Conference Agenda

Since Langdon Winner sparked debate on the politics of artefacts (Winner, 1980), authors in philosophy of technology have elaborated competing theories regarding the politics of technology. Although their conceptions differ, they share a similar understanding of politics (and ethics) as an intrinsic property of artefacts, which they examine as standalone objects, often abstracted from their contexts (Verbeek 2006; Feenberg 1999; Latour 2007). In my paper, I aim to reintegrate technology into the analysis of social relations and to develop a grounded, materialist understanding of the interplay between technology, institutions and the power relations they participate in.

Adopting an empirically informed approach to philosophy, this paper seeks to develop this political-philosophical understanding of technology and its politics by examining the history of the computerization of the French National Health Insurance Fund (CNAM) between 1963 and 1979. It explores the dynamic of joint development of French healthcare institutions and their technological tooling, investigating how technology participated in shaping power relations and policy orientations in healthcare.

My empirical research draws on archival material concerning the computerization of the CNAM, collected by its director Christian Prieur (1968-1979) and preserved at the French National Archives (Archives Nationales, boxes 20080146/6-20080146-8). Although computerization began as an initiative by individual agencies in the early 1960s, the first general “Computerization Plan” coincided with a moment of important institutional transformation and a governmental effort to instigate the development of a French a computer industry, whose first experimentation ground and market was public administration, including welfare institutions (Mounier-Kuhn 1994).

The inquiry highlights how a “national configuration” emerged from a prolonged political and industrial conflict surrounding computers, their promises, and their applications, which involved healthcare agencies, the welfare ministry, industry, and trade unions. After years of struggle, the ministry and the computing industry successfully imposed their vision of a centralized and integrated computer system, aimed primarily at improving bureaucratic efficiency, thereby excluding alternative conceptions of computers. However, initial malfunctions and significant resistance in welfare institutions led to the system’s replacement by a “Reconfigured Version” developed in 1975. This new version’s functioning, coupled with vehement political support, contributed to its success, which in turn reinforced these actors’ dominance within the institution. Despite trade unions’ efforts to promote alternative conceptions of informatics and advocate for technological democracy, this configuration favored the development of an even more centralized and integrated technological infrastructure, associated with state control over the institution.

In dialogue with Andrew Feenberg’s notion of “technological hegemony” (Feenberg 1999; Kirkpatrick 2020), this case allows me to develop a critical, materialist approach to the politics of technology. It highlights the importance of power relations in the institutional “definition” of technology (in this case, computers, their promise and institutional potential) and conversely emphasizes the role of technology in reinforcing pre-existing power relations, effectively naturalizing social relations by technological means (in this case, a centralized conception of computer systems favored a centralized welfare system under the control of the state). Finally, this critical and agonistic conception of the role of technology challenges discursive and procedural approaches to technological democracy (Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe 2001; Marres 2012; Latour 2004), emphasizing the materiality of institutional conflict around technology and the importance of maintaining viable technological alternatives. It thereby promotes a more materialist and radical conception of technological democracy, attuned to the institutional setting of technology and the power relations it takes part in.

Bibliography:

Callon, Michel, Pierre Lascoumes, and Yannick Barthe. 2001. Agir Dans Un Monde Incertain. Essai Sur La Démocratie Technique. Paris: Editions du Seuil.

Feenberg, Andrew. 1999. Questioning Technology. Abingdon: Routledge.

Kirkpatrick, Graeme. 2020. Technical Politics. Andrew Feenberg’s Critical Theory of Technology. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Latour, Bruno. 2004. Politiques de Nature. Comment Faire Entrer Les Sciences En Démocratie. 2ème ed. Paris: La Découverte & Syros.

———. 2007. “Le Groom Est En Grève. Pour l’amour de Dieu, Fermez La Porte.” In Petites Leçons de Sociologie Des Sciences, 56–76. Paris: La Découverte.

Marres, Noortje. 2012. Material Participation - Technology, the Environment, and Everyday Publics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Mounier-Kuhn, Pierre-Eric. 1994. “Le Plan Calcul, Bull, et l’industrie Des Composants: Contradictions d’une Stratégie.” Revue Historique 591 (3): 123–54.

Verbeek, Peter-Paul. 2006. “Materializing Morality: Design Ethics and Technological Mediation.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 31 (3): 361–80.

Winner, Langdon. 1980. “Do Artefacts Have Politics?” Daedalus, 1980.

The sudden and brief declaration of martial law on the night of December 3, 2024, in the Republic of Korea, marked a dramatic political regression. Few imagined such an event could occur in a stable democratic society supported by advanced technologies and industries. However, we must critically examine the connection between modern technology and this political disturbance. I argue that the relationship is deeper than commonly assumed.

First, ironically, this event is tied to conspiracy theories fueled by advanced technologies. The vast possibilities enabled by modern technology have led the public to embrace conspiracy theories, believing that almost anything can happen without their knowledge. Even the Korean President subscribed to the idea of election fraud, allegedly caused by a distorted electronic counting system. He was convinced that the evidence could be found on the server of the Central Election Management Office.

Second, this incident was partly the outcome of online recommendation systems that provide targeted content to individual users. When fake news, spread with various motives, interacts with such mechanisms, many individuals develop extreme biases. This issue cannot be solely blamed on propagandists. The bias was produced as a result of selective content consumption driven by user analysis and algorithmic personalization.

Third, those involved in orchestrating the martial law used untraceable social networking services (SNS) for communication. Even prior to this event, many Korean politicians relied on Telegram, an untraceable SNS platform, for the same reasons as criminals. It is alarming that services designed to circumvent transparency are readily available in the market and are used by politicians and public servants without hesitation.

The close relationship between technology and this incident suggests that similar events could occur elsewhere. Indeed, extreme political polarization fueled by fake news and conspiracy theories is already prevalent in the United States and Europe. As these trends gain influence, the foundation of democratic systems becomes increasingly fragile.

Two solutions are urgently needed to break this vicious cycle. The first is technological literacy. A basic understanding of technology and its mechanisms can help people avoid falling victim to nonsensical conspiracy theories. The second is the responsible and transparent use of technologies. While privacy must be protected, the development and use of technologies such as untraceable SNS platforms should be carefully regulated.

Before we are hurried into offering narrow, instrumental analyses and taking positions on whether particular technological interventions are beneficial or harmful, or developing a framework to guide adoptions and regulations, we need to come to terms with the overarching fact that it is the self-destructive modern industrial system/form of life that has laid to waste the modern lifeworld. Today, even the most basic necessities—clean air, water, soil, and food—have become a luxury. Add to this the strange aimlessness of accelerated transformations, the epidemic of loneliness, the mental health crisis, and an absence of a sense of belonging and community, and we see the basic coordinates of existence tearing at the seams. It is, therefore, in this context that the question concerning technology must be raised to understand the epistemological and metaphysical presuppositions that inform our current technological/engineering design, which is central to the possibility of imagining an alternative, sustainable form of life.We face two opposing responses to the present crisis: scattered experiments of small-scale sustainable communities working with convivial technologies (Illich 1973), emphasising the notions of skill, agency, meaning, community, rootedness, and ecological limits (Weil, 2002), and a euphoric transhumanist vision that seeks to leverage NBIC convergence to exert greater control over both external and internal nature, aiming for a technological utopia of abundance, leisure, and play (Bastani, 2020). This paper seeks to understand the differences in the concepts of labor, work, community, visions of the good life, and what it means to be human that guide these two visions of technological culture. The goal is to flesh out what is at stake in our choices.Furthermore I argue that changes in technological design must not only be critiqued in terms of the political bias they embody (Feenberg, 2002) but must also be understood as sites marking transformations in epistemes, which make certain forms of life possible while rendering others unviable (Naydler, 2018). I would like to explore whether Feenberg's (1992) framework of critical theory of technology, which positions technological design as the locus of political struggle, can be mobilized to argue for a radically different basis for technological design—one based on fundamentally different epistemological and metaphysical presuppositions than those of the Enlightenment. In this regard I will consider whether the various argument for crafts as a viable alternative mode of production holds any possibility in envisioning a different technological framework for sustainable innovation.