own terms a
certain discontinuity between modern and premodern societies (Latour, 1993). The argument might be less
provocatively, but more clearly formulated to say that we have been modern, but not in the way we thought. I
could agree with this and in fact offer reasons in support of such a position here.

87
deterministic view we are supposed to have transcended from our new culturalist perspective.
Is there no way out of this dilemma? Must we choose between universal rationality and
cultural variety? Or more accurately, can we choose between these two dialectically
correlated concepts that are each unthinkable without the other?
That is the underlying question I hope to address in this paper through a critique of the
account of technical action in Heidegger, Habermas, and, as an instance of contemporary
philosophy of technology, Albert Borgmann. Despite important differences I will discuss
further on, for these thinkers modernity is characterized by a unique form of technical action
and thought which threatens non-technical values as it extends itself ever deeper into social
life. They propose substantive theories of technology in the sense that they attribute a more
than instrumental, a substantive, content to technical mediation. According to these theories,
technology is not neutral. The tools we use shape our way of life in modern societies where
technique has become all pervasive. In this situation, means and ends cannot be separated.
How we do things determines who and what we are. Technological development transforms
what it is to be human.
Something like this view is implied in Max Weber's pessimistic conception of an "iron
cage" of rationalization, although he did not specifically connect it to technology. Jacque
Ellul, another major substantive theorist, makes that link explicit, arguing that the "technical
phenomenon" has become the defining characteristic of all modern societies regardless of
political ideology. "Technique," he asserts, "has become autonomous" (Ellul, 1964: 6). Or, in
Marshall McLuhan's more dramatic phrase: technology has reduced us to the sex organs of
the machine world (McLuhan, 1964: 46).
Recognition of the central importance of technical phenomena in the philosophies of
Heidegger and Habermas promises a much more concrete social theory than anything
possible in the past. However, neither fulfills the initial promise of their breakthrough. Both
offer essentialist theories that fail to discriminate significantly different realizations of
technical principles. As a result, technology rigidifies into destiny in their thought and the
prospects for reform are narrowed to adjustments on the boundaries of the technical sphere.
They hope that somethingalbeit a very different somethingcan be preserved from the
homogenizing effects of the radical extension of technical systems, but they give us little
reason to share their hope. In this talk I will attempt to preserve these thinkers advance
toward the critical integration of technical themes to philosophy without losing the
conceptual space for imagining a radical reconstruction of modernity.
I could challenge substantivism's rather pessimistic view of modernity by simply denying
that technical action has the broad significance attributed to it by Heidegger and Habermas,
but I will not do so because on this point I believe they are right. I could also offer examples
of culturally specific differences in the technical sphere, but these could easily be dismissed
as trivial or as due to cultural lag or local circumstances. The problem is to show how such
differences might be of fundamental significance and not merely minor accidents certain to
be effaced or marginalized by the further course of progress. I will therefore argue that
cultural difference can appear in the structure of modern technology itself, distinguishing
peoples and social systems not only symbolically but also technically.
Let me begin now to present my argument with a brief reminder of Heidegger and
Habermass approach.

Technical Action in the Critique of Modernity

Heidegger
Heidegger claims that technology is relentlessly overtaking us (Heidegger, 1977a). We are
engaged, he argues, in the transformation of the entire world, ourselves included, into

88
standing reserves, raw materials mobilized in technical processes. We have become little
more than objects of technique, incorporated into the very mechanism we have created. The
essence of this technology is the methodical planning of the future. Planning operates on a
world tailored conceptually at the outset to the exercise of human power. The reordering of
experience around a plan does inadmissible violence to human beings and nature. Universal
instrumentalization destroys the integrity of all that is. An objectless heap of functions
replaces a world of things treated with respect for their own sake as the gathering places of
our manifold engagements with being.
Translated out of Heidegger's own ontological language, he seems to be saying that
technology constitutes a new type of cultural system that restructures the entire social world
as an object of control. This system is characterized by an expansive dynamic which invades
every pretechnological enclave and shapes the whole of social life. The instrumentalization
of man and society is thus a destiny from which there is no escape other than retreat. The
only hope is a vaguely evoked spiritual renewal that is too abstract to inform a new technical
practice. As Heidegger explained in his last interview, "Only a god can save us" from the
juggernaut of progress (Heidegger, 1977b).
This critique gains force from the actual perils with which modern technology threatens
the world today. But my suspicions are aroused by Heideggers tendentious contrast between
the pious work of the Greek craftsman making a chalice and the destructive appropriation of
the Rhine by a modern dam. The craftsman brings out the truth of his materials through the
symbolically charged reworking of matter by form. The modern technologist obliterates the
inner potential of his materials, de-worlds them, and summons nature to fit into his plan.
Ultimately, it is not man, but pure instrumentality that holds sway in this enframing [Ge-
stell]; it is no merely human purpose, but a specific way in which being hides and reveals
itself through human purpose.
No doubt Heidegger is right to claim that modern technology is immensely more
destructive than any other. And it is true that technical means are not neutral, that their
substantive content affects society independent of the goals they serve. Thus his basic claim
that we are caught in the grip of our own techniques is all too believable. Increasingly, we
lose sight of what is sacrificed in the mobilization of human beings and resources for goals
that remain ultimately obscure. If there is no sense of the scandalous cost of modernization,
this is because the transition from tradition to modernity is judged to be a progress by a
standard of efficiency intrinsic to modernity and alien to tradition. Heideggers substantive
theory of technology attempts to make us aware of this. The issue is not that machines are
evil nor that they have taken over, but that in constantly choosing to use them over every
other alternative, we make many other unwitting choices. The overall effect of our
involvement with technology cannot therefore be interpreted as a relation of means to ends.
So far so good. But there are significant ambiguities in Heideggers approach. He warns us
that the essence of technology is nothing technological, that is to say, technology cannot be
understood through its functionality, but only through our specifically technological
engagement with the world. But is that engagement merely an attitude or is it embedded in
the actual design of modern technological devices? In the former case, we could achieve the
free relation to technology which Heidegger demands without changing technology itself. But
that is an idealistic solution in the bad sense, and one which a generation of environmental
action would seem decisively to refute.
Heideggers defenders point out that his critique of technology is not merely concerned
with human attitudes but with the way being reveals itself. This means, roughly translated
again out of Heidegger's language, that the modern world has a technological form in
something like the way in which, for example, the medieval world had a religious form. Form
in this sense is no mere question of attitude but takes on a material and institutional life of its

89
own: power plants are the gothic cathedrals of our time. But this interpretation of Heidegger's
thought raises the expectation that criteria for a reform of technology as a material and
institutional reality might be found in his critique. For example, his analysis of the tendency
of modern technology to accumulate and store up natures powers suggests the superiority of
another technology that would not challenge nature in Promethean fashion.
Unfortunately, Heidegger's argument is developed at such a high level of abstraction he
literally cannot discriminate between electricity and atom bombs, agricultural techniques and
the Holocaust. All are merely different expressions of the identical enframing, which we are
called to transcend through the recovery of a deeper relation to being. And since he rejects
technical regression while leaving no room for a modern alternative, it is difficult to see in
what that relation would consist beyond a mere change of attitude. Surely these ambiguities
indicate problems in his approach.17
Habermas
It may appear strange to discuss Habermas and Heidegger in the same breath, and
especially to compare their views on technology since Habermas has written practically
nothing on the subject in his major works of the last 25 years. Yet I will argue that
Habermass whole project is rooted in a critique of the type of action characteristic of
technology, which has provided him with a model for his later interpretation of the specific
modes of purposive-rational action that do concern him focally. The evidence for this
contention is primarily Habermass early preoccupation with the positivist understanding of
reason and its historical realization in a technocratic society. These arguments, developed
especially in the essay Technology and Science as Ideology, form the underlying structure
of Habermass theory despite the continual refinement and enrichment of his view of modern
society over the years (Habermas, 1971). I believe there is enough similarity between this
theoretical substructure and Heideggers philosophy of technology to justify a comparison
and contrast.
While Heidegger proposes a quasi-historical account of modern technology, Habermas
offers a theory of the transhistorical essence of technical action in general. As Thomas
McCarthy writes, Habermass own view is that while the specific historical forms of science
and technology depend on institutional arrangements that are variable, their basic logical
structures are grounded in the very nature of purposive-rational action (McCarthy, 1981:
22). At first Habermas argued that work and interaction each have their own logic. Work
is success oriented; it is a form of purposive-rational action aimed at controlling the
world. On these terms, technological development is a generic project consisting in the
substitution of mechanical devices for human limbs and faculties. By contrast, interaction
involves communication between subjects in the pursuit of common understanding. The
technocratic tendency of modern societies results from an imbalance between these two
action-types.
In his later work, Habermas reformulated his approach in system-theoretic terms borrowed
in part from Talcott Parsons. This media theory is designed to explain the emergence of
differentiated subsystems based on rational forms of calculation and control such as
17
I would of course be willing to revise this view if shown how Heidegger actually envisages technological
change. What I have heard from his defenders is principally waffling on the attitude/device ambiguity described
here. Yes, Heidegger envisages change in technological thinking, but how is this change supposed to effect
the design of actual devices? The lack of an answer to this question leaves me in some doubt as to the supposed
relevance of Heideggers work to ecology. One enthusiastic defender informed me that art and technique would
merge anew in a Heideggerian future, but was unable to cite a text. That would indeed historicize Heideggers
theory, but in a way resembling Marcuses position in An Essay on Liberation (1968) with its eschatological
concept of an aesthetic revolution in technology. It is not clear how the case for Heidegger is fundamentally
improved by this shift, which would not make much difference to the substantive arguments presented here. For
an interesting defense of Heideggers theory of technology that eschews mystification, see Dreyfus (1995).

90
business, law, and administration. The media concept is generalized from monetary
exchange. Habermas claims that only power resembles money closely enough to qualify as a
full fledged medium (Habermas, 1984, 1987: II, 274).
The media make it possible for modern individuals to coordinate their actions on a large
scale while pursuing individual success in an instrumental attitude toward the world. Media
steered interaction is an alternative to communicative understanding, to arriving at shared
beliefs in the course of linguistic exchanges. Common understandings and shared values play
a diminished role on a market because the market mechanism yields a mutually satisfactory
result without discussion. Something similar goes on with the exercise of administrative
power. Together, money and power delinguistify dimensions of social life by organizing
interaction through objectifying behaviors.
This media theory supports a critique of welfare capitalism. Habermas distinguishes
between system, media regulated rational institutions, such as markets and administration,
and lifeworld, the sphere of everyday communicative interactions. The central pathology of
modern societies is the colonization of lifeworld by system. This involves the over-extension
of success oriented action beyond its legitimate range and the consequent imposition of
criteria of efficiency on the communicative sphere. Habermas follows Luhmann in calling
this the technization of the lifeworld. But in fact technology drops from the discussion even
though Habermass analysis of system rationality continues to be shaped by the original
contrast of work and interaction. Technology itself receives hardly a mention although it is
obviously implicated somehow in the pathologies Habermas denounces.
The disappearance of technology as a theme is connected to a larger problem in the theory,
the ambiguity of analytic and real distinctions between system and lifeworld. Habermas
insists that the distinction between system and lifeworld is analytic. No institution is a pure
exemplification of one or the other category. While the types of action coordination
characteristic of eachmedia steered or communicativeare really distinct, they are always
combined in various proportions in real situations. Thus the system is not itself an actual
social institution, but merely refers to actual institutions, such as the market or the state, in
which media steered interactions predominate. Similarly, the lifeworld is not an exclusively
communicative institution, but describes those actual institutions, such as the family, in
which communication predominates.
Although in principle Habermas avoids in this way a crude identification of system and
lifeworld with actual institutions, in practice, the analytic distinctions tend to become
indistinguishable from real ones. For instance, the state and the family end up exemplifying
system and lifeworld despite Habermass precautions. Perhaps this also explains why he does
not consider technology to be a medium. Since there is no institutionally separate sphere,
such as the market or the family, in which its influence is especially prominent, it seems to be
ubiquitous. How then to identify it with an institutional base in which it would support a
predominance of media-steered interaction? Habermas may have thought that technologys
contribution to the problems of modern society could be adequately captured by analysis of
its employment in the market and administrative structures through which the colonization
process advances.18 However, the theoretical disadvantages of thus dissolving technology into
economics and politics far outweigh the advantages.
More convincing is Habermass critique of Weber, and by implication Heidegger as well,
for identifying the rationalization process exclusively with the extension of technical control.
He argues for the possibility of a communicative rationalization that would enhance human
freedom, but which has been partially blocked in the course of modern development. While
this seems right in a general way, in practice he is content to tinker with the boundaries of the
system while minimizing the all too obvious valuative bias of what goes on within it. So long
18
This argument was suggested to me by Thomas Krogh. I address it in Feenberg (1996).

91
as the media remain limited to merely facilitating the complex interactions and institutional
arrangements required by a modern society, they pose no problem. Indeed, to criticize
technization in its proper place is anti-modern and regressive. The alternative he envisages is
not reform of the media as such, but rather bounding them appropriately in order to give
communicative rationality a chance to develop fully. As with Heidegger, the critique offers
no concrete criteria for changing technology.19
Essence and History
The comparison between Heidegger and Habermas reveals several interesting
complementarities, but also a common problem. Both rely on the Weberian hypothesis that
modern and premodern societies are distinguished by the degree of systematic differentation
of domains such as technology and art that were united in earlier cultural forms. And both
argue that this differentation has led to the reification of the object of technical action, its
degradation to a lower plane of being than the subject which acts on it. Each emphasizes a
different aspect of this process, Heidegger the object, Habermas the subject. As I will try to
show, together, they provide the basis for a powerful theory of technology. Yet they each
develop their contribution in an essentially unhistorical way which is no longer credible.
In Heidegger and Habermas, modernity is governed by a very abstract concept of the
essence of technical action. I call this view essentialist because it interprets a historically
specific phenomenon in terms of a transhistorical conceptual construction. Of course
technical action systems and rationalities must have some core of common traits that enable
us to distinguish them from other relations to reality. But these thinkers want to get too much
a whole theory of historyout of the few abstract properties belonging to that core.
The weakness of this approach shows up most strikingly in problems with historical
periodization. The construction of the distinction between the premodern and the modern in
terms of the essential characteristics of technical action is unconvincing. The difficulty is
inherent in the essentialist project: how to fix the historical flux in a singular essence? Two
strategies are available: either deny all continuity and make of modern technology a unique
phenomenonHeidegger's solution, or distinguish earlier from later stages in the history of
technical action in terms of the degree to which it has differentiated itself in its purity from
other forms of actionHabermas's solution.
Heidegger represents modern technology as radically different from the one other model
of technical action he recognizes, premodern craft. He emphasizes the reduction of the object
of modern technology to a decontextualized, fungible matter cut off from its own history.
This reduction is value charged, or more precisely in Heideggerian terms, it brings value
into being by cancelling the intrinsic potentialities of the object, which craft respected, and
delivering it over to alien ends. The process of differentiation in which modernity consists
constitutes a sharp ontological break for Heidegger, a new dispensation, not a continuous
social change. Modern technology is thus no merely contingent historical phenomenon but a
stage in the history of being. Perhaps because of this ontologizing approach, Heidegger seems
to allow no room for a future evolution of the basic form of modern technology which
remains fixed in its eternal essence whatever happens next in history. Not technology itself
but "technological thinking" will be transcended in a further stage in the history of being that

19
Am I unfair to Habermas? He too has his defenders, who gesture at a Habermasian philosophy of
technology that goes well beyond the limits I attribute to his position here. However, to my knowledge no
Habermasian has ever tried to develop that philosophy. So far it is only invoked as a theoretical potential in
response to criticism, not to do the work we expect of a philosophy of technology. Note, however, that
Habermass lapsus is almost universally shared by those who reflect philosophically on modernity. (Among the
main exceptions, of course, are Heideggerians.) I have discussed these problems in more detail in Feenberg
(1996).

92
we can only await passively. This essentializing tendency cancels the historical dimension of
his theory.
For Habermas, on the contrary, modernity does not reveal being but human activity in a
new and purer light. In premodern societies the various types of action are inextricably mixed
together, with no clear distinction between technical, aesthetic, and ethical considerations. In
modern societies, on the contrary, the truth of technical action, as objectivating and success
oriented, is immediately accessible both practically and theoretically. Habermas explores this
change from the side of the subject, arguing that the value implications of technical action
appear where it interferes with human communication as, for example, in the substitution of
mediated interaction for understanding in essential lifeworld domains such as the family or
education. However, because Habermas continues to interpret technical action through the
generic concept of instrumentality, he grants it a kind of neutrality in the limited sphere
where its application is appropriate. Habermass notion of history is less idiosyncratic than
Heideggers, but for him the culturally variable nature of technical design is not a question of
rationality; he treats it as a minor sociological issue of the sort from which he routinely
abstracts. His alternative thus offers an avowedly non-historical conception of technical
rationality which effaces any fundamental difference between culturally distinct forms of
technology. As a result the variability of technology, and with it technology itself, disappears
as a theme from his work.
Heidegger and Habermas claim that there is a level at which technical action can be
considered as a pure expression of a certain type of rationality. However, as such, it is merely
an abstraction. Real technical action always has a socially and historically specific content.
What, in fact, do they actually mean by the enframing of being or the objectivating, success
oriented relation to nature? Do these definitions have enough substance to serve the
foundational purpose to which they are destined in these theories? Are they not rather mere
classifications so empty of content as to tolerate a wide range of instances including some
that embody quite different values from the ones these philosophers associate with the
modern and the technical?
Unless, that is, one smuggles in a lot of social content. In the next section I shall attempt to
show that this is how contemporary essentialist philosophy of technology actually proceeds.

A Contemporary Critique
Technology and Meaning
Both Heidegger and Habermas hold that the restructuring of social reality by technical
action in modern times is inimical to a life rich in meaning. The Heideggerian relation to
being, the Habermasian process of reaching understanding are incompatible with the
overextension of technological thinking and system rationality. It seems, therefore, that
identification of the structural features of enframing and the media can found a critique of
modernity. I intend to test this approach through an evaluation of some key arguments in the
work of Albert Borgmann, arguably the leading American representative of philosophy of
technology in the essentialist vein.20
Borgmanns social critique is based on a theory of the essence of technology. What
Borgmann calls the device paradigm is the formative principle of a technological society
which aims above all at efficiency. In conformity with this paradigm, modern technology
separates off the good or commodity it delivers from the contexts and means of delivery.
Thus the heat of the modern furnace appears miraculously from discreet sources in contrast
with the old wood stove that stands in the center of the room and is supplied by regular trips
to the woodpile. The microwaved meal emerges effortlessly and instantly from its plastic
20
For another interesting contemporary approach that complements Borg-manns, see Simpson (1995).

93
wrapping at the command of the individual in contrast with the laborious operations of a
traditional kitchen serving a familys needs.
The device paradigm offers obvious gains in efficiency, but at the cost of distancing us
from reality. Let us consider the example of the substitution of fast food for the traditional
family dinner. On the common sense or engineering view of technology, well prepared fast
food appears to supply nourishment without needless social complications. Functionally
considered, eating is a technical operation that may be carried out with more or less
efficiency. It is a matter of ingesting calories, a means to an end, while all the ritualistic
aspects of food consumption are secondary to this biological need. But what Borgmann calls
focal things that draw people together in meaningful activities that have value for their own
sake cannot survive this functionalizing attitude.
The unity of the family, ritually reaffirmed each evening, no longer has a comparable
locus of expression today. One need not claim that the rise of fast food causes the decline
of the traditional family to believe that there is a significant connection. Simplifying personal
access to food scatters people who need no longer construct the rituals of everyday
interaction around the necessities of daily living. Focal things require a certain effort, it is
true, but without that effort, the rewards of a meaningful life are lost in the vapid
disengagement of the operator of a smoothly functioning machinery (Borgmann, 1984:
204ff).
Borgmann would willingly concede that many devices represent an advance over
traditional ways of doing things, but the generalization of the device paradigm, its
substitution for simpler ways in every context of daily life, has a deadening effect. Where
means and ends, contexts and commodities are strictly separated, life is drained of meaning.
Individual involvement with nature and other human beings is reduced to a bare minimum,
and possession and control become the highest values.
Borgmanns critique of technological society usefully concretizes themes in Habermas and
Heidegger. His dualism of technology and meaning is also characteristic of Habermas, with
his distinction of work and interaction, and Heidegger, with his distinction of enframing and
being. This dualism seems always to appear where the essence of technology is in question.21
It offers a way of theorizing the larger philosophical significance of the process of
modernization. And, it reminds us of the existence of dimensions of human experience that
are suppressed by a facile scientism and an uncritical celebration of technology.
However, Borgmanns approach suffers from both the ambiguity of Heideggers original
theory and the limitations of Habermass. We cannot tell for sure if he is merely denouncing
the modern attitude toward technology or technology as such, and in the latter case, his
critique is so broad it offers no criteria for the constructive reform of technological design. He
would probably agree with Habermass critique of the colonization of the lifeworld, although
he does improve on that account by discussing the all important role of technology in the
social pathologies of modern society. What is lacking is a concrete sense of the intricate
connections of technology and culture, beyond the few essential attributes on which his
critique focusses. Since those attributes have largely negative consequences, we get no sense
from the critique of the many ways in which the pursuit of meaning is intertwined with
technology. And as a result, the critic imagines no significant restructuring of modern society
around culturally distinctive technical alternatives that might preserve and enhance meaning.
But is this objection really persuasive? After all, neither Russian nor Chinese communism,
neither Islamic fundamentalism nor so-called Asian values have been capable of producing
a fundamentally distinctive stock of devices. Why not just reify the concept of technology
and treat it as a singular essence? The problem with such an approach is that smaller but still
21
In the next part of this paper I will attempt to resituate this dualism within technology itself, to avoid the
ontologized distinctions characteristic of essentialism.

94
significant differences do exist, and these may become more important in the future rather
than less so as essentialist theory assumes. What is more, those differences often concern
precisely the issues identified by Borgmann as central to a humane life. They determine the
nature of community, education, medical care, work, our relation to the natural environment,
the functions of devices such as computers and automobiles in ways either favorable or
unfavorable to the preservation of meaning and focal things. Any theory of the essence of
technology which forecloses the future therefore begs the question of difference in the
technical sphere.
Interpreting the Computer
I would like to pursue this contention further with a specific example that illustrates
concretely my reasons for objecting to this approach to technology. The example I have
chosen, human communication by computer, is one on which Borgmann has commented
fairly extensively. While not everyone who shares the essentialist view will agree with his
very negative conclusions, I believe his position adequately represents that style of
technology critique, and that, therefore, it is worth evaluating here at some length.
Borgmann introduces the term hyperintelligence to refer to such developments as
electronic mail and the Internet (Borgmann, 1992: 102ff). Hyperintelligent communication
offers unprecedented opportunities for people to interact across space and time, but,
paradoxically, it also distances those it links. No longer are the individuals commanding
presences for each other; they have become disposable experiences that can be turned on
and off like water from a faucet. The person as a focal thing has become a commodity
delivered by a device. This new way of relating has weakened connection and involvement
while extending its range. What happens to the users of the new technology as they shift from
face-to-face contact toward hyperintelligence?
Plugged into the network of communications and computers, they seem to enjoy omniscience and
omnipotence; severed from their network, they turn out to be insubstantial and disoriented. they no
longer command the world as persons in their own right. Their conversation is without depth and wit;
their attention is roving and vacuous; their sense of place is uncertain and fickle (Borgmann, 1992:
108).22
There is a large element of truth in this critique. On the networks, the pragmatics of
personal encounter are radically simplified, reduced to the protocols of technical connection.
Correspondingly, the ease of passage from one social contact to another is greatly increased,
again following the logic of the technical network that supports ever more rapid
commutation. However, Borgmanns conclusions are too hastily drawn. A look, first, at the
history of computer communication, and, second, at its innovative applications today refutes
his overly negative evaluation.
In the first place, the computer was not destined by some inner techno-logic to serve as a
communications medium. In fact, the major networks, such as the French Teletel or the
Internet were originally conceived by technocrats and engineers as instruments for the
distribution of data. So precious were the computing resources being put at the disposal of
ordinary users that this seemed the appropriate use for them. The engineers imagined a virtual
space of communication, paralleling the real world of everyday interaction, where only
valuable information would circulate.
What actually happened in the course of the implantation of these networks? Users
appropriated them very early for unintended purposes and converted them into
communications media. Soon they were flooded with messages that were considered trivial

22
This negative evaluation of computer communication can be extended back to other forms of mediated
communication. In fact Borgmann does not hesitate to denounce the telephone as an early form of
hyperintelligence which substituted trivial chat for the more deeply reflective interactions made possible by
written correspondence (Borgmann, 1992: 105).

95
or offensive by those who created the networks. Teletel quickly became the worlds first and
largest electronic singles bar (Feenberg, 1995a: chap. 7). The Internet is overloaded with
political debates dismissed as trash by unsympathetic critics.
Here we have a dramatic case of what Pinch and Bijker have called the interpretive
flexibility of technology (Pinch and Bijker, 1989: 40-41). A concatenation of devices
configured by its designers as the solution to one problemthe distribution of information
was perceived by another group of actors, its users, as the solution to quite another problem
human communication. The new interpretation of the technology was soon incorporated
into its structure through design changes and, ultimately, through a change in the very
definition of the technology. Today, it would not occur to someone describing the principal
functionalities of the computer to omit its role as a communications medium although this
particular application was regarded as quite marginal by most experts only a decade ago.
How does Borgmanns critique fare in the light of this history? It seems to me there is an
element of ingratitude in it. Because Borgmann takes it for granted that the computer is useful
for human communication, he neither appreciates the process of making it so, nor the
hermeneutic transformation the computer underwent in that process. He therefore also
overlooks the political implications of the history sketched above. The networks constitute a
fundamental scene of human activity in the world today. To impose a narrow regimen of data
transmission, to the exclusion of all human contact, would surely be perceived as totalitarian
in any ordinary institution. Why is it not a liberation to break such limitations in the virtual
world that now surrounds us?
In the second place, Borgmanns critique ignores the variety of communicative
interactions mediated by the networks. No doubt he is right to argue that human experience is
not enriched by much of what goes on there. But a full record of the face-to-face interactions
occurring in the hallrooms of his university would likely be no more uplifting. The problem
here is that we tend to judge the face-to-face at its memorable best and the computer
mediated equivalent at its transcribed worst.
Borgmann ignores more interesting uses of computers, such as the original research
applications of the Internet, and teaching applications, which show great promise (Harasim,
et. al., 1995). It might surprise Borgmann to find the art of reflective letter writing reviving in
this context. I would like to conclude this brief review of significant applications with a
discussion of the emerging culture of on-line medical support groups. Consider for example
the ALS (Lou Gehrigs Disease) discussion group on the Prodigy Medical Support Bulletin
Board. In 1995, when I studied it, there were about 500 patients and caregivers reading
exchanges in which some dozens of participants were actively engaged (Feenberg, et. al.,
1996).
Much of the conversation consisted in exchanges of feelings about dependency, illness,
and dying. There was a long running discussion of problems of sexuality. Patients and
caregivers wrote in both general and personal terms about the persistence of desire and the
obstacles to satisfaction. The frankness of this discussion may owe something to the fact that
it was carried on in writing between people whose only connection was the computer. Here is
a case where the very limitations of the medium open doors that might have remained closed
in a face-to-face setting.
The larger implications of these online patient meetings have to do with their potential for
changing the accessibility, the scale, and the speed of interaction of patient groups. Selfhelp
groups, after all, are small and localized. With the exception of AIDS patients they have
wielded little political power. If AIDS patients have been the exception, it is not because of
the originality of their demands: patients with incurable illnesses have been complaining
bitterly for years about the indifference of physicians and the obstacles to experimental
treatments. What made the difference was that AIDS patients were networked politically

96
by the gay rights movement even before they were caught up in a network of contagion.
Online networks may have a similar impact on other patient groups. In fact, Prodigy
discussion participants established a list of priorities they presented to the Amyotrophic
Lateral Sclerosis Society of America. Computer networking may thus feed into the rising
demand by patients for more control over their own medical care.
It is difficult to see any connection between these applications of the computer and
Borgmanns critique of hyperintelligence. Is this technologically mediated process by
which dying people come together despite paralyzing illness to discuss and mitigate their
plight a mere instance of technological thinking? Certainly not. But then how would
Heidegger incorporate an understanding of it into his theory, with its tone of reproach toward
modern technology? Because of his emphasis on communication, Habermas might have more
to say about this example, however, I have argued elsewhere that he would have to include
technology in a revised media theory for such purposes (Feenberg, 1996).

Instrumentalization Theory
The Irony of Parmenides
Heidegger, Habermas, and Borgmann have undoubtedly put their fingers on significant
aspects of the technical phenomenon, but have they identified its essence? They seem to
believe that technical action has a kind of unity that defies the complexity and diversity, the
profound socio-cultural embeddedness, that twenty years of increasingly critical history and
sociology of technology have discovered in its various forms. Yet to dissolve it into the
variety of its manifestations, as constructivists sometimes demand, would effectively block
philosophical reflection on modernity. The problem is to find a way of incorporating these
latter advances into a conception of technologys essence, rather than dismissing them, as
philosophers tend to do, as merely contingent social influences on a reified technology in
itself conceived apart from society.23 The solution to this problem I propose is a radical
redefinition of technology that crosses the usual line between artifacts and social relations
assumed by common sense and philosophers alike.
The chief obstacle to this solution is the unhistorical understanding of essence to which
most philosophers are committed. I propose, therefore, a kind of compromise between the
philosophical and the social scientific perspective. In what follows, I will attempt to construct
a concept of the essence of technology that provides a systematic locus for the socio-cultural
variables that actually diversify its historical realizations. On these terms, the essence of
technology is not simply those few distinguishing features shared by all types of technical
practice that are identified in Heidegger, Habermas, and Borgmann. Those constant
determinations are not an essence prior to history, but are merely abstractions from the
various historically concrete stages of a process of development.24
In the remainder of this paper, I will attempt to work out this alternative concept of
essence as it applies to technology. Is the result still sufficiently philosophical to qualify as
philosophy? In claiming that it is, I realize that I am challenging a certain prejudice against
the concrete that is an occupational hazard of philosophy. Plato is usually blamed for this
prejudice, but in a late dialogue Parmenides mocks the young Socrates reluctance to admit
that there are ideal forms of hair or mud or dirt or any other trivial and undignified objects
23
Like the turtles in Feynmans famous story, the hermeneutics of technology goes all the way down.
24
The approach I suggest here bears a certain resemblance to Habermass interpretation of modernity in
terms of a structural model encompassing a variety of forms of rationalization that would receive differing
emphases in different types of modern society (Habermas 1984, 1987: I, 238). However, I extend this approach
downward into technology, which is only one component of Habermass97 model, in order to introduce variety
at the technological level. I believe this is a condition for the appearance of variety in fact, and not just
theoretically, at the level at which Habermas works.

97
(Cornford, 1957: 130C-E).25 Surely the time has come to let the social dimension of
technology into the charmed circle of philosophical reflection. Let me now offer, if only
schematically, a way of achieving this.
Primary Instrumentalization26
Substantivist philosophies of technology drew attention away from the practical question
of what technology does to the hermeneutic question of what it means. This question of
meaning has become defining for philosophy of technology as a distinct branch of humanistic
reflection. More recently, constructivism has sharpened reflection on a third range of
questions concerning who makes technology, why and how. My strategy here will consist in
incorporating answers to the substantivist and constructivist questions into a single
framework with two levels. The first of these levels corresponds more or less to the
philosophical definition of the essence of technology, the second to the concerns of social
sciences. However, merging them in a single framework transforms both, as we will see in
the next sections.
On this account, the job of describing the essence of technology has not one but two
aspects, an aspect which explains the constitution of technical objects and subjects, which I
call the primary instrumentalization, and another aspect, the secondary
instrumentalization, focussed on the realization of the constituted objects and subjects in
actual technical networks. Heidegger and Habermas offer insight only into the primary
instrumentalization of the technical by which a function is separated from the continuum of
everyday life. Primary instrumentalization characterizes technical relations in every society,
although its emphasis, range of application and significance varies greatly. Technique
includes those constant features in historically evolving combinations with a secondary
instrumentalization that includes many social aspects of technology. The most characteristic
distinctions between different eras in the history of technology result from different
structurings of these various dimensions.
As we have seen, the problem of periodization is central to the essentialist conception.
Heideggers ontological account of the distinction between premodern and modern
technology is no more plausible than Habermass epistemological one. This new approach
offers a solution to the difficulties. In contrast with Heidegger, I will distinguish premodern
from modern historically, rather than ontologically. I will break with Habermas as well in
arguing that the differentiation of modern technology from other world orientations is
relatively superficial and does not reveal the truth of the technical.
The primary instrumentalization can be summarized as four reifying moments of technical
practice. The first two correspond roughly with important aspects of Heideggers notion of
enframing, and the latter two describe the form of action implied in Habermass notion of the
media.
1. Decontextualization
To reconstitute natural objects as technical objects, they must be de-worlded, artificially
separated from the context in which they are originally found so as to be integrated to a
technical system. Once isolated they can be analyzed in terms of the utility of their various
parts, and the technical schemas these contain can then be released for general application.
For example, inventions such as the knife or the wheel take qualities such as the sharpness or
roundness of some natural thing, such as a rock or tree trunk, and releases them as technical
properties from the role they play in nature. Technology is constructed from such fragments
of nature that, after being abstracted from all specific contexts, appear in a technically useful
form.

25
Compare Latours account of a similar episode involving Heraclitus, Latour (1993), pp. 65-66.
26
Many of the ideas in this section and the next were first worked out in discussion with Robert Pippin.

98
 2. Reductionism
Reductionism refers to the process in which the de-worlded things are simplified, stripped
of technically useless qualities, and reduced to those aspects through which they can be
enrolled in a technical network. I will call these latter primary qualities, primary that is
from the standpoint of the technical subject for whom they are a power base. These are the
dimensions of the object which can be reorganized around an alien commanding interest,
while secondary qualities are vestiges of untransformable stuff tying the object to its
pretechnical history and its potential for self-development. The tree trunk, reduced to its
primary quality of roundness in becoming a wheel, loses its secondary qualities as a habitat, a
source of shade, and a living, growing member of its species. To the extent that all of reality
comes under the sign of technique, the real is progressively reduced to such primary qualities.
3. Autonomization
The subject of technical action isolates itself as much as possible from the effects of its
action on its objects. This suggest a metaphoric application to society of Newtons third law:
for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In mechanics, actor and object
belong to the same system and so every effect is simultaneously a cause, every object
simultaneously a subject. This is not a bad description of ordinary human relations. A
friendly remarks is likely to elicit a friendly reply, a rude one, a correspondingly unpleasant
response. But technical action autonomizes the subject through dissipating or deferring
feedback from the object of action to the actor. The subject is largely unaffected by the object
on which it acts, thus forming an apparent exception to Newtons law. The hunter
experiences a slight pressure on his shoulder as the rabbit dies; the driver hears a faint
rustling in the wind as he hurtles a ton of steel down the highway. Administrative action too,
as a technical relationship between human beings, presupposes the autonomization of the
subject.
4. Positioning
Francis Bacon wrote that Nature to be commanded must be obeyed. The technical
subject does not modify the basic law of its objects, but rather uses that law to advantage.
The law of gravity is present in the clocks pendulum, the properties of electricity in the
design of the circuit, and so on. In dealing with complex systems, such as markets, that
cannot be reduced to artifacts, Baconian obedience means adopting a strategic position with
respect to the object. Location, as they say in real estate, is everything: fortunes are made by
being in the right place at the right time. The management of labor and the control of the
consumer through product design have a similar structure. One cannot operate workers or
consumers as one would a machine, but one can position oneself strategically with respect to
them so as to influence them to fulfill pre-existing programs they would not otherwise have
chosen. In a sense all technical action is navigation, falling in with the objects own
tendencies to extract a desired outcome. By positioning itself strategically with respect to its
objects, the technical subject turns their inherent properties to account.
Secondary Instrumentalization
The primary instrumentalization does not exhaust the meaning of technique but merely
lays out in skeletal fashion the basic technical relations. Far more is necessary for those
relations to yield an actual system or device: technique must be integrated with the natural,
technical, and social environments that support its functioning. The process of integration
compensates for some of the reifying effects of the primary instrumentalization. Here
technical action turns back on itself and its actors as it is realized concretely. In the process, it
reappropriates some of the dimensions of contextual relatedness and self-development from
which abstraction was originally made in establishing the technical relation. The
underdetermined character of technological development leaves room for social interests and

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values to intervene in the process of realization. As decontextualized elements are combined,
these interests and values assign functions, orient choices and insure congruence between
technology and society at the technical level itself.
On the basis of this concept of integration, I argue that technique is fundamentally social.
Its essence must include a secondary instrumentalization that works with dimensions of
reality from which abstraction is made at the primary level. This level of technique includes
the following four moments:
1. Systematization
To function as an actual device, isolated, decontextualized technical objects must be
combined with other technical objects and re-embedded in the natural environment.
Systematization is the process of making these combinations and connections. Thus such
individual technical objects as wheels, a handle, a container, must be brought together to
form a device such as a wheelbarrow. Add paint to protect the wheelbarrow from rust and the
device has been embedded in its natural environment as well.27 The process of technical
systematization is central to designing the tightly coupled networks of modern technological
societies but plays a lesser role in traditional societies where technologies may be more
loosely related to each other but correspondingly better adapted to the natural environment.
2. Mediation
In all societies, ethical and aesthetic mediations supply the simplified technical object with
new secondary qualities that seamlessly reinsert it into its new social context. The
ornamentation of artifacts and their investment with ethical meaning is integral to production
in all traditional cultures. The choice of a type of stone or feather in the making of an arrow
may be motivated not only by sharpness and size, but also by various ritual considerations
that yield an aesthetically and ethically formed object. Only modern industrial societies
distinguish production from aesthetics through indifference to the social insertion of their
objects and the substitution of packaging for aesthetic elaboration. From this results the
artificial separation of technique and aesthetics characteristic of our societies, artificial, I
would argue, because no one denies that the prevailing ugliness of so much of our work and
urban environment is bad for the people who must live with it. Ethical limits too are
overthrown in the breakdown of religious and craft traditions, although medical technology
and environmental crisis have inspired new interest in the moral limitation of technical
power. These limitations are eventually embodied in modified designs which condense
considerations of efficiency with ethical values. A similar condensation appears in aesthetic
functionalism. Thus mediations remain an essential aspect of the technical process even in
modern societies.
3. Vocation
The autonomization of the technical subject is overcome in the recognition of the human
significance of vocation, the acquisition of craft. In vocation, the subject is no longer isolated
from objects, but is transformed by its own technical relation to them. This relation exceeds
passive contemplation or external manipulation and involves the worker as bodily subject and
member of a community in the life of its objects. The individual of our earlier example, who
fires a rifle at a rabbit, will become a hunter with the corresponding attitudes and dispositions
should he pursue such activities professionally. Vocation is the best term we have for this
reverse impact on users of their involvement with the tools of their trade. The idea of
vocation or way is an essential dimension of even the most humble technical practices in
some traditional cultures, such as the Japanese (at least until recently), but tends to be
artificially reserved for professions such as medicine in most industrial societies. Perhaps this
27
Strange as it may seem, underdetemination applies even to wheelbarrows. Today they are designed for
use by working adults, but they were made small to serve as childrens toys among the Aztecs, who did not use
wheels for transportation.

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is an effect of wage labor, which substitutes temporary employment under administrative
control for the lifelong craft of the independent producer, thereby reducing both the impact of
any particular skill on the worker and the individual responsibility for quality implied in
vocation.
4. Initiative
Finally, to positioning as the basis of strategic control of the worker and consumer there
correspond various forms of initiative on the part of the individuals submitted to technical
control, for example, the praxis of voluntary cooperation in the coordination of effort and
user appropriation of devices and systems for unintended purposes. In precapitalist societies,
cooperation was often regulated by tradition or paternal authority, and the uses of the few
available devices so loosely prescribed that the line between producer programs and user
appropriations was often blurred. Collegiality is an alternative to bureaucratic control in
modern societies with widespread if imperfect applications in the organization of
professionals such as teachers and doctors. Reformed and generalized, it has the potential for
reducing alienation through substituting self-organization for control from above. In the
sphere of consumption, we have numerous examples, such as the computer, where informal
appropriations by users result in significant design changes. As we have seen, this is how
human communication became a standard functionality of a technology that was originally
conceived by computer professionals as a device for calculating and storing data.
Secondary instrumentalizations support the reintegration of object with context, primary
with secondary qualities, subject with object, and leadership with group through a reflexive
meta-technical practice that treats technical objects and the technical relation itself as raw
material for more complex forms of technical action. There is of course something
paradoxical about this association of reflexivity with technology; in the framework Heidegger
and Habermas share technical rationality is supposed to be blind to itself. Reflection is
reserved for another type of thought competent to deal with such important matters as
aesthetics and ethics. We have here the familiar thesis of the split between nature and Geist,
and their corresponding sciences. What is the origin of this split?
Capitalism and Substantive Theory of Technology
Substantivism identifies technique in general with the specific technologies that have
developed in the last century in the West. These are technologies of conquest that pretend to
an unprecedented autonomy. The exemplary modern maestro of technology is the
entrepreneur, singlemindedly focussed on production and profit. The enterprise is a radically
decontextualized platform for action, without the traditional responsibilities for persons and
places that went with technical power in the past. Ultimately, it is the autonomy of the
enterprise that makes it possible to distinguish so sharply between intended and unintended
consequences and to ignore the latter. Capitalism is thereby freed to extend technical control
to the labor force, the organization of work, and aspects of the natural environment that were
formerly protected from interference by custom and tradition.28 To define technology on these
terms is ethnocentric.
What does a broader historical picture of technology show? Contrary to Heideggerian
substantivism, there is nothing unprecedented about our technology. Its chief features, such
as the reduction of objects to raw materials, the use of precise measurement and plans, the
management of some human beings by others, large scales of operation, are commonplace

28
It is important to resist the temptation to say that capitalism is irrelevant to the issues under discussion
here since Soviet communism and its imitators did no different and no better. These regimes never constituted
an alternative; they followed the capitalist example in essential respects, importing technology and management
methods, in some cases, such as protection of the environment, carrying its irresponsibility even further. I have
discussed this problem in more detail in Feenberg (1991), chap. 6.

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throughout history. It is the exorbitant role of these features that is new, and of course the
consequences of that are truly without precedent.
Those consequences include obstacles to secondary instrumentalization wherever
integrative technical change would threaten the maximum exploitation of human and natural
resources. These obstacles are not merely ideological but are incorporated into technological
designs. Only a critique of those designs is adequate to the problems, and only such a critique
can uncover technologys hopeful potential. The privileged dimensions of modern technology
must therefore be viewed in a larger context which includes many currently marginalized
practices that were of great importance in former times and may someday return to center
stage. For example, until the generalization of Taylorism, the technical experience was
essentially about the choice of a vocation. Technology was associated with a way of life, with
specific forms of personal development and virtues. It was the success of capitalist deskilling
that finally made workers objects of technique like raw materials or machines. Here, not in
some mysterious dispensation of being, lies the source of the total mobilization of modern
times.
Similarly, modern management has replaced the traditional collegiality of the guilds with
new forms of control. Just as vocational investment in work continues in certain exceptional
settings, so collegiality survives in a few professional or cooperative workplaces. Numerous
historical studies show that these more democratic forms are not so much incompatible with
the esssence of technology as with capitalist economics. Given a different social context
and a different path of technical development, it should be possible to recover these
traditional technical values and organizational forms in new ways in a future evolution of
modern technological society. Thus reform of this society would involve not merely limiting
the reach of the technical, but building on its intrinsic potential for democratic administration.
Because its hegemony rests on extending technical control beyond traditional boundaries
to embrace the labor force, capitalism tends to identify technique as a whole with the
instrumentalizations through which that control is secured. Meanwhile, other aspects of
technique are forgotten or treated as non-technical. It is this capitalist technical rationality
that is reflected in the narrow essentialism of Heidegger, Habermas, and Borgmann. Because
their characterization of technology is confined to the privileged instrumentalizations of
capitalist modernity, they are unable to develop a socially and historically concrete
conception of its development and potential. They take their own labor of abstraction, by
which they eliminate the sociohistorical dimensions of technical action, for evidence of the
nonsocial nature of technology.
In the next section I will explore in more detail the constitution of that abstraction, and
offer a very different way of understanding the social nature of technology.

Hermeneutic Constructivism
Technological Fetishism
The error of essentialism is not arbitrary but is a consequence of the very sociohistorical
dimensions of technical action it denies. I will argue here that this error reflects the reified
form of objectivity of technology in modern societies. By form of objectivity I mean a
socially necessary illusion with real consequences. Such illusions become an aspect of social
reality insofar as we constantly act on them.29 The concept is roughly comparable to the
notion of a culturally determined frame of reference so long as the culture is understood not
merely as a way of seeing but also as a way of doing, a system of practices.

29
The concept of form of objectivity is derived from Lukacs early History and Class Consciousness
(1971). See Feenberg (1986: 70-71).

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 Marx offered the original analysis of this phenomenon. In Marxs usage, the fetishism of
commodities is not the love of consumption but the practical belief in the reality of the prices
attached to goods on the market. As he points out, price is not in fact a real (physical)
attribute of goods but the crystallization of a relation between manufacturers and consumers;
yet the movement of goods from seller to buyer is determined by price just as though it were
real. What is masked in the fetishistic perception of technology is, similarly, its relational
character: it appears as a nonsocial instanciation of pure technical rationality rather than as
the social nexus that it is. It is this form and not the reality of technology which essentialism
theorizes.
Hence the ambiguity of the Heideggerian critique of technology, which cannot decide
whether what is needed is a change in attitude or in technological design. The problem is
located somehow in between these determinations, in the form of objectivity in which
technology reveals itself. This is also the ambiguity of Borgmanns device paradigm, which
hovers uncertainly between a description of how we encounter technology and how it is
made.
A critique of technology developed from this standpoint pursues the larger connections
and social implications masked by the paradigm. To this extent it is genuinely dereifying.
But insofar as it fails to incorporate these hidden social dimensions into the concept of
technology itself, it remains still partially caught in the very way of thinking it criticizes.
Technology, i.e. the real world objects so designated, both is and is not the problem,
depending on whether the emphasis is on its fetish form as pure device or our subjective
acceptance of that form. In neither case can we change technology in itself. At best, we can
hope to overcome our attitude toward it through a spiritual movement of some sort.
I have proposed a very different conceptualization that includes the underdetermined
integration of technologies to larger technical systems and nature, and to the symbolic orders
of ethics and aesthetics, as well as their relation to the life and learning processes of workers
and users, and the social organization of work and use. On the essentialist account, one could
still admit the existence of these aspects of technical life, but they would be extrinsic social
influences. Essentialism proposes to treat all these dimensions of technology as merely
contingent, external to technology in itself, and to hand them over to sociology while
retaining the unchanging essence for philosophy.
What explains the persistance of the reified concept of technology even in a critical
context? As I have argued above, the answer to this question lies in the social structure of a
technologically developed capitalist society. That structure shapes both practical and
theoretical relations to technology.
In everyday practical affairs, technology presents itself to us first and foremost through its
function. We encounter it as essentially oriented toward a use. Of course we are aware of
devices as physical objects possessing many qualities that have nothing to do with function,
for example, beauty or ugliness, but we tend to see these as inessential. What distinguishes
technology from other types of objects is the fact that it appears always already split into
what I have called primary and secondary qualities. We do not have to make that split as we
would in the case of a natural object since it belongs to the very form of the technical device.
Thus an initial abstraction is built into our immediate perception of technologies. That
abstraction, it seems obvious to us, sets us on the path toward an understanding of the nature
of technology. However, it is important to note that this is an assumption, based on the form
of objectivity of technology in our society. The function of technical artifacts is not
necessarily privileged in this way in other types of society. The functional point of view may
coexist peacefully with other points of viewreligious, aesthetic, etc.none of which are
essentialized. To the Western observer this eclecticism may appear as mere confusion but it
has its rationale, as we will see. And indeed, even Westerners are capable of fall-ing into the

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same confusion with respect to certain richly signified technical artifacts, such as houses,
which we must strain to perceive as mere machines for living, in Le Corbusiers phrase.
In any case, when we moderns consider technologies theoretically we find that they
possess structures corresponding to the everyday practical evidence of function.
Technology is social only insofar as it is used for something, leaving the structure of
technology in itself as a non-social residue. That residue can either be approached
technically, for example, by engineers concerned only with the inner workings of a device, or
philosophically in terms of the essential nature of technology as such. But once social aspects
of technology have been stripped away, what remains are the primary instrumentalizations:
technology, in essence, decontextualizes and manipulates its objects. And that, no amount of
change at the social level can alter.
Technical structures consist in the systems of parts that enable technologies to perform
their functions. Insofar as structures have an internal causal logic, they can be abstracted from
their social surround as an instance of scientific or empirical principles. All systematic
knowledge of technology rests on this type of abstraction. Professional technical disciplines
arise to explain and perfect the stuctures of technologies. As the prestige of these disciplines
spreads, their approach to technology becomes the model for common sense and philosophy
alike. Eventually, it seems obvious that technology is its structure. Function is a kind of hinge
between that logico-causal reality and the subjective intentions of users, hence also between
artifact and society.
Theory and Reality: The Limits of Differentiation
Now, there is no point in denying the existence of structure. It is real enough. The question
is, what kind of reality does it possess? Is its rational coherence sufficient warrant for positing
it as an independent object? Or is it merely an aspect, an artificial if useful cross-section, of a
more complex object that includes many other dimensions? This is the ontological question
implicit in the critique of essentialism. This ontological question is linked to a sociological
one. In the Weberian tradition, modernity is characterized by the differentiation of social
spheres. The splitting off of technical rationality from other dimensions of social life is a
particularly important case. The absolute differentiation of technical disciplines from social
and religious sciences is the very index of effective modernization. Purified objects, such as
the economy of economics and the technology of engineering precipitate out of this process
in their truth. Here, in a new sense, the rational is the real.
But how plausible is this identification? Arent these rational models too good to be true?
Arent they just ideal-types, only loosely linked to actual objects in the world? But then the
essence of those real objects will not coincide with their rational core. An essentialism of
rational structure will fail to reach beyond the limits of the disciplines that conceptualize it.
An example from economics will clarify the issues. Both modern economic science and
the modern economy developed through differentiation from an earlier less differentiated
social magma. The science had to distinguish its object from the vaguely defined political
economy analyzed by Adam Smith and Marx. Similarly, the capitalist economy
differentiated itself from institutions such as the state and religion. But economics achieves
much higher levels of differentiation from sociology and political science than do markets
from social and political life. Long after economic science is constituted independently as a
pure logic of markets, actual markets in real economies remain thoroughly intertwined with
all sorts of sociological and political influences about which modern economics has nothing
to say. The real abstraction of the actual capitalist market is nowhere near as total as the
highly idealized abstractions of economic science.
In a sense, then, Smith and Marx were more realistic than modern economics because they
incorporated more of the relevant contexts into the object of their science. However, modern

104
economics does not pretend to offer a social philosophy that would explain the origins,
development and social relations of capitalism; it is dedicated more modestly to the study of
quantitative aspects of a completely stabilized, fully capitalist economy. Where these narrow
conditions are met, it provides a powerful approach to understanding and predicting
economic behavior. Where they are not met, its explanatory power is small, smaller perhaps
than the class and institutionally oriented methods of its predecessors.
Of course modern economics takes account of the broader array of factors those
predecessors recognized, but it does so in an impoverished way designed to protect the
idealization which founds it. Thus some of these factors enter the science as background
assumptions about constraints on economic behavior. For example, the political struggle over
the length of the working day belonged to Marxs science but modern economic theory
simply takes its results for granted as a condition of economic activity. Other so-called non-
economic factors are recognized as imperfections with respect to a logical model of the
perfect market that has, of course, never actually existed.
This difference between the degree and type of differentation characteristic of theories and
the real world objects they study gives rise to serious confusion. Should markets be defined
simply as the object of economic science, leaving aside as does economics everything that
does not fit the theory, or should they be defined in terms of their real structure, including all
the aspects from which economic sciences abstracts? But then the essence of the market will
no longer correspond exactly to the object of economics. Should we, as social thinkers, care?
Only to the extent that the prestige of economics delegitimates every other reflection on the
economy. But that is a provocation to debate, not an argument in the debate.
With technology, similar problems arise. The differentiation of technical disciplines opens
cognitive access to rational structures like those economics discovers in markets. But, again
like economics, those structures are abstractions from a far more complex and far less
differentiated reality. That reality lies in the background of disciplines such as engineering,
laying out the framework within which they define and solve problems, but it is not an object
of engineering science. The typical engineering illusion, (followed uncritically by modern
common sense), is to assume that the technical device is actually identical with what the
engineer makes of it and relates only externally to the society in which it is found; in fact it is
a rich manifold that incorporates engineering parameters along with many others. This point
might be put in another way: the selfsame device is subject to description in many discourses
(engineering, artistic, ethical, etc.) none of which is fundamental.30
Although philosophy of technology has often attacked the narrow horizons of engineering
from a humanistic standpoint, paradoxically, its concept of technology is equally narrow. Its
key mistake has been to assume that technical disciplines reveal the boundaries of their
objects, not just in a certain respect for certain purposes, but generally, fundamentally. Thus
limitations of those disciplines and particularly of their explicit self-understanding tend to be
transferred to their objects and real technology comes to be seen as non-social, non-reflective,
indifferent to values, power oriented, and so on. But as we have seen, an adequate definition
of real technology, as opposed to the narrow, idealized cross-section studied by engineering,
involves much besides the formal-rational properties of devices.
System, Network, Lifeworld
To get at that surplus of meaning, we need to return to the problem of function once again.
What is the reality of this all too obvious concept that emerges spontaneously from our daily
technical practice? As noted above, function resembles price as a fetishistic form of
objectivity. Like price, function is a relational term which we attribute to the object as a real

30
Of course many reflective engineers are aware of this, particularly since their practice constantly involves
them with other dimensions of technology.

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quality. In reality, the function of any technology is relative to the organizations that create
and control it and assign it a purpose. It thus has a function as part of a system in the
systems-theoretic sense of the term.
The concept of system is surely one of the slipperier ones in social science. Systems are
generally defined as complexes of interacting elements. In the biological and social world,
these appear as self-reproducing structures, such as organisms or corporations. In nature, the
criteria that delimit the structure appear to be objective. We can identify internal processes,
such as immunological response, that effectively distinguish an organism from its
environment and even from parasites that attack it internally. (But of course cancer poses a
problem for this model.) But the boundaries between social systems and their environments
are not so objective and unambiguous.
For example, officially the stockholders own the company and appoint a management
responsible to themselves. The company as system would seem to be constituted around the
intentions of its owners, embodied in system maintenance procedures by its managers.
However, the official system is not the only self-reproducing complex of interacting
elements in play. What of the workers and their union which may treat the company as a
very different kind of system? What of the community in which the company is located,
which may consider the company as a subsystem of a larger urban system? Are workers and
community leaders mere environment or are they competing systematizers operating on the
same terrain as management?
Of course management would like to achieve complete autonomy. It may try to sharpen
the system boundaries, as it understands them, by fighting the union and the local politicians.
But in the end the system is more like a spinning whirlpool than a solid object. To whom
does its wealth legitimately belong? Its shareholders, the victims of its products, its workers,
the community? And is it the same system, independent of the answer to this question? Laws
and courts, not natural processes, decide the outcome.31
But this is to say that social systems are very much in the eye of the beholder. Systems, as
self-reproducing wholes, are fragile subsets of much more loosely organized complexes of
interacting elements that may support several overlapping systemic projects. I call this latter
type of system a network.32 Social systems belong to larger networks with which they are
involved in many uncontrolled and unintended interactions. To call these networks
environment in the systems-theoretic sense of the term is to prejudge the issue of system
boundaries. So long as system managers are successful, this prejudgement appears
reasonable. But among the elements of the networks are human beings whose involvement
has a symbolic as well as a causal dimension. They belong to the lifeworld within which the
system is situated. They may prey on the system and destroy it like bacilli in the bloodstream,
but they are also capable of reorganizing the network in conflict with system managers, of
producing a new configuration of the resources it contains. They are, in other words, involved
in a way that makes nonsense of the organic metaphor of living creature and environment.33
System managers become aware of that wider background through unintended
consequences and system breakdowns that highlight incompletely controlled or integrated
elements of the network. The translation of the problems revealed in these breakdowns into
functional terms is essential for restructuring the system. Success in this enterprise tends to
obscure the fact that any given function is a selection from the full range of possibilities and
demands revealed in the breakdown, including some which contradict system maintanence.

31
Very different outcomes are possible; witness the social charter of the European Community which
grants rights to workers and communities unheard of in the United States.
32
The implicit reference to actor network theory is intended, although I do not follow that approach closely.
33
Menenius Agrippas myth of the dysjecta membrae is thus the original systems-theoretic ideology.

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 This wider range, the potentialities of the technical lifeworld, may include positive
elements that can only be systematized through new technological designs, as in the case of
computer communications, or even through the creation of new organizations with new
leaders and goals. Such radical transitions cannot be conceptualized from a purely functional
point of view, always relative to a given system and its line of development. The essentialist
philosopher who finds confirmation of his or her theses in the limits of the technologists
self-understanding thus also loses sight of the relativity of function.
This is not to say that the concept of function is a useless abstraction. On the contrary, it
orients users toward devices suited to their needs and has an important role in the technical
professions which must focus their efforts on narrowly defined goals. But both users and
technologists act against a background of assumptions that belong to a lifeworld of
technology which need not be thematized in the ordinary course of events. A hermeneutic of
technology must clarify that background.
I have therefore proposed a different type of model based not on the distinction of the
social and the technical, but cross-cutting the customary boundaries between them. In this
conception, technologys essence is not an abstraction from the contingencies of function, a
structure that remains the same through the endless uses to which devices are subjected in the
various sytems that incorporate them. Rather, the essence of technology is abstracted from
the whole network within which functionality plays a specific limited role.
The reified form of objectivity of technology privileges the system managers point of
view over the decentered complexity of the network. Similarly, the very possibility of
scientific idealization rests on the emergence of a system standpoint that selects out a
narrowly defined domain of objects and tasks. But as we have seen, the less differentiated
world of real technology includes elements excluded by theory and the device paradigm. That
real world of technology is a network, not a system, but a network that encompasses a system
within it.

Concretization and Technical Change

The Question of Technical Change
I complained earlier that essentialism fails to grasp the historical dimension of technology.
It is now time to make good on the promise of an alternative approach implicit in that
complaint. At issue is the explanation of social change in the technical sphere, and whether
such change is ontologically significant. The question has two parts, only one of which can
be discussed here. The first part concerns the reconceptualization of technical change from
the standpoint of instrumentalization theory. That task involves a fundamental break with the
system standpoint in order to develop a broader view of progress as more than an accident of
technologys essence. The second part of the question concerns whether such a
reconceptualization could ever itself become a part of the lifeworld of technology, i.e.,
whether technologys form of objectivity might change and the everyday understanding of it
conform with the sophisticated findings of philosophy rather than the naive self-
understanding of the technical professions. That question is the subject of another essay.34
As we have seen, for essentialism the primary and secondary instrumentalizations are
more or less differentiated depending on the stage of technical and social development. In a
premodern society there may be no very clear distinction between narrowly conceived
technical ends, which flow from the mastery of natural causality, and such spiritual
mediations as aesthetic or ethical values. The shape of a chalice is not ornamentation in our
sense, but belongs integrally to its design. In our society, on the contrary, these different
34
This second question is also connected to another important problem that is discussed elsewhere, the
democratization of technology.

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aspects of technical work are not only clearly distinguished but often embodied in different
institutions.
Once technology is differentiated from other social domains, its interaction with them
appears to be external. This is particularly clear in the case of mediations. Art is no longer an
intrinsic part of technical practice but something added on aposteriori. Ethical values regulate
technology from without, through laws, and are not internal to technical practices. Heidegger
and Habermas have taken such differentiation to be the essence of modernity. In the course of
it the mediations lose their concrete links to technical reality and become increasingly
rarefied and ineffectual ideals.
Of course, in many case such external relations do prevail, at a definite cost in efficiency.
The existence of such costs seems to validate the essentialist conviction that technology does
not change in essence with modifications in its historical forms. What changes is only the
extent of its differentiation. Movement is either forward toward higher levels of
differentiation or backward, through dedifferentiation to more primitive conditions. The more
societies emphasize aesthetic and ethical values, the more these values are allowed to
interfere with pure technical considerations, the poorer they will be. Whether such virtuous
poverty is treasured or reviled, the consequences of value based technological change are
similar. But instrumentalization theory implies a two way interaction in which differentiation
is continually overcome not through regression but through another type of change
essentialism lacks the means to theorize.
This is the process in which social constraints are embodied internally by design. In that
case technical and social relations are condensed in the device. We can still make an analytic
distinction between, for example, the aesthetic form and the technical function of a
streamlined vehicle, but no real distinction exists, any more than in the case of Heideggers
famous chalice. This is not a question of mere packaging or extrinsic influences; design itself
is affected. Here the social is not differentiated from the technical but merged with it. The
distinction is purely analytic and corresponds to no specifically technical or social structures.
But surely, where the very design and structure of technology is socially relative and not
merely its appearance or use, differentiation is not the defining characteristic of modernity the
sociological tradition takes it to be. Insofar as such cases persist and even proliferate,
technology must be conceived as fundamentally implicated in social change. In some cases,
such as environmental impacts or skill levels associated with production, the very nature of
life in modern societies is at stake. In such cases we cannot say apriori, on the basis of an
essentialist preconception, that the problems are an expression of technology as such, nor can
we decide whether technology is or is not inherently destructive of nature and humane ways
of living and working.
Concretization
The fact that primary and secondary instrumentalizations are sometimes only analytically
distinguishable while at other times they are institutionally differentiated is another important
source of confusion in the philosophy of technology. The confusion is compounded by the
fact that there is a constant transition from the second case to the first through what the
French philosopher of technology, Gilbert Simondon, called the concretization process
(Simondon, 1958). (See Chart I.)
Simondons concept of concretization refers to the condensation of various functions in a
single technical structure oriented toward efficiency. Technologies are adapted to their
multiple milieux by concretizing advances: a cars metal skin must protect it from the
weather while also reducing air drag to increase effective power; the base of a light bulb must
seal it for operation within a certain range of temperatures and pressures while also fitting in
standard sockets. Energy efficient housing design offers another example of a technical

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system which is not simply compatible with environmental constraints, but which internalizes
them, making them in some sense part of the machinery. In this case, factors that are
usually only externally related, such as the direction of sunlight and the distribution of glass
surfaces, are purposefully combined to achieve a desired effect. The house operates in a niche
it itself creates by the angle it occupies with respect to the sun.

__________________________________________________________________

CHART I

differentiation
>

primary instrumentalization secondary instrumentalization

decontextualization systematization
reduction mediation
autonomy vocation
positioning initiative
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concretization
___________________________________________________________________

All developed technologies exhibit more or less elegant condensations aimed at achieving
compatibilities of this sort. Concretization is the discovery of synergisms between the various
functions technologies serve and between technologies and their various environments. Here
the instrumentalization of the object is reconciled with wider contextual considerations
through a special type of technical development.
Where that context is social, I will refer to a specifically social form of concretization.
Such social concretization is a special case of what Bruno Latour (1992) calls the
delegation of a social rule to a device; it reorders the internal structure of the device to
optimize its functioning even as it fulfills a social demand. Here a goal is not merely assigned
to a device but actually becomes technically productive in a positive sense.
Once a social constraint is internalized in this way, there is a tendency to lose sight of it.
Technical devices are then seen as pure of social influences, which are conceived as
essentially external, as values, functions, ideologies, rules. The internalized social constraints
concretized in design are read off the reconfigured device as its inevitable technical destiny,
as in the example of human communication by computer (Feenberg, 1995b: 14-15) . The
concretizing process is thus a technological unconscious, present only in the sedimented form
of technical codes that are interpreted as purely rational and separate from society (Feenberg,
1991: 79ff).
Technology and Values
The process of concretization has a progressive character: designs can be ordered in a
sequence going from the most abstract to the most concrete according to technical criteria.
Concretization thus involves the general type of cognitive advance usually associated with
technology and to that extent it founds progress in rationality. But unlike a simple

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developmental criterion such as growth in productivity, concretization is involved in the
reflexive accommodation of technologies to their social and natural environment. It describes
a complex trajectory of progress, richer than simple growth. It is this higher order complexity
which makes it significant for the issues under discussion here in a way mere quantitative
growth is not. Here is an example of the sort of thing I have in mind.
Simondon claims that the craftsman is actually the most important milieu of traditional
tools, all of which are adapted primarily to their human users. Collegial forms of work
organization were associated with the use of these tools. By contrast, the deskilling of
industrial labor went hand in hand with the imposition of hierarchical management. Here the
"device paradigm" operates with a vengeance, alienating the worker from the work process
itself.
Although modern machines do not depend to the same degree as the craftsman's tools on
human operators, it is still possible to design them to take advantage of an environment of
human intelligence and skill. There is an extensive literature in management theory (going
back to Marx) which argues that integration of human and machine, drawing on the full range
of workers intellectual as well as physical capacities, implies more participatory forms of
organization. But the capitalist technical code militates against solutions to technical
problems that place workers once again at the center of the technical system. Such
concretizing innovations in work organization are nevertheless becoming more and more
common as information technology reveals its full potential. This is a case where one might
judge between several competing models of industrial society and their associated
technological designs in terms of their ability to reconcile the pursuit of efficiency with
democratic values and the human need for interesting and fulfilling work (Hirschhorn, 1984).
The idea of a concrete technology, which includes human beings and nature in its very
structure, contradicts the commonplace notion that technique conquers its objects. In
Simondons theory the most advanced forms of progress consist in the creation of complex
synergies of technical and natural forces through advances that incorporate the wider contexts
of human and environmental needs into the structure of technical systems. While there is no
strictly technological imperative dictating such an approach, strategies of concretization
could embrace these contexts as they do others in the course of technical development.
Where these contexts include environmental considerations, the technology emerges as
reintegrated or adapted to nature; where they include the capacities of the human operators,
the technology progresses beyond deskilling to become the basis for vocational self-
development and participatory management. Demands for environmentally sound
technology, and humane, democratic and safe work, are thus not extrinsic to the logic of
technology, but respond to the reflexive tendency of technical development to construct
synergistic totalities of natural, human, and technical elements.
These considerations allow us to identify a type of directional development that is both
technically and normatively progressive. The normative standards of that development are
immanently derived from the resistances evoked by the technical process itself. That
connection is clear where technical advance suppresses contextual features of nature and
social life that the individuals mobilize to defend or to incorporate into improved designs
through secondary instrumentalizations.
The theory of concretization offers a better account of the bias of technology than that
proposed by substantivism. This bias is not determined once and for all by the essentialized
primary instrumentalization as in Heidegger and Habermas, but also has a complex social
dimension. To be sure, technology may enframe and colonize; but it may also liberate
repressed potentialities of the lifeworld that would otherwise have remained submerged. It is
thus essentially ambivalent, available for very different types of development.35
35
Note the difference between this concept of developmental ambivalence and the notion that technology is

110
 The evidence of this is all around us. It has taken a certain theoretical obstinacy to ignore
that evidence and to abstract from the emancipatory implications of technology in construing
its essence. That obstinacy nevertheless had its justification as a reaction against the
dystopian politics of technology of the postwar period. As technological issues are
increasingly contested today, the dystopian risk fades. It is no longer sufficient to challenge
the one-dimensionality of technological thinking; what is needed is an account of
technologys ambivalence as a locus of social change.

Conclusion: Technology as Place

Essentialist theories of technology define the technical in terms of the primary
instrumentalization alone. At that level it seems possible to abstract technology from society,
while the secondary instrumentalizations are transparently social, with the exception of some
types of systematization. They lie at the intersection of technique and the other action
systems with which it is inextricably linked insofar as it is a social enterprise. As a result,
socially specific configurations of the secondary instrumentalizations are as variable as the
contexts to which technique is integrated, subject to transformations corresponding to distinct
eras in the history of technical systems and technical rationalities. For example, a dimension
of technology such as vocation may be central to technical life in one era and eliminated as
much as possible through deskilling in another.
From this anti-essentialist standpoint, our form of modern society cannot be the
untranscendable horizon of technical possibilities, defining for modernity in general. But
neither can we conceive of a general deglobalization of modern societies, a splitting up of
modernity into incommunicable varieties. The shared technical heritage provides what might
be called a practical universality that has imposed itself on a planetary scale. No modern
society can forego basic technical discoveries such as antibiotics, plastics or electricity, and
none can withdraw from worldwide communication networks. The cost of an entirely
independent path of development is just too high. But both in the advanced and the
developing countries, significant innovations are possible with respect to what has been the
main line of progress up to now.
The terrain of practical universality is accessible from many standpoints for many
purposes. It is not a destiny, but the place on which destinies can be worked out. It first
emerged in the capitalist West around a particular panoply of technologies and rational
systems. These intentionally deemphasized most secondary instrumentalizations with
consequences we now experience as cultural homogenization, social anomie and
environmental crisis. The threat of technology is due to this particular realization of its
potential.
This conclusion invites us to consider the possibility of an alternative form of technical
rationality that would integrate the secondary instrumentalizations more fully through new
concretizations. On this basis, I have argued elsewhere for a reform of modern technology to
incorporate workers skills, human communication, and environmental limits into its very
structure (Feenberg, 1991: chap. 8). Similar arguments could be made with respect to the
possibility of culturally specific technological configurations (Feenberg, 1995: chap. 9).
The scope and significance of such change is potentially enormous. Technical choices
establish the horizons of daily life. These choices define a world within which the specific
alternatives we think of as purposes, goals, uses, emerge. They also define the subject who

neutral with respect to use. At stake in the ambivalence of technology is not merely the limited range of uses
supported by a given technical design, but the full range of effects technologies can be modified to possess. Not
all of these effects belong to any given technology through all the stages of its development, and not all are
uses in the usual sense. There is thus no contradiction is arguing that technology is always biased in one way
or another, and arguing that it is ambivalent, that is, that its bias is a political issue.

111
chooses among the alternatives: we make ourselves in making the world through technology.
Thus fundamental technological change is self-referential. At issue is becoming, not having.
The goal is to define a way of life, an ideal of abundance, and a human type, not just to
obtain more goods in the prevailing socio-economic system. As Terry Winograd argues,
technological designing is ontological designing (Winograd and Flores, 1987: 163).
Unexpected struggles over issues such as nuclear power, access to experimental treatment
for AIDS patients, and user participation in computer design remind us that the technological
future is by no means predetermined. To the extent that such struggles spread, we can hope to
inhabit a very different future from the one projected by essentialist critique. In that future
technology is not a fate one must chose for or against, but a challenge to political and social
creativity.

112
 References
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Univ. of Chicago Press.
Borgman, Albert (1992). Crossing the Postmodern Divide. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago
Press.
Conford, Francis (1957). Plato and Parmenides. New York: Liberal Arts Press.
Ellul, Jacques (1964). The Technological Society, J. Wilkinson, trans. New York: Vintage.
Dreyfus, Hubert (1995). Heidegger on Gaining a Free Relation to Technology, in
Feenberg, A., and Hannay, A., eds. (1995). Technology and the Politics of Knowledge. Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Feenberg, Andrew (1986). Lukacs, Marx, and the Sources of Critical Theory. New York:
Oxford Univ. Press.
(1991). Critical Theory of Technology. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
(1995a). Alternative Modernity: The Technical Turn in Philosophy and Social Theory.
Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press.
(1995b). Subversive Rationalization: Technology, Power, and Democracy, in Feenberg,
A., and Hannay, A., eds. (1995). Technology and the Politics of Knowledge. Bloomington and Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press.
(1996). Marcuse or Habermas: Two Critiques of Technology, in Inquiry, 39.
Feenberg, Andrew, J. Licht, K. Kane, K. Moran, and R. Smith, (1996) The Online Patient
Meeting, Journal of the Neurological Sciences, 139.
Habermas, Jurgen (1970). Technology and Science as Ideology, in Toward a Rational
Society, J. Shapiro, trans. Boston: Beacon Press.
Habermas, Jurgen (1984, 1987). The Theory of Communicative Action: Lifeworld and
System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, T. McCarthy, trans. Boston: Beacon.
Harasim, Linda, S. R. Hiltz, L. Teles, and M. Turoff (1995). Learning Networks: A Field
Guide to Teaching and Learning Online. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Heidegger, Martin (1977a). The Question Concerning Technology, W. Lovitt, trans. New
York: Harper and Row.
Heidegger, Martin (1977b). Only a God Can Save Us Now, trans. D. Schendler.
Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 6(1).
Hirschhorn, Larry (1984). Beyond Mechanization: Work and Technology in a
Postindustrial Age. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT.

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Latour, Bruno (1992). Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane
Artifacts, in Bijker, W. and Law, J., eds., Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies
in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Latour, Bruno (1993). We Have Never Been Modern. Trans. C. Porter. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Lukacs, George (1971). History and Class Consciousness. R. Livingstone, trans.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Marcuse, Herbert (1969). An Essay on Liberation. Boston: Beacon.
McCarthy, Thomas (1981). The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas. Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press.
McLuhan, Marshall (1964). Understanding Media. New York: McGraw Hill.
Pinch, Trevor and Bijker, Wiebe (1989). The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts:
or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each
Other. In Pinch, T., Hughes, T, and Bijker, W, The Social Construction of
Technological Systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Pinch, Trevor, Hughes, Thomas, and Bijker, Wiebe (1989). The Social Construction of
Technological Systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Simondon, Gilbert (1958). Du Mode dExistence des Objets Techniques. Paris: Aubier.
Simpson, Lorenzo (1995). Technology, Time, and the Conversations of Modernity. New
York: Routledge.
Winograd, Terry and Flores, Fernando (1987). Understanding Computers and Cognition.
Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.

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8. Critical Theories of Technology

Introduction: Two Types of Critique

The debate over technology between Marcuse and Habermas marked a significant turning
point in the history of the Frankfurt School. After the 1960s Habermass influence grew as
Marcuses declined and Critical Theory adopted a far less utopian stance. Recently there has
been a revival of radical technology criticism in the environmental movement and under the
influence of Foucault and constructivism. This chapter takes a new look at the earlier debate
from the standpoint of these recent developments. While aspects of Habermass argument
remain persuasive, his defense of modernity now seems to concede far too much to the claims
of technical autonomy. His essentialist picture of technology as an application of a purely
instrumental form of nonsocial rationality is less plausible after a decade of historicizing
research in technology studies.
I argue that Marcuse was right after all to claim that technology is socially determined
even if he was unable to develop his insight fruitfully. In this chapter I propose an alternative
which combines elements of both Marcuses and Habermass views on technology. A
synthesis is possible because the traditions of critique on which these thinkers draw are
complementary. However, as we will see, neither comes out of the confrontation unscathed.
The substantive critique of technology as such characterizes the Frankfurt School and
especially its leading members, Adorno and Horkheimer. In Dialectic of Enlightenment
(1972) they argue that instrumentality is in itself a form of domination, that controlling
objects violates their integrity and distorts the inner nature of the dominating subject. If this is
so, then technology is not neutral, and simply using it commits one to a valuative stance.
The critique of technology as such is familiar not only from the Frankfurt School but also
from Heidegger (1977), Jacques Ellul (1964), and a host of social critics who might be
described unkindly as technophobic. They generally operate in a speculative framework.
Heideggers theory of technology is based on an ontological understanding of being; a
dialectical theory of rationality does the same work for Adorno and Horkheimer. Their
arguments usually end in retreat from the technical sphere into art, religion, or nature. These
sweeping theories are not entirely convincing, and they are too indiscriminate in their
condemnation of technology to guide efforts to reform it, but they are a useful antidote to
positivist faith in inevitable progress. Their strategy consists not in reforming technology but
in bounding it. Albert Borgmanns work, discussed in the next chapter, offers a contemporary
example of this approach.
Reform of technology is the concern of a second approach which I call design critique.
Design critique holds that social interests or cultural values influence the realization of
technical principles. In recent years, many social critics have offered general theories of
modern technology. For some, it is Christian or masculinist values that have given us the
impression that we can conquer nature, a belief that shows up in ecologically unsound
technical designs; for others it is capitalist values that have turned technology into an
instrument of domination of labor and exploitation of nature (White, 1972; Merchant, 1980;
Braverman, 1974). On the terms of chapter 4, these are theories of technological hegemony,
the values they criticize realized in biased technical codes.
These theories are sometimes over-generalized into versions of substantive critique. For
example, if all technique is masculinist, then feminism would be irrelevant to the design of
any particular technology. But where essentialism is avoided and the critique confined to our
technology, this approach promises a radically different technical future based on different

115
designs embodying a different technical code. On this account technology is social in much
the same way as law, education or medicine, insofar as it is similarly influenced by interests
and public processes. Critics of the Fordist labor process and environmentalists have
challenged technical designs on these terms for many years (Hirschhorn, 1984; Commoner,
1971).
Although he was certainly influenced by Adorno and even Heidegger, Marcuse was not
the romantic technophobe he is often taken for.36 To be sure, he argues that instrumental
reason is historically contingent in ways that leave a mark on modern science and technology.
But unlike Adorno and Heidegger, he thinks human action can change the epochal structure
of technological rationality and the technological designs which flow from it. A new type of
reason would generate new and more benign scientific discoveries and technologies. Marcuse
is an eloquent advocate of this ambitious position, but today the notion of a political
transformation of science and technology has a vanishingly small audience and discredits his
whole approach.
Habermas offers a modest demystified version of the critique of technology as such.
Technical action has certain characteristics which are appropriate in some spheres of life,
inappropriate in others. Habermass approach implies that technology is neutral in its proper
sphere, but outside that sphere it causes various social pathologies of modern societies.
Although his position too is powerfully argued, the idea that technology is neutral, even with
Habermass qualifications, is reminiscent of the naive instrumentalism so effectively laid to
rest in recent years by social approaches.
The question I address here is, what can we learn from these two thinkers assuming that
we are neither metaphysicians nor instrumentalists, that we reject both a romantic critique of
science and the neutrality of technology?
In the following discussion, I work through the argument in three phases. I start with
Habermass critique of Marcuse in Technology and Science as Ideology (1970), the locus
classicus of this debate. Then I consider the deeper presentation of similar themes in
Habermass The Theory of Communicative Action (1984, 1987) where he reformulates his
position in Weberian terms. Marcuse was not able to reply to these arguments so my
procedure is anachronistic, but I will do my best to imagine how he might have responded on
the basis of his own critique of Weber. Next, I discuss aspects of Habermass theory that can
be reconstructed to take the Marcusian critique into account. Finally, I offer my own
formulation of an alternative approach.37

From Secret Hopes to New Sobriety

All Power to the Imagination
Marcuse follows Adorno and Horkheimers Dialectic of Enlightenment in arguing that
both inner and outer nature are suppressed in the struggle for survival in class society. The
technology that developed under these conditions bears the marks of a terrible history. To
carry any critical weight, this position must imply, if not an original unity of man and nature,
at least the existence of some natural forces congruent with human needs. Like his Frankfurt
School colleagues, Marcuse finds evidence in art that such forces that have been sacrificed in
the course of history. But today even consciousness of what has been lost in the development
of civilization is largely forgotten. Technical thinking has taken over in every sphere of life,
human relations, politics, and so on.

36
Marcuse was a colleague of Adorno and a student of Heidegger. For an account of his background, see Kellner
(1984).
37
I discuss a number of related issues in the interpretation of Habermas in Feenberg (1995a: chap. 4).

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 Although One-Dimensional Man (1964) is often compared to Dialectic of Enlightenment,
it is far less pessimistic. In putting forward a more hopeful view, Marcuse appears to be
influenced by Heidegger, although he does not acknowledge this influence, perhaps because
of their deep political disagreements. In Heideggerian terms, Marcuse proposes a new
disclosure of being through a revolutionary transformation of basic practices (Dreyfus, 1995).
This would lead to a change in the very nature of instrumentality, which would be
fundamentally modified by the abolition of class society and its associated performance
principle. It would then be possible to create a new science and technology which would be
fundamentally different, which would place us in harmony rather than in conflict with nature.
Nature would be treated as another subject instead of as mere raw materials. Human beings
would learn to achieve their aims through realizing natures inherent potentialities instead of
laying it waste for the sake of power and profit. Marcuse writes:
Freedom indeed depends largely on technical progress, on the advancement of science. But this fact
easily obscures the essential precondition: in order to become vehicles of freedom, science and
technology would have to change their present direction and goals; they would have to be reconstructed
in accord with a new sensibilitythe demands of the life instincts. Then one could speak of a
technology of liberation, product of a scientific imagination free to project and design the forms of a
human universe without exploitation and toil (Marcuse, 1968: 19).
Aesthetic practice offers Marcuse a model of a transformed instrumentality, different from
the conquest of nature characteristic of class society. Like the early twentieth century
avantgarde, especially the surrealists, Marcuse believed that the separation of art from daily
life could be transcended through fusing reason and imagination. Marcuse thus proposes the
Aufhebung of the split between science and art in a new technical base. This notion recalls the
slogan of the May Events, All Power to the Imagination, and in fact An Essay on
Liberation (1969) is dedicated to the young militants of May 68.
Although this program sounds wildly implausible, it makes a kind of intuitive sense. For
example, we all sense the contrast between the architecture of Mies van der Rohe and Frank
Lloyd Wright. Mies shows us technology as a manifestation of untrammeled power, while
Wright's structures harmonize with nature and seek to integrate human beings with their
environment.38 We will see that it is possible to save Marcuses essential insight by
developing this contrast.
The Neutrality of Technology
Habermas is not convinced. In Technology and Science as Ideology he denounces the
secret hopes of a whole generation of social thinkersBenjamin, Adorno, Bloch, Marcuse
whose implicit ideal was the harmony of man and nature. While he too is concerned about
the technocratic tendencies of advanced societies, he attacks the very notion of a new science
and technology as a romantic myth; the ideal of a technology based on communion with
nature applies the model of human communication to a domain where only instrumental
relations are possible.
In opposition to Marcuses historical interpretation of modern technological rationality,
Habermas offers a theory of the transhistorical essence of technical action in general. As
Thomas McCarthy writes, Habermass own view is that while the specific historical forms
of science and technology depend on institutional arrangements that are variable, their basic
logical structures are grounded in the very nature of purposive-rational action (McCarthy,
1981: 22). At first Habermas argued that work and interaction each have their own logic.
Work is success oriented; it is a form of purposive-rational action aimed at controlling
the world. On these terms, technological development is a generic project, a project of
the human species as a whole, not of some particular historical epoch like class society or of
a particular class like the bourgeoisie (Habermas, 1970: 87). By contrast, interaction involves
38
For a fuller treatment of Marcuses views, see Feenberg 1987.

117
communication between subjects in the pursuit of common understanding. Technocracy
results not from the nature of technology, but from an imbalance between these two action-
types.
Habermas not only criticizes Marcuse, but also Weber, and by implication Heidegger as
well, for identifying rationalization exclusively with the extension of technical control. He
identifies a process of communicative rationalization that enhances human freedom, but
which has been partially blocked in the course of modern development. While this seems
right in a general way, in practice he is content to tinker with the boundaries of technical
action systems while minimizing the all too obvious valuative bias of what goes on within
them. So long as technical action remains limited to merely facilitating the complex
interactions required by a modern society, it poses no problem. Indeed, to criticize
technization in its proper place is anti-modern and regressive.
In defense of Marcuse, it should be said that he nowhere proposes that a qualitatively
different technical rationality would substitute an interpersonal relationship to nature for the
objectivity characteristic of technical action. It is Habermas who uses the phrase fraternal
relation to nature to describe Marcuses views. Marcuse does advocate relating to nature as
to another subject, but the concept of subjectivity implied here owes more to Aristotelian
substance than to the idea of personhood. Marcuse does not recommend chatting with nature
but, rather, recognizing it as possessing potentialities of its own with a certain inherent
legitimacy. That recognition should be incorporated into the very structure of technical
rationality.
Habermas would of course agree that technological development is influenced by social
demands, but that is quite different from the notion that there are a variety of technical
rationalities, as Marcuse believes. For example, ecologically sound technology is socially
desirable, but technology as such remains essentially unchanged by this or any other
particular realization. Technology, in short, will always be a non-social, objectivating relation
to nature, oriented toward success and control. Marcuse argued, on the contrary, that the very
essence of technology is at stake in ecological reform (Marcuse, 1992).
In any case, Habermas does not simply dismiss Marcuse, who had a considerable
influence on his thinking. He finds in the concept of one-dimensionality the basis for a much
better critique of technology than the one he rejects. This is Marcuses analysis of the
overextension of technical modes of thinking and acting, an approach which Habermas
elaborated in his own terms. Habermas argued for the importance of bounding the technical
sphere in order to give communicative rationality a chance to develop fully. There is
something right about this conclusion, but it offers no concrete criteria for improving
technology.
Paradoxically, although the germ of Habermass famous colonization thesis appears to
derive at least in part from Marcuses critique of technology, technology itself drops out of
the Habermasian equation at this point in time and never reappears. As I will show,
Habermass theory could accommodate a critique of technology in principle, but the index of
The Theory of Communicative Action does not even contain the word. This oversight is
related to his treatment of technology as neutral in its own sphere. The neutrality thesis
obscures the social dimensions of technology on the basis of which a critique could be
developed.
What is the outcome of this first encounter? Despite the problems in his position,
Habermas prevailed. Marcuses views were forgotten in the late 70s and 80s. Of course
Habermas did have some strong arguments, but they also had a favorable historical context.
That context was the retreat from the utopian hopes of the 60s in the 80s, a kind of neue
Sachlichkeit, or new sobriety. Habermass views suited a time when we tamed our
aspirations.

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 Rationality in the Critique of Modernity
Weber and Habermas
Habermas distinguishes his own critique of the incompleteness of modernity from what
he regards as the anti-modernism of the 60s radicals. Accordingly, The Theory of
Communicative Action develops an implicit argument against Marcuse and the new left in the
name of a redeemed modernity.
______________________________________________________
Chart 3: World Relations and Basic Attitudes

I will review here one important version of Habermass argument which I will explain in
terms of Chart 3 (Habermass figure 11), drawn from The Theory of Communicative Action
(1984, 1987: I, 238).39 Along the top, Habermas has listed the three worlds in which we
participate as human beings, the objective world of things, the social world of people, the
subjective world of feelings. We move constantly between the three worlds in our daily life.
Along the side are listed the basic attitudes we can take up with respect to the three worlds:
an objectivating attitude which treats everything, including people and feelings, as things; a
39
This chart is the object of an interesting debate between Habermas and Thomas McCarthy. See Bernstein
(1985: pp.177ff and 203ff). Habermas rather confuses the issues here by apologizing for using the chart to
present his own views when in fact it was meant primarily as an explanation of Weber; but then he goes on to
use it once again to present his own views. The debate is inconclusive since, as I will explain in more detail
below, it poses the question of a normative relation to the objective world in terms of the possibility of a natural
philosophy rather than in terms of a reconceived technical reason. Cf. also 119Thompson and Held (1982, pp.
238ff). Marcuse (1964: 166) was none too clear on what he intended, but at least he explicitly rejected
regression to a qualitative physics.

119
norm-conformative attitude which views the worlds in terms of moral obligation; and an
expressive attitude which approaches reality emotively.
Crossing the basic attitudes and worlds yields nine world-relations. Habermas follows
Weber in claiming that only those world-relations can be rationalized that can be clearly
differentiated and that build on their past achievements in a progressive developmental
sequence. Modernity is based on precisely those rationalizable world-relations. They appear
in the stepped double boxes: cognitive-instrumental rationality, moral-practical rationality,
and aesthetic-practical rationality.
However, of the three possible domains of rationalization, only the objectivating relation
to the objective and social worlds, which yields science, technology, markets, and
administration, has been able fully to develop in capitalist societies. Habermas argues that the
problems of capitalist modernity are due to the obstacles it places in the way of
rationalization in the moral-practical sphere.
There are also three Xs (at 2.1, 3.2, 1.3) on the chart which refer to non-rationalizable
world relations. Two of these are of interest to us. 2.1 is the norm-conformative relation to
the objective world, i.e. the fraternal relation to nature. Although he is not explicitly
mentioned here, Marcuse is obviously consigned to box 2.1. Another X is placed over 3.2, the
expressive relation to the social world, bohemianism, the counterculture, exactly where
Marcuse and his allies in the new left sought an alternative. In sum, the 60s are placed under
Xs in zones of irrationality which can make no contribution to the reform of modern society.
This figure explains more precisely than his early essay on Technology and Science as
Ideology why Habermas rejects Marcuses most radical critique of technology.
A Marcusean Reply
How might Marcuse have replied? He could have drawn on the arguments against the
neutrality of science and technology developed in his work from the 1960s (Marcuse 1964;
Marcuse 1968). In Habermas as in Weber, scientific-technical rationality is non-social,
neutral, and formal. By definition it excludes the social (which would be 1.2). It is neutral
because it represents a species-wide interest, a cognitive-instrumental interest which
overrides all group specific values. And it is formal as a result of the process of
differentiation by which it abstracts itself from the various contents it mediates. In sum,
science and technology represent the objective world in terms of the possibilities of
understanding and control and are essentially disconnected from social interests or ideology.
In his essay on Weber, Marcuse argues that the apparent neutrality of the cognitive-
instrumental sphere is a special kind of ideological illusion (Marcuse 1968). He concedes that
technical principles can be formulated in abstraction from any content, that is to say, in
abstraction from any interest or ideology. However, as such, they are merely abstractions. As
soon as they enter reality, they take on a socially specific content relative to the historical
subject that applies them.
Although Marcuses argument appears rather speculativewhat is a historical subject?
it can be restated in simple terms. Efficiency, to take a particularly important example, is
defined formally as the ratio of inputs to outputs. This definition would apply in a communist
or a capitalist society, or even in an Amazonian tribe. It seems, therefore, to transcend the
particularity of the social. However, concretely, when one actually gets down to applying the
notion of efficiency, one must decide what kinds of things are possible inputs and outputs,
who can offer and who acquire them and on what terms, what counts as discommodities,
waste, and hazards, and so on. These are all socially specific, and so, therefore, is the concept
of efficiency in any actual application. And insofar as the social is biased by a system of
domination, so will be its efficient workings. As a general rule, formally rational systems

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must be practically contextualized in order to be used at all, and as soon as they are
contextualized in a capitalist society, they incorporate capitalist values.
This approach is loosely related to Marxs original critique of the market. Unlike many
contemporary socialists, Marx did not deny that markets exhibit a rational order based on
equal exchange. The problem with markets is not located at this level, but in their historical
concretization in a form which couples equal exchange to the relentless growth of capital at
the expense of the rest of society. That concrete form shapes economic growth patterns,
technological development, law, and many other aspects of social life. A rational market
rational in the narrow formal senseproduces a society that is irrational on human terms.
Economists might concede the bias of actual market societies, but they would attribute the
difference between ideal models and vulgar realities to accidental market imperfections.
What they treat as a kind of external interference with the ideal-type of the market, Marx
considers an essential feature of its operation under capitalism. Markets in their perfect form
are simply an abstraction from one or another concrete realization in which they take on
biases reflecting specific class interests. Thus it is not inconsistent for Engels to recommend
reliance on the market under socialism, as he does in the case of agriculture (Engels, 1969).
The class signficance of the market is relative to the way in which its basic structures are
realized.
Marcuse adopts a similar line in criticizing Webers notion of administrative rationality, a
fundamental aspect of rationalization. Administration in the economic domain presupposes
the separation of workers from the means of production. That separation eventually shapes
technological design. Although Weber calls capitalist management and technology rational
without qualification, they are so only in a specific context where workers do not own their
own tools. This social context biases Webers concept of rationality despite his intention of
elaborating a universal theory. The resulting slippage between the abstract formulation of the
category and its concrete realization is ideological. Marcuse thus insists on distinguishing
between rationality in general and a concrete, socially specific rationalization process: pure
rationality is an abstraction from the life process of a historical subject. That process
necessarily involves values that become integral to rationality as it is realized.
Norm and Technique
Habermas too finds Webers rationalization theory equivocating between abstract
categories and concrete instances, but his critique differs from Marcuses. Habermas argues
that a structure of rationality lies behind modern social development. The elements of this
structure are realized in specific forms privileged by the dominant capitalist structures (see
Chart 3 above). Weber overlooked systematic moments of potential normative rationalization
suppressed by captialism and as a result confused the limits of capitalism with the limits of
rationality as such.
Because Habermas does not challenge Webers account of technical rationalization, he too
appears to identify it with its specifically capitalist forms. Marcuse, on the contrary, attacks
Webers understanding of technical rationalization itself. Webers error is not simply to
identify all types of rationalization with technical rationalization, but more deeply to overlook
the biasing of any and all technical rationality by social values. Webers account of science
and technology as non-social and neutral, which Habermas shares, masks the interests that
preside over their genesis and application. Hence Marcuse would consider even Habermass
ideal of a balance between technical and communicative rationalization to be insufficiently
critical.
I can imagine a Habermasian responding that these problems are mere sociological details
inappropriate at the fundamental theoretical level. Raised at that level, they are a Trojan
Horse for a romantic critique of rationality. The best way to keep the horse outside the city

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walls is to maintain a clear distinction between principle and application. Just as ethical
principles must be applied if they are to enter reality, so must technical principles. That the
applications never correspond exactly to principles is not a serious objection to formulating
the latter in purified ideal-types. At that essential level, there is no risk of confusion between
formal properties of rationality as such and particular social interests.
Marcuses theory is indeed a critique of rationality, but his argument is not with rationality
per se but with the deceptive appearance of neutrality that belongs to its form of objectivity
under capitalism. The point of criticizing this form of objectivity is to bring technology under
the judgment of normative principles, to raise its normative dimension to consciousness so
that it can be discussed and challenged. There is no comparable problem in the application of
moral principles because their biased implementation falls under the norm that is being
applied. For example, if the principle of fairness is selectively invoked to perpetuate
discrimination, as in the current attack on affirmative action, that is itself unfair. When the
Board of Regents of the University of California refused to abolish special treatment for the
children of V.I.P.s shortly after eliminating special treatment for victims of gender and racial
discrimination, the unfairness of its fairness was plain for all to see.
By contrast, the biased application of technical principles is justified by reference to those
very principles. For example, technical initiatives designed to enhance managerial power are
usually claimed to be more efficient. The exclusion of viable technical alternatives less
favorable to capital and more favorable to workers is a moral issue, but it is occluded rather
than revealed by the application of technical norms. No one would deny that the rules of
engineering would work the same way in both cases, but that is not what the argument is
about.
Indeed, as Habermas would agree, the use of technical alibis to justify what are in reality
relations of force is the essential rhetorical strategy of technocracy. Typically, considerations
of efficiency are invoked to remove issues from normative judgment and public discussion.
But the very formulation of moral norms is distorted where their application is arbitrarily
restricted. Thus our society's failure to judge work settings according to democratic norms,
even as they are constantly judged in terms of managerial power, reacts back on our
understanding of those norms and renders them hollow and formalistic in the bad sense.
The point then is that the neutrality thesis supports a different type of mystification than
ethical formalism, one that blocks public dialogue about underdetermined technical
alternatives. The distinction between principle and application is irrelevant to this problem.
Constructivism and Critical Theory
Marcuses critique of science and technology was presented in a speculative context, but
its major claimthe social character of rational systemsis a commonplace of recent
constructivist research on science and technology. The notion of underdetermination is
central to this approach (Pinch and Bijker, 1984). Habermas himself at one time focused on
this very phenomenon. In an early essay, he argued that science cannot help us decide
between functionally equivalent technologies, but that values must intervene (Habermas,
1973: 270-271). He showed that the application of decision theory does not supply scientific
criteria of choice, but merely introduces different valuative biases. Even in Technology and
Science as Ideology Habermas recognizes that social interests still determine the
direction, functions, and pace of technical progress (Habermas, 1970: 105). He does not
explain how this affirmation squares with his belief, expressed in the same essay, that
technology is a project of the human species as a whole (Habermas, 1970: 87). Even this
(no doubt resolvable) inconsistency seems to disappear in the later work where technology is
defined as non-social.

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 But surely the earlier position was correct. If this is true, then what Habermas calls the
fraternal relation to nature, 2.1., should not have an X over it. If 1.1, that is, the objective
relation to the objective world, is already social, the distinction between it and 2.1 is softened.
On the Marcusean view, instrumentality is not opposed to normativity since all the basic
world relations have a normative dimension. Does this mean that objective research cannot be
distinguished from mere prejudice? Surely not. The biases that characterize the structure of
entire historical eras such as the capitalist era are not mere personal idiosyncrasies. They
reveal as well as conceal. Think, for example, of the obvious social background to the 17th
Centurys very fruitful mechanical view of nature. Habermas does not worry about this
problem because for him the important thing about rationality is not so much the purity of its
source as the intersubjective redeemability of its claims. However, he does think that
Marcuses approach leads straight back to a teleological nature philosophy. What other
meaning can there be to the notion of a normative relation to nature? Yet I find no evidence
for this sort of thing in Marcuse. The real difference between their views lies along a different
axis from that identified by Habermas. The issue is not, as Habermas thinks, whether to
revive philosophy of nature; it concerns our self-understanding as subjects of technical
action.
This is the argument of Steven Vogel, who points out that Habermass chart omits an
obvious domain of normative relations to the objective world: the built environment. The
question of what to build, and how to build it, engages us in normative judgments concerning
factual states of affairs. While there is no science of such judgments, they are at least as
capable of rationalization as the aesthetic judgements Habermas classifies under 3.1 on his
chart (Vogel, 1996: 388). Here we can give a perfectly reasonable content to Marcuses
demand for a new relation to nature.
Working in the tradition of humanistic geography, Augustin Berque has arrived
independently at a similar conclusion. The typically modern distinctions between objectivity
and subjectivity, nature and culture, occlude the realm Heidegger designated as world, the
experienced reality in which we actually live. In geographic terms, that reality is landscape.
Landscape is more than a set of natural features; it is also a symbolically invested habitat, an
coumne, which Berque defines as the earth insofar as we inhabit it (Berque, 1996: 12).
What Berque calls the ecosymbolicity of lived nature precisely parallels the double aspects
of technology discussed in chapter 4. Not only are technologies simultaneously causal
mechanisms and meaningful social objects, the natural environment itself exhibits this same
double character. Just as technology is neither purely natural nor purely social, so the nature
to which it is applied also transcends such abstract distinctions. Berque concludes that The
ecosymbolicity of the coumne...implies an ethic because all localities are always charged
with human values....For good or ill, the human manner of inhabiting a territory can only be
ethical (Berque, 1996: 80-81).
Nature would be treated as another subject where humans took responsibility for the well-
being of the materials they transform in creating the built environment. This is the
significance of democratic interventions into technology which prefigure a new style of
rationalization that internalizes unaccounted costs born by nature, i.e., some-thing or -body
exploitable in the pursuit of power and profit. I call this subversive rationalization because
it requires concretizing technical advances that can only be made in opposition to the
technocracy. There is nothing about this idea that offends against the spirit of modern
science. On the contrary, to carry out this program science is needed, as Commoner has
persuasively argued. Methodologically, the case is similar to medicine, which involves a
normative relation to the objectified human body.
What is the result of this second phase of the debate? I think Marcuse wins this one. We
are no longer in the new sobriety 80s, but have entered the social constructivist 90s, and his

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views sound much more plausible than they did twenty or thirty years ago. However there are
still problems with Marcuses position: Habermass scepticism about its speculative
foundation is difficult to dismiss. Rather than simply returning to Marcuses original
formulations, perhaps elements of his critical theory of technology can be reconstructed in a
more credible framework. Does one really need a new science to get a Frank Lloyd Wright
technology rather than a Mies van der Rohe technology? Couldnt one work toward such a
transformation gradually, using existing technical principles but reforming them, modifying
them, applying them somewhat differently? Environmentalism has shown us that this is a
practical approach to a long-term process of technological change.40
In the remainder of this chapter I propose to reformulate the Marcusean design critique
inside a version of Habermass communication theory modified to include technology.

Reformulating the Media Theory

The Media Theory
Habermass media theory provides the basis for a synthesis. This theory explains
modernity in terms of the emergence of differentiated subsystems based on rational forms
such as exchange, law, and administration. The media concept is generalized from monetary
exchange along lines proposed by Parsons. Habermas claims that only power resembles
money closely enough to qualify as a full-fledged medium (Habermas, 1984, 1987: II, 274).
The media make it possible for individuals to coordinate their behavior while pursuing
individual success in an instrumental attitude toward the world. Media-steered interaction is
an alternative to communicative action, to arriving at shared beliefs in the course of linguistic
exchanges. Normative consensus plays no role on the market, where agents reach their ends
without discussion. Administrative power too is exercised without the need for complex
communication. Together, money and power delinguistify dimensions of social life by
organizing interaction through objectifying behaviors. Roughly summarized, Habermass aim
is to right the balance between the two types of rational coordination, both of which are
required by a complex modern society (Habermas, 1984, 1987: II, 330).
It is important not to exaggerate Habermass concessions to systems theory. In his
formulation media do not eliminate communication altogether, merely the need for
communicative action. This term does not refer to the general faculty of using symbols to
transmit beliefs and desires, but to the special form of communication in which subjects
actively pursue mutual understanding (Habermas, 1984, 1987: I, 286). Media-related
communication is quite different. It consists in stereotyped utterances or symbols which aim
not at mutual understanding but at successful performance. Action coordination is an effect of
the structure of the mediation rather than a conscious intention of the subjects.41
The media theory allows Habermas to offer a much clearer explanation of technocracy
than Dialectic of Enlightenment and One-Dimensional Man. Habermas distinguishes between
system, media regulated rational institutions, such as markets and administration, and
lifeworld, the sphere of everyday communicative interactions in which such functions as
child rearing, education, and public debate go on.42 According to Habermas, the central
pathology of modern societies is the colonization of lifeworld by system. This involves the
over-extension of success oriented action beyond its legitimate range and the consequent
imposition of criteria of efficiency on the communicative sphere. The lifeworld contracts as

40
It is of course possible that this is what Marcuse intended all along, but that is far from clear.
41
For a discussion of this issue, see McCarthy (1991) and Habermass reply in Habermas (1991).
42
I will explain below the difference between Habermass use of the term system and the usage introduced in
the last chapter.

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the system expands into it and delinguistifies dimensions of social life which should be
mediated by language.
But, surprisingly, even though he protests what, following Luhmann, he calls the
technization of the lifeworld, Habermas scarcely mentions technology. That seems to me
an obvious oversight. Surely technology, too, organizes human action while minimizing the
need for language. This blind spot is particularly puzzling since Habermass thought was
shaped all along by his early critique of the positivist understanding of reason and its
historical realization in a technocratic society. These arguments, developed especially in the
essay Technology and Science as Ideology, form the basis of the theory of modern society
Habermas has refined and enriched over the years. His distinction of system rationality and
lifeworld is substituted in the structure of his theory for the original contrast of work and
interaction, technique and communication. Thus his project is rooted in a critique of the type
of action characteristic of technology, which has provided him with a model for his later
interpretation of the specific modes of purposive-rational action that continue to concern
him focally. Why, then, isnt technology counted as a medium alongside money and power in
his later work?
There is a strong objection to so enlarging the media theory, namely that technology
involves causal relations to nature while the other media are essentially social. However
impoverished, the codes that govern money and power are conventional and possess
communicative significance, whereas those that govern technology seem to lack
communicative content. Or, put in another way, technology relieves physical, not
communicative effort.
But this argument repeats the functionalist error criticized in chapter 4. In fact technology
has several different types of communicative content. Some technologies, such as
automobiles and desks, communicate the status of their owners (Forty, 1986); others, such as
locks, communicate legal obligations; most technologies also communicate through the
interfaces by which they are manipulated. A computer program, for example, transmits the
designers conception of a field of human activity while also helping to solve problems
arising in that field (Winograd, 1987: chap. 12). In any transportation system, technology can
be found organizing large numbers of people without discussion; they need only follow the
rules and the map. Again, workers in a well organized factory find their jobs almost
automatically meshing through the design of the equipment and buildingstheir action is
coordinatedwithout much linguistic interaction.
Indeed, it is quite implausible to suggest as Habermas appears to that action coordination
in the rationalized spheres of social life can be completely described by reference to money
and power. Certainly no one in the field of management theory would subscribe to the view
that a combination of monetary incentives and administrative rules suffices to organize
production. The problem of motivation is far more complex than that, and unless the
technical rationality of the job coordinates workers action harmoniously, mere rules will be
impotent.43
James Beniger has shown that these observations from management theory can be
extended to modern societies as a whole. The bureaucratic structure and market systems of
these societies rest on elaborate technological foundations. Beniger traces the roots of the
information society back to the 19th century when basic innovations in information
processing such as the telegraph and punch cards made it possible to handle the problems
raised by high speed industrial production and rail transportation. In Benigers terms,
coordination media preprocess human beings in the sense that they reduce the complexity
of human inputs to social subsystems. The role of new technologies in such preprocessing is
richly illustrated throughout his book (Beniger, 1986).
43
See, for an example from the management literature, Hammer and Champy (1993: chap. 5).

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 Technology as a Medium
To reduce technology to a mere causal function is to miss the results of a generation of
social science research. But if one cannot reduce technology to natural causality, why exclude
it from the list of media which it resembles in so many respects? Of course it is quite different
from money, the paradigm medium, but if the loose analogy works for power, I would argue
that it can be extended to technology as well. In Chart 4 (Habermass figure 37), where
Habermas defines money and power as media, I have listed technology (in the sense of
technical control) alongside them and found a parallel for each of the terms he uses to
describe them (1984, 1987: II, 274). I will not go over the whole chart, but will focus on three
of the most important functions.
First, consider generalized instrumental value. In the case of money it is utility, in the
case of power it is effectiveness, and I call it productivity in the case of technical control.
Those in charge of technological choices (who are not necessarily technicians) interpose
devices between the members of the community, unburdening them at both the
communicative and the physical levels. This generates two types of value: first, the enhanced
command of resources of the equipped and coordinated individuals, and second, the enhanced
command of persons gained by those who manage the technical process. This latter form of
technical control resembles political power but cannot be reduced to it because it is rooted in
operational autonomy rather than normative claims. Nor is it as vague as influence or
prestige, media suggested by Parsons which Habermas does not retain. I believe it is sui
generis.
Second, each of these media makes a nominal claim: with money it is exchange value,
that is, money demands an equivalent; power yields binding decisions which demand
obedience; and technology generates prescriptions, rules of action which demand
compliance. Complying with instructions in operating a machine differs both from obeying
political orders and from accepting an exchange of equivalents on the market. It is
characterized by its own unique code. The defining communication, the one which
corresponds most closely to the simplified codes of money (buy, not buy), and power (obey,
disobey), is pragmatic rightness or wrongness or action.
Third, there is the sanction column, which Habermas calls the reserve backing. In
claiming that money is backed by gold Habermas skips a generous helping of economic
history, but of course he is right that monetary value must refer to something people have
faith in such as national wealth. Power requires means of enforcement; in the case of
technology, the natural consequences of error have a similar function, often mediated by
organizational sanctions of some sort. If you refuse the technical norms, say, by driving on
the wrong side of the street, you risk your life. You burden those who would have been
relieved by your compliance and who must now signal to avoid a crash. Failing the success of
this communicative intervention, nature takes its course and an accident enforces the rules
encoded in law and in the technical configuration of highways and cars.
If technology is included in the media theory, the boundaries Habermas wants to draw
around money and power can be extended to it as well. It certainly makes sense to argue that
technical mediation is appropriate in some spheres and inappropriate in others, just as
Habermas claims for money and power. However, despite certain similarities to money and
power, technical control is so thoroughly intertwined with them, and with the lifeworld, that
it seems to defy a simple bounding strategy. It might therefore be objected that it is better
understood as a means or mediator by which the media penetrate the lifeworld, than as a
medium in its own right. Technologizing a domain of life opens it to eco-
Chart 4: Coordination Media

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nomic and political control; technical control serves system expansion without itself being a
medium.44
But is technical control uniquely intertwined? This objection confuses two levels of the
media theory. Habermas distinguishes the media as ideal-types, but in practice, of course,
money and power are not so easy to separate. With money one can obtain power, with power
one can obtain money; money is a means to power, power to money. Technical control is no
different. It can be distinguished from money and power as an ideal-type with no difficulty,
although empirically it is intertwined with them just as they are intertwined with each other.
All media are mediations in this sense, all media serve as means for each other.
Historical considerations also argue for this view. In each phase or type of modern
development, one or another of the media plays the mediating role, facilitating general
system advance. Polanyis description of the predatory market offers a model of market-led
system expansion (Polanyi, 1957). Foucaults discussion of the origins of the disciplinary

44
This objection has been suggested to me by Torben Hviid Nielsen and Thomas Krogh.

127
society relies on the capillary spread of techniques (Foucault, 1977). State power is the
mediator for the extension of market and technical relations into traditional lifeworlds in most
theories of Japanese and Russian modernization.
According to The Theory of Communicative Action, juridification plays the mediating role
in the contemporary welfare state. Law, Habermas claims, is both a complex medium and
an institution. As a complex medium law appropriately regulates system functions. A
society with contracts obviously needs laws and means of enforcement. As an institution, law
also regulates lifeworld functions, for example through welfare and family legislation. But
that can have pathological consequences: communication is blocked or bypassed, mistrust
enters, and so on. Then law becomes an instrument of colonization of lifeworld by system.
In these respects technology offers an exact parallel to law. It, too, mediates both system
and lifeworld. Following Habermass analysis of law, one could argue that technical
mediation of system functions such as productive activity is unobjectionable, while the
application of technology to lifeworld functions may give rise to pathologies. Consider, for
example, the medical offensive against breast feeding in the 1930s and 40s. In this instance,
an aspect of family life was technologized in the mistaken belief that formula was healthier
than breast milk. This technical mediation complicated infant care unnecessarily while
opening huge markets. The widespread use of formula in countries without pure water spread
infant diarrhea which in turn required medical treatment, further intruding technology on
infant care. This is a clearly pathological intervention of technology into the lifeworld.45

Value and Rationality

A Two Level Critique
The last section sketched a communication-theoretic formulation of a critical theory of
technology. Instead of ignoring the technologization of advanced societies, as Habermas and
most of his followers do, this theory subjects it to analysis. The treatment of technology as a
medium improves Habermass theory of communicative action without shattering its
framework. Nevertheless, it suggests some deeper problems in the theory which do place its
framework under tension. I would like to address those problems in the concluding sections
of this essay.
The synthesis sketched so far concerns only the extent and the range of instrumental
mediation and not technological design. In fact Habermass system theory offers no basis for
criticizing the internal structure of any of the media. He can challenge their overextension
into communicative domains but not their design in their own domain of competence.
Nothing in his theory corresponds to Marcuses critique of the neutrality of the market. But a
critical theory of technology cannot ignore design. Whether the issue concerns child labor,
medical research, computer mediated communication, or environmental impacts of
technology, design has normative implications and is not simply a matter of efficiency.
45
Before leaving this point, it is perhaps necessary to forestall a possible misunderstanding. It would be
misleading to identify technology (or any of the other media) with instrumentality as such. If all instrumentality
is designated as technological, one has no basis on which to distinguish between the various media.
Furthermore, one cannot distinguish the broad realm of technique in general from its specifically modern
technological form. In particular, traditional craft, with its premodern technologies, and what might be called
personal technique must be distinguished from modern technology. There are basic differences between hand
work and ordinary lifeworld activities carried out by individuals or small groups with small scale means under
individual control, as opposed to unusually complex activities mediated by semi-automatic devices and systems
under some sort of management control. No doubt the line is fuzzy, but this general distinction is useful and
allows us to judge the degree of technization of the lifeworld in Habermass sense. This is clear from the
example of breast feeding which is not without its own techne, different from formula but success oriented
too. On these terms baby formula is modern technology and as such a technical mediation, unlike breast
feeding which is a personal technique. The realm of technical action is thus broader than the realm of media.

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 What we need is a two-level critique of instrumentality. At one level I will follow
Habermas and substantive critique in claiming that the media have general characteristics
which qualify their application. This justifies the demand for boundaries on their range. But a
second level critique is also needed because the design of the media is shaped by the
hegemonic interests of the society they serve. Markets, administrations, technical devices are
biased: the form in which they are realized embodies specific valuative choices. These
designed-in biases leave a mark on the media even in those domains where they appropriately
regulate affairs. Therefore, critique cannot cease at the boundary of the system but must
extend deep inside it.
Is this two-level approach to the critique of the media consistent with Habermass
distinction between system and lifeworld? If we blur the difference between the two in theory
by defining both in normative terms, then how are we to maintain real boundaries between
them in practical affairs? We can no longer protest against the extension of technological
rationality into communicatively regulated domains if there is no fundamental difference
between system and lifeworld in the first place.
This objection is related to the question of whether the system/lifeworld distinction is
analytic or real. Axel Honneth (1991), among others, objects to Habermass identification of
the terms of this distinction with actual institutions, e.g. state, market, family, school. In
reality there is no clear institutional line between system and lifeworld. Production as much
as the family is constituted by a promiscuous mixture of cognitive, normative, and expressive
codes, success-oriented and communicative action. The distinction is therefore purely
analytic. While I agree with Honneths main point, it seems to me that several different
considerations are confused in these objections.
Habermas agrees that the distinction between system and lifeworld is analytic. No
institution is a pure exemplification of one or the other category. While the types of action
coordination characteristic of eachmedia steered or communicativeare distinct, they are
always combined in various proportions in real situations. Thus the system is not itself a
social institution, but merely refers to actual institutions, such as the market or the state, in
which media steered interactions predominate. Similarly, the lifeworld is not an exclusively
communicative institution, but describes those actual institutions, such as the family, in
which communication predominates. But surely Habermas is right to argue that there is a
fundamental difference between institutions that are preponderantly shaped by markets or
bureaucracies (and, I would add, technologies), and others in which personal relations or
communicative interaction are primary. The fact of mixed motives and codes
notwithstanding, without some such distinction one can make no sense at all of the process of
modernization.
Although in principle Habermas avoids in this way a crude identification of system and
lifeworld with actual institutions, in practice, the analytic distinctions tend to become
indistinguishable from real ones. For instance, state and family end up exemplifying system
and lifeworld despite Habermass precautions (Habermas, 1984, 1987: II, 310). Perhaps this
also explains why he does not consider technology to be a medium. Since there is no
institutionally separate sphere, such as the market in which its influence is especially
prominent, it seems to be ubiquitous. How then to identify it with an institutional base in
which it would support a predominance of media-steered interaction? Habermas may have
thought that technologys contribution to the problems of modern society could be adequately
captured by analysis of its employment in the market and administrative structures through
which the colonization process advances. However, the theoretical disadvantages of thus
dissolving technology into economics and politics far outweigh the advantages.

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 The Bias of the System
The crux of the problem is not the system/lifeworld distinction per se, but the
identification of one of its terms with neutral formal rationality. Contemporary feminist
theory, organizational sociology, and sociology of science and technology have abundantly
demonstrated that no such rationality exists. For example, Nancy Fraser (1987) has shown
that the high level of abstraction at which Habermas defines his categories only serves to
mask their gendered realization in concrete societies. System and lifeworld, material
production and symbolic reproduction, public and private, all such abstractions hide
distinctions of male and female roles which invest even the apparently pure administrative
and political rationality of the modern economy and state. Failing to grasp that fact leads to
an overestimation of the pathologies of colonization (reification), and a corresponding
underestimation of the oppression of social groups such as women.
A related problem vitiates the system concept on its own ground. Note that Habermass
concept cuts deeper than the concept of system introduced in the last chapter. There I
contrasted organizations, considered as systems, with the wider networks of actors and
objects in which they are embedded and portions of which they attempt to define as their
environment. My example of a system was a firm, embedded in a network including labor
unions and the community. But in Habermass usage, the term system refers in the first
instance not to organizations but to the structure of interactions carried out in media such
money or power. This is the social logic that generates the extended networks of modern
societies. In the case in point, money and power mediate the forms of wage labor and urban
development, and it is this which makes the organization of a firm possible in the first place.
So far so good, but what is missing from Habermass account is any consideration of how
organizations in turn structure and restructure the media, how they bias exchange and
administration as they construct what de Certeau called a Cartesian interiority. Because
Habermas does not consider this aspect of organizational activity, the media are treated as
neutral realizations of a rational logic, and the social pathology associated with their over-
extension is reduced to the neutralization of normative considerations.
This does not go far enough. We need a way of talking about designed-in norms of the sort
that characterize rationalized institutions without losing the distinction between system and
lifeword. These norms enter media in media-specific forms, not as communicative
understandings of the sort that characterize the lifeworld. If it is difficult to conceive of
system rationality as normatively informed, this is because our conception of valuative bias is
shaped by lifeworld contexts and experiences. We think of values as rooted in feelings or
beliefs, as expressed or justified, as chosen or criticized. Values belong to the world of
ought, in contrast to the factual world of is. We are unaccustomed to the idea that
institutions based on system rationality realize objectified norms in devices and practices, and
not merely in the individual beliefs or shared assumptions of their members.
I addressed this problem in chapter 4. I distinguished there between a functionalist
understanding of technology in which technical devices stand in external relations to the
social and its goals, and a hermeneutic approach for which devices possess complex
meanings that include delegated norms and connotations. These valuative dimensions of
technology are embodied in devices in something like the sense in which meanings are
embodied in linguistic signs. Like signs technologies join an object (a sound or in the
technological case, a device) to a sense which is not merely a subjective association, which
truly belongs to that object insofar as it is grasped in its phenomenological reality.
Habermass difficulties stem from his fidelity to a functionalist account in which the
analytic distinction between system and lifeworld ends up as a real distinction between an
objective realm of technically rational means and a subjective realm of ends, values,
meanings. It does not help much that he thinks valuative claims can be redeemed by

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communicative rationality. The problem is that they float free of technical rationality in such
a way as to strip the system normatively bare. The gap between value and fact Habermas
transcends in the world of talk is bigger than ever in the material world. This is the ultimate
result of what Latour calls the modern purification of nature and society (Latour, 1993). By
contrast, the hermeneutic approach distinguishes system and lifeworld not as matter and
spirit, means and ends, but in terms of the different ways in which fact and value are joined in
different types of social objects and discourses. From this standpoint, there is no need for an
unconvincing notion of pure rationality.
Critical Theory of Technology
The critique of norms embodied in rational systems begins with Marxs analysis of the
market. Under the influence of Weber and Lukcs, Critical theory attempted to extend the
Marxian approach to bureaucracy, technology, and other rational institutions. The
fundamental ambition of the critique was to bring these embodied norms to consciousness
where they could be identified and challenged. Habermass notion of a nonsocial
instrumental rationality puts that critique out of action. It reverses the theoretical revolution
by which Marx attempted to bring philosophy down from the heaven of pure concepts to the
real world, the social life process. This may explain the relentless pursuit of abstraction that is
both Habermass strength and his weakness.
Where system design embodies normative biases that are taken for granted and placed
beyond discussion, only a type of critique Habermass theory excludes can open up a truly
free dialogue. In the case of technology, this critique is still undeveloped although some work
has been done on the labor process, reproductive technologies, and the environment. As
Marcuse argued already, the research shows that modern technological rationality
incorporates domination in its very structure. Our technical disciplines and designs,
especially in relation to labor, gender, and nature, are rooted in a hegemonic order.
It is true that this pattern is often condemned in totalizing critiques of technology as such.
Habermas is right to want to avoid the technophobia sometimes associated with that
approach. However, Marcuses historicized critique does not make this mistake. It introduces
a third term between anti- and pro-technological positions: the idea of future change in the
structure of technological rationality itself. As we have seen, this alternative is based on the
quasi-Heideggerian distinction between technology as reduction to raw materials in the
interest of control, and a differently designed technology that would free the inherent
potential of its objects in harmony with human needs. We have already discussed some of the
unsolved problems with this theory.
These problems do not, however, justify returning to an essentialist approach which
defines technology in abstraction from any sociohistorical context. Nor will it work to claim,
as Habermas does, that there is a level of technical rationality that is invariant regardless of
changes in that context. Of course technical action systems and rationalities must have some
common core of attributes; in the next chapter, where I develop a theoretical framework for
the social theory of technology, I call these the primary instrumentalizations. But Habermas
wants to get too mucha whole social critiqueout of the few abstract properties belonging
to that core. No doubt it includes, as he affirms, the objectifying, success-oriented relation to
naturebut it must be embodied in technical devices and disciplines that include much else
besides to provide a basis for application. It is the rationality of those concrete instanciations
that is in question, since that is the form in which instrumental reason becomes historically
active.
Is it possible to develop a critique of technical rationality at that concrete level while
avoiding the pitfalls of Marcuses theory? I believe this can be done through analysis of the
social dimensions of technology discussed in earlier chapters. These include such attributes

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as delegated norms, aesthetic forms, workgroup organization, vocational investments, and
various relational properties of technical artifacts. In the next chapter, I call these secondary
instrumentalizations by contrast with the primary instrumentalizations that establish the
basic technical subject-object relation. Their configuration, governed by specific technical
codes, characterizes distinct eras in the history of technical rationality. The passage from craft
to industrial production offers an example: productivity increased rapidly, a quantitative
change of great significance that appears purely technical, but just as importantly, secondary
instrumentalizations such as product design, management, and working life suffered a
profound qualitative transformation. These transformations are not merely sociological
accretions on a presocial relation to nature, or unintended consequences of technological
change, but are essential to industrialization considered precisely in its technical aspect. They
result from fundamental criteria of technological advance such as the preference for
deskilling that characterizes strategies of mechanization. This approach can capture
something of Marcuses contribution while also overcoming the problems in Habermass
notion of rationality.
The social theory of technology appears more plausible by contrast with Habermass as
soon as one asks what he actually means by the essence of technology, i.e. the objectivating,
success-oriented relation to nature. Is there enough substance to such a definition to imagine
it implemented? Is it not rather an abstract classification so empty of content as to tolerate a
wide range of realizations, including Marcuses notion of relating to nature as to another
subject? Unless, that is, one smuggles in a lot of historically specific content. That is the only
way one can get from the excessively general concept of a success-oriented relation to nature
to the specific assertion that technology necessarily excludes respect for nature along the
lines Marcuse proposes. Here Habermas repeats the very error of which he accuses Weber,
identifying rationality in general with a specific historical realization of it.
The essence of technology can only be the sum of all the major determinations it exhibits
in its various stages of development. That sum is sufficiently rich and complex to embrace
numerous possibilities through shifts of emphasis and exclusions. This approach bears a
certain resemblance to Habermass interpretation of modernity in terms of a structural model
encompassing a variety of forms of rationalization that receive differing emphases in
different types of modern society (see Chart 3) (Habermas 1984, 1987: I, 238). However, I
extend this approach downward into technology, which is only one component of
Habermass model, in order to introduce variety at that level. The various technical
rationalities that have appeared in the course of history would each be characterized by a
formal bias associated with its specific configuration. A critical account of modern
technology could be developed on this basis with a view to constructive change rather than
romantic retreat.46

46
For an all too rare attempt to defend discourse ethics by enlarging its scope to include technical relations, see
Ingram 1995, Chap. 5.

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9. Can Technology Incorporate Values? Marcuse's Answer to the Question of the
Age47

Andrew Feenberg

"It is indispensably necessary for the human understanding to distinguish between the
possibility and the actuality of things."
Kant, Critique of Judgement, 249

"All of what I can become as this determinate individual is already there, not in the sense of a
mystical predetermination, but in the sense that my concrete person depends on the 'existing
multiplicity of circumstances' out of which and within which alone it becomes what is
possible for it."
Marcuse, Hegel's Ontology, 94-95

Prologue

Why delve back into the philosophical past to reanimate Marcuse's theory of technology.
Wasn't he an old technophobe, an opaque Marxist ideologue, a pre-post-modern elitist? What
can we still learn from him that hasn't been refuted by a new generation of computer savvy
digerati or better formulated by Baudrillard?
I ask these impertinent questions to motivate this paper, which is not merely commemorative
in intent. On the contrary, I believe that Marcuse is fundamentally important for us as one of
the few thinkers who not only faced the tragic implications of modern technology but also
formulated a technological response. Whether that response is entirely successful is less
important than the new relation to technology it implies. Marcuse recovered the classical
thought of techne in a radically modern way.48 It is this which should interest us today.
In this respect Marcuse's approach differed from that of his Frankfurt School colleagues,
Adorno and Horkheimer, who were content to implicate technology in a negative dialectic.
Refusing to set up permanent residence along with them in what Lukcs once called "the
Grand Hotel Abyss," Marcuse nevertheless tried to remain within the general framework of

47
Revised version of a paper delivered at the conference on The Legacy of Herbert Marcuse, University of
California, Berkeley, 1998.
48
The word "modern" will be used throughout this paper descriptively to refer to the era in which we live. In its
own uncritical self-understanding, this is the era of science, technology, and rational enlightenment. Much as
various critics of modernity would like to believe they can overleap this era into something called
"postmodernity," their athletic gesture remains internal to modernity and leaves its fundamental problems
unsolved. Among these problems is our need for "reasons" for our ideas and actions, that is, the impossibility of
re-founding our civilization on unquestioned tradition or community standards. Insofar as he responded to this
need Marcuse was "modern."

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their critique of instrumental reason (Lukcs, 1965: 17). The result is a suggestive but
ambiguous philosophy of technology the aporiae of which are at one and same time an
immanent self-refutation and an invitation to further reflection. It is in the latter spirit that I
have approached Marcuse in this essay, which, therefore, is not merely an interpretation but
also an attempt to show his relevance to contemporary technology studies.

The Question

The relation of technique to values appears as a problem for the first time in Plato's Gorgias.
In this dialogue, Socrates debates the nature of the techne, or "art," of rhetoric. He
distinguishes between true arts that are based on a logos, and what the English translation
calls mere knacks, empeiriae in Greek, that is, rules of thumb based on experience but
without an underlying rationale (Dodds, 1959: 225).
For Plato, such a rationale or logos necessarily includes a reference to the good served by the
art. Knowledge of the logos of the art thus involves a teleological conception of its objects, a
normative idea of their "essence," conceived as the fulfillment of their potentialities. If the art
is shipbuilding, its logos will not only instruct the builder in putting together boards in some
sort of arrangement, but will also guide him in making a ship that is strong and safe. The
doctor's art includes not only various notions about herbs but also a curative mission that
governs their use.

In this, these arts differ from a mere knack of combining pieces of wood or herbs without an
underlying order and purpose. Technical logic and objective finalities are joined in true arts
while knacks serve merely subjective purposes. But because we are prone to accept
appearances for reality, and pursue pleasure instead of the good, for each art there is some
knack that imitates its effects and misleads its victims. Gymnastics correlates with cosmetics,
which gives the appearance of health without the reality. Rhetoric, the power to substitute
appearance for reality in language, is the supreme and most dangerous knack. In a debate on
shipbuilding or medicine, the orator will silence the expert every time. Means triumph over
ends. The only way for the individual to protect himself is through knowledge, which
distinguishes appearance from reality and identifies the logos of each art. Knowledge is thus
essential to the pursuit of the good.
Callicles is the most articulate advocate of the knack of rhetoric in the Gorgias. He has an
unlimited appetite for power and pleasure which he serves through his mastery of the tricks
of language. That such ambition was not merely a personal idiosyncrasy is clear from a

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reading of Aristophanes, Thucydides and other contemporary authors, all of whom
denounced the moral degeneration and egoism of the imperialistic Athens of the 5th Century.
In external affairs, the Athenians oppressed their own allies. Internally, the assembly became
a battlefield of power hungry orators. Plato's version of the question of his age was thus, quite
simply, does might make right? His answer to this question is the basis of rational ethical
thought in the West.

It is worth reviewing the argument with Callicles briefly as Socrates' refutation of his views
sets the stage for modern debates over technology and values. Callicles intervenes in the
middle of the dialogue. He argues that the justice Socrates makes so much of is more useful
to the weak than the strong. The strong can impose their will without the help of the law. As a
mere special interest of the weak, justice has no claim on them. Natural justice consists quite
simply in the rule of the stronger over the weaker and is diametrically opposed to
conventional justice.
Callicles analyzes the earlier debates on these terms. In all of them Socrates has caught the
defenders of rhetoric in contradictions. These defeats, Callicles asserts, were due to a trick,
namely, playing fast and loose on both sides of the line between the natural goals rhetoric can
achieve, such as domination and pleasure, and the merely conventional values of morality
and aesthetics.
Callicles' analysis is astute. For example, Polus is asked if it is better to suffer than to do an
injustice, to which he answers that it is better to do injustice, i.e., less painful. But then
Socrates asks him if it is not uglier to do injustice, a consideration drawn from the realm of
aesthetics which Callicles regards as conventional. When Polus gives the conventional
answer, agreeing with Socrates that doing injustice is uglier, he suddenly finds himself
claiming that one and the same thing, unjust action, is better (by nature) and worse (by
convention.) But, Callicles argues, nature and convention are opposites. Any argument that
mixes the two will be inconsistent. And so Callicles constrains Socrates to answer according
to nature, giving up any direct appeal to moral or aesthetic values.
Callicles then defends a hedonistic doctrine according to which the good is the purely
subjective sensation of pleasure, a natural value. On these terms there is no gap between the
appearance of the good and its reality. No science of the good is required to "know" that one
is having a good time! But without a distinction between appearance and reality, the Socratic
distinction between techne and empeiria collapses: rationality, the logos, is irrelevant to the
pursuit of the good defined as a mere feeling each can verify for himself.

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The following chart sums up Callicles' analysis with, in brackets, a fourth good added by
Socrates in the course of the discussion:

NATURE
PLEASURE (hedone) [USEFULNESS (ophelia)]
\ /
\ /
\ /
THE GOOD
/ \
/ \
/ \
BEAUTY (kalon) JUSTICE (dike)

CONVENTION

Socrates agrees to Callicles' strictures and the argument proceeds from there. In one
important passage Socrates shows Callicles that the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure leads to
harm. This is not a Puritan argument: Socrates does not claim that pleasure is actually bad in
itself. Instead, he argues that pleasure is not the highest value but is pursued "for the sake of
the good" (Plato, 1952: 72). In this passage Plato identifies the good with "ophelia,"
usefulness, another natural value, and so the contradiction into which Callicles now falls--
affirming that pleasure both is and is not the good--cannot be blamed on any tricky play on
the differences between nature and convention.
After this decisive refutation, Socrates returns from natural goods to the ethical and aesthetic
values temporarily bracketed at Callicles' request. In the famous myth which concludes the
text, Socrates dismantles Callicles' distinction between nature and convention. Rhadamanthys
judges the dead and punishes each soul that suffers from "distortion and hideousness by
reason of the irresponsibility and licentiousness, the insolence and intemperance of its acts"
(Plato, 1952: 104).
Divine justice is meted out according to aesthetic criteria--"distortion and hideousness"--but
there is no question of conventional appearances prejudicing the eye of the judge. The
aesthetic reference is ontological; it measures the "naked" soul's actual reality. Such an
ontological conception of aesthetics was perhaps more accessible to the Greeks than to us as

136
they commonly referred to persons and their actions as beautiful or ugly for their moral
qualities (Dodds, 1959: 249-250).
The aesthetic in this sense refers to how the individuals define themselves through their
actions--as virtuous, a thief, generous, a liar, etc. The act of self-definition itself is a function
of rational self-control (or the lack of it) in terms of ethical and aesthetic standards.

The Tyranny of Reason

Modern readers may have difficulty taking the conclusion of Plato's dialogue seriously. The
earlier shift in the argument from ethics and aesthetics to the conflict between hedonistic and
functional goods appears to place it on a purely rational plane we can more easily accept.
Since such things as health are counted among functional goods, there is plenty for techne to
do even without guidance from contentious ethical and aesthetic standards.
But just how modern is even this phase of Plato's argument? In one sense his idea of techne
seems obvious. Technologies are in fact subordinated to purposes which appear in the
technical disciplines as a guide to resources and procedures. Many of these purposes derive
from considerations such as health and safety that have an objective rationale.
A software engineer working for Rolls-Royce Aircraft explained to me that 10 percent of his
time was spent writing software and 90 percent was spent testing it to for safety. Plato would
no doubt approve: the logos is at work at Rolls-Royce.
Yet we moderns can no longer generalize from such examples as Plato did. For every
benevolent aircraft designer, there is a bomb builder somewhere. We can still relate to Plato's
emphasis on the need for a rationale, a logos, but we're not so sure it necessarily includes an
idea of the good. In fact we tend to think of technologies as normless, as serving subjective
purposes very much as did Plato's knacks. What has happened to disconnect techne and value
in modern times?
The foremost theoretician of our modern view is Max Weber. Weber distinguished between
"substantive" and "formal" rationality in a way that corresponds in one significant respect to
Plato's distinction between techne and knack. Substantive rationality begins by positing a
good and then selects means to achieve it. Many public institutions are substantively rational
in Weber's sense: universal education is a good which determines appropriate means, that is,
classrooms and teachers. Formal rationality is concerned uniquely with the efficiency of
means and contains no intrinsic reference to a good. It is thus value neutral, like the Platonic
empeiria. Modernization consists in the triumph of formal rationality over a more or less
substantively rational order inherited from the past. The market is the primary instrument of

137
this transformation, substituting the cash nexus for the planned pursuit of values. Bureaucracy
and management are other domains in which formal rationality eventually prevails.

The knack in Plato is subservient to the power drive of the individual subject, Callicles, for
example. The will of a purely individual subjectivity can establish no larger order in society
as a whole. Callicles' triumph could only lead to tyranny and the anarchic reaction that
follows. Value neutrality in Weber implies a similarly subjective purpose, however market
and political processes do establish an order of some sort. The question is what is that order?
Weber himself was rather pessimistic. He foresaw an iron cage of bureaucracy closing on
Western civilization. The logic of the technical means employed in Western society had
prevailed over Enlightenment values of freedom and individuality. An order was emerging
that lacked any higher purpose or significance, but that was, at least, an order.
In modern times, the terms of Plato's distinction between techne and empeiria are broken
apart and recombined. Where Plato had correlated orientation toward the good with rationally
elaborated means, and orientation toward power and pleasure with the absence of rationality,
now the pursuit of power and pleasure has its own logic as a system of means
institutionalized in markets and bureaucracies, and that logic imposes itself independent of
human will and any conception of the good. This is the difference between the individual
tyranny Plato feared, and the tyranny of rational means that haunted Weber.

Weber's peculiarly modern brand of pessimism reaches its paroxysm with Adorno,
Horkheimer, and Heidegger. Writing a generation after Weber, they shift the emphasis from
markets and bureaucracy to technology. In Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of
Enlightenment the struggle to control outer nature requires the sacrifice and suppression of
inner nature. The distorted human beings who emerge from the process of civilization are full
of aggression and violence which discharges itself in racism and wars (Adorno and
Horkheimer 1972). Underlying this disastrous outcome is the reduction of reason to a mere
instrument. The "objective reason" that thought it knew the nature of the universe and could
derive rules of conduct from that insight, is replaced by a merely "subjective reason," a
truncated vestige of the old metaphysics good only for control and domination (Horkheimer,
1947: 11ff). Here Weber's distinction between formal and substantive rationality is
radicalized in a dialectic of Enlightenment. Enlightenment turns out to undermine its own
basis while exposing nature and human beings to untrammeled power.

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The argument also continues in Heidegger. His iron cage is a system of research and
development, a technoscience. He argues that reality is fundamentally restructured by this
technoscience in a way that strips it completely of its intrinsic potentialities and exposes it to
domination in service to subjective ends. This process destroys both man and nature. A world
"enframed" by technology is radically alien and hostile. Even the modern Callicles is caught
in the system he thinks he masters. Technoscience is otherwise dangerous than rhetoric or
markets. The danger is not merely nuclear weapons or some similar threat to survival, but the
obliteration of humanity's special status and dignity as the being through whom the world
takes on intelligibility and meaning; for human beings have become mere raw materials like
the nature they pretend to dominate (Heidegger, 1977).

Plato would not have been entirely surprised by these diagnoses although the shift in accent,
from the abuse of empeiria by its users to the inherent destructiveness of technology itself, is
peculiarly modern. This shift results from the fact that technology does not merely
manipulate appearances but systematizes reality. In Adorno, Horkheimer, and Heidegger, the
question of the age is therefore reformulated. Now we are less concerned with the
justification of power than with the sheer challenge of its sublime presence as technology.
Our question is: can we live with technology, i.e. with power in its modern form? The ethical
problem of right and might is superseded by the ontological problem of the destructive
transformation technology operates on both its users and its objects. We are less worried
about whether Callicles' descendants have the right to rule us than with whether the world
they dominate can survive the means set in motion by their vaulting ambition.

At this point, we seem to have come full circle. Value neutral technology turns out to contain
a value in itself after all. As Heidegger expresses it: "The outstanding feature of modern
technology lies in the fact that it is not at all any longer merely 'means' and no longer merely
stands in 'service' for others, but instead...unfolds a specific character of domination" (Quoted
in Zimmerman, 1990: 214). This paradox is already implied in Plato's account of empeiria.

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Recall that "knacks" are not explicitly oriented toward a good but are "neutral" in themselves.
Gorgias says as much early in the dialogue when he explains that the teacher of rhetoric no
more than the boxing coach is responsible for the use his students make of their art (Plato,
1952: 15-16). But when Socrates describes knacks such as cookery or cosmetics, it turns out
that they are essentially bound up with appearances and hence with various types of seduction
and manipulation (Plato, 1952, 26). The knack of rhetoric in particular serves domination as
does technology in Adorno, Horkheimer, and Heidegger.
While Plato based his hope on techne, our modern thinkers despair. They have no faith in
techne because modern technology has incorporated both logos, rationality, and ophelia, the
useful, into a normless system that everywhere prevails over all competing practices. The
modern Callicles has triumphed, and our thinkers, whether they be conservatives like
Heidegger, or radicals like Adorno and Horkheimer, can only appeal to a vague future in
which he will somehow come to his senses.

Marcuse's Theory: A Preliminary Sketch

This background sets the stage for a discussion of Marcuse's theory of technology. His
approach to the question of the age is not so different from that of Adorno, Horkheimer, and
Heidegger. Marcuse was a colleague of the first two, a student of the third, and deeply
influenced by classical philosophy as well. He too is concerned about the triumph of
apparently normless means over ends, of domination over every other value. He too worries
that our drive toward power is objectified in a system and no longer restrained by an ethically
informed logos.

But unlike these contemporaries, Marcuse is a utopian thinker. He conceives of a redeemed

technological rationality in a liberated society, much as Plato, at the end of the Gorgias,
imagines a reformed rhetoric that would serve good ends. Heidegger's utopian impulses were
safely checked after the mid 1930s, and Adorno and Horkheimer seem to have lost not only
hope but even the capacity to imagine a better future during World War II.49 Marcuse
followed a different trajectory. His writings from the 1950s on increasingly attempt to
articulate a vision. Eventually this utopianism enters into his conception of instrumental
rationality itself where it is formulated as a positive technological alternative. The old
objective reason defeated by the dialectic of Enlightenment is revived in a new form as an
answer to the trimphant liberal technocracy of the post-war period.

49
On the refusal of utopian thinking in the Frankfurt School see Jay, 1973: 60-61.

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In this section I will offer a preliminary sketch of Marcuse's theory which I will develop
critically in the remainder of this paper.50 The place to begin is Marcuse's approach to the
puzzling question of the neutrality of technology. Marcuse takes up this question most
explicitly in One-Dimensional Man (1964) where he returns to classical ontology for a
response. The Greek conception of the thing, substance, was not static. It included an inherent
movement toward higher forms. All being aspires to its end, to a perfected form which
realizes its potentialities. In fact the Greek word "dynamis," translated as "potential," already
implies a kind of energy and striving. These higher forms could be identified by a special
kind of abstractive intelligence that stripped away contingent features (Marcuse, 1964; 125-
126). The struggle of being for form is negatively evident in experience itself, in the suffering
and striving world the internal tensions of which reason analyzes. For the ancient Greeks
reason is the faculty which distinguishes between true and false not only in the realm of
propositions but also in the realm of being itself. The rational judgment of such being
therefore implies an imperative: the is is also an ought.
This ontological conception of reason explains the Platonic notion of techne. The role of the
arts is to bring existence to its essential form. Implicit in every art is a finality which
corresponds to the perfection of its objects. The art of government aims to make men just; the
art of education strives to develop the rational faculty that is the human essence. No such
finality is implicit in modern technology which emerged through the destruction of technai,
inherited crafts based on traditional values. Modern technological rationality declared its
"neutrality" over against the essences toward which these earlier technai were oriented. It is
this abstention from essentializing that gives it its peculiar positivist self-understanding as a
form of thought purified of social influences.
Modern technical or formal reason aims at classification, quantification, and control. Because
it recognizes only empirical existence as real, it admits no tension between true and false
being and makes no distinction between preferences and potentialities. What ancient ontology
takes for an intrinsic finality--the perfected form of things--is now treated as a personal
choice. Modern reason flattens out the difference between the essential potentialities of things
and merely subjective desires.
For example, an analysis of the state conducted on classical terms would relate it immediately
to ethical ends, such as justice. The modern approach focuses exclusively on the machinery
of coercion and propaganda without regard for the purpose of the whole. Politics is about
50
For another exposition of Marcuse's theory that complements this one, see Feenberg, 1995: chapter 2.

141
who gets what and how they get it, not about the realization of a norm. But how can the end
of government, justice, be placed on the same plane as the will to power of a Callicles? A
bias reveals itself in this equivalence, a bias which is all to the benefit of Callicles whose
ambition is now taken no less seriously than a true public purpose since both are regarded as
merely subjective. It is this abstention from any judgement as to what is accidental and what
essential that is the original violence of modern reason, which places it in the service of the
status quo.
The class system benefits from this refusal because it rests on suppressing the potential for a
humane and egalitarian social order made possible by technological advance. This is the crux
of Marcuse's social critique: advanced society is, in a certain sense, technically outmoded by
its own achievements. Its over-emphasis on the struggle for survival has become as perverse
as Callicles' obsession with pleasure. It is capable of "pacifying" existence but artificially
maintains competition as the basis for inequality and domination. As Marcuse put it in his last
speech on ecology, radical political struggle today consists in "existential revolts against an
obsolete reality principle." "The specter which haunts advanced industrial society today is the
obsolescence of full-time alienation" (Marcuse, 1992: 37, 35). Insofar as domination is built
into the inherited structure of society, Marcuse argues, technological rationality contributes to
maintaining and reproducing it.

The world of work is the chief domain in which the "continuity of domination" is secured. If
workers' self-government and self-actualization are treated as subjective preferences rather
than as a human and social potentialities, they lose the normative force to counter capital's
drive for profit and efficiency. Self-government and self-actualization on an assembly line
remain the merest fantasies while real products roll off the line and prove its worth. This is
what Marcuse meant when he wrote "Today, domination perpetuates and extends itself not
only through technology but as technology, and the latter provides the great legitimation of
expanding political power, which absorbs all spheres of culture" (Marcuse, 1964: 158).
Implicit in Marcuse's critique is a modern revival of the classical conception of techne.
Technology is to be reconstructed around a conception of the good, in Marcuse's
terminology, around Eros. The new technical logos must include a grasp of essences, and
technology must be oriented toward perfecting rather than dominating its objects. Marcuse
thus demanded the reversal of the process of neutralization by which formal rationality had
been split off from substantive rationality and subserved to domination.

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But much as we might like to revive the ancient concept of techne, it rests on an outdated
ontology with socially conformist implications. The standards in terms of which potentialities
were assigned to things in antiquity were community standards, accepted uncritically by
philosophers. For example, it seemed obvious that "man is a rational animal" in an
aristocratic society which valued contemplation over work. Greek philosophy betrayed an
unconscious fidelity to historically surpassable limitations of its society (Marcuse, 1964: 134-
135). Modern philosophy cannot proceed in this naive fashion but demands universal and
verifiable grounds.

Marcuse accepts the modern view that essences can neither be based on tradition and
community standards nor speculatively derived in an apriori metaphysics of some sort. But
what he calls "one-dimensional thinking" plays out that modern skepticism by rejecting the
idea of essence altogether and remaining at the level of empirical observation. It thereby
avoids tradition-bound conformism and outdated metaphysics but only by treating the logic
of technology as an ontological principle. It can recognize inherent potentialities no more
than can technology and so offers no guidance to technological reform. How then can
technology be informed with essential values? To what can Marcuse appeal for criteria?
What, for example, are the grounds for preferring enhanced freedom on the workplace to
class domination?
Marcuse responded to these questions by historicizing the notion of essence. Ancient
philosophy joined Logos to Eros, theoretical abstraction to striving toward the good. But it
lacked historical self-consciousness. The temporal dynamic it found in things was specific to
an individual or species. Each type of thing had its own essence, and, although these essences
were objects of striving, they themselves did not exist in time. Hence ancient philosophy
arrived at a static conception of essences as eternal ideas. The fixed nature of its essences
corresponds to its own lack of historical self-consciousness, its inability to conceive of
becoming as the fundamental ontological determination.
Today such an unhistorical conception of essence is unacceptable. We have learned that
human beings make themselves and their world in the course of history. Not just individual
things are caught up in time, but essences as well. If we are to revive the language of essence
today, its conceptualization must therefore be historical (Pippin, 1988). Accordingly,
Marcuse reconstructed both Logos and Eros as historical categories, reinterpreting the
observable tensions in reality as part of a larger historical process.

143
Marcusean historicism is rooted in the materialism and anti-utopianism of the Marxist
tradition. Dialectics, as a logic of the interconnections and contexts revealed in historical
strife, offers a modern alternative to ancient dogmatism. Its regulative concepts, such as
freedom and justice, are not ideals in the traditional sense because they have no fixed
meaning. The content of universals such as these derives from tensions in reality rather than
from a preconceived speculative notion or an uncritically accepted social consensus. They are
not exhausted by any particular institutional arrangement, but always points beyond toward
as yet unrealized potentials (Marcuse, 1964: 133ff). The function of philosophy for Socrates,
as knowledge transcending the given, is now taken over by these critical or "substantive"
universals.51
However, these universals are mainly abstract and negative. To be sure, the concept of
freedom excludes many concrete unfreedoms but it does not determine a positive program,
not even an abstract one. Marcuse's originality in the Marxist tradition appears in his
insistence on filling in the picture through the power of the imagination. The organized work
of the imagination is aesthetic activity, based on aesthetic experience, and it is therefore to
aesthetics that Marcuse turns for this constructive dimension of his theory.
Of course the perception of social reality as "beautiful" or "ugly" is commonplace, and
throughout his works Marcuse refers to many contemporary instances illustrating his thesis
that aesthetics is a fundamental category of social experience and not confined to the realm of
art. However, he seems to believe that in a liberated society aesthetic judgments would
become more refined and would have a claim to rationality and significance they usually lack
today. As a consequence, they would be systematically considered in political and technical
decisions. Beyond abstract universals, aesthetics would introduce a concrete, constructive
engagement with political and technical possibilities that might be realized in alternative
configurations of social reality.

Following Freud, Marcuse grounds the aesthetic in Eros. Beauty is identified here with that
which is "life-enhancing." "For the aesthetic needs have their own social content: they are the
claims of the human organism, mind and body, for a dimension of fulfillment" denied by the
established society (1969: 27). The "ugliness" of modern societies is not merely unsatisfying
to the senses of sight and hearing but offends against the "life instincts," i.e. against a wide

51
Is this an idealistic regression to what Adorno condemned as "identity" thinking? I do not believe so. The
Marcusean universals signify precisely the non-identical, that which resists the forms of the existing society. For
example, the "ideal" of freedom, understood as free development of an autonomous subject, simply validates the
striving to realize potentialities, if necessary against the established forms, i.e., the identical.

144
range of needs that cannot be channeled into profit-making enterprise or war. Erotic
liberation in a technically advanced society is not about how to have fun, as supercilious
critics have charged, but far more seriously concerns reconstructing modern technology to
accommodate it to the enhancement of life rather than the struggle for existence.

Now, aesthetics is surely a strange place to look for a solution to the problems of modern
technology. But Marcuse argues that although aesthetic experience is a marginalized domain
today, put out of action when it comes to matters of importance such as technical mastery of
the environment, it can become central in a liberated society. Images of harmony preserved in
the imaginary world of art during millennia of scarcity and strife can serve as criteria for
judging everyday objects and activities. Demands that would have been absurd in the past
now make sense as possible directions of progress. In this sense, aesthetics can support a
historicized teleology, a future oriented concept of essence, and a new technology for its
concrete realization. The "new sensibility" of the New Left began to bring these broadly
conceived aesthetic criteria to bear on the design of devices and systems as an alternative to
the artificially maintained struggle for existence of the advanced industrial societies
(Marcuse, 1969: 28).

This is Marcuse's radical extrapolation from Marx's claim that at the end of the capitalist era,
social advance would be a condition for technical advance. But traditional Marxism reduced
this original Marxian idea to a complaint that capitalist society makes a bad use of
technology. On Marcuse's account modern technology cannot simply be "used" to realize
radical ends. The logic of its normal operations contradicts them. What sense would it make
to try to turn the assembly line into a scene of self-expression, or to broadcast propaganda for
free thought? The systemic character of modern technology blocks recourse to it for these
purposes. Technology has a logic of its own independent of the goals it serves. To the extent
that this is true, merely changing goals would not change that logic, which is the source of the
ultimate threat.

To make a difference at that level, not just the ends of production, but the means must be
transformed insofar as they incorporate domination in their structure. A true alternative
would change the material base as well as the institutional superstructures. A
postrevolutionary society could create a new science and technology which would achieve
this goal and place us in harmony rather than in conflict with nature. The new science and

145
technology would treat nature as another subject instead of as mere raw materials. Human
beings would learn to achieve their aims through realizing nature's inherent potentialities
instead of laying it waste for the sake of power and profit (Marcuse, 1972: 65).

Freedom indeed depends largely on technical progress, on the advancement of

science. But this fact easily obscures the essential precondition: in order to become
vehicles of freedom, science and technology would have to change their present
direction and goals; they would have to be reconstructed in accord with a new
sensibilitythe demands of the life instincts. Then one could speak of a technology
of liberation, product of a scientific imagination free to project and design the forms
of a human universe without exploitation and toil (Marcuse, 1969: 19).

This emphasis on technical transformation distinguishes Marcuse from both Heidegger and
the rest of the Frankfurt School. True, technology has the power and consequences Heidegger
and Adorno and Horkheimer denounce, but it also holds a promise. In Heidegger the most
one can hope for is a "free relation to technology," a salutary change in attitude; and Adorno
and Horkheimer offer little more with their concept of Enlightenment tempered by
"mindfulness [Eingedenken] of nature" (Heidegger, 1966: 54; Adorno and Horkheimer, 1972:
40).52 Far more radical, Marcuse calls for change in the very nature of instrumentality, which
would be fundamentally modified by the abolition of class society and its associated
performance principle. Thus Marcuse gives the question of the age a further twist. It is not
only an ontological question of what technology is making of us; that question needs to be
posed, to be sure, but we must also ask the political question of what we can make of
technology.

The concluding chapters of One-Dimensional Man offer a synthesis of Marcuse's various

attempts to articulate the alternative to advanced industrial society. The heritage of the
Western philosophical tradition in which the substantive universals acquired their basic
contours is translated into practical terms by a modern techne that responds to the tension in
reality between the demand for happiness and the confining forms of class society. That
techne offers original solutions to modern problems, guided by aesthetic experience.

52
For my interpretation of Heidegger's theory of technology, see Feenberg, 1999a: chapter 8.

146
Surprisingly, we find here all four concepts of the Good from the Gorgias. The existing
technology has developed under social conditions that force a choice between the natural
goods of erotic satisfaction and survival, but it is now possible to imagine a liberated
technology that would fulfill both once the repressive structure of class society had been
dismantled. The supposedly conventional goods Socrates defends against Callicles, justice
and beauty, appear in Marcuse as the traditional concepts of philosophy and aesthetic criteria
of technical advance. They would enter into the very construction of technology in a renewed
techne based on the recognition of potentialities. Here is the revised chart of the four goods as
Marcuse might have sketched it.

NATURE

THE EROTIC (hedone) SURVIVAL (ophelia)

\ /
\ /
\ /
EROS
/ \
/ \
/ \
AESTHETICS (kalon) \
\
SUBSTANTIVE UNIVERSALS (dike)

CONVENTION

The Question of Democracy

"Aha!" exclaims the impatient critic of Marcuse who has held back through these all too
lengthy explanations. "Now everything is clear. We are descending the slippery slope from
utopianism to totalitarianism. Superior knowledge and taste will prevail over scientific
objectivity and technical developments rooted in actual public demands. A new "rational"
order will be imposed, not through the state as in earlier totalitarian experiments but through
the technical system. Plato's Republic anticipated Marcuse's program, lacking only the up-to-

147
date erotic and environmental references that are supposed to make the rationalistic pill easier
to swallow.
The objection is implicit in Bruno Latour's brilliant reading of the Gorgias as a conspiracy
between Callicles and Socrates to expel the polis from the halls of reason to the benefit of
either pure power or pure knowledge (Latour, 1999: chapter 7). Callicles' cynicism and
Socrates' idealism complement each other. The one sees only manipulation in the assembly,
while the other condemns it for not coming up to scientific standards of rational inquiry.
What is overlooked, Latour complains, is the idea of political persuasion as a specific kind of
practical rationality suited to the actual conditions of the assembly, in sum, democracy.53
But Marcuse was no Platonist. True, his critique of Plato is different from Latour's and
concerns Plato's hostility to pleasure rather than his dissatisfaction with the polis. Indeed,
Marcuse shares that dissatisfaction. He asks how it is possible to liberate a society that has
made "unfreedom...part and parcel of the mental apparatus." And he replies:

From Plato to Rousseau, the only honest answer is the idea of educational
dictatorship, exercised by those who are supposed to have acquired knowledge of the
real Good. The answer has since become obsolete: knowledge of the available means
of creating a humane existence for all is no longer confined to a privileged elite. The
facts are all too open, and the individual consciousness would safely arrive at them if
it were not methodically arrested and diverted. The distinction between rational and
irrational authority, between repression and surplus-repression, can be made and
verified by the individuals themselves. That they cannot make this distinction now
does not mean that they cannot learn to make it once they are given the opportunity to
do so. Then the course of trial and error becomes a rational course in freedom.
Utopias are susceptible to unrealistic blueprints; the conditions for a free society are
not. They are a matter of reason (Marcuse, 1955: 225).
Reason is not identified with the Platonic episteme here, but with the process of public
debate, trial and error in a society where dissent is no longer suppressed and concentrated
media power no longer distorts communication. I do not believe later ambiguous statements
cancel Marcuse's basic democratic commitment as expressed in this passage.
Although this critique of Marcuse's supposed elitism fails, there are other problems with his
theory. As we will see, his Freudianism is largely discredited and his concept of technological
53
It should not be forgotten that the Platonic Socrates was also an early critic of the arrogance of expertise. Of
the craftsmen of this day, he said: "Each of them believed himself to be extremely wise in matters of the greatest
importance because he was skillful in his own art: and this presumption of theirs obscured their real wisdom"
(Plato, 1956: 27).

148
rationality seems impossibly vague in the light of more recent technology studies. Indeed, the
very idea of an aestheticized technological rationality offends against common sense.
In fact, Marcuse's argument is rooted not in the study of technology but in the history of the
artistic avant gardes, and this may give it a certain resonance if not much additional
credibility. His technical aesthetic attempts to recapitulate the missed turning point in the
development of modernism when radical experiments in overcoming the split between life
and art proliferated in the first years of the century. That moment, which preceded the
conquest of the masses by commercial culture, projected a concrete utopia that reappeared in
the 1960s in manifestations of a new sensibility. On Marcuse's view, only a return on a mass
scale to the promise of those early avant gardes can release technological civilization from
the bind in which it is caught.54 Such a return is no doubt difficult to imagine, but in the light
of the experience of the New Left and the counter-culture, not entirely impossible. It was this
last public expression of utopian impulses that grounded Marcuse's reference to a democratic
transformation of advanced industrial society
The incredible inflation of aesthetics in Marcuse's thought has three rather different motives
discussed below. In the first place, he needs an experiential basis for identifying potentialities
transcending the given. A speculative metaphysics can no longer do the job. Second, he needs
a more concrete and imaginatively rich value criterion than morality by which to measure the
social world. Even if the advanced industrial society criticized in One-Dimensional Man
could meet basic moral standards, it would still constitute a social universe hostile to human
beings and nature. And this is related to problems in its technical structure that must be met
with aesthetically informed solutions. Third, he needs a way of reconceiving technological
rationality as an inherently value-laden techne in order to liberate it from subservience to the
dominant powers. As we will see, a Kantian moment in the theory is supposed to accomplish
this third goal by privileging the role of the imagination, although Marcuse's account of it is
rather sketchy. In the remainder of this essay, I will analyze the three basic concepts that
correspond to these purposes: concrete experience; aesthetics; technological rationality.

The Pursuit of the Concrete

Marcuse's recovery of essential thinking offers a place to stand to judge a society obsessed
with wealth and power, but, nevertheless, the logic of his argument must be quite different
54
However, note the qualifications he adds in Marcuse, 1972: 108. For a thorough account of the evolution of
Marcuse's views on art, see Kellner, 1984: 347ff.

149
from Socrates'. The link between rationality and a teleological interpretation of being has
been broken for centuries. Callicles' descendants defeated the Socratic approach with the rise
of modern society, and this is not a defeat that can be reversed at the purely conceptual level,
for example, by refuting hedonism (Marcuse, 1964: 148). Indeed there is a sense in which
hedonism, with its refusal of erotic restraint, offers a glimpse of liberation from a repressive,
survival oriented society (Marcuse, 1968: 188).

Usefulness (ophelia) is no ally of philosophy now, as it was for Socrates, but founds an
operational rationality that competes with philosophy. From the standpoint of this modern
rationalism, obligations flow from system requirements and not from essences; they do not
transcend a bad reality as they did for Socrates, but guarantee its smooth functioning. The
"natural justice" of our time is efficiency. With the exception of efficiency, all norms, both
ethical and aesthetic, enter the limbo of conventionality to which Callicles long ago
consigned them. The old philosophy is now considered outdated and speculative. Beauty has
been reduced to packaging, a sales pitch, measured by its commercial value.
Thus Marcuse, like Socrates, must confront the skeptical critique of philosophy, and he too
must pursue the argument under the limitations imposed by the adversary. Socrates accepted
Callicles' challenge to argue "according to nature" rather than convention and was eventually
able to overcome their opposition. Marcuse must also appeal to a common, i.e. modern,
ground of argument in order to recover the full range of values. What will it be?
There is no easy way out for Marcuse through an appeal to Marxist social theory, conceived
as Marx conceived it, as a kind of "counter-science." Although Marcuse makes such an
appeal, he admits its weakness in advance. The problem has to do with the structure of the
materialist dialectic which grounds all transcending concepts in the tensions of existing
reality rather than in a supersenuous realm of ideals. But although, actual struggles may teach
us the existence of repressed potentialities that could be realized in a freer society, the
articulation of the specific content of those potentialities and the ranking of some above
others, presupposes concepts, a language, a tradition. There remains a gap between concrete
reality with its internal tensions and the vision of a better society. In Marx that gap is destined
to disappear as theory becomes consciousness and philosophical speculation enters the real
world as mass politics. The early Marxist Lukcs called this concretization of the ideal "the
unity of theory and practice." In a 1929 essay much influenced by Lukcs, Marcuse describes
that unity as "the supreme exigency of all philosophizing" (Marcuse, 1978: 397).55
55
As Kellner writes, "Lukcs's importance for Marcuse and other radicalized intellectuals of his generation can

150
This "exigency" is explained in Lukcs's Hegelian-Marxist critique of Kantian ethics as the
practical correlate of modern theoretical reason. Once reason is purified of the teleology
postulated by ancient ontology, ought and is stand in unmediated opposition. But this
amounts to a confession of impotence. In failing to identify and further those mediations in
the real by which the is can develop beyond its limitations, ethics concedes the inevitability
of the given. "The 'ought' presupposes a being to which the category of 'ought' remains
inapplicable in principle" (Lukcs, 1971: 160). By contrast, for Marxism, ideal demands
become practical realities in the context of class struggle. The unity of theory and practice
would transcend the antinomy of ought and is could it be achieved.
But in the early 1960s, when Marcuse wrote One-Dimensional Man, it was not at all clear
that history would continue to be the scene of struggles overcoming that antinomy. Hence the
pessimistic tone of much of that book; Marcuse was forced to concede that the derivation of
potentialities might have to proceed negatively, on purely philosophical grounds, as a
diagnosis of the massive private distress and public squalor produced by a repressive society
that had integrated all opposing forces. But the gap between the amorphous resistances or
symptoms of distress and articulated values threatens the whole theory. What can verify the
diagnosis if not the voice of the victims? Without their assent, what distinguishes the
philosophical analysis from the mere discontent of a beautiful soul?56 And if that discontent
motivates action at some point, what is to stand in the way of a regression to the idea of
educational dictatorship to impose the philosophically rational solution to the riddle of history
on the irrational masses?
Marcuse's turn to aesthetics for an answer has seemed inexplicable to his critics, but it
makes sense in terms of this background. In Eros and Civilization Marcuse reminds us that
Schiller introduced aesthetics into social theory as a mediation between the abstract and
repressive forms of civilization and the brutality of raw sensuous content (Marcuse, 1966:
186ff). Aesthetic mediation between ought and is represents an alternative to the Marxist
unification of theory and practice through class struggle. Although aesthetics lacks the power
directly to transform reality, insofar as it is a realm of actual experience, it at least moves
beyond the idealism of pure ethics toward a substantive ground for identifying potentialities.
As we will see in the next section, Marcuse relates aesthetic experience to practice once he
links it up with technology.

hardly be exaggerated" (Kellner, 1984: 381).

56
That Marcuse was well aware of the danger is evidenced by this personal detail: on the wall of his dining room
in California he had a large print of Breughel's Fall of Icarus which he kept as a permanent warning against
romantic idealism.

151
This reference to the concept of experience may seem surprising, but in fact some of
Marcuse's earliest Marxist writings are inspired by Heideggerian phenomenology as much as
by Marx. He remained committed to the idea that the alienation of theoretical reason could be
countered by a certain kind of concreteness. This has epistemological implications for the
framing of Marcuse's argument.
Modern thought defines itself by its rejection of authority and dogma, by its basis in the
experience of the autonomous individual. Science claims its foundation in the carefully
framed and analyzed evidence of empirical experience. If there is anything that science does
not explain, i.e. if philosophical critique still has an object, it must be verifiable in a different
type of experience. The existential interpretation of experience appeared in the 1920s, not just
to Marcuse but to many other thinkers as well, as a specifically modern response to
naturalistic scientism and neo-Kantian objectivism. As Douglas Kellner writes, "Marcuse's
lust for the concrete was thus rooted in a fundamental drive of twentieth-century philosophy"
(Kellner, 1984: 396). Although the turn toward the concrete is a properly modern approach, it
can serve reactionary purposes where the experiential truth of national, racial, or religious
authority is opposed to enlightenment universalism (Feenberg, 1999b). But it can also take a
progressive form in the existential demand for erotic and political freedom.
Unfortunately, the terms on which Marcuse developed his argument from experience have
not stood the test of time very well. He started out by announcing the idea of a "concrete
philosophy" founded in individual existence ("Dasein") and, I would argue, he never entirely
abandoned this approach although the Heideggerian reference was quickly dropped
(Marcuse, 1978: 385ff). The concrete appears here as the activity of the existential subject,
itself constituted within a "world" in Heidegger's sense. But unlike Heidegger Marcuse
situates that world in the flow of a Marxist interpretation of history. The worldhood of this
world therefore includes political struggle as an essential moment. The problem is to find an
authentic, i.e. philosophical, politics capable of articulating the situation of contemporary
Dasein. Following Lukcs, Marcuse interprets that politics in terms of the concepts of
reification and the unity of theory and practice. All Marcuse's later attempts to reach the
concrete, through such concepts as the "new sensibility," sensuousness, the aesthetic, the
instincts, resonate with the echoes of this original existential praxis philosophy.
In his later work, Marcuse turned from Heidegger and Lukcs to Freud for a theory of the
concrete. Freud allowed him to elaborate a richer concept of individual experience in which
the erotic and the aesthetic appear as irreducible dimensions. But Marcuse's Freudian

152
categories seem to imply a static conception of human nature which in fact he never
entertained.
In Marcuse, criteria of social advance such as reducing instinctual repression are not
grounded on biology in any scientific sense or derived from an ideal of man, but are
reflections of actual historical struggles. Notions like the "reality principle" and the "pleasure
principle" are thoroughly historicized in Marcuse's application. As Robert Pippin writes, "far
from smuggling an a priori anthropology into critical theory (as readers of Marcuse
sometimes charge), [he] argued that even the instincts should be viewed as historical
phenomena" (Pippin, 1988: 86). All that can be traced back to a realm prior to history is a
primordial energy that expresses itself in socially constructed forms under the horizon of the
society that originally shaped it, and also, under certain conditions, beyond that horizon.
Marcuse's theory is thus a deconstruction of the reified opposition of nature and culture that
first emerged in the sophistic discourse of ancient Greece (we saw it in Callicles), and that
continues to this day as a fundamental assumption of modern thought. He made this project
explicit in a lengthy footnote to An Essay on Liberation.

I use the terms "biological" and "biology" not in the sense of the scientific discipline,
but in order to designate the process and the dimension in which inclinations,
behavior patterns, and aspirations become vital needs which, if not satisfied, would
cause dysfunction of the organism. Conversely, socially induced needs and aspirations
may result in a more pleasurable organic behavior. If biological needs are defined as
those which must be satisfied and for which no adequate substitute can be provided,
certain cultural needs can "sink down" into the biology of man. We could then speak,
for example, of the biological need of freedom, or of some aesthetic needs as having
taken root in the organic structure of man, in his "nature," or rather "second nature"
(Marcuse, 1969: 10).57
The relativization of biology to history accomplishes one half of the deconstructive project.
Just as the natural instincts now appear as shaped through and through by culture, so the
culturally specific form of aesthetic experience is rooted in nature. Marcuse suggests the
radical hypothesis that aesthetic archetypes should be added to the Kantian "pure forms" of
sensibility. These are differentiated historically but common to all human beings in their
source, reflecting a pre-established harmony between nature and human needs (Marcuse,
57
It is worth noting that Marcuse rejects the normalizing interpretation of Freud's theory of sexuality and actually
valorizes the so-called "perversions": "In a repressive order, which enforces the equation between normal,
socially useful, and good, the manifestations of pleasure for its own sake must appear as fleurs de mal"
(Marcuse, 1966: 50).

153
1969: 32). This last claim is quite similar in form to ideas Marcuse put forward in his early
phenomenological writings. For example, in 1929 he argued that "All historical situations are
as factical realizations only historical transformations of...basic structures that will be realized
in every order of life in various ways" (Quoted in Kellner, 1984: 40).
This similarity suggests an implicit phenomenological basis for Marcuse's attempts to
relativize the nature/culture distinction. Indeed, the phenomenological analysis of the
concrete practice of the existing subject does not presuppose that distinction. The analysis
follows everyday action itself, which finds such supposedly cultural phenomena as "values"
in the structure of its objects rather than in the mental habits of the subject. Thus
phenomenologically considered, goodness inheres in the apple pie, and is no "investment" of
a subjective preference in a value neutral objectivity. Like action itself, phenomenology
engages with the world as a unified whole. Reality is only decomposed into nature and
culture abstractly, theoretically, after action has ceased. In his later work Marcuse remains
within that phenomenological praxis framework, but he no longer articulates its premises. As
a result his speculation on the relations of nature and culture are suspended, so to speak,
between objectivity and subjectivity, not a comfortable place for a philosophical theory
(Feenberg, 1999a: 164-165).58
Nevertheless, it should be clear that Marcuse's approach does avoid naturalism. It may still be
unacceptable to postmoderns convinced (in a sad caricature of Derrida) that history is a
superficial "play of signifiers," but postmodern irony misses any sense of the first person
experience of participation in history under the pressure of human passions and the
unavoidable demands of the present. Some postmodern and feminist discourse introduces that
dimension anew through a focus on the body. Marcuse would no doubt have found these
reflections interesting. For him the existential significance of history was an undeniable
aspect of the human condition and had to be conceptualized somehow. As he himself said of
Freud, so for Marcuse, "'biologism' is social theory in a depth dimension" (Marcuse, 1966: 6).
One might reject biological language as inappropriate without losing sight of that dimension.
Here once again is the revised chart of the four goods modified to take it into account.

58
On this I am in partial disagreement with Kellner's excellent intellectual biography of Marcuse. Kellner
emphasizes the fundamentally Marxist, i.e. non-Heideggerian character of Marcuse's work in opposition to his
critics (Kellner, 1984, 389-390). Martin Matustik, following a suggestion in Habermas, argues that the
existential moment in Marcuse's thought is original, not merely derivative of Heidegger, usefully cutting across
the terms of this debate (Matustik, 1999). In my view, there remains much in Marcuse that is theoretically
incomplete precisely because he refused either to drop central phenomenological themes or to develop them
phenomenologically.

154
 CULTURALIZED NATURE

THE EROTIC (hedone) THE FUNCTIONAL (ophelia)

\ /
\ /
\ /
PRACTICE EROS THEORY
/ \
/ \
/ \
AESTHETICS (kalon) ETHICS (dike)

NATURALIZED CULTURE

The Aesthetic Turn

Marcuse's pursuit of the concrete raises as many problems as it solves. On the one hand, it
grounds the argument in experience, a potentially universal domain in which all can
participate and which can support a rational discourse. On the other hand, it valorizes
precisely those dimensions of experience that are most difficult to universalize rationally,
such as aesthetics. How then does Marcuse's democratic concept of public reason square with

155
his aestheticism? This is a real difficulty for the theory. As Habermas has so persuasively
argued, public reason is an intersubjective process, but insofar as the aesthetic is an
experiential reality, "there" to be found by an atuned sensibility, it appears to be private. The
idea of beauty individualizes the encounter with the aesthetic, which is itself objectified as a
higher truth available only to the happy few. Thus it is not obvious how democratic and
aesthetic reason can be reconciled.
Like so many interpretive difficulties with Marcuse, this one results from the dialectical
"compression" of theoretical levels that is his working method. Marcuse's aesthetics attempts
to build a bridge between the three quite different phenomena: the new sensibility of the New
Left, the concept of beauty, and Kant's theory of the imagination. The constellation formed
by these elements raises the exciting but rather marginal cultural innovations of the 1960s to
the level of a worldhistorical experiment in the political and technological realization of
artistic ideals. There are obvious problems with this view, but focusing on them may cause us
to overlook what is still interesting in Marcuse's theory, namely his aesthetic approach to the
politics of technology (Bronner 1988).
Walter Benjamin introduced the theme of the "aestheticization of politics" in a critique of
Ernst Jnger's writings on modern war (Benjamin, 1979). It was been widely assumed ever
since that there is some essential connection between aestheticization and fascism. But
Martin Jay points out that there are also progressive interpretations of the aestheticization of
politics, for example in Hannah Arendt's writings on Kant's aesthetic theory (Jay, 1993).
Arendt attempted to show that what Kant called "judgement" can be generalized from art to
politics. Political judgement on this account is properly doxic rather than epistemic, a matter
of opinion rather than knowledge, based on the imagination rather than on understanding, and
precisely in this apparent deficiency lies its link to our freedom (Arendt, 1982: 106). Political
judgement is not scientific but it contains an appeal to the other for agreement. It is thus
neither universally valid nor merely personal, but constructs an intersubjective community
bond.
To this example cited by Jay, we can add Marcuse's radical aestheticization of politics by
way of technological transformation There is in fact a certain similarity between his project
and that of Arendt. Is it a coincidence that both these Heidegger students affirm the disclosive
power of art and attempt to transpose it to the political domain by drawing on Kant's third
Critique? Where Arendt found a model of political judgement in Kant's theory of the
imagination, Marcuse took the more radical route of applying that theory to the technical
which, as we have seen, he conceived as itself political in advanced societies. This is a

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seemingly paradoxical approach: after all, isn't the technical precisely the most rigorous
application of conceptual understanding rather than imagination? Yet as we will see in this
section, for Marcuse aestheticized technology mediates between values and facts and offers
an alternative to conceiving of politics on the model of pure scientific rationality or pure
power.
An Essay on Liberation contains Marcuse's most radical discussion of aesthetic theory. There
he argues that the emergence of "new needs" in the New Left and the counter-culture are
symptomatic of the weakening grip of one-dimensional society. It was not just that young
people held radical political opinions. Mere opinions would have inspired readily absorbable
demands for particular reforms within the system, not a bad thing, but not revolutionary
either. The "new sensibility" operated at a more basic level than politics, at the level of the
form of experience itself.
Marcuse's notion of an "aesthetic Lebenswelt" refers to an order of experience in which the
aesthetic qualities of objects are revealed. Through the New Left the aesthetic Lebenswelt
entered everyday life itself as the form of perception, with revolutionary implications for
technology. Like Heidegger Marcuse sees technology as more than technical, as more even
than political; it is the form of modern experience itself, the principal way in which the world
is revealed. For both philosophers "technology" thus extends its reach far beyond the bounds
of actual equipment. It signifies a way of thinking and a style of practice involving a quasi-
transcendental restructuring of reality as an object of technical control (Marcuse, 1964: 218-
219). Release from this form of experience can only come through another form of
experience. In Heideggerian terms, as Hubert Dreyfus explains them, Marcuse calls for a new
disclosure of being through a transformation of basic practices (Dreyfus 1995). Against this
background, Marcuse's reference to aesthetics can be understood not just as introducing a
criterion of beauty into radical political judgements, but as the apriori form of a new type of
experience belonging to a new social order.
To this aestheticized experience corresponds a new organization of the faculties. Here
Marcuse draws on a rather speculative historical critique of the positivistic limitations of
modern thought shared by many Frankfurt School thinkers. According to this critique, there
was at some past time a primitive but in some respects richer, original mode of experience
that was shattered by the emergence of class society. In that society, reason and human
sensibility are restricted. Capable in principles of responding to the objective world in its
many dimensions, in practice they are limited to a narrow range of values associated with the

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struggle for survival. Experiential contents that go beyond what is required for victory in that
struggle are derealized.
The realm of art was differentiated out as the imagination and reason split apart in this
context. Reason became technical while the imagination conserved counterfactual images of
a harmonious world, a persistent negativity that was safely confined to a marginal artistic
realm (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1972: 32ff). The recovery of a richer concept of reason
incorporating the imagination is possible once again now that the struggle for existence is
essentially over, ended by technological advance. The questionable historical validity of this
theory is less important than the perspective it opens on the future.
Marcuse turns to Kant for an approach to the impact of social liberation on the faculties. In
Kant's third Critique, the gap between the abstract universal categories of the understanding
and the particularities of sense experience is filled by the imagination. The imagination thus
mediates between the senses and reason, raising sense experience to universality through
discovering beauty in its form, while bringing concepts down to earth as the organizing
principles of its projections (Marcuse, 1969: chapter II; Lukes, 73ff). With the abolition of
scarcity in advanced societies, the work of the imagination can overflow the boundaries of
art. Responding to the revolt of the repressed sensibility, the New Left "invokes the sensuous
power of the imagination" and projects a fundamental reorganization of the faculties
(Marcuse, 1969: 30). From its marginal position the imagination moves to the center of the
stage as the integrative faculty reconciling the demands of sense and reason. The imagination
organizes the heterogeneous contents of the aestheticized experience of the new sensibility
into a coherent whole. In a liberated society it would become "productive" in reality, like the
imagination of the artistic creator, and guide technical practice in the work of "pacifying
existence."
A transformed reason "free for the liberating exigencies of the imagination," arrives at very
different ways of understanding and mastering the world (Marcuse, 1969: 31). For such a
reason, potentialities appear as concrete contents perceived in the structure of the objects
themselves, as potentialities of those objects, and not merely as desires or wishes of subjects.
These contents are available through imaginatively informed aesthetic judgements of social
reality and are not mere subjective goals to be sought with appropriate technical means. Here
we have the aestheticized essences at the basis of a modern techne.
How are these essences apprehended in aesthetic experience? This is the question of the
mode of abstraction appropriate to a modern reconstruction of the concept of essence. Once
metaphysics and tradition are ruled out of order, it is only through the imaginative grasp of

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reality that reason can go beyond the mere cataloguing and quantification of objects toward
an appreciation of their essential truth. Reflection on aesthetic experience supports a type of
judgement that can identify the significant "Form" of reality, distinguishing essence from
accident, higher potentiality from mutilated empirical existence. Following Hegel, Marcuse
calls this abstractive act associated with aesthetic perception an "aesthetic reduction" (1964:
239). It consists in stripping away the contingent aspects of objects that restrict and stunt
them in order to get at what they could be if released to their free development. The aesthetic
reduction carries the dialectical theory of essence beyond theory; it verifies at the theoretical
level the claims of aesthetic experience and translates that experience into positive images.
Here beauty is the symbol of the good, the disclosure of being in its fullness.59
Does it matter that the "essences" posited by this new technological rationality would
ultimately be scientifically groundless, that they would be selected by the "productive
imagination" from a whole range of developmental possibilities on the basis of a value
judgement, a preference for human freedom and fulfillment (Marcuse, 1964: 220)? No doubt
Marcuse's theory would be more sympathetically received today had he avoided the language
of essence altogether and either invoked a transcendental ground for values la Habermas, or
the freedom of the postmodern subject willfully to construct identities and realities.
If he rejected both of these alternatives, I believe it is because he was faithful to a
fundamental insight of the Frankfurt School: the subjective reason of the existing
technological rationality and the objective reason of essential insight are not opposites or
alternatives but fractured moments of a totality that can only be anticipated today. To exclude
one for the sake of the other makes no more sense than to attempt to ground one in the other.
Horkheimer thus writes that "The task of philosophy is not stubbornly to play the one against
the other, but to foster a mutual critique and thus, if possible, to prepare in the intellectual
realm the reconciliation of the two in reality" (Horkheimer, 1947: 174). This conception, with
its faith that we can find traces of the ideal in the real, could not be further from the over-
burdened subjectivity of both transcendentalism and constructivism. It is true that where
Horkheimer, like Adorno, remained stubbornly bound to a negative dialectic, a pure critique,
Marcuse transgressed that limitation and constructed positive images of liberation. But he
remained within the larger framework of the Frankfurt School project as Horkheimer
explained it in the passage quoted above.
Marcuse concludes that aesthetics would be the basis of a new concept of reason that would
merge art and technique. A new form of technological rationality would be oriented toward
59
For more on Marcuse's theory of the "aesthetic reduction" see Kellner, 1984: 334ff.

159
the enhancement of life, the telos of the aesthetic. "The rationality of art, its ability to 'project'
existence, to define yet unrealized possibilities could then be envisaged as validated by and
functioning in the scientific-technological transformation of the world" (Marcuse, 1964: 239).
Here is how Marcuse describes it:

The liberated consciousness would promote the development of a science and

technology free to discover and realize the possibilities of things and men in the
protection and gratification of life, playing with the potentialities of form and matter
for the attainment of this goal. Technique would then tend to become art, and art
would tend to form reality: the opposition between imagination and reason, higher
and lower faculties, poetic and scientific thought, would be invalidated. Emergence of
a new Reality Principle: under which a new sensibility and a desublimated scientific
intelligence would combine in the creation of an aesthetic ethos (Marcuse, 1969: 24).

Technological Rationality

The argument thus culminates in the notion of a radical change in technological rationality.
But the very concept of technological rationality is obscure. A commonplace reading
stemming from Habermas identifies Marcuse's notion with the generic interest in technical
control, abstract efficiency (Habermas, 1970). On that reading, fundamental technological
reform of the sort Marcuse anticipates would be impossible, a violation of a basic condition
of human existence.
This interpretation seems to be implied by Marcuse's critique of the neutrality of
technological rationality as between subjective preferences and objective potentialities. Here
Marcuse echos the Heideggerian account of the intrinsic link between domination and
technology which is indeed difficult to reconcile with any project of reform. In any case,
whether it serves domination as in Marcuse or, less pejoratively, control as in Habermas,
neutral technical reason would seem to be differentiated from other forms of thought and
feeling, stripped down to its essential constituents. As such it qualifies as a quasi-
transcendental or anthropologically general faculty, "blended" with other faculties in concrete
situations but tending toward its pure form in highly differentiated modern societies. As such,
it would be subject to different degrees of purification but not to reform in itself.
Yet Habermas's interpretation reverses the older Frankfurt School conception of a wholistic
objective reason that is in some sense truer than a truncated subjective reason. Where
Habermas sees an ultimately salutary differentiation of reason from intruding elements of
premodern worldviews, Horkheimer, for example, argues that in modern times "the content

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of reason is reduced arbitrarily" (Horkheimer, 1947: 20). The Frankfurt School thus held out
the hope of a reconstitution of a richer concept of reason that would once again incorporate
values in some form, if only through negative self-critique.
If Habermas's differentiation theory of modernity is substituted for this more radical critique
of modern reason, Marcuse's position becomes incomprehensible or insignificant. On
Habermas's terms, we are left with the choice between two unacceptable interpretations of his
thought: either his critique of technological rationality implies the need for an entirely new
kind of technology that would not involve control and efficiency at all, a nonsensical idea, or
he merely wrote in a confusing way about the need to apply technological control and
efficiency to new purposes, a trivial idea.60
1) If the new aestheticized technology is based on completely new technical principles, then
the whole theory is unbelievable. Who is going to invent those principles, and what will they
be like? Although it sometimes sounds as though Marcuse intends a total break with the past,
the revolution that interested him was not supposed to refute elementary arithmetic, change a
decimal place in pi, or find aesthetically pleasing substitutes for the lever and the wheel. Nor
would it, as Habermas suggested, require personal communication with nature rather than
technical control of it. Marcuse did not believe it possible to replace technology as we know
it with some sort of mystical union. That is the view he attributes to his old friend Norman
Brown and distinguishes sharply from his own materialist position (Marcuse, 1968: 238).
2) Perhaps Marcuse had more modest ambitions and merely hoped that technology as we
know it would be used to enhance rather than to destroy life. But if he intended nothing more
innovative than this, it is difficult to figure out how practically his position differs from a
simple change of goals. Of course we could make toys and medicine instead of weapons, but
would that require truly fundamental technological change? If the new technology is simply a
new application of the old technology, then it is difficult to see what all the hoopla is about.
Indeed, on this interpretation Marcuse's position is indistinguishable from ordinary
technological optimism, with its all too familiar technocratic implications (Alford, 1985: 175-
176). But Marcuse himself consistently talks in terms of the need for a change in rationality
and not merely in applications.

60
The difficulty interpreting Marcuse is at least partly his fault. The key term "technological rationality" is
sometimes equated with the ratio of technology in general, or the existing technology only, or sometimes
employed in modified forms such as "post-technological rationality" or the "technological rationality of art" to
refer to a future liberated techne (Marcuse, 1964: 235, xlviii, 238, 239). For my response to Habermas, see
Feenberg, 1999a: chapter 7.

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Neither of these interpretations accords with the texts, but what else could he have meant?
This is the Marcusean enigma that has bedeviled his critics. I want to suggest a different
interpretation that, while it deflates Marcuse's speculative ambitions somewhat, at least does
not take him for a dreamer, and that accords with his own emphasis on the importance of
situating abstract concepts like "rationality" in a concrete social context (Marcuse, 1968: 223-
224). From that standpoint, his concept of technological rationality cannot be identical with
the formal concepts of efficiency and control, but must have a social content as a socially
specific pattern of goal orientation. But nor can it be a mere ideological "reflection" for then
it would have neither technical efficacy nor truth value.
The space in between these two flawed interpretations corresponds more or less to what is
called "technical culture," the cultural universe of technical work itself. Applications are not
designed in function of abstract technical principles alone but emerge from concrete technical
disciplines. Naturally, those disciplines incorporate technical principles, but they include
much besides. As social institutions, they operate under various types of constraints,
including social imperatives which influence their formulation of technical problems and
solutions and show up in the applications they design. Technical principles only become
historically active through such a culture of technology.
Unfortunately, Marcuse never developed concepts at this concrete sociological level, but
nothing prevents us from pursuing his argument in this context. Then it appears that the most
important referent of his concept of "technological rationality" is fundamental social
imperatives in the form in which they are internalized by a technical culture. Such
fundamental imperatives tie technology not just to a particular local experience but to
consistent features of basic social formations such as ancient society, capitalism, socialism.
They are embodied in the technical devices and systems that emerge from the culture and
reinforce its basic values. In this sense technology can be said to be "political" without
mystification or risk of confusion.61
Marcuse's theory makes sense conceived on these terms. At the level of the concrete
historical forms of technical culture, there is room for a variety of different rationalities, and
it is up to us to judge between them and chose the best. Environmentalism has allowed us to
give a concrete content to this notion, as Marcuse himself noted at the end of his life
(Marcuse, 1992). A technological rationality oriented toward the long-term preservation and
enhancement of human life and non-human nature contrasts sharply with one oriented toward
competition for control of resources and short-term exploitation.
61
I have developed this interpretation through my own notion of "technical codes." See Feenberg, 1991: 79-81.

162
How then, on this account, can we explain Marcuse's puzzling claim that it is the neutrality of
modern technological rationality that ties it to domination? In attempting to respond to this
question, I have been led to a further revision of Marcuse's theory which can trace its lineage
to his account but which is not entirely faithful to it. I argue that there are indeed moments of
domination and control that are defining for a technical relationship to objects and these are
inherent in any technological rationality. However, instrumental rationality qua domination
and control is not "differentiated" out in a pure form in modern societies as Heidegger and
Habermas seem to believe, (each of course in his own way). Rather, these defining moments
of technology are only analytically distinguishable from other moments that have a socially
concrete and historically variable character. Thus technological rationalities must be analyzed
as complexes of moments with different contents and temporalities. There is no single
technological rationality underlying all human technical achievements, the essence of which
would be revealed in its purest and most developed form in modern rational systems.
The socio-historical dimensions of technology include such things as the relation of technique
to vocations, to technical organization, and to ethical and aesthetic values that are inevitably
present in the background of technical design. All actual technologies reflect these
dimensions, and not just at the level of social attitude or use but at the fundamental level of
design itself. I therefore distinguish two "levels" of technological rationality, a primary level
that is involved in the technical approach to the world, and a secondary level that is
implicated in the realization of actual devices and systems, and their corrresponding technical
actors. A technical culture is constituted around a specific configuration of these levels of
rationality (Feenberg, 1999: chapter 9).
From this cultural perspective, what Marcuse criticizes as the neutrality of science and
technology, following the custom in traditional sociology and philosophy of science, might
be better described as the liberation of the technical sphere from the logic of community life.
The essences that guided techne reflected the complex web of constraints that traditionally
bound social action of all sorts, including technical action. That web was the product of a
multiplicity of actors engaged responsibly with each other. Their numbers reflected many
interests and aspects of reality, rooting technology in the institutional structure of society.
The world grasped from these many angles appeared richly defined and teleologically
ordered. It was this ordered world that Socrates found reflected in the logos, in the essence of
the objects of technique and the finality of techne. Technology designed in accordance with
the demands of the logos was immediately expressive of the ethical and aesthetic mediations

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associated with community life. It reproduced the community in its familiar form in a more or
less conscious process of social self-definition.

The rise of capitalism goes hand in hand with a drastic reduction in the number of actors with
influence on technology. Now only a very few interests and corresponding aspects of reality
are focused by technical culture. No overarching social ideal restrains and guides it.
Capitalism cannot support a complex notion of technique as containing a finality in itself.
Nor do the objects of this stripped down technique appear as essences. Instead, they are mere
mechanistic constructs and technique appears autonomous, value-free. This liberation from
the confines of precapitalist traditionalism is expressed in the rejection of aspects of the
secondary level of technological rationality that reflected the many participants involved with
technology in earlier times. A new technological rationality appears that is indifferent to the
traditional implications of technical design for working life, for the community, and for
aesthetic and ethical values. This is the real content of the passage from objective to
subjective reason.

But the appearance of value neutrality associated with subjective reason is an illusion: the
rejection of essentialized goals accommodates technology to other values. As soon as
technique and its objects are torn out of the social web they fall completely under the sway of
capital's drive for control of labor and resources (Marcuse, 1968; 212). Far from being
neutral, modern technology is rooted in a specific valuative framework like all other
technologies. It differs only in that its most basic link to values is not explicitly formulated as
an end as in a techne, but is implicit in its systems of control. The obsession with control
leads to an over-extension of the primary moment of technological rationality at the expense
of other dimensions which do not, however, disappear entirely.62 This makes possible great
advances in the efficiency of particular technical processes and gives the appearance of the
differentiation of rationality from contingent social instrusions.

But as Marcuse argues, modern science and technology do not emerge ex nihilo from reason
and find themselves instrumentalized by capitalism. On the contrary, their formalistic
conception of their objects results from the reduction in the number of actors that leaves only
the capitalist ones standing at the end of the day, faced ipso facto with the problems of

62
An account of how these secondary moments are reconstituted under capitalism is offered in Feenberg, 1999:
chap. 9.

164
control to which their culture responds. The reduction of technological rationality to a
truncated vestige is thus not a purification but a historically specific expression of social
forces like any other configuration.

The multiplication of actors in a democratic development of technology would open reason to

new ways of conceptualizing objects and techniques. In a society no longer dedicated to
commodity production but engaged in the harmonious reconstruction of the public domain
and everyday life, technical development would explore new paths as Marcuse foresaw.
Technical designs would not aspire to neutrality over against all substantive values as a
condition for pursuing profits and power, but would respond internally, structurally, to a
publicly debated conception of the good. The fact that value consensus is difficult to achieve
is not an unanswerable objection to this approach. The polis is used to cutting such
epistemological Gordian knots. In Marcuse's broad sense of the aesthetic, democratic debate
would encompass a wide range of concerns for the enhancement of life that today are ignored
and minimized. The imaginative grasp of technical possibilities could inform democratic
debate over the shape of the future. Technical disciplines and devices would evolve in new
directions under these constraints and once again express a wide range of values. New
technai, oriented toward the essences of their objects, would arise.

How different is this from the current situation? Isn't there plenty of "imagination" in
technical fields such as computers, a constant proudction and selection of technical
"potentialities"? This objection misunderstands Marcuse's point, which has less to do with
originality than with the technical status of values. Toward the end of One-Dimensional Man,
Marcuse states that "What is at stake is the redefinition of values in technical terms, as
elements in the technological process. The new ends, as technical ends, would then operate in
the project and in the construction of the machinery, and not only in its utilization" (Marcuse,
1964: 232). In support of this view, he cites the French philosopher of technology, Gilbert
Simondon, who was one of the few serious thinkers who attempted to break with positivistic
conceptions of technology before the recent constructivist vogue. A glance at his work helps
to interpret Marcuse's rather opaque pronouncement on the technization of values.
In Du Mode d'Existence des Objets Techniques, Simondon argues that culture does not yet
take into account the growing place of machines in the social world. Culture is still elaborated
as though machines were finished objects, given once and for all, when in fact they relate to
human beings "in the free plurality of their elements, or in the open series of their possible

165
relations with other machines within technical ensembles" (Simondon, 1958: 146). On the
terms of contemporary technology studies, one would say that machines are "technically
underdetermined," configurable in many different ways implying very different types of uses,
and very different relations to their users and to society as a whole.

As a result of the failure to recognize underdetermination, "Culture is unjust toward

machines" (Simondon, 1958: 146). It absolutizes ideal values it has no means to realize in
technological realities it interprets deterministically as fixed in their given form. The
alienation of means and ends that results can only be overcome in the systematic translation
of values into technical possibilities. To each ideal state of the real corresponds not merely
specific applications of the given technical means, but innovative designs of new means
adjusted to the requirements of that state. On Marcusean terms, this would be the
accomodation of design to essence. But that presupposes a rather different kind of "free
relation" to technology than the one Heidegger proposed. What is necessary is the openness
of culture and technology to each other in an imaginative play of possibilities. It is this play
which for Marcuse characterizes the technological rationality of a free society.

The structure of such a technological rationality can be sketched in terms of our chart of the
four "goods." In this final iteration, the goods are now operationalized under a commanding
principle. In Plato that principle was reason, to which he assigned the function of integrating
and reconciling the faculties of the soul. As we have seen, Marcuse cannot rely on reason for
this purpose. He turns instead to the imagination, which is the principle of synthesis of the
multiple demands on the technical culture of a liberated society. On the side of experience,
we must include the "new" needs of a liberated sensuousness, and the broader social
significance of the aesthetic as life-enhancing values. The theoretical demands consist in
basic technical principles and ethical ideals. These must be reconciled with each other and
with the experiential demands in a new technological rationality.63

CULTURALIZED NATURE

63
I have applied Simondon's concept of "concretization" to the working out of this project. See Feenberg, 1999a:
216ff.

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 NEW NEEDS TECHNICAL PRINCIPLES
\ / \ /
\ /
PRACTICE IMAGINATION THEORY
/ \
/ \
/ \
AESTHETICS ETHICS

NATURALIZED CULTURE

Conclusion: Democratic Technical Culture

In recent years philosophers have noted the poverty of any purely procedural notion of
democratic rights that fails to take into account the claims of community values through
which peoples achieve collective self-definition. The critique of proceduralism has merit, but
the argument is most persuasive where technology is ignored, as is unfortunately the custom
in social and political philosophy. But since technology everywhere trumps tradition,
communitarianism offers at most a marginal contribution to an understanding of politics
today.

I do not think Marcuse would have sympathized with it in any case. It would have made no
sense to him to go back to the tight restrictions of traditional community at the current level
of development. It is possible and necessary to go forward toward a greater measure of peace,
freedom, and fulfillment. To be sure, there are problems with invoking the aesthetic as a
future oriented approach to supplying substance to procedural democracy. But interpreted in
the broad terms of a theory of the social imagination, Marcuse's approach offers a properly
modern solution to the conundrum. Perhaps in this way we can realize more liberating
projects than those of either tradition or business.

I suggest that Marcuse's notion of an aesthetic criterion for the new technical logos be
reinterpreted as an attempt to articulate such a substantive democratic conception. In this
context aesthetics is not a matter of contemplation, but should be interpreted in classical

167
terms as an ontological category, expressing the reflexive significance for the actors'
existence of their own actions. Just as in Socrates' myth, the naked souls are judged in their
reality, so Marcusean aesthetic evaluates naked societies, stripped of their self-congratulatory
media images. So applied, Marcuse's point is obvious. A society where homelessness, urban
squalor, prisons, and war are commonplace defines itself by these "actions" on terms we can
reasonably condemn on aesthetic grounds in the classical sense. This is what I have called
elsewhere a matter of "civilizational" politics, a politics of self-definition that concerns not
power, laws, and institutions, but the very meaning of what it is to be human (Feenberg,
1999c). And this, as we have seen, is dependent on the technical structure of society.
How plausible is Marcuse's project? It is easy to dismiss his aesthetic reference in the name
of standard notions of discursive rationality and argument. This seems to be the line taken by
most critical theorists under the influence of Habermas. However, the result is an incredibly
thin notion of politics more or less identified with argument over moral rights. This is no way
to comprehend the complexity of modern social life and the political debates to which it gives
rise. Attempts to fill in the picture with a complementary idea of the "good" fall back on mere
traditionalism. Must we conclude that contemporary Critical Theory considers creative
responses to political and social problems to be irredeemably irrational? It is precisely a
theory of the rationality of such responses which Marcuse offers in a strained but nevertheless
suggestive attempt to understand the political and social creativity of the 1960s.
Nor is Marcuse's project so impractical as his very abstract language makes it appear. At one
point, he mentions "gardens and parks and reservations" as a small example of the "liberating
transformation" he awaits (Marcuse, 1964: 240). More generally, I think we already have
weak versions of modern technai in such fields as medicine, architecture, and urban and
environmental planning. Technical cultures based to a significant degree on life enhancing
values derived from a wide range of experiences and demands contend in these fields with
narrow technocratic ambitions and commercialism. Each of these disciplines posits an
idealized essence, such as health, the beautiful home or building, the urban ideal, the natural
balance. Democracy requires the public discussion and refinement of these ideals in a context
freed from propaganda, business influence, and technological determinist ideology. This is
not yet possible, but despite the obvious limitations of these disciplines, they offer at least an
imperfect model for the new technological rationality Marcuse advocates. Generalizing this
form of technological rationality and controlling it through democratic political debate is no
mere fantasy but a concrete project of resistance to techno-corporate power.

168
 It is true that today this Marcusean hope appears even less politically plausible than
in his lifetime, yet if one rejects it, one should be prepared to offer another solution. For,
the question of the age remains the one he addressed. Let me reformulate it in conclusion:
how can technology incorporate humane values rather than hurtling blindly forward
under the momentum of an inherited technical system shaped by scarcities and struggles
that can now be overcome in the rich and powerful society technology itself has created?

169
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