[SIGCIS-Members] Unix Racism: Winner vs. McPherson (Matthew Kirschenbaum)

[James Sumner]

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
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> Email: e.taylor-smith at napier.ac.uk
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> http://about.me/EllaTaylorSmith
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