Beach Haven

Bibliography
​Pickering, A. (1995). The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
 
Andrew Pickering takes a look at science as a practical work. While there are many philosophical arguments abounding in regards to science in theory, he examines social forces that shape and are shaped by the processes in scientific decision making.

Pickering offers some clarification around the word ‘mangle’. He realizes that this has a different meaning in different places. In America, for example, he notes that the word refers to completely messing something up from the original intention of the thing in question. In his sense mangle means, “practice, understood as the work of cultural extension” (original emphasis) (Pickering, 1995, p. 3). He equates ‘mangle’ with ‘change’. To Pickering, the practice of science is to change it from the theoretical to the real.

He uses some examples to show how process and outcomes don’t always follow original assumptions. One example includes experimentation using a bubble chamber. It includes “the extension of the mechanic field of science, specifically of the development of the bubble chamber as an instrument for experimental research in elementary-particle physics” (Pickering, 1995, p. 37). Pickering shares the history of decisions it took to get to a working model, and the modification of how ‘working’ was eventually defined. Since the chamber ultimately did not create the exact vacuum conceived, the vacuum it did achieve served to define what a bubble chamber is.

Other examples in the book include “hunting the quark,” “constructing quaternions,” and “numerically controlled machine tools.” Each comes with its own history of conception through realization with social compromises along the way. Finally, Pickering finishes with two chapters on conceptual arguments about the kinds of influences and ways to perhaps embrace or reconstruct them. In Chapter 6 for example, he puts some focus on scientific norms as espoused by Robert Merton which have been argued about since their inception. Pickering considers these norms (or any others) as ‘articulations’. 
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Bibliography
​Weintraub, S. (2014). A Christmas Far from Home: An Epic Tale of Courage and Survival During the Korean War. Boston: Da Capo Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

The Korean War was my father’s war. To be honest, it's a war I personally know little about. To be technical, the political powers of the west didn’t want to call it a war to avoid what inevitably happened, involvement by China. Instead, they called it a ‘police action’ that involved countries that signed on as United Nations forces. In this book, Stanley Weintraub looks at the beginning engagements, the rout of American forces from the Chosin reservoir, and the military leadership decisions that seemed to bungle the whole thing.

It was late fall in Korea and the weather was turning cold. General Douglas MacArthur (yes, the one from WWII) was in charge of all the forces in Asia. He conducted Korean operations from a comfortable hotel suite and offices in Tokyo. At first, spirits were high in his offices, and initially with troops on the ground as well. Everyone heard that the whole thing will be over by Christmas. The armies of North Korea seemed to be a pushover. There was no reason to think the Chinese would involve themselves. Unfortunately, there was plenty of intelligence to the opposite. The intelligence was ignored. The result was that American troops pushed north toward the Yalu River with little resistance, then found themselves nearly encircled by Chinese regulars and plummeting temperatures.

Weintraub’s work is a combination of historical facts about what happened, and editorial perspective on why things went the way they did. His descriptions of the war that wasn’t a war, the first war America didn’t win, are well written. The reader can see the whole thing play out both from the perspective of generals who rarely joined the ground troops, to the forces themselves dodging death as they made their way back from the Yalu to the relative safety south. The reader gets both the grit of up-close warfare, and the confusion and assumptions at upper levels that reflected an 'alternate reality’ as events unfolded.

Bibliography
Sclove, R. E. (1995). Democracy and Technology. New York and London: The Guilford Press.

​Reviewed by Michael Beach
 
In this work, Richard Sclove examines both various forms of democratic societies and how they approach incorporating technology, and he also looks at where these approaches tend to fail. At the end of the book, Sclove proposes his own suggestion of democratic methods that he feels would work best in a ever more international environment.

Two of the examples Richard Sclove regularly refers to are water provision in rural Spain and Amish farming communities. In the case of the Spanish towns, old systems were quickly upgraded to ‘modern’ water systems. Among the results were increase used of home laundry systems. Community spirit decreased over time as people did not gather at local streams for cleaning clothing. Likewise, gathering at well sites went away as manual retrieval in buckets we no longer necessary. The Amish farmer example, on the other hand, included community discussion on adding any technology. The goal of continued community interaction and cooperation is at the heart of each decision to add or not to add a particular technology. That is different than what many assume. Amish communities are often thought to technology-averse. Sclove argues this is untrue. He points to technologies adopted over many years by Amish communities. The key is whether the implementation would cause separation or isolation among community members.

Among other areas, Sclove reviews topics like the role of experts, international and local impacts of technical decisions, and how power dynamics influence and are influenced by technology. User influence on technical design choices within differing forms of democracy wraps up this examination followed by the author’s own recommendations. What Sclove calls “A New and Better Vision” (Sclove, 1995, p. 239) is laid out in an earlier chapter in the book. There are nine criteria (Sclove, 1995, p. 98) divided into five categories. Each category is elaborated on in separate chapters. The categories include: toward democratic community, toward democratic work, toward democratic politics, to help secure democratic self-governance, and finally to help perpetuate democratic social structures.

From the perspective of Richard Sclove, it is possible to have a democratic approach in selecting technology, even within societies that are less democratic. At the same time a democratic government does not imply the same principles are used to select which technologies any particular society will adopt. 
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