Technical Fouls

What is it that shapes the direction of technological progress in advanced industrial societies? Is it science? Technology itself? Or is it something even more powerful and all-encompassing like power or money or politics? John Kurt Jacobsen addresses this topic by investigating how contemporary democratic capitalist states govern the development and deployment of their scientific and technological resources. He examines the interaction of ideology profits and power and their combined effect upon technology policy in democracies.The ?social function of science? has been a contentious area of scholarly study throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Although the book focuses mainly on the United States for the sake of instructive comparison it also studies technological development of other societies including the former Soviet Union and China. Some competing accounts of technical change across the borders include laissez faire cultural and neo-Marxist markets. In fact with regard to laissez faire markets even to inquire if science has a social function is to deviate from the appropriate images of economic development. What is always politically at stake is who will rule the next stage in production due to each swing in technology which will in turn be associated with a new structure of control. Most recently the microchip revolution and cyberspace are the most highly publicized candidates for the next upswing in technology?and thus the next new structure of control.The explanatory focus of the book is on ideology or on ideas about how technology works and should work and the three key areas of policy contention discussed are industrial development military uses and the environment. Students and scholars of science technology and sociology should find this book useful in coming to terms with the fundamental questions underlying the development of technology today.