BKDEMTEC.RVW 980816 "Democracy and Technology", Richard E. Sclove, 1995, 0-89862-861-X, U$18.95 %A Richard E. Sclove %C 72 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012 %D 1995 %G 0-89862-861-X %I The Guilford Press %O U$18.95 212-431-9800 fax: 212-966-6708 staff@guilford.com %P 319 p. %T "Democracy and Technology" "This book promotes the reconstruction of technology along more democratic lines. [...] Insofar as (1) citizens ought to be empowered to participate in shaping their society's basic circumstances and (2) technologies profoundly affect and partly constitute those circumstances, it follows that (3) technological design and practice should be democratized." Personally, I can sympathize with the aims, and even the thesis, that the author proposes for this text. However, he also notes a personal experience that taught him "that even the most well-intentioned, elite study group can be deeply unaware of the extent to which its conclusions embody far-reaching value judgements." What Sclove seems to have missed is the fact that however important your ideas may be, they have to be communicated to those who may have different backgrounds, and also have to be backed up by some kind of evidence. Although the declamations may be impassioned, only the most sympathetic and dedicated reader will be able to plow through the prose; and the arguments, as they proceed, have little support beyond force of personality. Part one is intended to synthesize modern research in the social dimensions of technology and democratic theory into a rudimentary but comprehensive democratic theory of technology. Chapter one, using a statistical sampling of two communities (one of which is oversimplified into caricature) states that technology affects society, but that society can choose those technologies that it will accept. The idea that technology affects society is re-examined in greater detail and verbiage in chapter two. Democratic decision- making is said to be superior in chapter three, and some objections are replied to. Unfortunately, this entire section is based on only four real examples, and those situations include one failure, one closed and homogeneous community, and two "megaprojects" requiring massive, formal bureaucratic and political decisions. The theory eventually turned out is extremely rudimentary: it states that technology should be democratized, but fails to determine whether it can be. Part two proposes a set of evaluation points that can be used to review technologies for compatibility with democracy. Chapter four is supposed to look at technologies of community, but concentrates primarily on work situations. In this regard it weakens the arguments of part one in that examples are given of cooperative social structures (successfully) imposed on hierarchical work environments, and democratically designed work technologies subsumed to a centralized corporate structure. When the topic does finally turn to a purer consideration of community it is to dismissively denigrate the possibility of technological support of virtual community. Democratic work is said to be free of routine and inflexible schedules, but chapter five singularly fails to say how this utopian state of affairs is to be accomplished. The first of three discussions of politics, chapter six proposes that technologies that promote distorted ideologies or exacerbate social inequities be avoided. Actually, though, the material hardly touches on any example technologies at all. Two of the points in chapter seven boil down to "smaller is prettier" since technologies with a smaller scope of impact promote local self-governance. The third, however, is rather vague. We are to prefer technologies that promote decentralization and federation, without any real ideas of what those are. (There is also no analysis of the relative importance of self-governance versus federation, a debate that my Canadian heritage finds most compelling.) The first point in chapter eight is that we should not foul our own nests, and I assume that most would agree with that; the only problem being the determination of how strictly to adhere to it. The second, however, seems to be an almost religious insistence on flexibility. For the perpetuation of a species we might note that adaptability is a good thing, but technology can be managed by the species (that is, us) according to changing conditions. Is the slotted screw somehow morally superior to the Robertson because slotted screwdrivers can be used as (rather clumsy) chisels? Part three is a defence of the democratic politics of technology against traditional economic models. Chapter nine appears to want to eliminate the concept of value from the discussion. Economic theory is not actually challenged in chapter ten. Instead it is turned into a straw-philosophy, "economism," and attacked as unfit for comparison with social justice. I fully agree with the kind of participatory inventiveness that chapter eleven espouses, which used to go by the name of amateur scholarship. It cannot, however, be successfully mandated: it must be self-driven. This has to be obvious from the examples given in the chapter which are almost universally either proper systems analysis stories or failures. Chapter twelve purports to lay out a roadmap for pursuing more democratic technologies, but is weakened by a vast majority of statements that use "could" or "might" rather than "will." Sclove does admit to a number of important social factors that work against his ideals (at least in the United States) in chapter thirteen, but finishes by only hoping that they can be overcome. This book is forceful, turgid, passionate, dull, and verbose. At first reading, I thought that the nine criteria for evaluation of technologies were the most important part of the work. However, as an exercise I tried reviewing some processes. War and weapons technologies came out surprisingly well, marred only by a tendency to perpetuate authoritarian structures. Guerilla or sectarian violence came out even better. Again, I am in full agreement with the general aims of the book, but have to conclude that a lot more work needs to be done on the specifics. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1998 BKDEMTEC.RVW 980816