Hubris and Hybrids: A History of Technology and Science

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Hubris and Hybrids A History of Technology and
Science

• Andrew Jamison

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An Underlying ContradictionHubris...

• impious disregard of the limits governing human
  action in an orderly universe. It is the sin to
  which the great and gifted are most susceptible,
  and in Greek tragedy it is usually the hero's
  tragic flaw.
• Encyclopedia Britannica

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...versus Hybrids

• offspring of parents that differ in genetically
  determined traits
• or, more colorfully
• By the late twentieth century, our time, a
  mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and
  fabricated hybrids of machine and organism...
• Donna Haraway, A manifesto for cyborgs

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Socio-economic development, or where
hubris comes from

Imperialism and modernization
Globalization and technoscience
The Middle Ages (feudalism)
Industrialization and democracy




Society appropriating nature
sustainability appropriating reality

Modernity appropriating machines


Science appropriating God
1850
1500
2005
romanticism
The Renaissance
environmentalism




modernism

Cultural movements, or where the hybrid
imagination is fostered
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Science Appropriating God

• humans take over Gods role as creator
• man the maker, homo faber
• creativity expressed as experimentation
• humanism combined with magic
• artistry and technique combined with curiosity

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The Making of Modern Science
From movements to institutions reform of
religion reform of philosophy visionary,
utopian realistic, pragmatic decentralized
organization (central) academy technical
improvements scientific development informal
communication formal publication
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The hybrid imagination 1

• The Renaissance Men Leonardo and co.
• Artists and engineers in combination
• Inspired by magic and humanism
• The invention of experimentation

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Leonardo da Vinci The artist-engineer
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The hybrid imagination 2

• Scholars and craftsmen in combination
• e.g. Paracelsus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo
• Inspired by Luther and Protestant Ethic
• Connected theory to observation
• Invented scientific instruments

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Tycho Brahe The scholar-craftsman
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Society Appropriating Nature

• A political and economic revolution
• from agriculture to industry mechanization
• A process of social change
• from the country to the cities urbanization
• Cultural, or human transformations
• from community to society modernization

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Long Waves of Industrialization
mechanization


capitalism

imperialism
globalization





1850
2000
1950
1900
1800
romanticism cooperation
environmentalism feminism
socialism populism
anticolonialism fascism




Cultural and Social Movements

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The First Wave

• the industrial revolution (ca 1780-1830)
• Iron, textile machines, and steam engines
• Technologies of mechanization
• The factory as an organizational innovation
• Social and cultural movements
• machine-storming and cooperation
• romantic art and literature, e.g. Frankenstein

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The Industrial Revolution
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The hybrid imagination Samuel Morse and the
telegraph
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The hybrid imagination Henry David Thoreau and
Walden
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Thoreaus science

• The true man of science will know nature better
  by his finer organization he will smell, taste,
  see, hear, feel better than other men. His will
  be a deeper and finer experience. We do not learn
  by inference and deduction, and the application
  of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct
  intercourse and sympathy. It is with science as
  with ethics we cannot know truth by contrivance
  and method the Baconian is as false as any
  other, and with all the helps of machinery and
  the arts, the most scientific will still be the
  healthiest and friendliest man, and possess a
  more perfect Indian wisdom.

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The Second Wave

• the age of capital (ca 1830-1880)
• Railroads, telegraph, and steel
• Technologies of socialization
• The rise of the corporation (Carnegie, Krupp)
• Social and cultural movements
• populism, communism and social-democracy
• science fiction and arts and crafts

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The Industrial Society
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Appropriating Nature
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The hybrid imaginationWilliam Morris and arts
and crafts

• nothing can be a work of art
• that is not useful
• The Lesser Arts, 1878

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The hybrid imagination Karl Marx (1818-1883)

• Philosophy (Hegel) meets economics (Ricardo)
• Positivism (Comte) meets socialism (Owen)
• Idealism (Kant) meets materialism (Bentham)
• Science meets the industrial society

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Science as technology

• Technology reveals the active relation of man to
  nature, the direct process of the production of
  his life, and thereby it also lays bare the
  process of the production of the social
  relations of his life, and of the mental
  conceptions that flow from those relations.

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The Third Wave

• the age of empire (ca 1880-1930)
• Electricity, automobiles, chemicals and airplanes
• Technologies of modernization
• Research becomes a business (Edison, DuPont)
• Social and cultural movements
• anticolonialism and fascism
• modernism and human ecology

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The Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk
Henry Ford with his 10 millionth car
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Appropriating machines
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Edward Hopper
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The hybrid imagination The Bauhaus (1919-1933)
"art and technology - a new unity
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The hybrid imagination Lewis Mumford and human
ecology
The whole industrial world and instrumentalism
is only its highest conscious expression - has
taken values for granted...

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The Fourth Wave

• the coming of technoscience (ca 1930-1980)
• Atomic energy, genetics, and computers
• Technologies of scientification
• The rise of transnational corporations (IBM,
  Sony)
• Social and cultural movements
• civil rights and ban the bomb
• environmentalism, feminism and postmodernism

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The Modern Age
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The hybrid imagination Rachel Carson and
environmentalism
The road we have long been traveling is
deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway om which
we progress with great speed, but at its end lies
disaster.
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A new wave or a new age?

• the age of information (från ca 1980)
• Converging technologies (info-, bio-, cogno-,
  nano)
• Technologies of the virtual
• Global corporate empires (Microsoft, Nokia)
• Social and cultural movements
• identity politics and open source
• ecological design and global justice

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The Age of Information
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The hybrid imaginationVandana Shiva and global
ecology
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The Emerging Ecological Culture

• Awakening 1960s
• Public education, criticizing (big) science
• Organization 1970-1980s
• Environmental movements, appropriate technology
• Globalization 1990s-
• Sustainable development, climate change politics

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From Movements to Institutions
1970s 1990s ecological society
sustainable development AT, small-scale cleaner
technologies citizen scientists professional
experts
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From appropriate technology...
Tvindmøllen 1977-1978
Cretan windmill at the Center for Alternative
Technology in Wales
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...to green business
VESTAS, the worlds largest wind energy company
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Appropriating reality
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The Hybrid Imagination

• At the macro, or discursive level
• connnecting ideas, integrating knowledge and
  action
• At the meso, or institutional level
• creating sites of collective, or organizational
  learning
• At the micro, or personal level
• combining identities, and forms of practical
  activity