LECTURE NOTES HANDOUT- LECTURE 2 (week 3)- Technologies of socialization & Social Capital
Understanding Technological Society, Humanities 201, Fall 2016, Prof. Edel
Readings this week:
Sherry Turkle- “Alone Together”
Robert Putnam- “Bowling Alone”
Putnam & Sanders “Still Bowling Alone”
Key Concepts/Terms from the readings:
Identity
Social Capital
Civil Society & Civic engagement
Aspects of interaction & group membership: Connectedness, Intimacy, Trust
Authenticity
“Strong ties” vs “weak ties” (e.g. Mark Granovetter 1973. “The Strength of weak ties” Amer.Journ. of Sociology.)
Social networks
Additional Vocabulary:
Politics
Technology
Homogenous, Heterogeneous
Anthropomorphism
Epistemology/epistemological
Reciprocity
Distribution
Proximity / Proximate
Technological Determinism
Major Theories From: Science and Technology Studies (S.T.S.)
Actor Network Theory –or- Actant Network Theory (A.N.T.) – Emphasizes balance and equivalency of elements
in the system, machines and people as actants, things that act, that have effect, and seeks to understand all outcomes and understanding as result of interaction. A key concepts include the “Black Box” representing the closure of objects after design, and the invisibility of the details of function to most user, as well as the idea of translation between heterogeneous elements of networks. Focus on starting from a Micro Level and moving out to Mezzo level of analysis. Draws from Anthropology and STS. E.g. Bruno Latour & Michel Callon.
Social Construction, or the Social Construction of Technological (S.C.O.T.) – Emphasizes Interpretive Flexibility,
the idea that any object, or interaction can mean multiple things, that meanings change, and that from different perspectives or moments of contact the ‘thing’ has a different existence/function/use/effect. The multiple Perspectives often rely on specific repeated versions deemed Frames or ways of understanding the thing, some of the frames are more enabled, more dominant, more easy to arrive to and accept. Focus on Mezzo Level of analysis. Draws From sociology and STS. E.g. Trevor Pinch, Wiebe Bijker, to a certain extent Langdon Winner.
Large Technological Systems (L.T.S.) – Emphasizes the idea that by investing time, money, power, into the
materiality of a system it is harder to change, this Momentum, and the fact that the systems interact provide powerful forces in interactions, that may be invisible because they become background to the smaller more local technologies within the large system. Focuses on starting from the Macro level of analysis, and working down into the components as part of analysis. Draws from Sociology and STS. E.g. Thomas Hughes.