This is the first in a series of notes to eleven lectures for my class Technology and Culture.

OVERALL

I understand this course as bringing together very contemporary interest in "technology" somewhat narrowly defined as "whatever computers allow us to do that could not be done so easily twenty years ago" and very classical interest in "technology," perhaps overly broadly defined as "whatever tools human beings have invented, used, and become dependent upon" in both cases "for better and for worse."

I also understand this course as being concerned with the relationships of human collectivities to their history rather than on the relationship of the individual to his environment.
 

ORIENTATION

  1. I will start with two intellectual "initiating myths" that I am retelling here for my own purposes (rather than in terms of what the authors might have meant in their times)

    2.  
    1. Marx, on humanity making its history:
      1. Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Chapter One)

      2. The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organization of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature. Of course, we cannot here go either into the actual physical nature of man, or into the natural conditions m which man finds himself -- geological, oreohydrographical, climatic and so on. The writing of history must always set out from these natural bases and their modification in the course of history through the action of men.


        3. Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organization. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life.

        The way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature of the actual means of subsistence they find in existence and have to reproduce. This mode of production must not be considered simply as being the production of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.

        This production only makes its appearance with the increase of population. In its turn this presupposes the intercourse of individuals with one another. The form of this intercourse is again determined by production.
        The German Ideology Chapter One, First Premises of materialist Method

    2. John Dewey on CUM-UNITY:

      Society not only continues to exist by transmission, by communication, but it may fairly be said to exist in transmission, in communication. There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication. Men live in a community in virtue of the things which they have in common; and communication is the way in which they come to possess things in common. What they must have in common in order to form a community or society are aims, beliefs, aspirations, knowledge -- a common understanding -- like-mindedness as the sociologists say. Such things cannot be passed physically from one to another, like bricks; they cannot be shared as persons would share a pie by dividing it into physical pieces. The communication which insures participation in a common understanding is one which secures similar emotional and intellectual dispositions -- like ways of responding to expectations and requirements.
      Democracy and education. New York: The Free Press. 1966 [1916]. (Chapter One )



  2. My approach can be summarized as concerned with taking into detailed, empirical (that is in a movement that acknowledges the externality of the world-against/with-me), account, both Marx's concern with production (but not necessarily his language about "determination") and Dewey's concerns with communication (but not his language about consensus or sharedness). It can be presented through a discussion of two definitions-for-discussion of the concept of "culture."

    3.  
    1. the concept of CULTURE refers to the processes through which human beings take the facts built for them over the course of human history, transform them and thereby build further facts for future human beings.

      2.  
    2. CULTURE HAS MORE TO DO WITH THE HOUSES WE INHABIT THAN WITH THE HABITS WE ACQUIRE

     
  3. In summary, I am concerned with the process of our relationships with each other understanding that this process always involve

    1. communication


      2. mediated by

    2. a tool of some sort including, but of course not limited to

      1. our body (voice box and ears, hands and eyes, etc.)
      2. "hand" tools (stones, sticks)
      3. processed tools (axes, plows, computers)
      4. social tools (soldiers, bureaucrats, teachers, etc.)

    Together these processes open new possibilities and always constrain human interaction in different ways. But they never "determine" interaction.
     

THE COURSE

After an introduction setting the scope of the course and my orientation of what I will call the "culturation" of human interaction with a focus on the mediation of tools, we will go through a series of exemplary discussions of the impact of various tools on human interaction ("culture," "mentality," etc.), specifically

  1. agricultural tools (plows and irrigations systems) as they have been the most powerful in transforming the conditions of human life (and possibly limiting what could be done with human "nature")
  2. print around which major controversies continue to swirl.
  3. the machines of industrialization approached as requiring transformations in the imagination of humanity and in social relationships.
  4. some of the 20th century technologies the impact of which is still not completely clear, particularly armament technologies and the new technologies that allow us to enter our bodies in ways no other human beings had been able to enter them

While few of the readings will directly address the "new information technologies," I assume that much of in-class discussions and many of the projects will.