Technology: Practice and Culture

Chapter Summary

All technologies, qua technologies, have technical components — the materials, designs, parts, and processes that constitute them, as well as the scientific principles by which they operate. However, all technology is also socially, culturally, ecologically, and politically situated. How effective a technology is in the world, depends not only upon its technical aspects — i.e. on how well it works mechanically, chemically or electrically — but also on how well suited it is to the social and ecological contexts into which it is introduced. In this chapter, Pacey uses several detailed cases studies to emphasize the importance of attending to the cultural and organizational aspects of technology in its design and implementation. In the course of doing so he provides a critique of the view that technology is merely a value neutral tool. He argues that cultural values are embedded within technological design and dissemination.

This chapter is excerpted from Arnold Pacey (1983) The Culture of Technology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). It appears here by permission of John Wiley and Sons, Inc.