[SIGCIS-Members] Bridges & Empty Black Boxes

Tue Aug 25 09:00:02 PDT 2015

Hi

You are remembering correctly. As James has remarked, the bus timetable was published in Social Studies of Science 1999:

Woolgar, S. and Cooper, G. (1999) Do Artefacts Have Ambivalence? Moses’ Bridges, Winner’s Bridges and other Urban Legends in S&TS, Social Studies of Science, 29 (3), 433-49.

The timetable is listed and printed at the back of the paper as “STOP PRESS: FIGURE 1” on page 448.

They write on page 435, “we discussed with the Editor of this journal the idea of simply publishing the timetable as a stand-alone item, as the shortest definitive refutation ever published.”

I thought I remember reading a response from Winner to this article, but perhaps I am confusing it with Bernward Joerges’

Joerges, B. (1999) Scams Cannot be Busted: Response to Steve Woolgar and Geoff Cooper, “Do artefacts have ambivalence? –
Moses’ bridges, Winner’s bridges and other urban legends in STS”, Social Studies of Science, 29 (3), 450-457

Best

David

---

Dr. David M. Berry
Reader

Silverstone 316

School of Media, Film and Music
University of Sussex,
Falmer,
East Sussex. BN1 8PP

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/125219

> On 24 Aug 2015, at 16:45, Thomas Haigh <thaigh at computer.org> wrote:
> 
> 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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