Technique, Techne, Technology
As part of a longer project about the state I've been working on, I have become interested in understanding the concept of technology. The question of the bigger project is whether the modern state can be understood as a technology - or at least as a specific deployment of techniques and technologies - of "rule" (let's leave that unspecified for a minute). But in order to get there, it is necessary to reach some clarity about this "technology" thing.
Two concepts appear to be important to understanding "technology": the concept of a technique and the concept of a techne or know-how.
A “technique” seems to me to be simply an algorithm or recipe for doing something. As such, it “exploits” some (possibly quite local and limited) regularity of the world to provide a relatively reliable way of achieving some end in some unspecified (but possibly quite limited) set of circumstances. Techniques do not need to be (and hardly ever are) foolproof: it just suffices that they do better than random muddling through (or than any other available recipe or algorithm) at achieving some end given the circumstances, and that they do so time and again, though perhaps not forever. (A technique that is so sensitive to changes in circumstances that it only works once or twice is no technique at all but rather a kind of “magic”).
This recipe or algorithm may be available in a variety of media (paper, memory, digital storage) with greater or lesser degrees of specificity and completeness, depending on the kind and amount of tacit knowledge that the prospective user of the technique brings in advance; so, for example, a cookbook intended for the expert cook will spend far less time explaining how to scale and fillet a fish or make sauce béarnaise than a cookbook intended for the novice cook. But they need not be polished recipes, unambiguous and shorn of any superfluous steps. A single recipe may, for example, have different uses, in which some steps that are superfluous for some purpose turn out to be essential for others; or the “superfluous” steps may not be known to be superfluous; or they may be relatively “inexpensive” in terms of energy or money, and prized for their aesthetic or otherwise social value. A technique is thus a kind of tool, related to some social network of purposes, some of which it serves more or less well, and depending for its successful utilization on the availability of more general forms of know-how that are able to “fill in the gaps” left in every recipe. We may thus speak of a techne or art (the classical unit of human know-how) as a set of techniques related to the achievement of some general end and undergirded by a great deal of poorly or un- articulated “tacit” knowledge.
Now, it seems to me that if a technique is merely an algorithm or recipe (and hence, in a certain sense, independent of its material embodiment), a technology, by contrast, is always a kind of embodied technique, a “machine.” A machine is an “implementation” – to use the terminology of computer science – in a material being or beings of an algorithmic recipe for achieving some end. The term “machine” here should be understood quite broadly: a book, a hammer, the power grid, are all examples of machines, and thus of technologies. In the process of implementation in a material being, however, the very nature of the technique is transformed.
It seems to me that two points of this transformation are worth noting. First, the kind of tacit (or explicit) knowledge required of a user of a machine is usually quite different, and often less demanding, than the kind of knowledge required of the user of a technique (you need to know very little about the algorithm of division to use a calculator, for example, though you do need to know other things). A technology thus may make a technique available to those who do not possess knowledge (but possess other things, such as for example money). Second, because technology is implemented in material beings, it normally harnesses the energies of the physical universe for human purposes, extending the power - in the broadest sense - of the naked human being, especially in the physical world.
Given these understandings of technique, techne and technology, I think one could conceive of the state as a kind of materialization of a wide variety of techniques of rule. But this would be something for another day. Do these understandings of technique, techne, and technology make sense?
Two concepts appear to be important to understanding "technology": the concept of a technique and the concept of a techne or know-how.
A “technique” seems to me to be simply an algorithm or recipe for doing something. As such, it “exploits” some (possibly quite local and limited) regularity of the world to provide a relatively reliable way of achieving some end in some unspecified (but possibly quite limited) set of circumstances. Techniques do not need to be (and hardly ever are) foolproof: it just suffices that they do better than random muddling through (or than any other available recipe or algorithm) at achieving some end given the circumstances, and that they do so time and again, though perhaps not forever. (A technique that is so sensitive to changes in circumstances that it only works once or twice is no technique at all but rather a kind of “magic”).
This recipe or algorithm may be available in a variety of media (paper, memory, digital storage) with greater or lesser degrees of specificity and completeness, depending on the kind and amount of tacit knowledge that the prospective user of the technique brings in advance; so, for example, a cookbook intended for the expert cook will spend far less time explaining how to scale and fillet a fish or make sauce béarnaise than a cookbook intended for the novice cook. But they need not be polished recipes, unambiguous and shorn of any superfluous steps. A single recipe may, for example, have different uses, in which some steps that are superfluous for some purpose turn out to be essential for others; or the “superfluous” steps may not be known to be superfluous; or they may be relatively “inexpensive” in terms of energy or money, and prized for their aesthetic or otherwise social value. A technique is thus a kind of tool, related to some social network of purposes, some of which it serves more or less well, and depending for its successful utilization on the availability of more general forms of know-how that are able to “fill in the gaps” left in every recipe. We may thus speak of a techne or art (the classical unit of human know-how) as a set of techniques related to the achievement of some general end and undergirded by a great deal of poorly or un- articulated “tacit” knowledge.
Now, it seems to me that if a technique is merely an algorithm or recipe (and hence, in a certain sense, independent of its material embodiment), a technology, by contrast, is always a kind of embodied technique, a “machine.” A machine is an “implementation” – to use the terminology of computer science – in a material being or beings of an algorithmic recipe for achieving some end. The term “machine” here should be understood quite broadly: a book, a hammer, the power grid, are all examples of machines, and thus of technologies. In the process of implementation in a material being, however, the very nature of the technique is transformed.
It seems to me that two points of this transformation are worth noting. First, the kind of tacit (or explicit) knowledge required of a user of a machine is usually quite different, and often less demanding, than the kind of knowledge required of the user of a technique (you need to know very little about the algorithm of division to use a calculator, for example, though you do need to know other things). A technology thus may make a technique available to those who do not possess knowledge (but possess other things, such as for example money). Second, because technology is implemented in material beings, it normally harnesses the energies of the physical universe for human purposes, extending the power - in the broadest sense - of the naked human being, especially in the physical world.
Given these understandings of technique, techne and technology, I think one could conceive of the state as a kind of materialization of a wide variety of techniques of rule. But this would be something for another day. Do these understandings of technique, techne, and technology make sense?
posted by Xavier Marquez @ 10:36 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
This is a good question, and I am not entirely sure I have a good ansewer at this point. I will try to post something more extensive a little later. I think, however, that many of those things you mention (various institutions such as a legislative body, a system of law enforcement, etc.) can be understood as either technologies or techniques, and hence as "machine-like."
The examples I specifically had in mind were things like the systems of surveillance and categorization that have been studied by people like Foucault, Bordieu, and James Scott.
My response to your last point - on the fact that many technologies represent possibilities that were simply not available to human beings before - is that yes, this is true: many technologies represent the materialization of merely imagined techniques. ("Take an electron beam, deflect it with the help of a magnetic field and shine it on a surface of a phosphorescent material and voila, you have television"!) The point is that the technique which is implemented as a particular machine is capable of many different such implementations (consider the varieties of television sets, or of electoral systems for that matter).
Is political knowledge rendered unnecessary by the technologization of the state? Well, military knowledge, for one thing, has suffered tremendous changes: the invention of close order drill de-skilled the lower ranks of the soldiery, for example, and divided armies into commanders with specialized managerial skills and soldiers with "mechanical" skills. (This has in turn changed quite a bit in the moder age).
But the problem is certainly complicated. I guess I was trying to point to the fact that once created the machinery of the state is responsive to command even if the ruler does not have the knowledge that would be necessary to create it. But this perhaps is a subject for another post.
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