Memo+11-Three+Annotations

This memo should include annotations for three articles or books referenced in your “Three Literatures” memo – one for each literature. There’s an “annotation” template that lists questions you should address in each annotation

1. What three quotes capture the critical import of the text? 2. What is the main argument of the text? 3. Describe at least three ways that the main argument is supported. 4. Describe the main literatures that the text draws on and contributes to. 5. Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports, challenges or otherwise relates to the argument or narrative that you imagine developing. 6. List of at least three details or examples from the text that you can use to support the argument or narrative that you are developing.

Argument: Feenberg does two different things. The first is to talk about how technologies should be considered integral to human existence and need to be critically evaluated. The second item is that he argues how philosophy and sociology of technology should be merged in order to develop critical tools for the evaluation and governance of technology.
 * Feenberg, Andrew. 1999. Questioning Technology.**

Quotes: In considering the distinctive inquiry types from essentialism (weak) to his more critical inquiry: "the __functional constitution__ of technical objects and subjects, which I call the 'primary instrumentalization,' and another aspect, the 'secondary instrumentalization,' focused on the __realization__ of the constituted objects and subjects in actual technical networks and devices" (202).

"I argue that the degradation of labor, education, and the environment is rooted not in technology per se but in the antidemocratic values that govern technological development." (3)

"Disputes over the definition of technologies are settled by privileging one among many possible configurations. This process, called closure, yields an 'exemplar' for further development in its field" (87).

3. Three ways: As a philosopher he relies on empirical examples as bolstering agents for his prescriptions for critical inquiry about technoscience. His examples range from French telecommunications and modernization to alternative child birthing methods--all of which indicate where technologies have been brought into tension with people and have shown the opportunities for modification on democratic principles.

4. Three literatures: Philosophy of science Philosophy of Technology Sociology of Technology Marx Constructivism Essentialism Democratic Theory

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6.

Mackenzie 1996 Knowing Machines

"The essays I have gathered in this book explore a wide range of questions such as these in the relationship between machines and society. The first two are predominandy conceptual, exploring Karl Marx's contribution to the study of technology and the relationship between economic and sociological analyses of technology. The others are more empirical, exploring the interweavings of technology, society, and knowledge in a variety of particular contexts: the "laser gyroscopes" central to modern aircraft navigation; supercomputers (and their use to design nuclear weapons); the application of mathematical proof in the design of computer systems (and arithmetic as performed by computers); computer-related accidental deaths; the knowledge needed to design a nuclear bomb" (5).

Audience: "Although I hope it will be of interest to die general public, this book is also meant to contribute to the field of social studies of technology" (11).

Quotes: "The inclusion of labor power as a force of production thus admits conscious human agency as a determinant of history: it is people, as much as or more than the machine, that make history" (26).

"Their obdurate materiality is crucial to their social role..." (9).

"The social relations of production within which technology develops are not simply between worker and capitalist, but also between worker and worker" (42).

"Perhaps understanding how existing technology has been and is being socially shaped can help in reconstructing it. If that can be so, and if Marx's account of the machine is useful to that understanding, then the shade of Marx will surely be happy, for it was of the essence of the man that he believed not simply in understanding the world but also in changing it" (47).