Does Silicon Determine State?

Gunnar Trumbull’s Silicon and the State (2004) explores French innovation policies in encounter with the rise of new information and communication technologies in the late 90s. Being trained in business administration and political economy, Trumbull mainly focuses on the political and economical infrastructure of rising technologies in France and how these technologies’ demand for radical innovation results in a “revolution in innovation policy” (1). He shows that contrary to the commonly-held view that the success of new innovative technologies is best (or only) achieved by a liberal market, France has created a working alternative model of innovation policy that has strong social commitments and values economic and social equity. So Trumbull argues that the French case offers at least “some preliminary evidence” that the new information and communications technologies may be actually compatible with state activism (100).

For me, the significance of Trumbull’s book is in its relation to two important themes in philosophy of technology: technological determinism and politics of technology. With regards to technological determinism, the French encounter with information and communication technologies shows that technology does not dictate or determine the development of social structure and cultural values. Although it was thought that ICT would result in a convergence of policies and institutions towards liberalism, that was not what happened in France. In fact, France managed to adhere to its social value of economic fairness and respond to the new situation with more rather than less government intervention. That being said, the fact that new market institutions and policies had to emerge in France in response to ICT’s need for risky entrepreneurship shows that technology does influence political and social structure and even cultural values (e.g., the emergence of a culture of risk-taking). It’s just that the relationship between technology and society is not a deterministic and one-sided simple causal relation.

The other theme that I find interesting here has to do with the relationship between technology and politics. Authors like Langdon Winner have claimed that technology is inherently political, or that artifacts have politics that is characteristic of them and comes with them no matter what. I think the history presented in this book offers a nice counterargument to this claim. Although ICT resulted in new innovative policies in France, it did not bring with it quite the same kind of politics that it had in the US or other countries. Rather, the French government found a way to help high-tech entrepreneurship while at the same time keeping the values that distinguish French from American politics. This shows that the politics that comes with a technology is not ‘inherent’ in it, but is shaped by many different factors including a society’s values and norms.

Trumbull, Gunnar. Silicon and the State: French innovation policy in the Internet age. Brookings, 2004.