<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div>Hi<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">You are remembering correctly. As James has remarked, the bus timetable was published in Social Studies of Science 1999:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Woolgar, S. and Cooper, G. (1999) Do Artefacts Have Ambivalence? Moses’ Bridges, Winner’s Bridges and other Urban Legends in S&TS, <i class="">Social Studies of Science</i>, 29 (3), 433-49. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The timetable is listed and printed at the back of the paper as “STOP PRESS: FIGURE 1” on page 448. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">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.”</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I thought I remember reading a response from Winner to this article, but perhaps I am confusing it with Bernward Joerges’ </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Joerges, B. (1999) Scams Cannot be Busted: Response to Steve Woolgar and Geoff Cooper, “Do artefacts have ambivalence? –<br class="">Moses’ bridges, Winner’s bridges and other urban legends in STS”, <i class="">Social Studies of Science</i>, 29 (3), 450-457</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Best</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">David</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""><div apple-content-edited="true" class="">
<div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="orphans: auto; widows: auto;" class="">---<br class=""><br class="">Dr. David M. Berry<br class="">Reader<br class=""><br class="">Silverstone 316<br class=""><br class="">School of Media, Film and Music<br class="">University of Sussex,<br class="">Falmer, <br class="">East Sussex. BN1 8PP<br class=""><br class=""><a href="http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/125219" class="">http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/125219</a></div></div></div></div>
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<br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On 24 Aug 2015, at 16:45, Thomas Haigh <<a href="mailto:thaigh@computer.org" class="">thaigh@computer.org</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class="">Thanks James,<br class=""><br class="">I had a memory of also seeing the actual bus timetable published, but I<br class="">could be wrong about that. Maybe I read their suggestion of publishing it as<br class="">a stand-alone rebuttal and misremembered this as actually occurring. I'm<br class="">personally inclined to believe that Caro was initially right, but that over<br class="">time buses got lower and that the old-timey parkways had lower bridges than<br class="">the newfangled Long Island Expressway. To quote the Wikipedia article on the<br class="">NY Parkway system "Finally, because most use low, decorative stone-arch<br class="">overpasses that would trap trucks, commercial vehicles, trucks and tractor<br class="">trailers are banned from parkways."<br class=""><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkways_in_New_York" class="">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkways_in_New_York</a> Note that the LIE, now<br class="">upgraded to interstate along its full length, does not appear on the list of<br class="">parkways. (Translation for British readers: "parkway" --> "scenic dual<br class="">carriage way" while "interstate"--> "motorway").<br class=""><br class="">I did find an online timetable:<br class=""><a href="http://www.nicebus.com/maps-schedules/jones-beach-summer-service.aspx" class="">http://www.nicebus.com/maps-schedules/jones-beach-summer-service.aspx</a>.<br class=""><br class="">More broadly, I have noticed people increasingly citing Winner's paper in<br class="">support of a general interest in "opening the black box" or as a short hand<br class="">for social construction. As the Woolgar and Cooper article reminds us (at<br class=""><a href="http://www.sts-biu.org/images/file/COURSE%20READINGS/27-815%20SCIENCE,%20TEC" class="">http://www.sts-biu.org/images/file/COURSE%20READINGS/27-815%20SCIENCE,%20TEC</a><br class="">HNOLOGY%20&%20SOCIETY/Woolgar%20&%20Cooper,%20Do%20Artefacts%20Have%20Ambiva<br class="">lence-%20Moses%20Bridges,%20Winners%20Bridges%20and%20Other%20Urban%20Legend<br class="">s%20in%20S&TS.pdf for those without JSTOR), this is sloppy as Winner takes a<br class="">strong position of old-school political engagement and is skeptical of<br class="">discourse-oriented approaches.<br class=""><br class=""> So I'd like to point anyone interested in citing Winner towards his 1993<br class="">paper, "Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding it Empty"<br class="">(http://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/papers/openingblackbox.pdf) which<br class="">observes that "the most obvious lack in social constructionist writing is an<br class="">almost total disregard for the social consequences of technical choice. One<br class="">tries to show why it is that particular devices, designs, and social<br class="">constituencies are the ones that prevail within the range of alternatives<br class="">available at a given time. But the consequences of prevailing are seldom a<br class="">focus of study." For all her determination to bring politics into code<br class="">studies, I'd say that this critique has considerable power when applied to<br class="">McPherson's article.<br class=""><br class="">Best wishes,<br class=""><br class="">Tom<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">-----Original Message-----<br class="">From: Members [mailto:members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org] On Behalf Of James<br class="">Sumner<br class="">Sent: Monday, August 24, 2015 3:59 AM<br class="">To: members@lists.sigcis.org<br class="">Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Unix Racism: Winner vs. McPherson (Matthew<br class="">Kirschenbaum)<br class=""><br class="">Dear all<br class=""><br class="">Joerges' article appeared alongside a counter-response which challenges and<br class="">complicates its finding (I think this is the "bus timetable" paper mentioned<br class="">by Tom):<br class=""><br class="">Steve Woolgar and Geoff Cooper, "Do Artefacts Have Ambivalence? Moses' <br class="">Bridges, Winner's Bridges and Other Urban Legends in S&TS", Social Studies<br class="">of Science 29:3 (1999), 433-449. <www.jstor.org/stable/285412><br class=""><br class="">-- which some have taken as a more-relativist-than-thou abandonment of the<br class="">researcher's duty to either resolve the research question or keep quiet, and<br class="">others as a useful clarification of the scarcity of true "smoking guns" and<br class="">the practical limitations of real-life scholarship.<br class=""><br class="">Possibly edging off topic, but what interests me is the way most of us in<br class="">the STS/HoT community -- particularly those who teach -- tend to treat<br class="">Winner's "Do Artefacts Have Politics?" as "the Moses bridge paper." It<br class="">contains only three paragraphs on Moses's bridges, all derived directly from<br class="">Robert A Caro's work, in the course of a wide-ranging survey which addresses<br class="">David Noble, Alfred Chandler Jr, and various other obvious hooks for<br class="">introducing big HoT themes. I've always thought that the argument about<br class="">nuclear power needing a central government capable of authoritarian policing<br class="">(for which Winner draws on Jerry Mander) is stronger than the bridge case as<br class="">a knock-down affirmative answer to the title question.<br class=""><br class="">Why, then, have my class discussions of this paper always ended up focusing<br class="">on the bridge case? The exposition is particularly clear and<br class="">student-friendly, as Tom points out, but the rest of the paper is not<br class="">notably harder. Perhaps I'm just repeating a familiar pattern. But I suspect<br class="">-- and this is relevant to the UNIX/racism debate, after all -- that the<br class="">appeal of the case lies mainly in the fact that it looks contentious. "There<br class="">are racist bridges" is an abnormal statement to newcomers to the field, and<br class="">taking up a position on it is an expression of identity.<br class=""><br class="">(Most students fairly quickly go on to see that the abnormality is only<br class="">superficial. I suspect that, having been introduced to the principle via the<br class="">bridge case, many of us go on to notice enough evident examples of the<br class="">reinforcement effect going on around us that we'd remain convinced even if<br class="">the bridge case itself *were* disproved.)<br class=""><br class="">Best<br class="">James<br class=""><br class="">On 24/08/2015 08:51, Taylor-Smith, Ella wrote:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">hi everyone<br class=""><br class="">Tom -I got the impression that the story about the Long Island bridges was<br class=""></blockquote>potentially a myth..<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">See<br class="">Joerges, B. (1999). Do Politics Have Artefacts? Social Studies of Science.<br class=""></blockquote>29 (3). Pp. 411-431.<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">http://www.jstor.org/stable/285411?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents<br class=""><br class="">"In social studies of technology, as in many other scientific disciplines,<br class=""></blockquote>highly persuasive similes are at work: pious stories, seemingly reaped from<br class="">research, suggesting certain general theoretical insights. Variously<br class="">adapted, they are handed down: in the process, they acquire almost doctrinal<br class="">unassailability. One such parable, which has been retold in technology and<br class="">urban studies for a long time, is the story of Robert Moses' low bridges,<br class="">preventing the poor and the black of New York from gaining access to Long<br class="">Island resorts and beaches. The story turns out to be counterfactual, but<br class="">even if a small myth is disenchanted, it serves a purpose: to resituate<br class="">positions in the old debate about the control of social processes via<br class="">buildings and other technical artefacts - or, more generally, about material<br class="">form and social content."<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class="">best wishes<br class="">-Ella<br class=""><br class="">Ella Taylor-Smith<br class=""><br class="">Institute for Informatics and Digital Innovation Edinburgh Napier <br class="">University<br class="">10 Colinton Road<br class="">Edinburgh, EH10 5DT<br class=""><br class="">Email: e.taylor-smith@napier.ac.uk<br class=""><br class="">http://www.iidi.napier.ac.uk/e.taylor-smith<br class="">http://about.me/EllaTaylorSmith<br class="">@EllaTasm<br class="">This message and its attachment(s) are intended for the addressee(s) only<br class=""></blockquote>and should not be read, copied, disclosed, forwarded or relied upon by any<br class="">person other than the intended addressee(s) without the permission of the<br class="">sender. 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