Bridges & Empty Black Boxes
hi everyone
Tom -I got the impression that the story about the Long Island bridges was
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,
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@lists.sigcis.org] On Behalf Of James Sumner Sent: Monday, August 24, 2015 3:59 AM To: members@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: potentially a myth.. 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@napier.ac.uk
http://www.iidi.napier.ac.uk/e.taylor-smith http://about.me/EllaTaylorSmith @EllaTasm This message and its attachment(s) are intended for the addressee(s) only
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After following this discussion for the past week -- only a week? -- I went back to McPherson's essay for a second reading. I got a lot more out of the essay after following the recent debates. I make the following two observations: 1) The author relies on the writings of Eric Raymond in her descriptions of UNIX. Is it not relevant to our discussion that Raymond, in addition to being an articulate spokesperson for UNIX, is also one of the most forceful and articulate champions of unrestricted gun ownership and a literal interpretation of the Second Amendment? Do we place those two attributes in "modules" and not connect them? Raymond himself mixes the two together, should we? 2) McPherson's discussion of "modularity" has a resonance with a similar term, "compartmentalization," articulated by Paul Forman, in "Into Quantum Mechanics: the Maser as 'Gadget' of Cold War America," and Allan Needell, _Science, Cold War and the American State: Lloyd V. Berkner and the Balance of Professional Ideals_. Forman and Needell describe the term as "...a personal coping strategy among scientists who played complex, multifaceted, and often self-contradictory roles in American academic and military systems." Berkner could describe federal support for science as furthering knowledge for its own sake, when talking to scientists; while at the same time, in classified briefings to military personnel, describe how the military could enlist the scientists into furthering weapons development. Does this also apply to UNIX? Not sure. Paul E. Ceruzzi, Curator Division of Space History, MRC 311 National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution PO Box 37012 Washington, DC 20013-7012 202-633-2414 http://airandspace.si.edu/staff/paul-ceruzzi
Raymond is also a force in the open source movement isn't he? Sent from my iPad On Aug 25, 2015, at 10:28 AM, "Ceruzzi, Paul" <CeruzziP@si.edu> wrote:
After following this discussion for the past week -- only a week? -- I went back to McPherson's essay for a second reading. I got a lot more out of the essay after following the recent debates. I make the following two observations:
1) The author relies on the writings of Eric Raymond in her descriptions of UNIX. Is it not relevant to our discussion that Raymond, in addition to being an articulate spokesperson for UNIX, is also one of the most forceful and articulate champions of unrestricted gun ownership and a literal interpretation of the Second Amendment? Do we place those two attributes in "modules" and not connect them? Raymond himself mixes the two together, should we?
2) McPherson's discussion of "modularity" has a resonance with a similar term, "compartmentalization," articulated by Paul Forman, in "Into Quantum Mechanics: the Maser as 'Gadget' of Cold War America," and Allan Needell, _Science, Cold War and the American State: Lloyd V. Berkner and the Balance of Professional Ideals_. Forman and Needell describe the term as "...a personal coping strategy among scientists who played complex, multifaceted, and often self-contradictory roles in American academic and military systems." Berkner could describe federal support for science as furthering knowledge for its own sake, when talking to scientists; while at the same time, in classified briefings to military personnel, describe how the military could enlist the scientists into furthering weapons development. Does this also apply to UNIX? Not sure.
Paul E. Ceruzzi, Curator Division of Space History, MRC 311 National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution PO Box 37012 Washington, DC 20013-7012 202-633-2414 http://airandspace.si.edu/staff/paul-ceruzzi
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
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@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@lists.sigcis.org] On Behalf Of James Sumner Sent: Monday, August 24, 2015 3:59 AM To: members@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
hi everyone
Tom -I got the impression that the story about the Long Island bridges was
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,
On 24/08/2015 08:51, Taylor-Smith, Ella wrote: potentially a myth.. 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@napier.ac.uk
http://www.iidi.napier.ac.uk/e.taylor-smith http://about.me/EllaTaylorSmith @EllaTasm This message and its attachment(s) are intended for the addressee(s) only
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It is your responsibility to ensure that this message and its
attachment(s) are scanned for viruses or other defects. Edinburgh Napier University does not accept liability for any loss or damage which may result from this message or its attachment(s), or for errors or omissions arising after it was sent. Email is not a secure medium. Emails entering Edinburgh Napier University's system are subject to routine monitoring and filtering by Edinburgh Napier University.
Edinburgh Napier University is a registered Scottish charity. Registration number SC018373
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
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_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
participants (5)
-
Ceruzzi, Paul -
dave.walden.family＠gmail.com -
David Alan Grier -
David Berry -
Thomas Haigh