The social dimension and impact of engineering
Design decisions distribute costs, benefits and possibilities before anyone uses the product. That is why the designer is not a neutral executor.
01No artifact is socially neutral
A comfortable idea says that technology is a neutral tool and that everything depends on how it is used. It is partly true and, taken literally, false: design decisions distribute possibilities. A device that can only be repaired at the official service center, a platform that decides which content is seen first, or a machine that requires one operator fewer are already distributing power, work and money before anyone uses it “well” or “badly.”
Langdon Winner raised it in 1980 with a question that stuck: Do artifacts have politics? His answer is yes, in two ways: some are deliberately designed to produce a social effect, and others demand, by their very nature, a certain form of organization —a nuclear power plant requires a control and security structure that a solar panel on a roof does not need—.
Technological determinism: technology advances on its own and society adapts. It explains little and
removes responsibility.
Instrumentalism: it is just a neutral tool. It ignores that the design already contains decisions.
Social construction of technology: the social groups involved —users, manufacturers,
the State, workers— shape which technology is developed and which falls by the wayside. It is the most useful for
thinking about the engineer’s role, because it gives back the capacity to decide.
02First-, second- and third-order effects
Almost no important technology produces only the effect it was designed for. It is best analyzed in layers:
What the technology does directly, and which was in the design goal.
What changes in practices and in organization once use becomes widespread.
Deep social transformations, which usually appear years later and which nobody was seeking.
Choose a technology and open the layers one at a time. Before opening the next one, it pays to venture aloud what might be there.
03Assess the impact beforehand, not afterwards
There is a discipline for this, technology assessment, and a handful of questions that any project should be able to answer:
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Who wins and who loses? | The benefits and the costs rarely fall on the same people |
| Who decides? | If those affected do not take part, the rejection comes later and costs more |
| What happens if it fails? | It is not the same for a toy to fail as for a ventilator or a traffic light |
| Is it reversible? | The less reversible, the more caution it demands: this is the precautionary principle |
| What alternatives were discarded? | Every technical choice closes off paths; it pays to know which ones |
| Who is left out? | Accessibility, cost, connectivity, language: a solution that excludes 20% is not finished |
In engineering, risk is calculated as probability times consequence, but socially what also weighs is who bears it, whether it is voluntary and whether it is reversible. A small risk imposed on others is tolerated far less than a larger one taken on by choice. Ignoring that difference is the cause of many conflicts between technically correct projects and the communities where they are installed.
04Cases where the technical and the social cannot be separated
- Electronic voting. An apparently technical problem —counting votes faster— that involves secrecy, verifiability, auditing and public trust. The Argentine debate of recent years showed that the central objections were not about speed but about whether an ordinary citizen can verify the result without trusting an expert. It is a textbook case: the technical answer depends on which values are chosen as priorities.
- Free-to-air digital television. Choosing a standard —European, Japanese-Brazilian or American— was not just a modulation decision: it defined the local industry, patents, the cost of receivers and content policy.
- Automation and employment. Every job that a system automates reorganizes work. The engineer’s question is not only whether it can be automated, but which tasks are redistributed and what training is needed.
- Accessibility. A screen reader, a digital hearing aid or a communication device for people without speech expand rights. And conversely: a touch-only interface leaves out anyone who cannot see. Universal design proposes thinking from the start about the diversity of users, instead of adapting afterwards.
- Unequal connectivity. A public service that goes digital without considering where there is no coverage or devices turns an advance into a barrier.
05The responsibility of the designer
Something practical follows from all of the above: the person who designs is not a neutral executor. They choose materials, margins, safety levels, what gets documented and what does not, what can be repaired, what data is collected and who can access it. Each of those decisions has consequences for third parties who will never read the schematic.
That does not mean the engineer decides alone or carries the whole weight: it means their technical opinion is part of the social decision and that staying silent is also a decision. The professional ethics developed in the profession in Argentina and professional ethics puts that in writing.
06Activities
Take a project from your degree program and answer the six questions of section 3 in writing. Identify at least one second-order effect that was not in the initial goal.
Research a case of a technically viable technology that did not take hold —Betamax, the magneto-optical disc, 3D TV— and reconstruct which social and economic groups tipped the balance. It helps show that “the best one” does not win on its own.
Redesign the interface of a laboratory device so that it can be used by a blind person or by someone with reduced mobility in their hands. List which hardware and firmware changes would be needed and how much they would cost.
07Ideas worth revisiting
- “Technology is neutral, it depends on the use.” The design already contains decisions that distribute costs and benefits.
- “Technical progress is inevitable.” Many viable technologies were abandoned and others prevailed for economic or political reasons, not because they were better.
- Believing that social effects are “a topic for another course.” They show up in concrete design decisions.
- Confusing acceptance with participation: announcing a decision already made is not consulting.
- Thinking of accessibility as an add-on at the end, when it is much cheaper if it is considered from the start.
08Self-assessment
What does Winner maintain when he says that artifacts have politics?
That some are designed to produce specific social effects and that others, because of their scale or their risk, require certain forms of organization and control.
Give an example of a second-order effect of the cell phone.
For example, the disappearance of the habit of agreeing in advance on a place and a time to meet: coordination came to happen on the fly.
Why is an imposed risk resisted more than a voluntary one?
Because the social perception of risk includes who decides and who bears it, not only the probability and the magnitude of the harm.
What is the precautionary principle?
That in the face of potentially serious or irreversible harm, the lack of full scientific certainty must not be used as an excuse for not taking action.
What does universal design mean?
Designing from the outset so that the product can be used by the widest possible diversity of people, without the need for later adaptations.
09Further reading
- Langdon Winner. The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. University of Chicago Press, 1986 (Spanish edition: “La ballena y el reactor,” Gedisa). It includes the essay “Do Artifacts Have Politics?”, the text that gave order to this discussion.
- Hernán Thomas and Alfonso Buch (eds.). Actos, actores y artefactos. Sociología de la tecnología. Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 2008 (in Spanish). An Argentine textbook of social studies of technology, with local cases.
- Wiebe Bijker and Trevor Pinch. The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts. Social Studies of Science, 1984 (Spanish translation in Actos, actores y artefactos, UNQ). The founding text of the SCOT approach (social construction of technology), with the case of the bicycle.
- Ruth Schwartz Cowan. More Work for Mother. Basic Books, 1983. How household appliances, which promised to free up time, ended up redefining domestic work. A classic on unintended consequences.