Human Rights and Politically Incorrect Thinking
versus Technically Speaking
Stephen Petrina
University of British Columbia
Pearson, G. and Young, T. (Eds.). (2002). Technically speaking: Why all
Americans need to know more about technology. Washington, DC. National
Academy Press. $19.95 (paperback), 156 pp. (ISBN 0-309-08262-5).
Published in 1963, Technically Speaking is a portrayal of technological
literacy as engineers and technologists are wont to provide. Whoops! Wrong
book, but the same can be said about the new Technically Speaking. There was
a problem with the type of literacy that engineers and technologists were prone
to advocate for themselves and others in 1963 and there is a problem now.
Inherently conservative, both books exhibit the fence-sitting literacy and “happy
consciousness” that Herbert Marcuse wrote about in 1964 (pp. 79, 84). Of
course, the world has changed since Weiss and McGrath (1963) published their
text of technological literacy and since Marcuse published One-Dimensional
Man. Since the tragedies of September 11, there is one word to describe the
type of technological literacy that engineers, technologists and the rest of us
need: Rights. Constitutional rights, civil rights, and human rights, tenuous as
they always are for the disenfranchised of the world, are being seriously
undermined in the war on terrorism and the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive
violence that accompany globalization and expansion of empire. The more the
United States (USA) assumes the role of empire (Ignatieff, 2003), the more
difficult the USA's Bill of Rights and international charters of human rights will
be to sustain. Confrontations with fear and terror, police and military
intimidation, propaganda, global expansionism, oil, and empire are dependent
on the new convergences of communication, information, and medical
technologies. Technological literacy in a post-September 11 context cannot be
described nor understood outside of these dependencies and convergences. If it
is to have any meaning at all, technological literacy must be about the value of
rights, first and foremost— historically won human rights, the rights of women,
worker's rights, civil rights, the rights of the downtrodden of the world, gay and
___________________________
Stephen Petrina (stephen.petrina@ubc.ca) is Associate Professor in Technology Studies at the
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
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lesbian rights, animal rights, and today, general environmental rights. This is
the backdrop against which Technically Speaking ought to be read.
Channeled through editors Pearson and Young and the National Academy
of Engineering (NAE), Technically Speaking is the product of nearly three
years’ worth of input from the Committee on Technological Literacy
(TechSpeak), a group appointed through the NAE and National Research
Council. The twenty members of the committee were handpicked from a range
of fields including technology education (Paul DeVore and Rodney Custer).
Judging by their publications, many with which I am quite familiar, the group
represents right and moderate positions on the political spectrum. The few
exceptions, such as Taft Broome, Jonathan Cole, Mae Jemison, and Thomas
Hughes, have leaned left in their analyses of race (Broome), stratification in
science (Cole), adult literacy and development (Jemison), and social history
(Hughes). Of course, technological literacy is not an abstract, neutral concept;
its various manifestations derive from the politics of its creators. It is this basic
sociological concept that the authors of Technically Speaking, be it the 1963 or
the 2002 version, fail to grasp. Neither literacy nor knowledge is neutral, transcultural,
or trans-historical (Petrina, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c).
I demonstrated how derivations of technological literacy from the right of
the technological literati mark commonplace manifestations in “The Politics of
Technological Literacy” analysis published in 2000. In an ethical breach, this
article, which TechSpeak requested for their deliberations, was not cited in
Technically Speaking. In our current global crisis of war and rights, and as an
expatriate living in Canada, there are bigger issues to take up with the committee
and their version of literacy.
Chapter two of Technically Speaking concludes with the juxtaposition of
the USA's unmatched economic and military power against the relative
technological illiteracy of its citizens (pp. 70-71). The authors conclude that this
is a “paradox.” However, there is nothing paradoxical about it. The power of
empire, the type of economic and military power currently exercised by the
USA, is derived from indoctrination in the ways of capitalism, erosions and
violations of basic rights, and illiteracy in the ways of political participation in
science and technology. This power is derived from precisely the type of
literacy that the authors of Technically Speaking advocate. The type of literacy
TechSpeak advocates for citizens would shore up economic and military might
in the USA even further (pp. 40-42). It would shore up the xenophobia
necessary for empire and competitive supremacy. Hence, TechSpeak bemoans
the fact that empire depends “on workers brought in from other countries.” “A
campaign for technological literacy could lessen our dependence on foreign
workers to fill jobs in many sectors,” TechSpeak asserts (pp. 5, 42).
“Technologically literate citizens would be less likely to support policies that
would undermine” the economy, such as regulation and curbs on free enterprise
(p. 40). On the one hand, TechSpeak wants unfettered capitalism for the USA
and on the other wants to increase participation, equity, and enhance the social
well-being (pp. 25, 43-44). This is the double-speak of TechSpeak. These
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contradictory views, which I documented in my analyses of technological
literacy and the Technology for All Americans project, were commonplace in
the pre-September 11 era as well (2000a). “More power over foreigners without
foreign dependence” is the only disposition toward economic and military might
in Technically Speaking. Similar to the International Technology Association's
Standards for Technological Literacy, there are no connections made between
literacy and the disproportional volumes of consumption and waste in the USA,
or between literacy and resignation to the dangerous arms build-up and
intimidation tactics of the USA government and military across the world. A
values-oriented literacy, such as that described by Michael Moore in Stupid
White Men, would define literacy in terms of rights, sustainability, and
opposition to excessive military and police surveillance.
TechSpeak advocates a values-free, fence-sitting literacy, illustrated in the
three case studies of chapter two (pp. 26-36). The case studies are very well
written, interesting, and if rethought, have great potential to be the types of
exemplars necessary to convey a more critical technological literacy to large
audiences. In these case studies and the characteristics of a technologically
literate citizen that follow, TechSpeak situates literacy on the fence as a
complacent, neutral practice. The case of California's energy crisis and rolling
blackouts is a good example. TechSpeak's average citizen would understand a
few things about electricity, evaluate a few proposals to stabilize energy
markets, weigh the costs and benefits of efficiency, change a light bulb, flip a
tripped circuit breaker, and turn the air conditioner down a bit at home or work
(p. 36). This is already the level and activity of the average citizen and it
underwrites the comfort and convenience demanded by the American dream of
California. My technologically literate middle-class citizen would have the
political disposition to immediately reduce personal consumption by 15%, to
lobby the government for the regulation of energy production and use, and the
courage to speak out against the norm when it came to energy and consumption
(Petrina, 2000c; Petrina and Volk, 1993). Critical literacy would emphasize the
difference between the have middle and upper classes and the have not migrant
workers of California, and the activism necessary to champion citizenship and
rights for the thousands of illegal immigrants at work in the Sacramento Valley.
My average citizen would recognize that the wealth and massive rates of
consumption of energy in the Silicon Valley and water in Los Angeles come at
the poverty and thirst of millions of Mexicans to the south.
Chapters three and four are the most accurate and helpful in the book. Here,
TechSpeak shifts from their troubling normative positions to descriptive
analyses of surveys of technological literacy, participation rates in making
technological decisions, and the institutional players in the teaching of
technological literacy. While there is nothing new in these sections, the data
provided will serve educators and researchers looking to embellish or support
their advocacies for technological literacy. These chapters buttress the eleven
recommendations that conclude the book. A top-heavy reliance is placed on the
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National Science Foundation to insure the implementation of the altogether
innocuous recommendations.
Technically Speaking will serve boardroom and office maneuvering for
policy based on the recommendations, but at the grass roots technological
literacy is about the rights of everyday people across the world. Rights for most
in the USA were reduced over the last three decades to little more than property
rights and the rights of consumer choice (Apple, 2002). Technological literacy
has to be about more than informed consumer choice, contrary to the portrayal
in Technically Speaking.
My recommendation is that the technological literati move themselves and
literacy off the fence to attend to the interrelations between technology and
rights. In the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution, the First Amendment
secures the freedom for the expression of thought and opinion. It protects our
most sensitive areas of personal expression: religion, ethics and political
philosophy. Technological literacy would empower individuals to use the new
technologies to express and inform themselves about the content and violations
of rights throughout the world. This literacy would also enlighten citizens about
technological threats to free speech and privacy. The Fourth Amendment
protects rights to individual privacy and against the practice of arbitrary power
and surveillance. The new technologies of surveillance threaten individual
rights protected under the First and Fourth amendments. Satellite systems
empower commercial owners and governments with the abilities to monitor and
manipulate public and private activities. Data mining systems, extensively
marshaled for surveillance in the post-September 11 era, provide the means to
track and trail the quotidian cultural and financial activities of citizens. Remote
surveillance violates common notions of privacy and one does not know
anymore whether s/he is under observation. Complementary to remote sensing
systems are the technologies for intimate sensing. Intimate sensing provides the
government— the police, CIA, or FBI— or private companies, with the means
to detect identity and monitor the use of drugs or sexual activities. Fingerprint,
retinal and voice recognition, or semen, urine and DNA analysis, are just some
of the new technologies that threaten Fourth Amendment rights. The power to
intrude into the very core of personal autonomy and privacy is accessible to
nearly anyone or any institution with the means. Invasive technologies also
threaten rights protected under the Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments. These
amendments protect citizens accused, convicted, or suspected of crimes. The
new forensic technologies offer governments incredible powers to try and
predict who is and who is not a threat to national security or policing. Racial
profiling, biochemical technologies, and genetics provide the incentive to
identify determinants of criminal behavior and the temptation to intervene prior
to the commitment of a crime (Office of Technology Assessment, 1988).
Technological literacy would empower citizens to agitate for the regulation of
intimate and remote surveillance and restrictions on government, police, and
security.
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Prior to September 11, it was easy to be complacent about mundane things
like empire, literacy, security, technology and human rights. Now, we no longer
have the time for complacency and we gambled away the luxury. We are all
complicit in terrorism, war, the abuses of rights, and the technologies that
support these activities. Literacy aside, it's time we got active and smart.