Beach Haven

​Bibliography
Rumsfeld, Donald. 2018. When the Center Held: Gerald Ford and the Rescue of the American Presidency. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, New Delhi: Free Press.

Review by Michael Beach

As one might surmise by the title, this book is Donald Rumsfeld’s homage to Gerald Ford. When I first saw the title, being this was likely a political book, I assumed ‘the center’ was a reference to a centrist political position. That was an incorrect assumption. Gerald Ford played college football in Michigan in his younger days. His position was that of the center. This player hikes the ball to the quarterback, then holds the line of large opponents attempting to get past him to tackle the quarterback.

Rumsfeld recounts Ford’s lifetime of service in the military and in politics. He describes his calm demeaner and plain speaking that some took as weakness, but for Rumsfeld, political players in Ford’s day mistakenly underestimated him.

The culmination of the book, and Gerald Ford’s political career, was about his service as vice-president to Richard Nixon. Ford was not the first vice-president to Nixon. He replaced a scandal-ridden Spiro Agnew. This meant that Gerald Ford was not elected to the position. Nixon also made it clear to Ford that he was not his first pick to replace Agnew. After taking office, the Watergate scandal became widely known and led to Nixon’s resignation. Ford found himself moving from an unelected vice-president, to an unelected president.

One of his first acts was to pardon President Nixon. Rumsfeld recounts the Ford administration policies and the historical fallout. Then he reviews the election where Ford actually ran but lost to Jimmy Carter. Rumsfeld recounts likely reasons for Carter’s win. His obvious assumption is that Ford suffered from guilt by his association with Nixon.

Like any political history work, one should consider the perspective of the author who was a Ford administration insider. He also later served with President George W. Bush.  Despite some reflexive influence on the part of Rumsfeld, for those of us who remember the period, the book rings true. 

Bibliography
Rohde, Joy. 2013. Armed with Expertise: The Militarization of American Social Research During the Cold War. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press.
 
In this work, Joy Rohde begins discussing a relatively new tool in the military arsenal called the Human Terrain System (HTS). Essentially, HTS includes social scientists who are familiar with local social factors in war zones who advise in-field troops and commanders. Rohde begins discussing it’s use in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Another example of HTS researchers Rohde discusses are those “behind the front lines in the War on Terror” (Rohde 2013, 1). She notes how one of the goals of HTS participants is to encourage soldiers to “see the world through the eyes of the people affected” so perhaps they could somewhat “demilitarize the military” (Ibid.). As it turns out, many critics of HTS argue the opposite. This approach, some social scientists point out, is militarizing the researchers instead.

The military funded much of this research through the Special Operations Research Office (SORO) created by the Office of the Chief of Psychological Warfare. After setting up this tension and noting some of the major participants, Rohde goes on to offer a historical view of the roots of psychological warfare research dating back to the 1950s and 1960s during the height of the Cold War between the United States and Western allies in conflict with the Soviet Union and it’s sphere of influence.

Among other conclusions, Joy Rohde asserts that “much of the critical focus on contracting for the post-9/11 environment focuses on the dangers of privatization, not on those of militarization” (Rohde 2013, 155). Perhaps the same could be said about the military itself. Rohde notes that if it’s true that Americans are “devoted to their image of the nation as a global superpower” (Rohde 2013, 156), then militarization of social research will “last as long as Americans continue to measure their national greatness by their global might” (Ibid.).
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​Bibliography
Kleinman, Daniel Lee, ed. 2000. Science, Technology, & Democracy. New York: State University of New York Press.

Review by Michael Beach
 
Like so many of the books I’ve reviewed as part of my studies in the field of Science, Technology, and Society (STS), this book is a compendium of chapters written as interdependent topics. Daniel Kleinman, as the editor, wrote the introduction and closing chapter. The title of his contribution as the final chapter is Democratizations of Science and Technology. This title hints at the idea that democracy has more than one meaning hence each version of democracy differently influences and is influenced by a given community’s relationship with science and tech.

Some of the chapters are a form of mini case study. For example, there is a chapter about AIDS treatment activism. Another looks at sustainable farming networks, where knowledge sharing among farmers and agriculturalists impact how food begins in our collective food chain. Several chapters consider actor roles such as experts, practitioners, and consumers. These chapters tend to examine how much influence each group has, or how much they are willing to rely on the insights of the other groups. There are a few more generalized philosophical chapters such as how the nuclear family is defined and how that influences technology acceptance. There is a review of federal science and 'human well-being’. Perhaps the most academic chapter is by Sandra Harding. She is a well-known author in STS and generally examines feminist thought. In this section she asks the question how much scientific philosophy should steer or be steered by democratic ideals.

Kleinman’s final chapter is a consideration of public policy and motivation. He concludes, “Scientific, professional, and corporate groups have a strong vested interest in seeing that innovations go forward, and they typically have substantial financial, organizational, and technical resources to invest in pursuing those interests. Most public groups, by contrast, as well as society as a whole, have a much less direct stake in the outcome of given policy choices, and usually can draw on only limited economic and institutional resources” (Kleinman 2000, 162). This is an interesting assertion. Even if ‘the public’ has limited input to direct policy deliberation, they ultimate are consumers (or non-consumers) of whatever technology results. The public votes with its money and its votes. As you might note, these topics are tricky. Any strong stand on one point or another makes for argumentative fodder. 
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​Bibliography
Aiken, Katherine G. 2019. "The Environmental Coneqences Were Calamitous: Smelter Smoke Controversies in Progressive Era America, 1899-1918." Technology and Culture, The International Quarterly of the Society for the History of Technology (Johns Hopkins University Press) 60 (1): 132-164.

Review by Michael Beach
 
In this article, Katherine Aiken looks at legal battles between smelter operation companies and community organizations that sued for damage created by toxic smoke. Most of these organizations represented farmers, but the author includes the “four-way interaction among farmers, industrialists, government, and technology” (Aiken 2019, 134). Aiken speaks to claims and settlements, but since this journal is about technology, as one could guess, the primary focus is on technological ways smelter owners approached reducing particulate output. Her intention with the article is to “survey major smelter smoke battles with an emphasis on the intersection of industrial growth, engineering solutions to challenges, and the role of farmers and the government” (Aiken 2019, 135).

The specific systems developed included baghouses, large buildings filled with filtering bags that captured much of the particulate matter. A weakness to this approach is it was expensive and did not stop gasses. Two related solutions were to extend the location of smoke exhaust. In one version, large underground tunnels would be used to move the smoke away from locations with people and farms to less concerning (more remote) locations. The other was to build ever taller smokestacks so the particulates were spread more widely, having less affect in any one location.

Perhaps the most exotic approach was something called ‘electrostatic precipitation’ in which emissions were passed through an electric field that caused some of the gases to break into other compounds that had other uses. This was costly in terms of electricity generation, but some of the cost was offset by revenues created from sale of the chemical byproducts.

Social and financial forces were at odds with each other. They were also connected to each other. For example, Aiken shows how farmers’ claims were argued by the smelter companies to be exaggerated. Experts on both sides made their cases. Both groups had financial motivation. The technology was developed to lower the financial impact claims of farmers while minimizing cost to smelter operators. 
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Bibliography
Winner, Langdon. 1986. The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Review by Michael Beach
 
In this work, Langdon Winner considers a mix of nature and technology in the area of San Luis Obispo, CA where he grew up. In Diablo Canyon, as a child he had enjoyed the ocean and the occasional view of the whales as they migrated close to shore through the area. As an adult he visited again to take a tour of the construction site of a new nuclear power plant. Given his academic background reading “history, politics, and philosophy,” he found himself, “drawn, quite unexpectedly, to questions concerning technology” (Winner 1986, 166). Seeing the juxtaposition of the wild and the technical in close proximity in Diablo Canyon became a natural curiosity for him.

The first two sections include a review of some of the questions under examination in the field of the philosophy of science. While reviewing prominent publications along these lines, he progresses to consider how we tend to characterize newer forms of technology. For example, is the goal to ‘build a better mousetrap’? Winner considers decentralization of technological ‘progress’ and helps the reader sort through information about technology. How much of what we learn is factual and how much myth? How do we know the difference?

Langdon Winner finishes this book with a focus on exploring what we scholars of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) refer to as ‘boundary work’. In this case, what is ‘natural’ and what is not. He points out how some argue that when it comes to technological change, “this is the natural way; here is the path nature itself sets before us” (Winner 1986, 121). Still others contend, “what we are doing is horribly contrary to nature; we must repair our ways or stand condemned by the most severe tribunals” (Ibid.). Langdon walks through some of the major questions these two simple polarized perspectives unleash. What morals are in play here? How does one define what is ‘natural’ and what isn’t? Is ‘nature’ a pile of stock goods to be exploited? Is it something that requires taming through conquest? How much human intervention causes something to move between the boundary of natural and not natural? The ideas around many of these sorts of questions are considered by Winner.

From an STS perspective, Langdon Winner uses the use-case of how the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant contrasts with what was there before. He notes, for example, that prior to the power plant there were farms and orchards all along the coast, and they are still there. How natural is agriculture as compared to ‘wild’ vegetation? For me as a reader, the arguments are helpful if not clarifying. I think any time we intend to modify our world, such issues should be considered. At the same time, we can’t be so concerned about changing anything that we are unable to meet the needs of humanity. Power consumption is very real. Our modern Western civilization is dependent on it. Nuclear energy is less of a pollutant form, unless there is some sort of unintended accident in the future. Then it can do more damage than alternative methods. Nothing is free impact or free of risk. Winner asks for consideration while exploring limits and balancing benefits and impacts. 
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Bibliography
Hess, David J. 1995. Science & Technology in a Multicultural World: The Cultural Politics of Facts & Artifacts. New York: Columbia University Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach
 
In the field of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) facts are associated as a product of science, and artifacts a product of technology. In this book, David Hess examines influences on and by the multicultural movement with regards to science and tech. The early chapters look at cultural construction of science and technology, later he reviews how science and tech help reconstruct culture. He essentially makes a co-production argument, but in terms of the recent multiculturalist perspective.

One specific example is the chapter looking at non-western medicine. Using the term ‘ethnoknowledges’, Hess considers knowledge systems. This approach is not unique to Hess. He documents several professional forums in the field including the Journal of Ethnobiology, and the Journal of Ethnopharmacology and Ethnobotany. Groups don’t get much more specific than that. I had not heard of either previously.

In his concluding chapter Hess makes a case for more emphasis in education on multicultural issues in science and technology. Speaking of a shift in American demographics he predicts, “that by the middle of the twenty-first century most Americans will trace at least some of their ancestors to a continent other than Europe. In the United States, as in many other Western countries, native-born white males today realize that they are going to have to work with women, nonwhites, and immigrants; they are even going to have to work for them, if they are not already doing so” (Hess 1995, 250). Among other concluding arguments he notes, “All efforts to increase equality and diversity through recruitment and retention of students in the technical fields are very important in the struggle to break through the glass ceilings that hold back certain groups of people. My concluding comments extend and compliment these efforts by focusing on the related question of curriculum reform” (Hess 1995, 253).

As a former employer (now retired) I agree diversity has a positive effect on organizations. I would caution adopting diversity for its own sake, but by broadening recruitment pools it is possible to both bring in quality talent and increase diversity. I’ve seen this firsthand over a career spanning nearly 40 years in the field of communications technology. Not that it matters, but here is my CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-beach-57a0a26/
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Bibliography
Ferreira da Silva, Alvaro, and M. Luisa Sousa. 2019. "The "Script" of a New Urban Layout: Mobility, Environment, and Embellishment in Lisbon's Streets (1850-1910)." Technology and Culture: The International Quarterly of the Society for the History of Technology 60 (1): 65-97.

Review by Michael Beach

The authors of this article look at city planning from the perspective of ‘scripting’ in the form of planning documents, and ‘scribes’ comparing public and private efforts both in tension and compliment. During the specified time-period, Lisbon was like many other European cities with haphazard growth and poor technology. As a result, there was a fair amount of health and safety concerns for city residents.

Ferreira da Silva and Sousa show planning maps as issued by the city council during the 60-year window. With each plat the street layout and utilities change, but not as previous plats had imagined. The plat design is a form of ‘scripting’ and city planners are a form of ‘scribe’. At the same time, private interests had their own designs in mind. Developers would purchase tracts of land in and on the outskirts of town, then construct private streets and buildings, often ignoring city codes and plans. Private funds were available more quickly, and construction could be carried out for less cost when not allowing for street amenities such as sidewalks, pavement, lighting, maintenance and sewers. “Opening private streets was a refuge to avoid more coercive municipal bylaws and escape the slower street construction and infrastructure by the municipality” (87).

As one might guess, compromise became common. “Sooner or later, they moved in the public domain and the city council found itself saddled with streets poorly sized and cared for” (Ibid.). In one example, a promoter named Bairro Andrade “signed a deed with the city council… giving the terrains of the five recently opened streets in the public domain” (Ibid.). In compensation, the city council agreed to “plumb, pave, and illuminate them” (Ibid.). By this point, Andrade would have already cashed in on private sale of any of the property not deeded to the city, as well as he would continue to collect rents.

I doubt these sorts of fits and starts of city planning and development were any different in other countries, or in other times. Even today one hears of shady developers and negative aftermaths of unchecked building projects. At the same time, growth under strict government control tends to slow. Weighing this tension between safety and quality as opposed to quick financial returns are social factors that have a direct impact on technological decisions. That seems to be the main point of the article.
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​Bibliography
Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.

Review by Michael Beach

As the subtitle suggests, Bruno Latour explains the main discussion points in this specific framework. In the discipline of Science, Technology, and Society (STS), Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) is widely adopted in terms of how to view interactions of people, organizations, and artifacts in making policy and technology choices. Unlike some of the other social frameworks, Latour argues that the adoption and stability of a given scientific fact or technological artifact is a function of the strength of the networks that support them. For Latour, fact or artifact selection results if more actors (people) or actants (objects) interact on a consistent basis than competing facts or artifacts. If the strength of a network begins to wain in relation to different facts or artifacts, then a theory or technology is supplanted. Context for Latour is less important. Context may influence parts of a network, but contexts differ among network nodes (actors or actants), and they also change over time. He puts less weight to social factors that may seem stable in some ways. Instead it is how much actors and actants tend to support a given policy, technology, or scientific finding that will determine how stable it tends to be.

Latour argues “sociology has confused science with politics” (253). When discussing what influences a network, he further states, “it makes no difference if it’s ‘natural’ or ‘social’” (Ibid.). One way to think about it, when actants are involved, there is no ‘social’ effect on such. Natural resources are an example. Efficiency is more a question in terms of human use of non-renewable resources, yet renewables can be overtaxed as well. The resources themselves impact network choices but are not influenced directly by social forces.

ANT has been shown to have weaknesses that even Latour admits. For example, ANT does not consider non-users. When the cost of a specific technology excludes people living in poverty, there are perspectives excluded that might offer improvement. Lower costs and fewer options might add user count, especially if many of the options are not really used by purchasers of the more expensive versions of technology. How many channels of TV do people actually view of the hundreds they pay for through some service? Today we might think the song lyrics “57 channels and nothin’ on” rather quaint. Who has a service with only 57 channels? One could also argue that if ANT is less interested in 'context', wouldn't a network itself constitute a form of context?

Bruno Latour’s ANT lens can be applied to many aspects of life. Essentially he argues that facts and artifacts most supported by a network of people and things will win, even if they cost more, are less efficient, and not universally available. 

Bibliography
​Guston, David H., and Kenneth Keniston, . 1994. The Fragile Contract: University Science and the Federal Government. Cambridge & London: The MIT Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

This book includes multiple authors. Guston and Keniston are the editors. Each chapter examines some aspect of the relationship between scientific research and government funding sources. The classic challenge for academics is determining research targets. They can range from general so-called ‘basic’ science topics to very specific ways of employing science and technology. Although the generalized idea of scientists desire for unfettered research agenda and the narrow outcomes preferred by funders can be true, it is a very simplistic description. Many researchers are motivated by the financial and prestige benefits of patented discoveries. Also, there are funders more interested in general science than in marketable inventions. Another consideration is the widespread establishment of academic institutes associated with universities that act as both research facilities and business incubators.

Among the considerations some of the authors approach includes the idea of trust. Value-based words such as trust, integrity, and accountability are common in the articles. Actors most generally defined are researchers of various sorts, government and business representatives, and differing descriptions of ‘the public’. What motivates the funders? What motivates the researcher? What role do members of the public play?

The best way I can think of to share the flavor of perspectives is to list the chapter titles. They include - The Social Contract for Science; Universities, the Public, and the Government: The State of the Partnership; On Doing One’s Damnedest: The Evolution of Trust in Scientific Findings; Integrity and Accountability in Research; The Public Face of Science: What Can We Learn from Disputes?; How Large an R&D Enterprise?; Views from the Benches: Funding Biomedical Research and the Physical Sciences; Financing Science after the Cold War; Indirect Costs and the Government-University Partnership; Research in U.S. Universities in a Technologically Competitive World; Constructive Responses to the Changing Social Context of University-Government Relations.

As you can see, there are plenty of meaty topics here. In addition to the language of social values and scientific research, many authors cover aspects of sustainable business to help justify funding and research decisions. 
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Bibliography
​Tallbear, Kim. 2013. Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

Kim Tallbear is one of my favorite authors related to my studies in science, technology, and society (STS). The title of this work is self-explanatory, but the topics she covered are varied, and certainly explores ideas new to me.

One of overarching themes relates to how human test material such as blood samples have been used in the past in ways not agreed to by the subjects. Often banks of samples and data are sold to companies that develop treatments or further databases that yield not only medical findings, but revenues that come with them.

Tallbear also looks at the accuracy of DNA testing to find one’s ancestry. Such services have become popular in the private sector. There are many reasons to hold such findings suspect, and Tallbear reviews some of the technical issues. In terms of Native Americans, many of the issues are more social than technical. For example, there are specific government benefits for people who can document a native ancestry. Likewise, there is risk to those who claim native heritage when DNA tests don’t support their claim. Another difficulty the author has with native DNA testing is how many people claim specific tribal affiliation based on results. In reality, tribes intermingled so much through economic and warfare activity that it is difficult at best to narrow DNA categories in this way.

The problematic aspects Tallbear raises about DNA testing can be more generalized in two area as she does. The first happens when science and business are tied to each other. She points to the example of the genographic project (mapping the human gene structure) and ‘the business of research and representation’. Others have broached how science represents ‘facts’. Ian Hacking looks at the same issues from a philosophical perspective. He refers to the issues as ‘representing and intervening’. Likewise, Sheila Jasanoff created an entire framework that includes the idea of ‘controlling narratives’.

Tallbear finishes with a look at governance. Who can decide what’s appropriate use and language? Once collected, who owns human genetic tissue? She shares other complicating questions that are still unanswered. Even with modernized legal documents about what sort of rights research subjects cede when they sign a specific document, court cases continue. For example, if a company purchases data or samples from an academic study, then creates large revenues from that resource, are donors entitled to some of it? What part does race play in subject selection? How do scientists define a specific narrow population? How much isolation is required, or intermixing is acceptable, to make the samples be representative of a specific population? As the reader might imagine, such questions can continue. These are ethical concerns for scientists, and often cause ‘native’ people to be unwilling to trust them.
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