Transcript TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER: A RHETORICAL PERSPECTIVE

A RHETORICAL PERSPECTIVE
ON TECHNOLOGY
• Defining Technology and Technology
Transfer
• Competing Theories of Technology
• Rhetorical Theory of Technology
• My Rhetorical Perspective on the Impact of
Culture on Technology
TECHNOLOGY AND
TECHNOLOGY TRANSFR
• Technology: two aspects
– The physical artifact
– Technical Rationality: the cultural aspect
• Technology Transfer
– The narrow sense: from one country to another
– The broad sense: from the laboratory to the
marketplace
COMPETING THEORIES OF
TECHNOLOGY
• Neutrality theory
• Technological determinism/Substantive
theory/Convergence theory
• Ambivalence theory
• Mediation theory
• Critical theory
• Rhetorical theory
NEUTRALITY THEORY
• Proposition: Technology “has no particular
consequences for social organization and
the non-technical aspects of culture.”
– No inherent ethical or cultural values
– Technology use external to technology
• Problem: confusion between technology as
a process and as a product; a partial picture
of technology
DETERMINISM/SUBSTANTIVE/
CONVERGENCE THEORY
• Proposition: “There is some form of inner
logic or dynamic in modern industrial
technology that results in similar social
consequences.:
• problem: ahistorical perspective of
technological development
AMBIVALENCE THEORY
• Proposition: “Technique (and culture) is not
neutral but ambivalent, capable of various
alternative developments….”
– Technology somewhat contextualized
– Recognition of inherent values in technology
• Problems:
– Political optimism about socialist culture
– Underestimating the impact of technology on
culture
MEDIATION THEORY
• Proposition: “Technology as one of the
artifacts of culture embodies the dominant
values contained in that culture.”
– Cultural values and production relations of
capitalism, such as control and efficiency, are
embodied in both the concrete technology itself
and its technical rationality.
• Problem: theory underdeveloped, lacks
elaboration
CRITICAL THEORY
• Proposition: Technology is “an ambivalent
process of development suspended between
different possibilities.”
– Technology development is overdetermined by
both technical and social criteria of progress
and therefore conforms to the prevailing
hegemony.
– The process of adaptation between social
institutions and technological development is
reciprocal.
CRITICAL THEORY (cont’d)
• Technology transfer/development goes
through two instrumentalizations.
• Primary Instrumentalization
–
–
–
–
Decontextualization
Reductionism
Autonomization
Positioning
CRITICAL THEORY (cont’d)
• Secondary Instrumentalization
–
–
–
–
Concretization
Vocation
Aesthetic Investment
Collegiality
RHETORICAL THEORY OF
TECHNOLOGY
• Technology Transfer
– is a process of individual and collective
meaning construction and communication
– is a rhetorical phenomenon
– involves not only the product but also a set of
practices
– is a reciprocal process
– is affected by the culture, which dictates a
particular way of constructing, interpreting, and
communicating meaning
RHETORICAL BARRIERS
• Cultural and rhetorical differences
• Differences in perceptions by the
participants about the meanings of
technology, about what constitutes the
knowledge about technology
• Conflict of interests between the different
parties involved: government, experts,
technicians, ordinary users
RHETORICAL ELEMENTS
•
•
•
•
Exigency: Scene
Ideology: Scene
Participants: Agent
Knowledge Production and
Communication: Act
• Knowledge Acquisition and Control:
Purpose
• Language (Medium of knowledge
distribution): Agency
TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER:
AN INTERACTIVE ACT
Exigency
Ideology
Knowledge
Participant
Language
Control