Ethics, Place and Environment

Ethics, Place and Environment Vol. 10, No. 1, 1–6, March 2007 EDITORIAL Introduction to ‘Technological Change’: A Special Issue of Ethics, Place & Environment PAUL C. ADAMS Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Texas at Austin, USA In 1894 the anthropologist Otis Tufton Mason called for research in an area he dubbed ‘technogeography’, and he lauded the potential benefits of the knowledge to be acquired under this heading: The right progress looks forward to a time when the whole earth will have been exploited, every pernicious plant and animal and man or tribe of men removed, and all that is good domesticated; when the powers of nature will all be harnessed or enslaved; when distance and time will offer no impediment to commerce; when it will be as easy to put production and consumption in friendly union at the springing up of desire as it was for the primitive man or woman. (Mason, 1894, p. 161) This article was situated solidly in the environmental determinist tradition of its time, with the geographical variation of technology cast as a result of variations in the opportunities for human advancement from place to place. The aboriginal Australians were primitive because they lived where ‘all the unfavorable conditions of human existence are exaggerated’ (Mason, 1894, p. 150), while the Europeans had been more fortunate in their clime. But the article ambivalently portrayed human destiny as dependent on the conquest of environments, and technology as a cause rather than a consequence of human–environment relations. Indians of North America may have been fortunate to live close to squirrels who unwittingly ‘gave to Correspondence Address: Paul C. Adams, Guest editor, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station A3100, Austin, TX 78712, USA. Email: [email protected] 1366-879X Print/1469-6703 Online/07/010001–6 ß 2007 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13668790601149968 2 P. C. Adams the Indians a lesson in economy and storage’ (p. 145), but most of nature’s lessons were not offered so willingly: She knew where all the good things were concealed. They find them when she resists. When nature does not resist us she is leading us astray, when she unconsciously holds us back we follow to success in the lines of greatest pressure. (p. 147) If this overtly sexualized motif surprises us today, it may be in part because we now fear the monstrous offspring that may come from this forced coupling between society and nature (Lowenthal, 2001, p. 90; Tenner, 1996). Technology has long been a matter of debate for all manner of academics and experts, from engineers and historians to philosophers and geographers. The term meant the study of ‘practical arts’ in the mid-nineteenth century (Williams, 1983; Chapman, 2004), and while the concept stabilized in the twentieth century to mean a collection of useful objects (the products of those ever more dominant practical arts), it has become more fluid in recent years, destabilized by the perspectives of postmodernism and actor network theory (Callon et al., 1986; Latour, 1993; Bijker, 1995; Serres & Latour, 1995; Law & Hassard, 1999) as well as by explorations of the boundaries that define the human being (Adams, 1995, 2005). Technologies are no longer simply seen as objects, but are increasingly understood as relationships, flows, or mobilities that persist across and through endless translations (from objects to concepts, concepts to social relations, social relations to narratives, narratives back to objects, and so on). The bicycle, for example, is no longer an optimal and inevitable physical form proceeding out of a logical progression of engineering solutions, but rather a stabilized expression of particular interpretations of gender, leisure, personal mobility, space, and time (Bijker, 1995). And what scholars mean by ‘bicycle’ is not only the physical object, the matter in isolation, but rather the set of relations that continue to produce the object, which in sum are a ‘quasi-object’, a rather fragile thing since it is a heterogeneous assemblage of bolts, beliefs, cables, narratives, bearings, and discourses. In addition, ‘technology’ increasingly implies the specter of unruly human–technology hybrids that serve only certain needs, some of the time, for limited periods, and with unknown and disturbing potentials (Haraway, 1985; Beck, 1992, 1995; Kitchin & Kneale, 2002; Whatmore, 2002). Meanwhile, these unstable and unruly technologies fuse with place as they ‘mediate, supplement, and augment collective life . . . making things happen in conjunction with people’ (Mackenzie, 2002; Dodge & Kitchin, 2005, p. 169). Dubbed ‘technicity’, this merging suggests that space/place and technology are intertwined in dialectical fashion. The geography of technology cannot be defined simply in terms of the places where technological objects are, as it also involves the expressions of space and place that are maintained by the social construction of technological objects as useful, right (morally acceptable), and modern. Anything that troubles these constructions can cause not only a reassessment of the object, but also a reorganization of the quasi-object and therefore of technicity, with profound impacts on space and place. Introduction 3 For all of these reasons, technology is political. In the words of Latour (1993, p. 144), ‘Half of our politics is constructed in science and technology’. I would add that the other half (at least) is embodied in space and place. The task of exposing the social and spatial dimensions of technology is therefore a necessary part of any effective political project. As many have argued, the politics and the spatialities of technology must be made explicit so that people can take into account long-term social conditions and the related questions of justice and ethics (e.g. Sclove, 1995; Serres, 1995; Hinchcliffe, 1997, 2001; Bennett, 1999; Crang et al., 1999; Hawken et al., 1999; Bulkeley, 2001). But this task is rendered all the more arduous by the constant proliferation of technology in and through daily life in a time of globalization. The familiar expansion of spatial frontiers by technology (e.g. Janelle, 1969; Brunn & Leinbach, 1991; Massey, 1993; Castells, 1998; Kwan, 2000; Brunn et al., 2004) has its mirror in the expansion of epistemological frontiers in technology studies. Just as new technologies push back the bounds of the knowable and accessible through time–space compression, through the proliferation of ways of seeing, hearing, and otherwise sensing the world, and through the colonization of spheres of daily life previously untouched or little touched by technology, they also push back the bounds of theory and philosophy. For example, as new medical technologies enlarge the boundary of conditions considered ‘normal’ or ‘treatable’, the boundaries between just and unjust modes of medical care become fluid, as do the boundaries between affordable and unaffordable modes of care. Likewise, the acceleration of interaction and communication between places expands the opportunities for surveillance, control, manipulation, and exploitation of distant others, creating a need to re-theorize social spaces of power and order. Furthermore, as new ways of extracting and exploiting resources are identified, not only are new resources in effect discovered or created, but also new arrays of ethical questions with regard to wise resource use. In these senses and others, technological change pushes back the boundaries that previously defined theoretical and philosophical questions, posing various dilemmas that urge a deeper and broader engagement by scholars in various disciplines. This special issue contributes to the debate in science and technology studies (STS) by broadening the understanding of the contexts in which technological change takes place—both physical and virtual—and by bringing a geographical sensibility to questions of technology’s boundaries, flows, and transformations. These papers track technological change through diverse spaces—including the spaces of medical care, resource extraction, communication, consumption, and government—with an eye towards the intersection between ethics and the spatial/environmental dimensions of society. Implicated in these ethical debates are questions of representation and communication: private messages versus public debate, local knowledges versus remote control of activities, national constructions of identity versus globalized visions, free enterprise versus regulatory frameworks, virtual co-presence versus faceto-face communication in place, communication through time versus communication through space. This chain of dichotomies serves only to suggest the variegated terrain that is covered by this set of multi-dimensional and complex papers, and risks oversimplifying the terrain. 4 P. C. Adams The first two papers, by Gibson et al. and Peltola, explore the ways in which nature is socially constructed, touching on nature within (the human body) and nature without (the natural environment), as well as issues of rights and power relations. The next two, by Wilken and Zook, explore relationships between place and representation. Wilken reveals a particular relationship between place and representation: virtuality, communication supposedly detached from place, actually presupposes the concept of place. Zook shows a strikingly different relationship between place and representation: a narrative constructing a particular place, Nigeria, as a ‘failed state’, solidifies a perception of that place as a symbol of criminal activity in cyberspace while concealing the precise nature and intentions of that criminal activity. The final two papers, by Warf and Smith, highlight particular aspects of communication across space and through time. Politics are shown to intersect with communication as Warf traces the political implications of economic liberalization in telecommunications and the media, demonstrating a disturbing trend toward oligopoly control and the concomitant asphyxiation of democratic discourse. Religious belief is shown to intersect with communication as Smith explores ‘time-binding’ communications that convey values through time while also giving time a sense of direction or telos. Aside from Warf’s paper, several of the others also raise political issues associated with technological change. Most notable are: the social exclusion as well as the potential to include people who depend on certain kinds of technology (Gibson et al.); the ‘strategy of the cuckoo’ whereby old sociotechnical networks foster the fledging of new, alternative sociotechnical networks (Peltola); and an epochal change in the scaling of power as underground networks (including those of crime) challenge the authority of the state (Zook). Smith, as well, suggests a kind of politics—the struggle between space-binding and time-binding forms of social organization. Observations about technological change also raise interesting ethical and philosophical dilemmas. Gibson addresses the level to which society is responsible for equalizing the spatial accessibility of persons with unusual medical conditions and/or handicaps. Peltola shows that the political terrain contains more than just the twin peaks of ‘obey’ and ‘resist’; it also contains wide spaces for innovation and appropriation of technology. Zook reveals how crime’s occupation of the interstices of cyberspace has been met by morally questionable behavior: the tactic of ‘scambaiting’ that tricks swindlers into branding themselves with racist epithets. Wilken reveals the haunting presence of place where we would least expect to find it—in cyberspace. Warf reveals the deterioration of the public sphere as a threat to ethical decision-making. And Smith explores the unraveling of moral fiber through decadence, by which he means the decay of moral imagination, in this case owing to a failure in time-binding communication. Each of these authors points to an array of rearrangements as technological change causes groups, narratives, organizations, flows, and bodies to be reorganized in space and place, and such reorganizations reveal themselves not simply as consequences of technological change but integral elements of that change. The articles therefore suggest a very different kind of ‘technogeography’ than what was envisioned over 100 years ago by Otis Tufton Mason. The new technogeography is politically and ethically reflective as well as being sensitive to the interplay and reciprocity between humans and technologies. It avoids the optimistic excesses of Introduction 5 industrial era technological boosterism, and instead weaves ironic or tragic visions of the political and ethical complications of a technologically-dependent world. Acknowledgments The author owes special thanks to Deborah Dixon for her role in conceiving and initiating this project and to Darryl and Kathryn Adams for offering the use of their cabin in the Rockies for a wonderful spring retreat where the project was first discussed over tea and hot chocolate. Above all, thanks are due to Jonathan Smith for his assistance throughout the process. References Adams, Paul (1995) A reconsideration of personal boundaries in space–time, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 85(2), pp. 267–285. Adams, Paul (2005) The Boundless Self (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press). Beck, Ulrich (1995) Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk (Cambridge: Polity Press). Beck, Ulrich (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (trans. Mark Ritter) (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications). Bennett, P. (1999) Governing environmental risk: regulation, insurance and moral economy, Progress in Human Geography, 23(2), pp. 189–208. Bijker, Weibe (1995) Of Bicycles, Bakelites and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Social Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Brunn, Stanley D., Cutter, Susan L. & Harrington, Jr, J.W. (Eds) (2004) Geography and Technology (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers). Brunn, Stanley D. & Leinbach, Thomas R. (Eds) (1991) Collapsing Space and Time: Geographic Aspects of Communication and Information (London: HarperCollins Academic). Bulkeley, H. (2001) Governing climate change: the politics of risk society? Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 26(4), pp. 430–447. Callon, Michel, Law, John & Rip, Arie (Eds) (1986) Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology: Sociology of Science in the Real World (Basingstoke: Macmillan). Castells, Manuel (1998) End of Millennium. Vol. 3 of The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (Malden, MA & Oxford, UK: Blackwell). Chapman, Anne (2004) Technology as world building, Ethics, Place and Environment, 7(1–2), pp. 59–72. Crang, Mike, Crang, Phil & May, Jon (1999) Virtual Geographies: Bodies, Space and Relations (London & New York: Routledge). Dodge, M. & Kitchin, R. (2005) Code and the transduction of space, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95(1), pp. 162–180. Haraway, Donna (1985) A manifesto for cyborgs: science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s, Socialist Review, 15(2), March–April, pp. 65–107. Hawken, Paul, Lovins, Amory & Lovins, L. Hunter (1999) Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Boston: Little, Brown and Co.). Hinchcliffe, S. (1997) Locating risk: ideal homes and the non-ideal world, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 22(2), pp. 197–209. Hinchcliffe, S. (2001) Indeterminacy in-decisions: science, policy and politics in the BSE crisis, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 26(2), pp. 182–204. Janelle, Donald (1969) Spatial reorganization: a model and concept, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 59, pp. 348–364. Kitchin, Rob & Kneale, James (2002) Lost in Space: Geographies of Science Fiction (London & New York: Continuum). Kwan, Mei-Po (2000) Human extensibility and individual hybrid-accessibility in space–time: a multi-scale representation using GIS, in: D. G. Janelle & D. C. Hodge (Eds) Information, Place, and Cyberspace: Issues in Accessibility, pp. 241–256 (Berlin: Springer-Verlag). 6 P. C. Adams Latour, Bruno (1993) We Have Never Been Modern (trans. Catherine Porter) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Law, John & Hassard, John (Eds) (1999) Actor Network Theory and After (Oxford, UK & Malden, MA: Blackwell). Lowenthal, David (2001) Making a pet of nature, in: Paul C. Adams, Steven Hoelscher & Karen E. Till (Eds) Textures of Place: Exploring Humanist Geographies, pp. 84–92 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Mackenzie, Adrian (2002) Transductions: Bodies and Machines at Speed (London & New York: Continuum). Mason, Otis Tufton (1894) Technogeography or the relation of the Earth to the industries of mankind, American Anthropologist, 7, pp. 137–161. Massey, Doreen (1993) Power-geometry and a progressive sense of place, in: Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, Tim Putnam, George Robertson & Lisa Tickner (Eds) Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change, pp. 59–69 (London & New York: Routledge). Sclove, Richard (1995) Democracy and Technology (New York: The Guilford Press). Serres, Michel (1995) The Natural Contract (trans. Elizabeth MacArthur & William Paulson) (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). Serres, Michel & Latour, Bruno (1995) Conversations on Science, Culture and Time (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). Tenner, E. (1996) Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences (New York: Knopf). Whatmore, S. (2002) Hybrid Geographies: Natures, Cultures, Spaces (London & Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications). Williams, Raymond (1983) Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, revised edition (New York: Oxford University Press).