In Thinking about Technology, Joe Pitt aims for a primarily epistemological understanding of technology which he believes has to precede social criticisms of technology. He starts thinking about technology by making a distinction between tools and their use. He casts doubt on the commonsense conception of technology as a tool and offers a more complicated definition. According to Pitt, if something can be used to achieve a goal, it is a tool, but it should not be called technology until it is actually used. Notice that what Pitt means by tool is not restricted to mechanical tools, but includes everything that can be used for achieving a goal. For instance, social mechanisms and organizations are also considered tools since they can be used for achieving goals and, in so being used, they can become technologies. To be more accurate, he claims that technology consists in purposeful and goal-directed use of tools by humans. That is why he defines technology as ‘humanity at work.
Pitt accompanies this definition with a model in order to schematize the complexity and pervasiveness of technology. This model is composed of three components: a decision-making process, a tool-making (or tool-using) process, and a rational assessment feedback of the consequences that follow. According to this model, decisions about technology are made in light of the knowledge available to us at the time in addition to our values and goals. Then, a decision is made about making or using a tool in order to achieve a goal or solve a problem. The consequences of this course of action are then observed and rationally assessed, resulting in further knowledge, which then feedbacks into further decision makings. What Pitt means by rational assessment is simply learning from experience.
One nice aspect of Pitt’s model and definition is that it shows the concept of technology is too broad to cover a meaningfully particular and special class of things. As Pitt rightly points out, many human activities (e.g., science) that are not often thought of as technology fall under this definition. This exhibits how it is futile to talk about technology simpliciter and analyze or criticize it as if it is one thing. Pitt suggests that we should instead evaluate and philosophize about specific technologies independently.
Another interesting aspect of Pitt’s proposal is the distinction he makes between tools and using tools. Although I agree that there is a difference between a product and the process of using it, I believe there is something misleading about how Pitt sets up this distinction. He seems to be suggesting that tools are completely independent from their uses and in other words they can be used in any manner that the users will. This however makes me wonder how Pitt would distinguish between tools and objects. Saying that tools can be used to achieve a goal would not do, since all objects seem to satisfy this criterion too. I believe what is distinctive about tools is that they have one or more functions, or ways that they are supposed to be used. That is to say, there is a intimate connection between a tool and how it is used, which should not be ignored when thinking about the metaphysical and epistemological character of technologies.
In chapter 4 of “thinking about Technology,” Pitt starts a discussion of dissimilarities between scientific and technological knowledge as well as those between scientific and technological explanation. He argues that central issues regarding scientific knowledge (such as incommensurability or justification) do not translate directly to counterpart issues in technological knowledge. Similarly, the concept of technological explanation does not seem to bear a parallel comparison with scientific explanation. Pitt uses the Deductive-Nomological theory of explanation in philosophy of science to show that a scientific explanation accomplishes its goal by causally linking the phenomenon to be explained to a universal generalization (a scientific law) whose justification has already been established. He goes on to claim that if his definition of technology as humanity at work is correct, then technological laws would be generalizations about people and their relations. But then he notes that social sciences have had difficulties with formulating universal laws about people and their use of tools, which leads him to conclude that instead of technological explanations we need to turn our attention to technical explanations.
Pitt describes technical explanations as ones that are concerned with particular technological artifacts and seek an understanding of particular events in terms of other specifics rather than universal law. He counts three different types of technical cases that call for explanation: (1) when a technology fails; (2) when someone wants to know how a technology does what it does; and (3) when a technology leads to unintended consequences (which may be desirable or undesirable). He claims that neither of these cases can be accounted for in universal terms. In explaining the failure of a bridge or the blowup of a reactor, for instance, what is needed is a list of specific contributing factors, not a generalization over them. He argues that because the quest for a specific technical explanation is not made in a vacuum, accounting for particular technical phenomena in terms of other particular technical phenomena does not lead to an infinite regress, and usually a citation of neighboring factors in the causal link is good enough to answer the question at hand.
My main source of unhappiness with this account concerns the way Pitt distinguishes between technological and technical explanations. He describes the difference in whether the account sought is universal or specific. However, the three types of technical explanation that he counts and the examples he uses suggest that the difference is not just in whether the account is general or specific, but also in the kind of phenomena that it aims to explain. Whereas technological explanations are sociological or psychological explanations that concern why humans behave in a certain way when dealing with technology, ‘technical’ explanations seem to be mostly focused on why something of purely technical nature happened (e.g., physical failure of a bridge or the turning on of a light bulb, but not satisfaction or dissatisfaction of users with a technology). I am not claiming that Pitt intentionally excludes sociological phenomena from his conception of technical explanation. My complaint is merely that he does not make it clear enough that technical explanations (if they are to differ with technological explanations only in their specificity) are also primarily concerned with humanity at work and hence with people and their relations, not with what is considered ‘technical’ in every-day use of the term.
Making such a clarification may have interesting implications for Pitt’s classification of the phenomena that call for technical explanation. For instance, if the notion of ‘technological failure’ in this classification becomes understood in a broader sense that includes not only technical failures of bridges sand reactors but also failure of a more social nature (such as the failure of picturephone to win its user’s interest and adoption), it becomes clear that cases of technological ‘success’ would also need explanation and have to be included in Pitt’s classification. After all, the positive response of users to a technology can equally be a case of something ‘going wrong’ and should not be assumed to be a desirable and unproblematic phenomenon that does not call for further assessment and adjustment.
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