[SIGCIS-Members] Bridges & Empty Black Boxes

[Thomas Haigh]

Thanks James,

I had a memory of also seeing the actual bus timetable published, but I
could be wrong about that. Maybe I read their suggestion of publishing it as
a stand-alone rebuttal and misremembered this as actually occurring. I'm
personally inclined to believe that Caro was initially right, but that over
time buses got lower and that the old-timey parkways had lower bridges than
the newfangled Long Island Expressway. To quote the Wikipedia article on the
NY Parkway system "Finally, because most use low, decorative stone-arch
overpasses that would trap trucks, commercial vehicles, trucks and tractor
trailers are banned from parkways."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkways_in_New_York Note that the LIE, now
upgraded to interstate along its full length, does not appear on the list of
parkways. (Translation for British readers: "parkway" --> "scenic dual
carriage way" while "interstate"--> "motorway").

I did find an online timetable:
http://www.nicebus.com/maps-schedules/jones-beach-summer-service.aspx.

More broadly, I have noticed people increasingly citing Winner's paper in
support of a general interest in "opening the black box" or as a short hand
for social construction. As the Woolgar and Cooper article reminds us (at
http://www.sts-biu.org/images/file/COURSE%20READINGS/27-815%20SCIENCE,%20TEC
HNOLOGY%20&%20SOCIETY/Woolgar%20&%20Cooper,%20Do%20Artefacts%20Have%20Ambiva
lence-%20Moses%20Bridges,%20Winners%20Bridges%20and%20Other%20Urban%20Legend
s%20in%20S&TS.pdf for those without JSTOR), this is sloppy as Winner takes a
strong position of old-school political engagement and is skeptical of
discourse-oriented approaches.

 So I'd like to point anyone interested in citing Winner towards his 1993
paper, "Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding it Empty"
(http://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/papers/openingblackbox.pdf) which
observes that "the most obvious lack in social constructionist writing is an
almost total disregard for the social consequences of technical choice. One
tries to show why it is that particular devices, designs, and social
constituencies are the ones that prevail within the range of alternatives
available at a given time. But the consequences of prevailing are seldom a
focus of study." For all her determination to bring politics into code
studies, I'd say that this critique has considerable power when applied to
McPherson's article.

Best wishes,

Tom




-----Original Message-----
From: Members [mailto:members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org] On Behalf Of James
Sumner
Sent: Monday, August 24, 2015 3:59 AM
To: members at lists.sigcis.org
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Unix Racism: Winner vs. McPherson (Matthew
Kirschenbaum)

Dear all

Joerges' article appeared alongside a counter-response which challenges and
complicates its finding (I think this is the "bus timetable" paper mentioned
by Tom):

Steve Woolgar and Geoff Cooper, "Do Artefacts Have Ambivalence? Moses' 
Bridges, Winner's Bridges and Other Urban Legends in S&TS", Social Studies
of Science 29:3 (1999), 433-449. <www.jstor.org/stable/285412>

-- which some have taken as a more-relativist-than-thou abandonment of the
researcher's duty to either resolve the research question or keep quiet, and
others as a useful clarification of the scarcity of true "smoking guns" and
the practical limitations of real-life scholarship.

Possibly edging off topic, but what interests me is the way most of us in
the STS/HoT community -- particularly those who teach -- tend to treat
Winner's "Do Artefacts Have Politics?" as "the Moses bridge paper." It
contains only three paragraphs on Moses's bridges, all derived directly from
Robert A Caro's work, in the course of a wide-ranging survey which addresses
David Noble, Alfred Chandler Jr, and various other obvious hooks for
introducing big HoT themes. I've always thought that the argument about
nuclear power needing a central government capable of authoritarian policing
(for which Winner draws on Jerry Mander) is stronger than the bridge case as
a knock-down affirmative answer to the title question.

Why, then, have my class discussions of this paper always ended up focusing
on the bridge case? The exposition is particularly clear and
student-friendly, as Tom points out, but the rest of the paper is not
notably harder. Perhaps I'm just repeating a familiar pattern. But I suspect
-- and this is relevant to the UNIX/racism debate, after all -- that the
appeal of the case lies mainly in the fact that it looks contentious. "There
are racist bridges" is an abnormal statement to newcomers to the field, and
taking up a position on it is an expression of identity.

(Most students fairly quickly go on to see that the abnormality is only
superficial. I suspect that, having been introduced to the principle via the
bridge case, many of us go on to notice enough evident examples of the
reinforcement effect going on around us that we'd remain convinced even if
the bridge case itself *were* disproved.)

Best
James

On 24/08/2015 08:51, Taylor-Smith, Ella wrote:
> hi everyone
>
> Tom -I got the impression that the story about the Long Island bridges was
potentially a myth..
> See
> Joerges, B. (1999). Do Politics Have Artefacts? Social Studies of Science.
29 (3). Pp. 411-431.
> http://www.jstor.org/stable/285411?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
>
> "In social studies of technology, as in many other scientific disciplines,
highly persuasive similes are at work: pious stories, seemingly reaped from
research, suggesting certain general theoretical insights. Variously
adapted, they are handed down: in the process, they acquire almost doctrinal
unassailability. One such parable, which has been retold in technology and
urban studies for a long time, is the story of Robert Moses' low bridges,
preventing the poor and the black of New York from gaining access to Long
Island resorts and beaches. The story turns out to be counterfactual, but
even if a small myth is disenchanted, it serves a purpose: to resituate
positions in the old debate about the control of social processes via
buildings and other technical artefacts - or, more generally, about material
form and social content."
>
> best wishes
> -Ella
>
> Ella Taylor-Smith
>
> Institute for Informatics and Digital Innovation Edinburgh Napier 
> University
> 10 Colinton Road
> Edinburgh, EH10 5DT
>
> Email: e.taylor-smith at napier.ac.uk
>
> http://www.iidi.napier.ac.uk/e.taylor-smith
> http://about.me/EllaTaylorSmith
> @EllaTasm
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