November 9 , 2005
© Bob Kistler
Go to Part II: Models

[Week 2 is/was an in -class session.  If you missed class, please carefully go through the materials, write a one - two page overview of your thoughts based upon the materials, your findings and thoughts about the questions as you think appropriate and submit this to Dr. Bob.  Then share some of your more pertinent thoughts in a couple of extra TechnoTalk posts to make up for the lack of your voice in our class on November 9.]

Readings:

• Monsma: Responsible Technology, Chapters 1 - 6, pages 1 - 102
• Read at least two of the following: Bb E-Readings Link
  • Slovic, P. 1987. Perception of risk. Science. 236:280-285(Blackboard E-reading)
  • 1996. A fistful of risks. (risk statistics) Discover. 17(5):82-83. (Blackboard E-reading)
  • Kluger, J. 1996. Risky business (risks of everyday hazards). Discover. 17(5):44-47 (Blackboard E-reading)
  • Patton, D. 1993. The ABCs of Risk Assessment. EPA Journal 19(1):10-15
  • Scheuplein, R.J. 1993. Uncertainty and the "Flavors" of Risk. EPA Journal 19(1):16-17

Objectives:

• Define Technology
• Examine how worldview influences a definition of technology
• Examine two or more models for examining and evaluating technology
  • risk models
  • normative models
  • other models

Review from Week 1:

Questions about the course so far…
Perceptions about the impact of the online session.
Why do we embrace technology?
Why do revenge effects happen?
The demographic transition
The epidemiologic transition - shift from acute to chronic
Conclusions from week 1?

Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh water and brackish water? James 3:11

Examples of Technology you used this week.

pencil	internet
voice mail	scissors
tivo	shower
furnace	plane
printer	paper
frozen chicken	car
computer	blackboard
palm	jacuzzi
toaster	washer/dryer
vacuum	phones
pen

 

Word Association Quiz:

Class Results:

• Lawn
  • mower, grass, fertilizer, green,
• Lightbulb
• energy, electricity, flourescent, white, glass
• Chemical
  • smell, poisen, fire, liquid, safety hazard, reaction, engineer, spill
• Car
  • fast, jeep, transportation, mercedes, vehicle, gas, motor, repair
• Book
  • worm, reading, paper, library, store, sleep, enjoyment
• Air
  • free, life, pollution, breathe, plane,

What is technology?

Class Ideas:

 

Technology possibilities:

What will our future look like. One of the fascinating aspects about technology that we thought helped in a definition of the term was change. Of course then we are left with questions about where to, how fast, and will the change be for the better. Even the technology that we use to light up the world has drastically changed over time and continues to change at a very rapid rate. While we may not want to know why the Dept. of Defense might be using the satelite technology used to take the image below of the earth at night, we can clearly see that using "light technology", humanity has changed the earth on which we live.

Many people are trying to look into the future and see what is out there. [Motavalli, J. & J. Bogo. 2000. Wild Ideas: 12 Trends for the New Millennium. E The Environmental Magazine. 11(1): 33-39].

Just a quick look on the web ended up with several other interesting possibilities.

• JR Mooneyham's An Illustrated Speculative Timeline of Future Technology and Social Change takes one look at how we have viewed technology futures into the foreseeable and non-foreseeable future.
• A search of Google for "future technology" brought back 3,620,000 hits.
• "NetFuture is an electronic newsletter with postings every two-to-four weeks or so. It looks beyond the generally recognized "risks" of computer use such as privacy violations, unequal access, censorship, and dangerous computer glitches. It seeks especially to address those deep levels at which we half-consciously shape technology and are shaped by it. What is half-conscious can, after all, be made fully conscious, and we can take responsibility for it."
• Future technology sure to be fantastic, but will it improve life?
  
  
• Foresight Institute's goal is to guide emerging technologies to improve the human condition. Foresight focuses its efforts upon nanotechnology, the coming ability to build products—of any size—with atomic precision.

Indeed I found quite rare virtual "conversations" about the precautions of technology. We have grown up in and used to a world that changes so rapicly that we never get the chance to think about where we are going and why, before the technology under discussion is already lightyears out of date. For example, I wrote an article about digital imaging in a 1995 issue of The American Biology Teacher and the technology that I used was obsolete by the time the article was published later the same year.

So I think one question as, we examine "models" of technology and how to evaluate them and you begin to build models of how you examine the way in which you analyze the personal and corporate impacts and risks of technology, might be, What are the assumptions that you view the world from. In scientific circles we talk about concepts like Worldview (weltanschauung) and Zeitgeist.

• Worldview: The conscious and unconscious values and assumptions by which we see the world. Consists of:
  
  • CULTURE and EDUCATION
  • BELIEFS (Christian faith for example)
  • INTUITION
  • ZEITGEIST (Time Spirit - Spirit of the Times - The main mental model by which a culture lives at a given point in history)

The concept of worldview is very popular. I find interesting how popular worldview is as a concept and you can see part of this discussion by looking on the web or in library databases.  Since we skimmed over the following questions in class, even though we went online and looked at worldviews and technology, I did some brief searching (I will do a RefWorks and Searching overview at the start of class next week.) and found the following links (under Results:)

Questions

• How would you define worldview?
• Why can worldviews be so different?
• What are the main components of of your worldview?
• What are the themes about world view in the literature you found?
• What is the current dominant world view in society? Are their "minority" views?
• How does the world view concept relate to the way in which we see the future of technology in our world?

Results:

• Steven J Dick's model of world views - "But whether one believes scientific world views are primarily grounded in nature, or in society, or in the mind, I claim they affect our daily lives. This is my first claim for world views. Because I believe that scientific world views are grounded in nature, and that the mind can comprehend this reality, my second, and stronger, claim is that scientific world views should inform our world views at all levels, to an even greater extent than they already have."
  Extraterrestrial Life and our World View at the Turn of the Millennium, Dibner Library Lecture, Smithsonian Institution Libraries, May 2, 2000
• individualistic vs deterministic
• climate vs created/ physical vs made
• theistic humanistic/naturalism pantheistic

What is technology?  Can we distinguish the following?

Is everything technology?
Technological objects
Technological process
technological tool
technological product
vs technological “artifact

Monsma et al. in Responsible Technology think that:

a. Technology is pervasive
b. Technology is value-laden
c. Technology is conflicted
d. Technology is divergent

and that technology may be viewed from different perspectives:

a. anthropological - a human cultural distinctive
b. epistemological - human practical knowledge - the technological “method”
c. sociological - human modernity - the technological society

You might want to find a picture that you think embodies the example of technology and post it as a link or attachment in the TechnoTalk forum or your posting for this week. I really like this image and its implications in light of our discussions.

According to Monsma et. al a definition of technology should do three things

1. distinguish technical activity from other human activities
2. bdistinguish modern and premodern technology
3. be centered in a Christian context of understanding

How does Technology differ from Science?

Objectives of Science (F. Ayala (1968))

• to seek to organize knowledge in a systematic way, endeavoring to discover patterns of relationship among phenomena and processes,
• to strive to   provide explanations for the occurrence of events and
• to propose explanatory hypotheses that must be testable, that is accessible to the possibility of rejection.  More broadly, science
• attempts to subsume the vast diversity of the phenomena and processes of nature under a much smaller number of explanatory principles.

Dr. Kistler's thoughts:

I think science is not facts, not explanations of natural phenomena, not observation, identification, textbooks, etc., BUT IS A PROCESS - science is really a verb, A WAY OF KNOWING AND FINDING OUT WITH A RELATIVELY HIGH PROBABILITY , BUT NEVER WITH CERTAINTY(NO PROOF), IS AN OPEN MINDED VIEW ABOUT WHY AND HOW THE CREATION WORKS - IS A WAY TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE MIND OF THE CREATOR AND OUR RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CREATION

Monsma et. al. Definition of Technology:

A distinct human cultural activity in which humans exercise freedom and responsibility in response to God by forming and transforming the natural creation, with the aid of tools and procedures, for practical ends or purposes.
Monsma et al. Responsible Technology

How does society now perceive visions of technology: Some examples:

movie engineers win first Oscars
Technology enhances art
National ID Cards
Fuel cell vehicles - this year?

 

Some Questions - issues with such definitions

“natural creation”
“practical ends and purposes”
What was our hope for technology?
Is technology now our modern faith?
What is the value of technology?
unique and intertwined
What is technology in our “post-modern” world culture?
Others?

Pre-modern?
Modern?
Postmodern?

Are there “models” that might help us understand our views of technology? PART II: Models