Critical Approaches to Technology: Editor’s Introduction

Important contributions to a critical theory of technology were made by the members of the Frankfurt school, in particular Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse and Jürgen Habermas. In a different vein, Martin Heidegger and Jacques Ellul also developed critical perspectives on modern technology. During the last decades of the 20th century, however, these views have been criticized by postmodernists and constructivists for being anti‐technological and/or at odds with (human experiences of) concrete technological practices. Although this critique should be acknowledged as partially correct, the accompanying lack, or even rejection, of a critical perspective prevents postmodernism or constructivism from being acceptable as a comprehensive alternative. In this spirit, a recent special issue of Social Epistemology, entitled “Beyond Social Constructivism” (Sterne and Leach 2005), underlined this conclusion and argued for expanding the (social) constructivist approach by adding a substantial social–critical component.

The papers in the present special issue aim at developing critical approaches to technology by drawing on the tradition of critical theory. At the same time, they deviate from that tradition in three crucial respects. First, they attempt to combine an appropriate theoretical and normative perspective with a sensibility to the varieties of concrete socio‐technical experiences and practices. Second, their aim is not to critique technology “as such”, but to critically examine particular aspects of particular types of technologies. Finally, their intention is not merely to criticize existing technologies, but also to offer specific concepts and analyses that can be employed in realizing more desirable, alternative technologies. To mark this contrast with the traditional conceptions of critical theories of technology mentioned above, we speak of “critical approaches to technology”.

The influential work of Andrew Feenberg illustrates this approach in an exemplary manner. Apart from including a contribution by Feenberg himself, the other authors in this issue engage his work in a variety of ways. Some more or less directly apply basic ideas of his theory of primary and secondary instrumentalization; others discuss aspects of his work in the context of their own views of how to develop critical approaches to technology. The starting‐point of this project was a one‐day symposium at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in June 2005, entitled “Critical Approaches to Technology: Past, Present and Future”. The contributions to this special issue are substantially reworked and expanded versions of the papers presented at that symposium. We hope that they may contribute to a flourishing future of the critique of technology.

Andrew Feenberg’s paper, “From Critical Theory of Technology to the Rational Critique of Rationality”, not only presents a concise account of his instrumentalization theory of technology; in line with the tradition of critical theory, it also embeds this account in a broader theory of social rationality. In a nutshell, the relation between Feenberg’s approach and the tradition of critical theory can be described as follows. The basic features of the primary instrumentalization are those distinctive operations that define a technical relation to the world. However, such a relation is never simply “instrumental” in the sense in which Horkheimer and Adorno intend, nor is it neutral as Habermas believes. Rather, the technical relation to the world is always already invested by social dimensions comprised in the secondary instrumentalization. These social dimensions complicate the picture in ways that account for both the oppressive and liberating potentialities of technology. No particular secondary instrumentalization is necessary, and the essentially contingent nature of this aspect of technology (as stressed in postmodernism and social constructivism) leaves ample space for a more desirable and a more democratic evolution of technology. Bram Bos’ contribution, “Instrumentalization Theory and Reflexive Design in Animal Husbandry”, reports and discusses a concrete project of reflexive design in animal husbandry. This project expressly aimed at realizing a more desirable and democratic secondary instrumentalization right from the start of the design process. Thus, it did not arise as a consequence of the resistance of a countermovement or subordinate social group, as in Feenberg’s case studies. My own paper, “Critical Philosophy of Technology: The Basic Issues”, provides a comprehensive characterization of technologies, including their realization in practice. On this basis, it systematically examines the possibilities and obstacles for alternative realizations, and it discusses some of the similarities and dissimilarities of this approach with Feenberg’s instrumentalization theory. The focus of Philip Brey’s “The Technological Construction of Social Power” is on the role of technologies in creating and sustaining power relations between agents. He analyses the notion of power and the types of power relations in detail, and relates this analysis to the issues of empowerment, resistance, and democracy. The comprehensive characterization of technologies and their normativity in my contribution and the detailed discussion of the relations between technology and social power in Brey’s paper complement each other, in providing two distinct but essential ingredients of critical approaches to technology. In his paper “Possibilities of Democratisation in Organisations”, Han van Diest applies Feenberg’s instrumentalization theory to the domain of critical thinking about management and organisation. He focuses on the notion of underdetermination and argues for complementing Feenberg’s (social–political) underdetermination with a notion of ontological underdetermination. The purpose is to provide a framework that enables a systematic search for possibilities of democratisation of organisations. In his concluding “Comments”, Andrew Feenberg responds to several of the issues brought up in the four preceding papers – in particular those that pertain to his own version of critical theory.