A RHETORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON TECHNOLOGY

1. 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

2. 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

3. COMPETING THEORIES OF TECHNOLOGY • Neutrality theory • Technological determinism/Substantive theory/Convergence theory • Ambivalence theory • Mediation theory • Critical theory • Rhetorical theory

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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.

9. CRITICAL THEORY (cont’d) • Technology transfer/development goes through two instrumentalizations. • Primary Instrumentalization • Decontextualization • Reductionism • Autonomization • Positioning

10. CRITICAL THEORY (cont’d) • Secondary Instrumentalization • Concretization • Vocation • Aesthetic Investment • Collegiality

11. 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

12. 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

13. RHETORICAL ELEMENTS • Exigency: Scene • Ideology: Scene • Participants: Agent • Knowledge Production and Communication: Act • Knowledge Acquisition and Control: Purpose • Language (Medium of knowledge distribution): Agency

14. TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER: AN INTERACTIVE ACT Exigency Ideology Knowledge Participant Language Control