5.1 Technological choice  (Page 4/6)

Lens two: social construction

• This lens comes from Pinch and Bijker’s article, “The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts.” Social construction makes the opposite claim to technological determinism. Instead of holding that technology determines society, the social constructionist argues that society determines or “constructs” the technology. This lens, then, will help you to see the contribution that individuals and groups make to the social construction of technologies.
• Pinch and Bijker begin with an application of epistemological relativism to science and technology.
• Relativism may be a misnomer here since it argues that individuals or groups bestow truth and value on the surrounding world. Humans according to the Greek thinker, Protagoras, are the measure of all things, of those that are, that they are and of those that are not, that they are not. So classical relativism holds that humans-—as individuals or as groups-—provide the standards by which all things are assessed.
• But the relativism that Bijker and Pinch advocate is for methodological, not ontological, purposes. All scientific theory proposals and all technological variations are treated the same whether successes or failures. They are all grist for the historian's mill. This gives us special insight into how they are generated, how they compete with one another, how individuals interact with them, and on how, finally, the successes are selected and the failures de-selected. This methodological relativism lays bare the process of social construction concealed in the final product.

Looking at the development of technologies, pinch and bijker identify three stages:

1. The first stage exhibits interpretive flexibility. Because the design of an artifact and its meaning are open, social interaction and transaction generates different variations. (Their example is the different bicycle designs that competed for market share before the small wheeled, safer version won out.) Many variations are generated which compete with one another. This positive competition stimulates creativity. Individuals interact with the variations that are produced, experimenting with them and, through this experimentation, clarifying their interests, values, and concerns. The interests, needs, and problems clarified become filters that select and de-select variations.
2. The second stage is characterized as the closing of interpretive flexibility. Needs, interests, and problems stabilize. They select and de-select variations so that most drop off to the side. Because individuals interact with facts and artifacts, because they experiment with them, select those that meet their needs and de-select those that don't, they literally and socially construct them.
3. In the third stage, closure is achieved through rhetorical means (such as advertising), problem definition (which keeps some problems and dissolves others), and inclusion in a wider context where the variations selected fit into the surrounding socio-technical system. Closure leads us to forget the historical process of social construction, i.e., interpretive flexibility and closure of interpretive flexibility. Hence, we treat the final technology as a black box that has always been there and is somehow inevitable. But re-opening the historical process reminds us that the black box has been constructed and selected to incorporate our needs, problems, and values.