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On Technological Determinism: A Typology, Scope Conditions, and a Mechanism

Author(s): Allan Dafoe

Source: Science, Technology, & Human Values , November 2015, Vol. 40, No. 6 (November 2015), pp. 1047-1076

Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.

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Article

On Technological Determinism:

A Typology, Scope Conditions, and a Mechanism

Science, Technology, & Human Values 2015, Vol. 40(6) 1047-1076

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Allan Dafoe1

Abstract

"Technological determinism" is predominantly employed as a critic's term, used to dismiss certain classes of theoretical and empirical claims. Under- stood more productively as referring to claims that place a greater emphasis on the autonomous and social-shaping tendencies of technology, techno- logical determinism is a valuable and prominent perspective. This article will advance our understanding of technological determinism through four contributions. First, I clarify some debates about technological determinism through an examination of the meaning of technology. Second, I parse the family of claims related to technological determinism. Third, I note that constructive and determinist insights may each be valid given particular scope conditions, the most prominent of which is the scale of analysis. Finally, I propose a theoretical microfoundation for technological deter- minism - military-economic adaptationism - in which economic and military competition constrain sociotechnical evolution to deterministic paths. This

'Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

Corresponding Author: Allan Dafoe, Yale University, 1 15 Prospect Street, Rosenkranz Hall, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.

Email: allan.dafoe@yale.edu

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1048 Science, Technology, & Human Values 40(6)

theory is a special case of a general theory - sociotechnical selectionism - which can be regarded as also including (mild) constructivist theories as special cases. Greater understanding of, respect for, and engagement with technological determinism will enhance the study of technology and our ability to shape our sociotechnical systems.

Keywords technological determinism, constructivism, trends, momentum, unintended consequences, autonomy, competition, selectionism, levels of analysis, functionality, power

Who - If Anyone - Controls Technological Change? A central issue in the study of technology is the question of agency. To

what extent do we have control over the tools we use - and hence also our

systems of production, social relations, and worldview? To what extent are our technologies thrust upon us - by controlling elites, by path-dependent decisions from the past, or by some internal technological logic?

Prior to the 1980s, many scholars of technology took seriously the view that technological change could be, in some sense, an out-of-control history-shaping process (Winner 1977). To these scholars, often looking over large spans of time, technology seemed to develop autonomously, fol- lowing an internal technical logic, and profoundly shape society in ways that were not intended by anyone.

More recently, this view has been dismissed by many sociologists and historians of technology as "technological determinism." These scholars generally prefer constructivist approaches to the study of technology, employing descriptive narrative and emphasizing historical and social context, human agency, interpretive flexibility, and contingency. Con- structivist scholarship has been very productive, in general by providing a rich framework for the study of the social shaping of technology, and in particular by challenging technological determinism. Through many detailed studies of the design, interpretation, and use of technology (for a useful overview, see Hackett, Amsterdamska, and Wajcman 2008), con- structivist scholarship has convincingly shown the important role in the evolution of technology of different social groups, historical context, and varying perceptions of the meaning and purpose of a technology. In so doing, constructivist scholarship has shown the implausibility of simplis- tic technological determinisms.

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But the field of science and technology studies (STS) has gone much further, largely rejecting the many questions and conjectures that are cen- tral to technological determinism. Summarizing this rejection of techno- logical determinism, Ronald Kline (2001) writes that "historians and sociologists of technology have discredited the tenet of technological determinism, so much so that it has become a critic's term and a term of abuse in their academic circles"(p. 15497), and Michael Lynch (2008, 10) states that "technological determinism has been reduced to the status of a straw position in technology studies." To provide some sys- tematic evidence on the state of the literature, I reviewed sixty references, selecting the twenty references that ranked highest in a Google Scholar search for "technological determinism" within each of the following three leading STS journals ( Science , Technology , & Human Values ; Social Studies of Science^ Technology and Culture ); of the twenty-five articles that offered an explicit judgment of the merits of technological determinism, 76 percent of the references were critical (for data and cod- ing details, see http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/28473).

While most STS scholars will agree that, in addition to the social shaping of technology, there is an "influence of technology upon social relations" (Mackenzie and Wajcman 1999, 41), questions about the effects and auton- omy of technology are neglected. Important underexplored areas of inquiry include the study of the political effects of technology, the inertia of tech- nological systems, the existence of trends and an internal logic in technolo- gical developments, and the historical transformations associated with key technological innovations.1 Leonardi and Barley (2010), reflecting on the field of technology and organization, similarly argue that the field has swung strongly away from technological determinism, in so doing neglect- ing issues of "knateriality and power" (p. 42). The contemporary lack of interest in deterministic questions and propositions within STS is all the more concerning because most of the disciplines in social science, and busi- ness and the military, continue to take them seriously. In short, STS no lon- ger seriously engages with one of its founding debates.

A recent move within STS to take technological determinism "more seriously" involves studying beliefs about technological determinism using a constructivist lens (Wyatt 2008; Söderberg 2013). While these works do direct attention to technologically deterministic claims, they treat them as subjects of study to be explained , not as potentially insightful theoretical arguments that can explain.

I propose that "technological determinism" should be reclaimed from its use as a critic's term and straw position and should instead be employed to

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(Mild) Social Constructivism (Soft) Technological Determinism

Radical

Social '* *'■ Technological Constructivism Determinism

Figure I . A continuum of scholarship, from social constructivism to technological determinism.

respectfully characterize works that are closer to the determinisi side of the continuum of scholarly claims (similar to the proposed usage in Smith and Marx 1994, xiii). Going too far in either direction leads to the generally implausible positions of hard technological determinism (Smith and Marx 1994, 2) or radical social constructivism (Sismondo 1993; see Figure 1). The question should not be a dichotomous one of whether technological determinism is right or wrong, but a set of questions of degree, scope, and context: to what extent, in what ways, and under what scope conditions are particular kinds of technology more autonomous and powerful in shaping society? The complement of this framing also clarifies questions about human agency: to what extent, in what ways, and under what scope condi- tions are particular groups of people able to shape their sociotechnical systems?

This article seeks to reclaim "technological determinism" as a legiti- mate intellectual position through the following contributions. The first section discusses the definition of technology, clarifying some debates about technological determinism. The second section outlines the rich family of ideas related to technological determinism. In it I clarify differ- ent aspects of technical determinism and how they logically relate to each other; I discuss the role of technological trends in deterministic thinking; and I note that deterministic claims are more prevalent in studies with macro levels of analysis and that contrary findings from micro levels of analysis do not necessarily invalidate macro-insights. The third section addresses a serious weakness in technologically determinisi accounts: the lack of a compelling causal microfoundation. This article outlines a the- ory of military-economic adaptationism in which military and economic competition can give rise to harder forms of technological determinism. In so doing, it shows how it is possible for both radical constructivism and hard determinism to be simultaneously true on different scales of analysis. At the micro level, social groups can have extreme flexibility in interpreting, using, and designing technology. At the macro level, how- ever, strong military and economic competition could lead to emergent

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Dafoe

patterns in which technology evolves as if according to an inner logic that determines society.

What Is Technology? Confusion about technological determinism is in part due to confusion about the meaning of the term technology. Technology can refer to vast sociotechnical systems, such as the Internet, as well as specific arti- facts, standards, routines, and beliefs that make up these systems, such as computers, the Internet protocol, e-mail routines, and beliefs about the reliability of online information. Leo Marx (1997, 982-83) argues that the term technology , by conflating specific artifacts and broad sociotechnical systems, induces erroneous deterministic thinking and that the abstract concept "is almost completely vacuous." Whenever possible, this ambiguity can be avoided through the use of more pre- cise terms. Artifact can stand for specific objects intended for a func- tion, such as machines, devices, and tools. Technique can refer to "softer" functional configurations, such as habits of mind, analytical methods, and behavioral routines. Institutions can refer to organiza- tional hierarchies, legal codes, and incentive structures. Sociotechnical systems can refer to the vast functional configurations of all these components. While I agree that these other terms can clarify thinking, I nevertheless believe the abstract term technology is useful. Technology , like its "immediate precursors - words like machine , invention, improvement, and ... the mechanic (or useful . . . ) arts " (Marx 1997, 967, italics in orig- inal) is rooted in the metaphor of the machine and the application of sci- ence to commercial and military objectives. As such, technology highlights the functionality of sociotechnical configurations. This is apparent in present-day definitions of technology as "a manner of accom- plishing a task" (Merriam Webster 2005) and as "configurations that work " (Rip and Kemp 1998, 330). The defining characteristic of technol- ogy is its functionality, not its specific materiality. Technology , thus, (1) denotes those entities - artifacts, techniques, institutions, systems - that are or were functional and (2) emphasizes the functional dimension of those entities.

This understanding of technology helps to resolve a central confusion in debates over technological determinism. Critics of technological determinism often portray the debate as centered on the definition of technology as artifact. However, while some aspects of technological

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1052 Science, Technology, & Human Values 40(6)

determinism are about artifactual determinism, the core of the literature is more about kinds of functional determinism: the way that history often seems to follow inexorable functional logics that drive and are driven by technological change.

Technological Determinism The term technological determinism , as Ronald Kline (2001) points out, is presently employed to criticize the extreme position that (1) technol- ogy develops according to an "internal logic independent of social influ- ence" (p. 15495) and that (2) "technological change determines social change in a prescribed manner" (p. 15495). Exemplifying Kline's argu- ment, Bimber (1994) offers the extreme definition of technological determinism as the view that history is "determined by laws. . .rather than by human will" (p. 86) and that these laws involve physical arti- facts as a necessary component (p. 88). Technological determinism so defined does not allow the possibility of any human agency and thus does not refer to the vast majority of perspectives that takes the effects of technology seriously.

I propose defining technological determinism more moderately as approaches that emphasize (1) the autonomy of technological change and (2) the technological shaping of society. Following Smith and Marx (1994, 2), who offer a similar moderate definition, we can situate determi- nistic theories along a continuum, with harder determinists putting more emphasis on the autonomy and power of technology, and softer determi- nists allowing for more social control and context. This moderate defini- tion provides a terminological umbrella for a large set of respectable scholarship, spanning the disciplines that study technology.

In the following section, I analytically separate a number of distinct claims related to technological determinism (with distinct theories itali- cized). The family of claims include the views that: (1) functional entities (artifacts, techniques, institutions, and systems) exert an effect on the world independent of human choice ( technical determinism ); (2) there is a broad sequence and tempo of scientific and technological advance {technological trends) that seems to follow an internal logic , making technological change seem autonomous ; and (3) that people are insuffi- ciently conscious of their technological choices ( technological somnam- bulism) or have been co-opted ( the magnificent bribe), such that the social order is becoming more machine-like over time.

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Dafoe

Technical Determinism

The claim most often associated with technological determinism is that of artif actual determinism : the view that artifacts shape social relations. Technical determinism , on the other hand, denotes the broader view that technical entities, such as artifacts, routines, and the technical dimensions of institutions and systems, exert effects on the world. Harder variants claim that thes^ effects are more extensive and powerful. The form of technical determinism that leaves the greatest role for human agency is the idea of technological politics (Winner 1980, 1986): intentions can be inscribed into technologies, which then influence others. In this view, technological decisions "are similar to legislative acts or political foundings that establish a framework for public order that will endure over many generations" (p. 29). Examples include the con- struction of fences, speed bumps, bulletproof glass, surveillance technol- ogy, encryption algorithms, and the broad linear Parisian boulevards that facilitated the Suppression of riots (Lay 1992, 97). Prisons, schools, art studios, and other institutions all employ technology to evoke specific kinds of behavior, from compliance to creativity. Latour (1992) refers to technology as the "missing mass" of sociology, since it invisibly holds together the social order. Feenberg (2010, 18) refers to the way that tech- nology provides "material validation of the social order" as the "'bias' of technology." A handful of other scholars have contributed to the con- versation between ST S and the study of technological politics (Hamlett 2003; Wachelder 2003), though more is required given the importance of these questions. Two other technically deterministic theories are the ideas of technologi- cal momentum (Hughes 1983, 295) and technological frames (Bijker 1995). These ideas emphasize the constraints arising from established technologi- cal systems; these can be regarded as more deterministic than technological politics because the constraints need not have been designed by any partic- ular human or group. Hughes found that as systems mature they seem to gain inertia. This inertia follows the logic of sunk costs: assets have been bought, standards set, infrastructure built, employees trained, interactions routinized, and interests entrenched, all of which constrain subsequent deci- sions. Likewise, Bijker (1995, 282) rejects the idea that "social groups [can] fantasize whatever they want, without constraints." Instead, Bijker (1995, 264) argues that practices, shared meanings, and infrastructure produce technological frames which "constrain freedom of choice in designing new technologies."

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1054 Science , Technology, & Human Values 40(6)

Few scholars would deny the premise that there can be an "influence of technology upon social relations" (Mackenzie and Wajcman 1999, 41). This premise, however, implies the possibility of harder forms of technical determinism whenever technologies have unintended consequences. Due to the lack of foresight or concern by the designer, or the sheer unpredictability

of complex sociotechnical processes, unintended consequences can arise that fundamentally shape social relations.

Examples of unintended consequences abound in the history of tech- nology: the invention and deployment of the machine gun and barbed wire unexpectedly gave rise to a terrible form of warfare that was abhorred by all - even the generals and politicians responsible for con- tinuing the war (Ellis 1975). The decision by a few members of the Skolt Lapps of Finland to use snowmobiles in their herding practice began a process that undermined their traditional egalitarian culture (Pelto 1973). A report by the US National Security Council shares this view that "as technologies emerge, people will lack full awareness of their wider economic, environmental, cultural, legal, and moral impact

Trends- 2015 2000, 14). If technological change proceeds too quickly and extensively, "societies face the distinct possibility of going adrift in a vast sea of 'unintended consequences'" (Winner 1977, 89). Under this perspective, while people may control initial technological choices, if they are sufficiently ignorant of the consequences of their decisions society can be fundamentally shaped in ways that no one intended. Taken to the limit so that technical effects are powerful and conse-

quences unforeseeable, the simple premise that technology can shape social relations implies a hard technological determinism: a world where technol- ogy evolves in a seemingly autonomous and society-determining way. The difference between most mainstream STS theories and hard determinism is

therefore not fundamental, but a matter of degree that depends on how strongly technologies shape social relations and how foreseeable are the consequences of technology. The extent to which hard technological deter- minism has merit, therefore, is an empirical and context-specific question, not something that can be assumed, deduced, or casually generalized across empirical domains.

Trends in Technological Change

A second prominent theme of technological determinism is that there are trends in the patterns of sociotechnical evolution. Over the large sweep of time, the pool of artifacts seems to continually increase in diversity and

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number. New innovations arise that exceed the previous in their complexity,

power, and utility. To cite some specific trends, there seems to have been a persistent increase in the maximum levels of the: speed of transportation and communication, lethality of weapons, durability of materials, efficiency of engines, marginal productivity of labor, ability to store and reproduce information, height of buildings, and so forth. These "trends in the maxi- mum" are the easiest trends to define, though it seems likely that many other kinds of trends could be operationalized given closer study. The medievalist historian Joseph Stray er (1955, 224), summarizing the history of Western Europe during the Middle Ages, notes that "if there is steady progress anywhere, it is in the field of technology." Similarly, a number of anthropologists and archaeologists have identified a direction in the evo- lution of civilization toward increased social complexity. Robert Wright (2000, 16), summarizing this literature, writes that "archaeologists can't help but notice that, as a rule, the deeper you dig, the simpler the society whose remains you find." These trends need not extend monotonically - in one direction at all scales of analysis - for them to warrant being taken seriously. Some of these technological trends follow logically from the apparent cumulative nature of technological innovation (Heilbroner 1967): it is hard to imagine a society developing nuclear power before first harnessing simpler sources of power. Some technological trends are so predictable and persistent that they seem to follow an internal logic. Historian of computing Paul Ceruzzi (2005, 593) observes that an "internal logic is at work" in the evolution of some technologies. Specifically, over the past forty years, the "exponen- tial growth of chip density has hardly deviated from its slope," (p. 586) as described by Moore's Law. The belief in Moore's Law, Ceruzzi writes, is not "an indication of the social construction of computing [but] an indica- tion of the reality of technological determinism. Computing power must increase because it can" (p. 590). Ceruzzi concludes that historians of technology should "step back from a social constructionist view of tech- nology" and consider that, in at least some cases, "raw technological determinism is at work" (p. 593). Similarly, many early theorists observed the trend that society was becoming more rationalistic, technical, and materialistic. Max Weber (1978, lix) warned that "rational calculation . . . reduces every worker to a cog in [the bureaucratic] machine and, seeing himself in this light, he will merely ask how to transform himself from a little into a somewhat bigger cog." Ellul (1962, 30) was concerned with the spread of "la technique," which "is artificial, autonomous, self-determining, and independent of all

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1056 Science, Technology, & Human Values 40(6)

human intervention." Mumford (1966, 3) warned that "man will become a passive, purposeless, machine conditioned animal." These processes could be due to our insufficient awareness about our technological choices ( tech- nological somnambulism , Winner 1977, 167).

A potential mechanism for the spread of la technique could be called the magnificent bribe : the tendency for the system to co-opt individuals by using the material incentive to become a "somewhat bigger cog." Mumford (1964, 6) writes that: "We are being asked to ratify ... a magnificent bribe" under which "each member of the community may claim every material advantage, every intellectual and emotional stimulus" in exchange for sur- render to "authoritarian technics." Winner (1977, 167) concurs that "each group with any appreciable social power has gained auxiliary membership in the technostructure or has been put on its payroll." An example of this involves the 1997-1998 transformation of Massachusetts Institute of

Technology's Technology Review. Motivated by "years of declining advertising revenue" (Crum 1998), a former advertising director from Fortune magazine was brought in to increase the magazine's profits. He managed to turn red ink to black, but only after a new editor ensured that "nothing will be left of the old magazine except the name" (Warsh 1998, CI). The regular columnists and editorial staff were fired. The magazine transformed from a policy-relevant publication that was reflective about the social implications of technical choices to one whose new mandate, as characterized by former editor Marcus, was "cheerleading for innova- tion" (Warsh 1998, CI). The need for profit transformed Technology Review. How many other public conversations about the sociotechnical order are similarly influenced?

The seeming trend toward greater rationalization may be explained by the fact that people perceive it to be beneficial. Leo Marx (1987) describes the technocratic concept of progress in which scientific, technological, and economic progress is thought to improve "all the conditions of life - social, political, moral, and intellectual, as well as material" (p. 34). If enough people perceive technological progress to improve life, then associated trends may not be evidence of technological determinism, but simply the product of a social choice to pursue certain technological changes. However, while technological development has improved many dimensions of life for many people in recent decades, there remains abun- dant evidence in history of technological trends going against the will of elites at the time (see, for example, discussion of the Meiji Restoration below). The modern miracle of economic development may only tempo- rarily coincide with the interests of most people; for example, trends in

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information technology and automation are plausibly eroding the income of the majority of Americans.2 In summary, there appear to be trends in the evolution of human civili- zation, particularly in the character of our technologies. Some of these trends follow logically from the implausibility that an advanced technology could be developed before the development of its prerequisites. Some of these trends are so striking and persistent in their rhythm that they seem to suggest an internal logic of development. One trend is toward the greater rationalization of society, which may arise from lack of consciousness,

selective co-opļtation, or from its perceived benefits.

Scope Conditions and Levels of Analysis

The sociotechnical trends that are most suggestive of determinism are gen- erally those thàt take place over longer time scales: five decades of expo-

nentially increasing density of transistors; two centuries of technological progress and economic growth since the Industrial Revolution; and two mil- lennia of the growth in the size, complexity, and energy intensity of civili- zations. In a survey of scholarship on technology, Thomas Misa (1988) identified that technologically deterministic scholarship tends to look at larger scales of time and space than scholarship that is more constructivist. Both across disciplines and "within each discipline, the authors affirming some version of technological determinism adopt a "macro" perspective, whereas those denying technological determinism adopt a "micro" per- spective" (Mis^ 1988, 309). How can we reconcile these divergent findings? One response is to assert epistemologicai superiority for micro studies', the findings of more detailed smaller scale Scholarship are more valid than those adopting a macro- perspective. Misa (1998) articulates this view: "the Machine as causal force vanishes when [scholars] adopt a detailed analysis" (p. 315), "from a shop- floor perspective, the Machine is an irrelevant abstraction, and what makes history is individuals (perhaps classes) in conflict or accommodation. A row of machine tools is not itself a compelling historical agent" (p. 320). Simi- larly, Williams (2002, 116) writes that to a historian, technological deter- minism is "self-evidently untrue: human beings construct machines, not the reverse." Epistemologicai superiority for micro-studies is implicit any- time a scholar rejects findings from macro-studies using evidence from micro-studies.

Is it not possible that different processes could be at work on different scales of analysis (Leonardi and Barley 2010, 37)? In complex systems,

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there are often emergent patterns visible over larger scales of analysis which may be impossible to perceive at smaller scales of analysis (Byrne 1998). Consider the example of traffic: the fact that humans driving vehicles have intelligence, idiosyncrasies, and free will does not refute the fact that traffic

patterns often follow a simple, counterintuitive, and unintended logic. For example, in some situations, traffic throughput can be increased by inten- tionally slowing down traffic (Resnick 1996). Traffic jams do not need an obvious proximal cause, such as a car accident, to come into existence; they emerge spontaneously when vehicle density exceeds certain levels (Nagel and Paczuski 1995). Similarly, in history, there may arise unex- pected, deterministic, macro-patterns that are independent of human inten- tion and not apparent at smaller scales. Many of the claims of technological determinists are macro-observations

about patterns in history. Scholars looking at smaller scales of analysis may reject these macro-patterns because it is not clear how they could emerge from micro social processes. However, such an inference does not follow. It would be incorrect to reject Boyle's Law because the motion of individual molecules is chaotic and unpredictable. It would be incorrect for pre- Newtonian scholars to reject the systematic association between the motion of the moon and tides because they could not conceive of a mechanism to link them.

Social systems are complex and multileveled and are known to give rise to emergent unexpected behavior. When limited to their respective empiri- cal domains, could it not be that the claims of both constructivists and the

determinists are valid? Is it not possible that on certain scales of analysis technology is socially created, hacked, and interpreted, while on other scales of analysis technology exhibits trends, an internal logic of develop- ment, and profoundly shapes history in ways unforeseen by humans?

The Missing Mechanism: Military-Economic Competition The previous section argued that it is an error to discard macro-observations simply because they appear to be inconsistent with micro-observations. However, macro-observations are much more compelling if a coherent and plausible theory links the macro-patterns to a believable micro- foundation. In this section, I offer such a mechanism - military-economic competition - showing how deterministic macro-patterns could emerge from social micro-processes. This explanation - military-economic adap- tationism - can account for most of the claims of technological

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determinists. Military-economic adaptationism states that (CI) when there is sufficiently intense and prolonged economic and/or military com- petition, and given that (C2) technology enables new sociotechnical con- figurations, (C3) some of which confer advantages in economic/military competition, sociotechnical systems will evolve to become more adapted to success in the economic and/or military competition. This section will introduce the general theory of sociotechnical selec- tionism and show how mild constructivism and military-economic adapta- tionism can be regarded as special cases, differing on the empirical issue of what kind of selection process (cognitive/social vs. economic/military) is dominant. I then discuss military-economic adaptationism in more detail, showing how it could account for the deterministic claim that there exist macro-trends in sociotechnical evolution that are (largely) independent of human will.

Sociotechnical Selectionism

The claim that competition is the mechanism for technological determinism is a special case of the theory of selectionism (also called Universal Darwin- ism). Selectionism generalizes the mechanism at the heart of evolutionary biology: variation and differential proliferation. In a population of varied forms, if some forms proliferate (reproduce, survive, grow) because of some characteristic, then that characteristic will be more abundant in future popu- lations. Over time, these forms, called organisms in evolutionary biology and interactors more generally (Hull 2001), will fit better with - will appear as if designed for - the criterion that determines superior proliferation (the "selection environment").

This logic applies to sociotechnical entities: which exhibit variety ; for example, there are many styles of hammer, production strategy, and mili- tary, and new variants persistently arise. Sociotechnical entities proliferate at different rates (some negative) as a function of selection pressures ; cer- tain types of artifact, technique, and institution are reproduced, imitated, imported to other contexts, or expand in scale. Other types - most types - of artifact, technique, or institution die out. This proliferation is a function of cognitive, social, economic, military, ecological, and other selection pressures. Over the long run , the population of technologies will become more adapted to their selection environment: hammers become more effective, production strategies more productive, and militaries more powerful. Military-economic adaptationism is a special case of sociotech- nical selectionism that emphasizes the selection pressures associated with

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economic and military competition; military and economic competition seem to operate over longer time scales than cognitive and social selection processes, which may account for why deterministic claims are most com- mon in studies of longer time scales.

Mild social constructivism can also be thought of as a special case of sociotechnical selectionism in which the selection environment is primarily cognitive, social, or political. In fact, Pinch and Bijker (1987, 22; see also Bijker 1995, 51) explicitly proposed selectionism as the model for the Social Construction of Technology: "In SCOT the developmental process of a technological artifact is described as an alternation of variation and selection." Other historians and sociologists of technology have explicitly employed selectionist reasoning in their theories (Basalla 1988; Vincenti 1990; O'Connell 1992, and the many contributors to Ziman's (2003) edited volume Technological Innovation as an Evolutionary Process). In this model, cognitive and social processes are crucial for determining the differ- ential proliferation of ideas and technologies. Note that sociotechnical selectionism, just like evolution by natural selection, does not imply a linear evolution of forms (Pinch and Bijker refer to it as a "multidirectional model"); however, as discussed below, in Trends in Military-Economic Adaptationism subsection, it could give rise to trends. Selectionist reason- ing is also prominent in many other fields, including psychology (Campbell 1974), philosophy (Dennett 1995), political science, economics, archaeol- ogy (see below), and, of course, biology.

Military-economic Adaptationism

The theory of military-economic adaptationism applies when three condi- tions are present.

Condition 1 (military-economic competition): There is sufficiently intense and prolonged military and/or economic competition between groups of people, such that the outcome of the competition determines the ability of these groups to maintain and proliferate their ways of life.

The strength of economic or military competition varies by region and era and can be empirically evaluated. Therefore, the appropriateness of mil- itary-economic adaptationism as a theory of sociotechnical evolution will vary over time in a measurable way by the applicability of condition 1 . Var- iation in the intensity of military-economic competition can be exploited to study military-economic adaptationism (e.g., Turchin et al. 2013).

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Condition 2 (technology enables): Technology enables new socio- technical configurations.

This condition is probably the mildest definition of the effect of technol- ogy, and thus can be assumed to be true for almost all situations. It does not assume that technology "constrains" or has a particular "valence" or deter- ministically exerts effects of any kind on society. All that is required is that some technologies enable groups to do things that they otherwise could not.

Condition 3 (imperfection): The configurations enabled by new technology are sometimes superior to existing configurations for the selection environment.

This last condition is logically necessary to rule out the implausible sit- uation in which new technology cannot possibly provide an advantage. The extent to which condition 3 is true (the probability of a superior con-

figuration becoming feasible per unit time) affects the speed of sociotech- nical adaptation.

These conditions then support some implications.

Implication 1 (differential proliferation): All else equal, those groups who adopt configurations that convey economic or military

advantages ^vill proliferate, relative to those who do not.

Implication 2 (military-economic adaptation): Sociotechnical sys- tems will evòlve so as to be more adapted to the economic and/or mil- itary competitive environment.

Interestingly, we see the mechanism of economic and military competi- tion explicitly in the writings of technological determinists. Ellul (1962, 84) explains that la technique proliferates because it is powerful and that groups face an illusory choice over whether to adopt or reject la technique : either they adopt it or they will be defeated. Mumford (1962, 195) argues that societies pursued technical means because of economic and military com- petition. Similarly, economic historian Joel Mokyr (1990, 206) summarizes that "the struggle for survival [in Europe] guaranteed" that rulers had to accommodate themselves to economically beneficial technological advances. Mokyr explains that without competition, technological progress would probably have been willfully stopped long ago: "By and large, the forces opposing technological progress have been stronger than those striv- ing for changes" (p. 16). But, "as long as some societies remain creative,

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1062 Science , Technology, & Human Values 40(6)

others will eventually be dragged along" (p. 302). According to Mokyr, the "stronger" social forces opposed to technological progress have been defeated because, though they were proximally stronger, they competed against social groups that became more competitive because of their attitude toward technol-

ogy. In a competitive world, so long as some communities pursue profitable or

powerful technologies, all societies will eventually be "dragged along." The mechanism of military-economic competition is prominently theo-

rized in most fields that study the macroevolution of social systems. Many insights from economics rely on the concept of competition, most notably in the economics of innovation (Freeman and Soete 1997), evolutionary eco- nomics (Hodgson 2002; Nelson and Winter 1982), economic history (Mokyr 1990; North 1990), the two fundamental theorems of welfare eco- nomics, the idea of path dependence from increasing returns (Arthur 1994), and the justification of the rational actor assumption in competitive markets (Samuelson 1998). The prominent theoretical approach in international relations of structural realism asserts that international competition con- strains statesmen to pursue military-economic power, irrespective of their ultimate goals (Waltz 1979). Many scholars see military-economic compe- tition as the force that gave rise to large coherent political orders such as the state and nation-state (Carneiro 1970; Tilly 1992; Spruyt 1994; Thompson 2001; Turchin et al. 2013), and even to the altruism-promoting norms, insti- tutions, and genetically rooted social preferences that allowed humans to become such a successful cooperative species (Bowles and Gintis 2011). Emphasis on military-economic adaptationist processes can be found in all fields of social science that examine large-scale changes, such as history, sociology, anthropology, and archaeology (McNeill 1984; Sanderson 1990; Diamond 1997; Carneiro 2003; Wilson 2003; Richerson and Boyd 2004; Bowles and Gintis 201 1). In summary, military-economic adaptationist the- ories are prevalent in macro social science and are actively studied.

Military-economic adaptationism allows us to elaborate a prominent critique of some constructivist approaches to technology, that it ignores social structure, such as the asymmetric power of some groups over others (Russell 1986; Klein and Kleinman 2002). Military-economic adaptation- ism extends this critique by pointing out that when military-economic com- petition is severe, power goes to those groups who best adapt to the military-economic pressures.

Trends in Military-Economic Adaptationism

There is a third conditional implication of military-economic adaptationism.

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Implication 3 (trends): If over time the competitive environment con- tinues to select for more of some trait (such as energy intensiveness, functional differentiation, processor speed, explosive power), then the evolution of sociotechnical systems will exhibit trends in that trait.

One of the central differences between determinisi and constructivist

accounts of technological change is whether technology is seen as evol- ving in a linear or multidirectional way. The theory of sociotechnical selectionism makes clear that the directionality and linearity of evolution depends on the character of the selection process over time. Even when military-economic competition dominates, technological change need not exhibit trends, For example, though there seems to be a broad trend in his- tory toward larger polities and greater functional differentiation, certain technological innovations have reversed this trend: the innovation of iron weaponry in 1000-1200 BC made flatter social structures more competi- tive, reducing (for a time) the size of polities and functional differentiation (McNeill 1984, 13).

Trends in a selectionist system can arise if there is ongoing selection for the same trait over time. Whether there is, in fact, ongoing selection for the same trait in sociotechnical evolution, perhaps during particular peri- ods, is an open scientific question, as is the analogous question in evolu- tionary biology (McShea 1998). Military-economic adaptationism offers a mechanism by which certain trends could arise and moves us toward more productive theoretical and empirical questions: What kinds of selec- tionist processes give rise to trends? Were the selectionist processes that were present at particular periods of history the kind that would induce trends? Do we, in fact, observe these sociotechnical trends? Where are current selectionist processes likely to take us?

Vicarious Selection

One particularly useful theoretical development is the notion of vicarious selection , developed by Walter Vincenti (1990) and others. Vicarious selection is the process whereby a life-form tries to anticipate the external selection environment and preemptively adapt to it. Accurately doing so would convey a large advantage to the life-form. It would also accelerate the process of adaptation and disguise from the analyst the ultimate cause of the adaptation.

Vincenti offers the example of an aeronautics engineering team. Rather than implement each idea in a full-scale plane and then see how well it flies,

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1064 Science , Technology, & Human Values 40(6)

engineers test their ideas in simulated environments. These engineers first select their ideas about wing design based on how well the idea fits with their cognitive model of a good design; they then submit the idea to selec- tion by the group's understanding of good design; they then select wing designs based on performance in a wind tunnel. By simulating as closely as possible the actual selection environment, aeronautical engineers can more quickly and less expensively design the optimal wing shape. Ulti- mately, however, the wing will have to pass some external selection criteria, such as the ability to efficiently move a plane through the air so as to con- tribute to profitability or military efficacy. Similarly, any life-form will be more successful if it can accurately anticipate and adapt to the external selection environment.

This concept is useful because it shows how the external selection envi- ronment could influence the goals and values of an individual or group. A scholar who seeks to explain technological change using only the deci- sions, beliefs, values, and ideologies of groups will fail to see the prior structural causes of these decisions, beliefs, values, and ideologies. Soci- eties spend tremendous resources trying to develop more powerful mili- tary systems and more profitable economic enterprises. This obsession for power and profit has proximal causes in culture, ideology, institutions, and the preferences of individuals. But ultimately, this social commitment toward building powerful and profitable sociotechnical systems may be driven by the imperative for states and firms to survive and proliferate in a competitive environment. Given competition and enough time, groups that choose not to adapt to military-economic imperatives will be defeated, absorbed by more competitive groups, or will realize their peril and imitate more competitive groups. Many scholars argue that imitation is an important means by which sociotechnical components or systems proliferate (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Rogers 1995; Lynn 1996; Gold- man and Eliason 2003). When observed on a microscale, this decision to imitate others may appear willful or the product of human psychology or a particular culture; however, it would be a mistake to underestimate the underlying causal role of competitive pressures.

An apt example of vicarious selection of military and economic pres- sures comes from Thomas Hughes' history of electric systems. Hughes describes how the British systems of electric power before World War I were much smaller than those in the United States and Germany because "the British placed a high value on the power of local government" (p. 79). Under the imperative to improve efficiency during World War I, however, they were networked and made larger, contrary to "prevailing

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British political values" (Hughes 1987, 79). Hughes explains that "engi- neers and managers who, because of their experience and special compe- tence, were committed to smallness of scale nevertheless acknowledged the primacy of output when personal and national survival seemed to depend on it" (p. 285). This case illustrates how sociotechnical trends could arise counter to the wishes of society: the technology of energy pro- duction and distribution in Britain became larger, more centrally con- trolled, more complex and differentiated, despite the prevailing political views. The British chose to have a larger power system in the trivial sense that a victim chooses to give up his wallet at gunpoint. Another informative case comes from one of history's best examples of a society controlling its technological course: the Tokugawa period of Japa- nese history. In the sixteenth century, Japan had some of the most sophis- ticated firearms in the world (Perrin 1979, 25). Japan was unified during this period due in large part to the advantages conferred on larger warlords by firearms technology (Chase 2003, 184; Brown 1948). Following this uni- fication, internal and external military competition subsided, permitting elites greater control over their destiny: firearms technology was centralized and then largely eliminated (Perrin 1979), and interchange with foreigners was strictly controlled. A samurai-dominated social order persisted for over 200 years. This ended in 1853 when the military threat from foreigners could no longer be ignored. Commodore Perry, of the US Navy, violated Japan's strict seclusion policy with his four "black ships of evil" (Baruma 2004, 11) spewing smoke and mysteriously moving upwind without sails. Under the implicit threat of bombardment and a famine-inducing blockade (Samson 1963, 234), the Japanese made concessions. They observed the fate of China to colonial exploitation and their own powerlessness to repel Perry's ships. A debate and then civil war raged about how to respond. The individuals who emerged as the leaders of Japan had come to appreciate the necessity of learning from Western countries. They systematically observed foreign institutions and technologies and imitated those that seemed to give the foreigners their military power. Within merely a few decades, the Japanese radically transformed themselves - adopting many Western customs, institutions, and technologies - contrary to the values of the Japanese elite pre-1853. The Japanese chose well; whereas Japan's neighbors were colonized by Western powers, the Japanese were able to modernize on their own terms (Totman 2000, chap. 12; Sims 2001, chap. 1). But the Japanese chose this path in only a very limited sense; it is more accurate to say that the Japanese adapted to the military pressure

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1066 Science, Technology, & Human Values 40(6)

that they faced. Stark military-economic competition reduces our choice set to two options: adapt or be dominated.

Limits of and Issues in Military-Economic Adaptationism

Some caveats and complexities need to be discussed. This article is not arguing that military-economic competition is neces-

sary for technological determinism. As mentioned earlier, some features of technological determinism can plausibly arise simply from the effects, iner- tia, and unintended consequences of new technologies. What military-eco- nomic adaptationism offers is a plausible mechanism for many of the harder claims of technological determinism.

Military-economic adaptationism is not a complete theory of socio- technological change. The theory is only applicable to a limited set of questions and empirical domains, namely, those for which the conditions (and most importantly condition 1) apply. As stated by condition 1, mili- tary-economic adaptationism is most applicable when military-economic competition is severe. In the modern world, for example, military compe- tition is much less severe. Compared to a hundred or a thousand years ago, there is much less risk to groups of having their resources militarily con- quered. Groups (countries) today can afford to worry less about preparing for war and focus more on material consumption and other goals (Mueller 2007; Pinker 2011). We thus should expect military adaptationism to be less useful for understanding contemporary global changes in society and technology.

There are many kinds of "military-economic competition," such as interstate military competition, interstate economic competition, interfirm transnational economic competition, and within-state economic competi- tion. Each of these will have different implications for the evolution of society and technology. The selection processes that generate more deter- ministic outcomes are those whose rules are most given by nature, rather than by preferences, norms, culture, or law. Accordingly, military compe- tition between groups who don't share a culture or institutions would likely be the most deterministic. By contrast, economic competition within a well-regulated economy would be the least deterministic since it is most shaped by socially shaped preferences, norms, and law. Given severe economic competition, firms will still economically adapt, but the function determining success (the fitness landscape) is defined by fac- tors - norms, culture, taste, and law - that are more amenable to social control. So long as the rules governing economic competition are socially

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controlled, then so can be the processes of economic adaptation taking place beneath them. Military competition can also be regulated by social processes, as exem- plified by the modern taboo against the use of nuclear weapons and other norms about the proper conduct of war (Morrow 2014). Norms and other social limits on war are more likely to arise when the belligerents share a culture, and the advantages from violating a norm are not too beneficial. However, throughout most of history, military competition was always present (Gat 2006), and those social restraints that did arise were periodi- cally overrun during intense conflicts. In summary, the more we value the social control of history, the more we should seek to understand the conse- quences of different kinds of military and economic competition and to reg- ulate them accordingly. Just as there are many kinds of military-economic competition, so are there many other kinds of selection processes, such as cognitive, social, and ecological selection processes. Further, they can all operate simultaneously, at different levels, push in different directions, be dominant over different timescales, and interact with each other. For some questions, both construc- tivist and economic adaptationist theories will be necessary, as in the study of the evolution of advertising: firms compete to optimize the technology of socially constructing marketable desires. And, of course, agents are some- times able to modify the very rules of competition to favor them, as when firms lobby politicians for favorable legislation or victors of major wars construct a new regional order to favor their strengths. Adaptationist theory can accommodate these complexities, known in biology as niche construc- tion. Recall that selection pressures is simply a term for the, often complex, processes that determine differential proliferation; adaptiveness is an emer- gent property of these processes. However, there is a danger to adaptationist theorizing in such complex settings. When there is not a clear stable selection process and not a self- evident definition of adaptiveness, adaptationist theories become highly flexible, making it possible for scholars to construct unfalsifiable "just so stories" for almost any observed outcome. This is a problem for any flexible theory. The fact that a theory is flexible does not make it wrong, but it does require greater adherence to good scientific practice to mitigate the risk of "just so" explanations. To mitigate this risk, adaptationist scholars should try to: provide independent evidence of the character of the selection process, such as through process tracing whether the alleg- edly adaptive trait really did help the agent to proliferate; make predic- tions blind to the outcome and ideally out-of-sample so that there is no

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possibility of fitting the theory to the outcome; and otherwise articulate all testable implications and scope conditions of the theory so that other scho- lars can evaluate the theory using other evidence.

There is one last category of selection process that needs to be dis- cussed: ecological selection. Ecological selection involves the differential proliferation of groups according to how well they deal with toxins, patho- gens, extreme climate and climate change, and the need to sustainably acquire necessary resources. Customs, institutions, and ways of life that are not well adapted to the local environment can perish, either because they are abandoned or because the groups holding them perish (for some examples, see Diamond 2005). Such collapses for ecological reasons may be difficult to identify because they can "masquerade as military defeats" (Diamond 2005, 12).

Ecological selection differs from economic and military selection in an important way: success in economic and military competition is often much more sensitive to relative performance. If sociotechnical configuration A is slightly more ecologically adapted than B, then A will typically proliferate slightly faster (or be slightly less likely to perish). By contrast, if sociotech- nical configuration A is slightly more economically adapted (say, more effi- cient at producing a good), it will often proliferate much faster. In a perfectly competitive market, even the smallest difference in efficiency will be sufficient to determine which configuration proliferates and which per- ishes. Similarly, a slight absolute advantage in military performance can lead to a huge advantage in military contests. When groups compete with each other, rather than just "against nature," it is not enough to do well, one must continually do better .

Ecological selection tends to work on longer timescales than other selec- tion processes, and it is not uncommon for a way of life that is adapted to its social, economic, and military pressures to be maladapted to ecological pressures. For example, it is an open question how well modern civilization will fare in the face of climate change.

Conclusion

Who - If Anyone - Controls Technological Change? The answer, of course, is that it depends. From a selectionist point of

view, the degree of human agency depends on the character and intensity of selection and the character of variation. Neither extreme theoretical posi- tion - that of the radical social constructivists or the hard technological determinists - provides a satisfactory general account. There are contexts,

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usually found on smaller scales of analysis, in which the social constructi- vist insights are most valid. This is because, in the absence of economic and military competition, humans often have tremendous interpretive flexibility and freedom of choice. There are also contexts, usually found on larger scales of analysis, in which the claims of the technological determinists appear to be more valid. This is probably because military-economic com- petition directs the evolution of sociotechnical forms, severely limiting the ability of humans to control their destiny. Rather than judging theories by the degree of human agency that they allow, we should evaluate theories based on how well they explain their subject of study. Assuming that individuals "have choice" and assuming that humans have none are equally disempowering; we should be exploring the hard questions of how much and what kinds of agency humans have in particular circumstances, and why. Hard technological determinism dis- courages political action by claiming that technological change is inevita- ble; radical social constructivism similarly handicaps political action by ignoring the powerful competitive forces shaping history. Taking technological determinism seriously reopens a large set of research questions: How should we think about the effects of different kinds of technology? Can we better parse, evaluate, and understand the different processes and concepts related to technological determinism, such as tech- nological politics , technological momentum, the internal logic of develop- ment, unintended consequences, the magnificent bribe, technological progress , and military-economic adaptationisml Under what contexts are these processes more or less amenable to particular forms of social control? How have different societies regulated economic competition so as to achieve desired goals, and what can we learn from them? Can we build glo- bal cultures, institutions, and norms that will regulate military-economic competition to promote desired goals? Explicit use of selectionist theories helps reframe some important research questions. It helps illuminate the nature of human agency by drawing attention to the intensity of different selection pressures. It pro- vides a way of linking scholarship at different levels of analysis. It gives the study of technology a general theoretical framework that spans the social sciences and other fields. For constructivists, selectionist theory clarifies some questions and suggests directions for research. For con- structivist claims that generalize beyond the spatial-temporal scope of the study, scholars should ask themselves: (1) Are there longer run selection processes that constrain the ability of agents to socially construct their technologies? (2) How did the groups come to adopt their beliefs and

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1070 Science, Technology, & Human Values 40(6)

preferences, and in particular, could these be adaptations to perceived competitive pressures? Constructivist scholars could investigate the rich ways that groups harness and guide military-economic competition and explore why these efforts succeed or fail. Finally, constructivist scholars can investigate vicarious selection. What kinds of experiences are able to persuade a group that they need to adapt their technologies and social order? How do individuals and groups learn about and internalize exter- nal selection pressures?

Finally, military-economic adaptationism provides a solid micro- foundation for technological determinism. Humans are diverse and per- sistently generate new ways of living. Technology enables new forms of sociotechnical life. The proliferation and survival of forms of sociotech- nical life depend on how well adapted they are to different selection pressures. Over the long run, military-economic competition has exerted powerful selection pressures, promoting forms of sociotechnical life that are militarily powerful and economically productive. This could account for the long-run trends in sociotechnical systems toward being large, complex, energy-intensive, technical, functionally differentiated, and rationalistic. Selection for power and productivity, thus, may account for many of the macro-patterns observed by technological determinists.

Lynn White, famous for arguing that the stirrup gave rise to feudalism, wrote that technology "merely opens a door; it does not compel one to enter" (White 1962, 28). He was right. Technology opens the door. It is mil- itary-economic competition that drags us through.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Wiebe Bij ker, Shay David, Edward Hackett, Robert Hudspith, Jofish Kay, Ronald Kline, Manjari Mahajan, Lisa Onaga, Sergio Sismondo, Nauba- har Sharif, Janet Vertesi, and especially Judith Reppy for helpful comments, advice, and support.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or pub- lication of this article.

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Notes

1. Some examples of science and technology studies work that do engage these questions, largely emerging from neighboring disciplines, include Rosenkopf and Tushman (1994), Schroeder (2007), Radder (2009), Feenberg (2010), and Leonardi and Barley (2010).

2. A survey of leading economists (Initiative on Global Markets Economic Experts

Panel 2014[) found that more of them agreed (33 percent) than disagreed (20 per-

cent) with the statement that " information technology and automation are the central

reason why median wages have been stagnant in the US over the past decade."

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Author Biography

Allan Dafoe is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Yale University. He studies the causes of war and statistical methods, www.allandafoe.com.

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