SOCY 284 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Sociotechnical System, Gas Lighting, The Takeaway

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Social Sci, Edu and Soc Work - Sociology
• Course: SOCY 284
• Professor: Norma Mollers

Document Summary

Technologies can be political in 2 ways. Technologies can be designed - intentionally or unintentionally - to open certain options to some people, and close options to some people, and close options for others. But effects of technology and the intentions of the designers may only be loosely coupled. Does this state of affairs derive from an unavoidable social response to intractable properties in the things themselves, Is it instead a pattern imposed independently by a governing body, ruling class, or some other social or cultural institution to further its own purposes? . Some technologies require or are strongly compatible with particular forms of social order. As long as it exists at all, its lethal properties demand that it be con trolled by a centralized, rigidly hierarchical chain of command closed to all in uences that might make its workings unpredictable. The internal social system of the bomb must be authoritarian; there is no other way .