Ideas, Machines and Values: An Introduction to Science, Technology, and Society Studies, and: Visions of STS: Counterpoints in Science, Technology, and Society Studies (review)

If we are to believe Alston Chase, Theodore Kaczynski, popularly known as the Unabomber, is a product of unethical psychological experiments conducted at Harvard University as part of a CIA-inspired program of mind manipulation and the "culture of despair" that permeated academe during the cold war. In Harvard and the Unabomber (2003), Chase argues that Kaczynski's bombing spree was a response to ideas and attitudes built into postwar liberal education. As he puts it: "From humanists we learned that science threatens civilization. From scientists we learned that science cannot be stopped. Taken together, they implied there is no hope" (p. 206).

The intriguing thing is that Stephen Cutcliffe of Lehigh University attributes the development of academic STS programs to a similar intellectual (but not psychological) dynamic: "Science, Technology, and Society (STS) first emerged as an explicit academic field of teaching and research in the United States in the 1960s. The emergence has a deep historical background in both the modern attempt to transform society through the pursuit of science and technology (the Enlightenment) and the critical reaction to this project (Romanticism)" (Cutcliffe, Ideas, Machines and Values, p. 1). In other words, the clash between C. P. Snow's "two cultures" (which Chase inexplicably ignores) created the conditions that produced the Unabomber on one hand and professors of STS on the other (though STS professors do not typically find modern civilization "hopeless"). This irony highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the STS movement as outlined in the two books under review here, one a monograph by Cutcliffe and the other a collection of essays edited by Cutcliffe and Carl Mitcham, of the Colorado School of Mines.

Visions of STS presents four essays on determinism and disciplinarity, three on the applications of STS, and three critiques of the movement. To begin with the critiques: Eulalia Perez Sedeno argues that gender has been widely ignored by STS scholarship, and Richard E. Sclove encourages more political participation in technological decision making, along the lines of Danish and Dutch models. Wilhem Fudpucker offers an even more fundamental challenge by arguing that STS was founded under socioeconomic conditions of mass production and mass consumption that no longer apply, and thus the conventional STS framework no longer suffices. In its place, Fudpucker recommends the development of approaches that comprehend "post-modern production," essentially global flexible or lean production attitudes and techniques. Fudpucker does not specify, however, how this new paradigm would differ from current approaches.

In the first of the three contributions to the section on STS and its applications, Rudi Volti reviews the various well-known interactions between technological change and work. Robert E. Yager then explores the implications of an STS approach to science education in K-12 schools by focusing on efforts to reform the education of science teachers. He acknowledges that this approach is hotly debated within the ranks of science educators but steadfastly maintains that students will not be motivated to learn scientific concepts and processes if their teachers do not build their lessons around the real-world contexts in which science is encountered daily. In the third essay, Albert Teich asserts that policymakers and advocacy groups such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science are influenced by STS-related approaches to issues of law and research priorities. He encourages scholars to "recognize the importance of their field to policy-making and make efforts to communicate their ideas more clearly to nonspecialists" (p. 106). This plea is all the more relevant given the dismemberment of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment.

The...