Instrumentalization
A key concept in Feenberg critical theory of technology, is to make technology a key part of critical theoretical analysis and concerns, and to consider where democratic rationalization can take place.
His attempt to do so revolves around a splitting of the social and technical, and their relative intertwining, into the primary instrumentalization and secondary instrumentalizations of technology. It is the processes across these two that are the essence (now) of technology Kirkpatrick 2020 p. 126
Generally speaking, primary instrumentalization (also considered to be functionalism) is the reification of technology from its initial development and use in one or more places, which allows it to move elsewhere, through two objectifying moments:
- decontextualization of the technology through abstraction to features and functions,
- and the reduction of the natural world (perhaps we could also say specific social activities and practices) to useful properties.
And two subjectivation moments:
- autonomisation which confers a new freedom on the subject to act without consequences Kirkpatrick 2020 p. 126, {need to check what subject means here — the human?}
- and positioning which is the using of natural laws to gain “strategic mastery in a given context”.
Secondary instrumentalization (sometimes concretisation and realisation) involves two aspects of “the objective life of technical artifacts” Kirkpatrick 2020, 127:
- systematization when objects are placed and integrated in networks with other people and things {sounds very Latourian here}
- mediation through the adding of symbols and ornamentation to invoke particular meanings {chance for deconstruction here?}
And their relation to humans {didn’t the other two also imply this?}
- vocation: people who identify and find roles and activities with the technology
- initiative: opens up the margin for maneuver for users {only users?} to experiment with uses of the technology
It is at this intersection across PI and SI that “technology is underdetermined”, and hence ambivalent and open to influence and change. The problem is when new technology in the end, despite this underdetermination, reinforces existing power and social relations. In Feenberg’s
This is effectively his way to address some middle ground between essentialist and substantive views of technology, and the resulting dystopian negative critiques of technology from some of the key Frankfurt School critical theorists, and the lack of criticality in instrumental approaches to technology and social construction approaches, which both fail to questions the narrowing of interests and effects through technology.
It is the ability to intervene in the inherent ambivalent