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

Mon Aug 24 06:17:03 PDT 2015

…and Vannevar Bush stated in a 1946 letter of the Joint Research & Development Board that the nation only really needed five.

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On 2015.Aug.24, at 09:09 , Ceruzzi, Paul <CeruzziP at si.edu<mailto:CeruzziP at si.edu>> wrote:

This reminds me of the story that Thomas Watson of IBM once said that five computers would satisfy the world's needs. This has been thoroughly disproven, yet one still encounters it. The theme is an important one, and tells us a lot about how people perceived the early electronic digital computers, but attributing the statement to Watson telescopes too much of that, in my view.

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: Members [mailto:members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org] On Behalf Of James Sumner
Sent: Monday, August 24, 2015 4:59 AM
To: members at lists.sigcis.org<mailto: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<http://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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Edinburgh, EH10 5DT

Email: e.taylor-smith at napier.ac.uk

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