Beach Haven

Bibliography
​Green, Venus. 2001. Race on the Line: Gender, Race, and Technology in the Bell System, 1880-1980. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

Venus Green chronicles telephone operator employment over a century. In the early days of telephony, ‘Ma Bell’ specifically defined telephone operators as female and have a voice and demeanor that was ‘white lady’. That persona was defined by white men who were in charge of the organization. It was less about who the person was than about her mother-like persona with a white-sounding accent. A certain education was also expected since they were often tasked with answering customer questions.

Over time, white women began to move into other roles such as administrative jobs. As a result, Bell downgraded the description of operators, in part to avoid unionization. As this transition was happening, self-dialing was introduced to larger communities which caused automation to replace the human operators. The quicker this automation trend proliferated, the lower salaries became for remaining operators. By the end of the period in the book title, all human operator employment stopped.

The obvious themes were about sexist views of job requirements. Men were managers and engineers. Women were operators. The assumption was that engineering required more physical and intellectual capacity. As more valued administrative jobs opened up to women, the second theme was about race and how the jobs identified as lower on the hierarchy then became associated with women of color. Eventually, even these lower-tiered jobs disappear when they were replaced with automation. The trend seems obvious as described in this book, and during the time period covered, white male dominated management would not have seen this as an issue as American society would today.
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Bibliography
​Latour, Bruno. 1996. Aramis or the Love of Technology. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press.

Review by Michael Beach
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If you’ve ever heard the phrase ‘a solution looking for a problem’ that is the gist of this case study. Bruno Latour walks the read through the idea of creating a new sort of mass transit train in Paris, France. Aramis was an experimental commuter train that was not a train. The project was to form trains from train cars that were not attached to each other. Rather, each car would travel independently of others. Whenever one car approached another on the same track in the same direction, they would communicate with each other and travel like a traditional train but remaining unattached. Each car was small and was to hold only four riders. Given each car’s independent pickup and drop-off location, their routes would connect and disconnect with other equally independent cars.

Latour takes the reader through a project that lasted several decades and never successfully became more than a proof of concept with a handful of cars on an unconnected test track. Depending who was in power at the federal level, the Aramis project varied in funding and progress. People involved were excited about the technical idea then gradually became disillusioned. Others followed later with a similar pattern. Its failure was blamed on everything from lack of vision to the shortcomings of the technical state of the art of the time. Latour also shares how the design itself shifted. The car sizes changed, slowly increasing to look more like a typical train car. The independent start and stop locations became are stations, more like traditional train stations, though greater in number than the normal trains.

In Bruno Latour’s examination of a commuter train project in Paris, France, social forces are examined and their effect on a technical project that eventually was stopped through similar social forces. One example was changing the idea of a train car that held only four people. It became apparent that this approach could lead passengers to become victims of crime. If just a few strangers happened to be on the same car, there would be fewer witnesses for criminals to concern themselves with. That risk led to ever growing numbers of intended passengers. This was a form of scope creep based on a social concern. The result was lower efficiency and less benefit as compared to the traditional train system.

Bibliography
​Lampland, Martha, and Susan Leigh Star, . 2009. Standards and Their Stories: How Quantifying, Classifying, and Formalizing Practices Shape Everyday Life. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press.
 
Reviewed by Michael Beach

Convention is the word of this book. The various chapter authors consider different standards of measurement we tend to take for granted. How did we choose one length, or weight, or electrical measurement over another? In fact, standards are still not really standard. Ask anyone who totes along an electrical plug converter when they travel internationally.

One area I found surprising is the chapter by Steven Epstein that relates to the ‘standard human’. I had not idea, but when dealing with medical research or treatment the world of health has set categories of humans. In reality, we are each different and are part of a mix and continuum of humanity, each with unique DNA. No one prognosis or treatment is best for all, so the medical community sort of does it work considering clumps of humans to get the symptoms and treatments mostly right most of the time.

There are a few standards examples reviewed from my profession, including metadata and ASCII definitions. One of the jokes in the industry of communications technology is that standards are so helpful because there are so many to choose from. The implication being that with so many different standards to select from, there really isn’t a ‘standard’.
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Bibliography
Woodward, C. Vann. 1974. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. 3rd. London, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

​Review by Michael Beach
 
Although the idea of so-called Jim Crow laws is associated with a narrow time period in the southern states of the US, in fact, ideas of segregation of the races (particularly black and white) were (and maybe still are) around for much longer. Woodward makes some interesting arguments by separating segregation from slavery, racial violence, and geographic location.

Early on in the book, Woodward describes ‘southern history in stochastic terms. “These breaks in the course of Southern history go by the names of slavery and secession, independence and defeat, emancipation and reconstruction, redemption and reunion” (Woodward 1974, 3-4). He shares interesting examples of time such as reconstruction when people of both races interacted together in the south in pretty much every public setting. Once Jim Crow laws began to be enacted mandating so-called ‘separate but equal’ facilities, white attitudes toward black people changed. He acknowledges that violence was present all along. For example, lynchings were not uncommon prior to Jim Crow enactment, and continued throughout.

Another perspective Woodward shares is that during the 1960s when many laws were causing Jim Crow to be officially demolished and mandatory desegregation took place, violence rose in both races. Once Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, there was a rise in black nationalist movements that ironically encouraged segregation again, though this time it was advocated more from African Americans, and less from whites.

The geographic question is one other area Woodward explores. He shares examples of times when integration was actually practiced more openly in the South, and although northern laws did not demand it, there was effective segregation in the North through discriminatory practices and attitudes that had no legal check. Finally, Woodward notes how there still are examples of economic segregation today. Though not codified, in practicality economic disparity has a similar effect as legally sanctioned segregation.

Given this edition was published in 1974, I wonder how Woodward would see things today. For example, the concern in some inner-city neighborhoods over the fallout of ‘gentrification’ may be increasing segregation again through economic strata. Working in downtown Washington DC for nearly ten years at this point, I have witnessed gentrification firsthand. The difference in predomination by one race as opposed to another in terms of population is notable. In places the ‘line’ is as direct as one city block of modern luxury apartments next to another of mostly aging row houses.

Bibliography
​Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Review by Michael Beach

Bruno Latour, among other things, was a French sociologist of science. This specific work was originally published in French in 1991. In the field of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) he is among the canonical authors. Depending on one’s philosophical bent, society, at least western society, finds itself in either a modernist or post-modernist world. The basic argument of Latour, as the title hints, is that neither is true. We are not modern in the sociological sense, and having never been so, we are also not post-modern.

Latour shares many definitions that have surfaced in explaining modernism. Latour points to the pattern in such definitions as comparative between ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’. In this approach there is a winner and loser as modern supplants ancient. He argues, however, such arguments don’t reveal whether the new defeats the old or if it just brings past revolution “to fruition” (Latour 1993, 10). One aim of this work is to take on “the task of studying scientists and politicians in tandem since no central vantage point has seemed to exist” (Latour 1993, 13). Modernism can be looked at in many ways. Latour considers art, architecture, and scientific process among others. For Latour, modernism creates a dividing line between “the natural world and the social world” (Ibid.).

In this work, the author examines a famous debate between ‘natural philosophers’ such as Thomas Hobbes, and the ‘empiricists’ like Robert Boyle. The argument puts Hobbes on one side in which the world is defined through thought experiment and the theoretical. On the other side, Boyles defines science as finding truth about the natural world through planned experiments. At the heart of the debate is which brings us closer to truth. Modernism in science looks to support empiricism over philosophy. For Latour, that leaves out the influence that each has on each other. For example, experiments are formulated and carried out based on theories and assumptions constructed over time, and theories and assumptions are shaped by former experiments.

Bruno Latour is arguing for symmetry over asymmetry. “When Georges Canguilhem distinguishes scientific ideologies from true sciences, he asserts not only that it is impossible to study Darwin – the scientist – and Diderot – the ideologue – in the same terms, but that it must be impossible to lump them together” (Latour 1993, 92). Latour then argues for symmetry between the two approaches arguing that they are inextricably connected.  On page 135 is a table arguing what parts of both modernist and post-modernist approaches should be maintained, and which rejected, in order to describe a symmetrical approach that Latour argues that is more reflective of how the social and the scientific actually interact with each other to form our current scientific and technologically influenced world.
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References
​Hess, David J. 2016. Undone Science: Social Movements, Mobilized Publics, and Industrial Transitions. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.

Review by Michael Beach

In this work, David J. Hess looks at controversial issues that involve “complex scientific and technological issues that can provoke sharp divisions in public opinion” (Hess 2016, 1). As a way to examine the role of scientific and technological expertise Hess includes specific topics to include climate change, industrial pollution, nanomaterials, technologies of surveillance, and products of molecular biology. It’s safe to say these topics are both ongoing and controversial. Although he looks at the political issues themselves, the point of the work is to look at epistemological perspectives by and about scientists and technologists involved in these specific focus areas.

One example of an area Hess examines is depicted in the chapter 3 title; “The Politics of Meaning: From Frames to Design Conflicts” (Hess 2016, 79). The controversial topics noted above are not the focus of this chapter so much as the setting. The focus is on how researchers tend to frame the arguments and issues that need attention, and the cultural factors that influence their analysis. How does one create an analysis (breaking down ideas into parts) then move towards a meaningful synthesis (understanding the way the parts interact)? Designing an approach to both analysis and synthesis is where many human factors can cause variation in approach that also cause variation in artifacts produced in the process. This variable process is what causes many of us who are not experts in a given controversial topic such as climate change to put stock in one political position or another using ‘science’ as one of our arguments in favor of a given position. An example Hess shares relates to high emissions by buses. The bus depots that have the highest pollution emission concentrations tend to be in lower-income parts of cities. He gives examples of studies conducted in specific cities that linked income with bus depot locations. These studies further linked low-income neighborhoods with predominantly African American residents. Yet, one needs to examine the details about bus usage, historical demographic changes in neighborhoods, and other similar factors. “More generally, the analysis of race and design in the urban transit system suggest a need for methodological caution” (Hess 2016, 91). Studies have often suffered criticism in the process of going from the general the specific (analysis), then applying the specific to the general (synthesis). Humans are making decisions all along the process of what to examine and what to ignore in collecting data. Then humans are making decisions all along the process of which variables and data are relevant and which are not. In the language of statistical analysis, what information is statistically significant, and how does one define statistically significant? How much variability in data is acceptable to call something ‘significant’? The subjectivity is ultimately what has led to an erosion of confidence by some in scientific expertise. 
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References
Ezrahi, Yaron. 1990. The Descent of Icarus: Sceince and the Transformation of Contemporary Democracy. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.

​Review by Michael Beach

The author has looked at the cross-section of science and politics since the 1960s. In this work, Yaron Ezrahi considers the role of scientific expertise in the policy process within modern ‘liberal-democratic’ states. He shares examples of the ascension of science as an authoritative voice in coming to ‘objective’ conclusions. Over time, other factors came to have as much or more influence in policy. Since experts of similar credential don’t always agree, and some change their perspective over time, public policy makers have come to view expertise as one area of consideration when forming public policy, not so much as the area of consideration. The lowering of scientific authority from preeminence to that of one more voice of many is its descension. Science is more generally understood to have both objective and subjective components, often with ‘dueling experts’ on opposite sides of a policy question.

Ezrahi examines both political process and its relationship with scientific process. The work is divided into three sections. The first examines the political functions of science. It is followed by a look at dilemmas that arise between private persons and public actions. This includes those who act as scientific experts, but also those who create policy, and the rest of us who vote in a democratic society. The final section takes deep dive into effects caused by the privatization of science in the United States specifically.

One interesting thread for me as a reader was the author’s look at machines as a metaphor in scientific and policy processes. For example, machines can be viewed as helpful and positive, or out of control. In the first, we have influence and benefit from mechanistic processes. They create a fair and equal environment. In the second, those not directly inside the machine are powerless and fall victim to its seemingly mindless path. Where one falls in the machine metaphor as benevolent or apocalyptic, depends a great deal on the specific country or culture with which one is surrounded. 
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​Bibliography
Jasanoff, Sheila. 2005. Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

Sheila Jasanoff is a leading scholar on topics of how science and technology are coproduced with society. Each influences change in the other. In this work she examines how biology and politics interact with each other.

She uses examples of how scientific change is influenced differently in different societies. For example, in the US, foods using genetically modified organisms (GMO) such as grains have largely been adopted. There are parts of US society that feel uncomfortable with GMO foods. This created a market for ‘whole foods’ or ‘non-GMO’. People will pay extra for the labeling. When this same topic came up in the UK, there was sufficient public backlash to cause the government to create anti-GMO laws. Jasanoff points to several things that caused the different reactions. For one, in England there had been a health hazard created by the science community. Intending to help increase beef production efficiency through modifying cattle feed, the result was so-called ‘mad cow disease’. Much of the stock in the UK was slaughtered and burned to prevent the disease spreading to humans.

​Other areas explored in the book by Jasanoff include cloning, stem cell use, animal patenting, and reproductive technologies. She contrasts approaches in the US, the UK, and Germany. She also documents how rifts grew among these countries over how best to govern innovation in genetics and biotechnology.

Bibliography
​Daston, Lorraine, and Gregg Mitman, . 2005. Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Antrhopomorphism. New York, Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press.

Review by Michael Beach
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This is a collection of articles (chapters) from multiple authors. Each chapter focuses on some aspect of how humans project themselves onto animals. For example, many fairy tales and Saturday morning cartoon characters include animals that talk and feel like humans. Some authors do the opposite, such as the chapter by Wendy Doniger in which she explores the idea that humans can be more bestial than beasts. Paul S. White looks at the use of animals in scientific experimentation during the age of Victorian Britain.

The list goes on. Authors tackle topics including evolutionary biology, psychology, human-pet relationships, digital beasts, media, politics, and conversation. Several chapters look into human-animal relationships from a scientific perspective, either their use in science, or scientific evaluation of the human in some connected way. These chapters are the main motivation for my reading the book as a part of my PhD program, but the rest of the perspectives are worth the read.

One example of a specific approach includes a study of “The Family that Live with Elephants” (Daston and Mitman 2005, 177). In this section, Gregg Mitman considers communications between the elephants and the human family that cares for them. The human father and daughter in particular discuss actions and noises the pachyderms make to express ideas. The humans ponder how subjective the elephant thoughts are, and not just simple one-word ideas. In a discussion about objective and subjective human evaluation of elephant language, the daughter eventually asserts, “But it’s HUMAN and subjective. They decide which bits of animal behavior to be objective about by consulting human subjective experience. Didn’t you say that anthropomorphism is a bad thing?” To which her father answers, “Yes – but they do try to be not human” (Ibid.).
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Bibliography
Steinberg, Ted. 2000. Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natrual Disaster in America. 2nd. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

In this work, Ted Steinberg looks at human action increases events that count as catastrophic through increasing where we live and work. He also speaks to how our modification of geography, flora, fauna, and climate also increases the number and severity of natural disasters.

In terms of impact to human life, Steinberg shows how the poor, elderly and minorities are impacted more than those who have more means. In some examples such as specific floods, he shows how land values are higher as distance from flood zones increases. As land value increases the purchase prices grow beyond the ability of lower income home buyers and renters. In lower cost flood zones where poor people can afford to live, the increase of insurance costs means they are less likely to carry flood coverage. If all people could afford to live at higher elevations, then fewer buildings would be built in flood-prone areas and losses would be less.

Other examples are shared throughout the book where human activity adds to both the frequency and impact of largescale disasters. Crowded cities give way to faster spreading pandemics. As with pandemics, closely compacted homes built from combustible materials have made large fires engulfing whole portions of cities. Floods along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, the burning of Chicago, Hurricane Katrina, and the list goes on.

There are, of course, many ways to mitigate both the frequency and impact, but they all take two things; money and social will. At least in the case of modern construction there are improvements, but generally only where zoning rules require them for new construction or major renovation. That doesn’t protect existing structures, nor do such efforts guarantee complete survivability. These efforts still don’t address where people live based on their economic strata. In America, we are slow to want to preclude people from their freedom to live where they wish, or at least where they can afford to. There are no easy answers, and the answers we do have are partial at best. 
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