Beach Haven

Bibliography
​Collins, Harry, and Robert Evans. 2007. Rethinking Expertise. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.

Review by Michael Beach
 
In this work, Harry Collins and Robert Evans describe a framework for understanding  expertise. They divide these forms of authoritative knowledge into ‘ubiquitous’ and ‘specialist’ expertise, then offer several forms of tables to depict related topical continua for each. For the authors, ubiquitous expertise is that sort that most people possess so no particular authority is ascribed to it other than one might note if it seems missing in a person. As the expertise requires ever more effort to attain, the continuum approaches the realm of specialist expertise.

Science and technology are considered as a “provider of truth” as they attempt to analyze “the meaning of the expertise upon which the practice of science and technology rests” (Collins and Evans 2007, 2). The note that this provider-of-truth view has been questioned more over time. They share perceptions that some have come to place more confidence in ‘folk wisdom’ or ‘common sense’ over positions taken by scientists. They note a ‘tension’ between legitimacy or trust and the approach of increased involvement of ‘the public’. This increase in public involvement they call ‘extension’.  The opposite of extension is referred to as scientism. This is often found in scientists themselves. Essentially, scientism is a belief that science is the best and maybe only answer to understanding the nature of things. Scientism discourages involvement by those not specially trained in a narrow field that proponents consider acceptable.
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After describing the framework through a series of continua, the authors conclude with three summation questions. They ask about appropriate ratios of influence between science and politics. They wonder which of the sciences should be included in a given discussion in order to understand what is science and what is pseudoscience. Finally Collins and Evans ask if the public can recognize what they need to in order to make “appropriate decisions” (Collins and Evans 2007, 134). Of course the reader might challenge the authors with the question of how to define ‘appropriate’. They go on to argue that “experts should obviously have a relatively greater input where their results are more reliable” (Ibid.). I suppose that ‘reliable results’ would be understood from the position of expected, or at least hoped for, outcomes. Narrow expertise makes for less wholistic understanding. At the same time, one can be an expert without all the accolades of accredited institutions. For example, who has better insight, the doctor of agrology or the farmer? What does better mean? Perhaps each helps the other to see what neither can on their own.

Bibliography
​Kaku, M. (2008). Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration Into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Auckland: Doubleday.

Review by Michael Beach
 
As the title and subtitle suggest, Michio Kaku considers the stuff of science fiction and considers them from science as we know it today. Taking the mantra that “the ‘impossible’ is relative” (Kaku, 2008, p. xi), he breaks the various sci-fi ideas into categories. Class I impossibilities “are technologies that are impossible today but that do not violate the known laws of physics” (Kaku, 2008, p. xvii). Class II impossibilities “are technologies that sit at the very edge of our understanding of the physical world” (Ibid.). Class III impossibilities “are technologies that violate the known laws of physics” (Ibid.).

Michio Kaku goes on to describe difficult scientific ideas in ways that a novice like me can understand. He looks at each technology, explains the sort of science involved, and the new technology or science that would have to be developed. For each technology he then makes an argument for which category each technology would belong to. I found the approach framed well and the arguments convincing. It’s a really interesting way to a non-scientist like me to get a glimpse into the world of scientific thought.
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Bibliography
​Ottinger, Gwen. 2013. Refining Expertise: How Responsible Engineers Subvert Environmental Justice Challenges. New York. London: New York University Press.

Review by Michael Beach
 
In one way, Gwen Ottinger could be thought to be writing a form of exposé about how emissions from an oil refinery in Louisiana exposed a community to hazardous fumes and the (likely? potential?) harmful health effects. She shares that story in this work. As important as that story is, the book has a larger point. Ottinger reviews how what started as a public relations failure shifted. As refinery ownership changed, so too did the communications strategy. The refinery began to involve local citizens through a series of meetings, placing gas detection monitors around the town, and making some operational concessions. Over time, residents began to accept engineering data and explanations, even when accidental over-emission events happened.

Gwen Ottinger explores the idea of identity and influence. She looks at how experts at first relied on that identity to make definitive statements and expect people to trust them. As the messaging began to include technical information and logic in lay terms, residents could follow the thinking and were more accepting. Residents also began to change identity from antagonistic victims to informed supporters. The refining companies also financed improvements in the town itself. To Ottinger’s point, this shift in identity by both refinery personnel and local citizen advocates did not mean there were no negative health effects or risks. She argues that a shift in identity created a new form of discourse. Shifting narratives helped shift identifying self-definitions by the actors involved. For example, over time the refinery became a ‘moral company’ at least in the perception of those involved. As residents became more participating and more accepting of information their diminishing challenges transformed them into ‘good citizens’ living in ‘nice communities’. Granted, there were some actual changes to how the plant was operated, but how much change was enacted really?

For Gwen Ottinger, one can question motives linked to narratives. For example, did the company change because it became moral? Did the challenges by citizens cause introspection on the part of refinery leaders? Were resident attitude changes justified by more participation or information, or did their attitudes change unjustifiably? The links among language, narrative, discourse, identity and power are co-productive. All affect and are affected by social interaction. This case-study sheds light on one way that technical knowledge in particular helps shape these relationships.
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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
​Schwartz, A. B. (2015). Broadcast Histeria: Orson Welles's War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News. New York: Hill and Wang.
 
In the broadcast industry, the events during the radio broadcast led by Orson Welles is the stuff of legend. It was said that as people believed they were hearing real news interruptions into otherwise normal programming, they went crazy collectively. The broadcast warned up front it was a fictitious portrayal. Several times during the program similar messages were shared. Yet, people often tuned in during times that did not include the caveats. Supposedly, people ran out into the street screaming. Others packed up the family car and headed for the proverbial hills. A few are said to have committed suicide. In this work, Schwartz examines many of these myths and debunks them. He does share some examples where a relatively small number of people did think the program real and started fleeing, but these documented examples are few.
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What Schwartz does document is a somewhat skeptical public. Newsrooms and police station phones rang off the hook. People were looking for some sort of official confirmation to what they were hearing. Was there really a Martian invasion in progress? Were people dying by alien death rays?

In the chapter titled ‘Journalism and Showmanship’ the author examines how the news covered a real story of the same time period, specifically the Lindberg baby kidnapping. Sensationalism in reporting inspired people to flood the Lindberg estate. Charles Lindberg was a celebrity in his day. He was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. “Within half an hour, newsrooms in three states had gotten word of the crime and begun frantically revising their front pages” (Schwartz, 2015, p. 13). Much of the Welles fictional story had the same trappings of what people experienced during the immediate aftermath of the Lindberg kidnapping story. The storytellers were acting in a believable manner. In other words, they were good at their writing and acting craft.

Schwartz wonders if things are all that different today. Whether one calls it fake news, misinformation, disinformation, or whatever the newest terms will become, there are people who purposefully copy realism fictitiously. Welles was in it for entertainment, and perhaps that the same goal of some modern-day trolls. It seems clear to me that some of this effort is not just for a joke, but with specific outcomes intended. Motives may be political, social, or criminal, but each looks to sway some portion of the population into a preference action or inaction. Schwartz shares several examples such as ‘the Veracruz Twitter panic’ in the popular resort of Veracruz, Mexico. A few residents of the city started reporting crimes and violence throughout the city that were not actually happening. The reports were forwarded by others, then picked up by some websites that “capitalized on this by writing fake news stories with provocative headlines” noting how such headlines “can generate a small fortune in ad revenue by exploiting gullibility” (Schwartz, 2015, p. 223).

In the same page, Schwartz does note that “the same technology that spread that false report also made it possible to verify the story in almost no time at all” (Ibid.). He argues that Americans were skeptical of the original Martian attack story but seem to be more inclined to accept the stories about the hysteria that ensued. He suggests we apply skepticism in both stories and meta-stories we hear. Perhaps we should be less inclined to accept those stories that seem to fit a narrative we already accept.

​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
​Good, Katie Day. 2019. "SIght-Seeing in School: Visual Technology, Virtual Experience, and World Citizenship in American Education, 1900-1930." Technology and Culture: The International Quarterly of the Society for the History of Technology 98-131.

​Review by Michael Beach
 
The focus of this article by Katie Day Good is the language and arguments used to extend the use of audio/visual media in the early part of the 20th century from the homes of those who could afford it into the schools as a form of education enhancement. In 1928 Anna V. Dorris, then the president of the National Education Association (NEA), urged teachers to reject “formal and bookish” instruction and “explore the pedagogical potentials of newly available audio and visual devices” (Good 2019, 99). This idea seems to inspire the play on words of the article title. Instead of site-seeing, as in going to a site to see it, the media bring the sight of a site to the classroom, hence the idea of 'sight-seeing'. One is not seeing the site, rather an edited and controlled image of the site.

After WWI the United States “began forging a rhetorical link – what cultural studies scholars call an articulation” (Good 2019, 101). The idea of forming an articulation between school instruction and “an emerging ideal of ‘world citizenship’" (Ibid.) can be linked to a push for the organization of the League of Nations, the predecessor of the United Nations, that was forming around the same time. Isolationism as opposed to world entanglements had been a debate from the very founding of the United States. Here, NEA leaders, federal government, and manufacturers of media devices chimed together using similar rhetoric, if not similar motivations. The tension over how much international involvement should our country take on is still in headlines today. The idea of using educational media to help students understand other cultures through virtual tours in the classroom also continues, even it the technology has changed. Good points out that, “The historical association between classroom media use and the acquisition of worldly experience warrants attention in the digital and globalization age” (Good 2019, 103). She argues that such “discourses of global citizenship education, international connectivity, and the democratization of communication have helped smooth the way” of Internet deregulation and commercialization (Ibid.). She may have a point on commercialization, but one of the major attractions of the Internet is the considerable lack of regulation existing from its inception. Nonetheless, she essentially takes for granted the benefits pushed in the language she is critiquing and focuses on the way language is used to make the various cases with a resulting growth in classroom use of media for instruction.

One caution Katie Good does share is the potential of media to reinforce a Western world view and “reproduce colonial relationships through inequalities of representation and access” (Good 2019, 104). For example, through the ‘value of virtual travel’ depictions may be used to either encourage or reinforce “desirable behaviors in hygiene, health, and morality through stories and dramatizations” (Good 2019, 105). Desirable to who? Good shares some of the language used at the time. She quotes X. Theodore Barber as saying, the “heightened sense of culture and refinement surrounding [these] exhibitions attracted the ‘better classes’ as well as those who wished to be identified with them” (Good 2019, 107). The colonialism angle refers to using images as a “means of appropriating some distant place through an image” (Good 2019, 113). Just as in the physical ‘appropriation’ of some other people or place, the use of images helps form ideas about these ‘others’ through the lens of Western thought and interpretation, one of the hazards of ethnologists. These researchers do all they can to avoid ‘reflexivity’, but it’s safe to say the rest of us are not so aware of the issue or have tools to adjust our perspective under our own cultural view. Consider one of Good’s closing statements, “Consistent in the promotional rhetoric for all manner of instructional media was a dual emphasis on its ability to unify and uplift Americans around a common set of civic values while turning their attention to the rapidly changing world beyond their shores” (Good 2019, 124). As an author, Good is questioning if both of these stated goals can truly be accomplished together. Essentially, by espousing the first creators of media help color the second.
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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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