NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/5991

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Subject: Rethinking Science and Technology
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Rethinking Science and Technology.
(Slingshot spring 1992, issue #45, Berkely California)

By Stuart Cowan

William Blake's dark satanic mills have been replaced with a fluid field
of tensions and resistances whose nodal points include cyborgs, virtual
reality, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, advanced surveillance,
fusion, global climate change etc. The old luddite response to
technology, blanket rejection, is no longer viable. Instead, we must
engage in strategic rewirings of the knowledge machine--contest and
intervene at all levels of knowledge production and propagation. A
radical Earth Day requires a radical conception of the knowledge-power
equation, one which can mobilize our energies to educate each other and
engage in guerrilla R&D. here's a quick list of five useful levels on
which to intervene (of course they're all connected):

Production of knowledge

        It is often possible to "read" the defects of a given
experiment, methodology, or scientific vocabulary. AIDS activists have
reshaped clinical testing protocols in the interest of accuracy,
feminists have questioned the scientific construction of PMS
[pre-menstrual syndrome? - G]. These interventions have changed research
agendas and priorities, despite their source OUTSIDE the academy.

Democratization of knowledge

        It is necessary to dismantle the monopoly of cognitive authority
currently held by engineering and technical elites. How? By establishing
counter-networks building on everyday knowledge but incorporating
scientific knowledge where appropriate (e.g. immunology for AIDS
activists, ecology and atmospheric chemistry for environmentalists).
When scientific issues occur in a political context, they need to be
made accessible to everyone. We can no longer rely on "expert" opinions
on the global economy or the reliability of nuclear reactors.

Application of knowledge

        This is the level of technological choice. Do we develop wind
power or petroleum? Do we engineer plants ever more resistant to
herbicide use or do we promote organic agriculture? Artifacts have
politics. No technology is neutral, each carries its own risks and
benefits, its own implications for social structure. It is possible to
resist specific technologies on many different grounds (health concerns,
inequitable benefits, unnecessary specialization or commodification).

Control of knowledge

        Science is not autonomous. Its development is deeply linked to
the institutions which support it. The funding process is highly
political; what counts for "appropriate" science needs to be constantly
questioned. It's not sufficient to be for or against "science" when
science is a constantly shifting field of possibilities. It's a question
of how to navigate within this field in an empowering way.

Cultural uses of knowledge

        Scientific knowledge inevitably finds issues on the "street". A
parody of Darwinian evolution was used to justify British imperialism in
the late  nineteenth century; sociobiologists initiated a revival of
genetic determinism in the 1970s. These cultural refashionings of
mainstream (or otherwise) science are critical sites of contestation.
The boundaries between technology and culture are particularly permeable
at this stage. It is time for new political struggles around the
technologies so intrinsic to our material culture.