Chapter 8- Technical Economic Innovations 2

Summary

Woodhouse lays out the format and problems with the hierarchy and authoritarian nature of most businesses in the modern world in this chapter. He argues that the market playing field should be equal between employees, executives, the government and social organizations or associations. This can be done through an auction mechanism, which raise funds, automatically set market priorities, allow new innovators to decide when/if to progress, and account for exceptions for high-priority innovations, valuable innovations and smaller innovations that needn't be put through the system. In his terms, consumers and innovators need to consider, "is technological society in greater trouble because of a shortage of innovations, or because of lack of attention to those that do occur?" (101) Then the system can take time and effort into making a new, more thorough system of addressing innovations.

Analysis & Synthesis

I feel that there will always be the ongoing struggle with technology of how it redefines our roles in society. Woodhouse highlighted this struggle throughout this chapter, focusing on how our current system often progresses to the disadvantage of employees. His first example was that of environmental solutions. There have been many suggestions to executives to implement more environmentally friendly practices, to which they respond with the threat to our jobs or employment opportunities to pick up the cost. This prevents progression, harms employee relations and shoots down any opportunity given to environmental organizations. Woodhouse's approach to this solution was twofold: first, that "the tax rate might be increased every few years until it became obvious that the contest between business and other social interests became more equal" (97), and having employees act as consumer representatives, the hope being "if it were known that workers had a share in decision making, environmental organizations or other groups might as workers to speak on their behalf" (97). I have two questions in response. First, we have been trying to make tax changes for a very long time, and in recent political battles the discussion of raising taxes as well as enacting tax raises have been implemented. See Occupy Wall Street. This is clearly not a simple or easy answer; consumers will complain or revolt until it is changed. Woodhouse gave the example of how "Spanish workers still have the right to vote to hire and fire their bosses", and that he "wonders why that simple idea has not become better known and more widely tried" (98). It would not surprise me if businesses put conditions into place that would allow workers to technically have a say, but would limit them to which decisions they could make, or what exactly they could say, how they could say it, etc. I don't think it would be an effective system, at least with the general tendencies of the business market right now. Somehow we need to break this "trend toward fewer employees per cracker or car [that] has been in place for a century, with no end in sight." (99)

Our current system catches us in this vicious cycle of authoritarianism based on profit incentives and ideas of power & dominance, which I described in my previous blog post. Still, I wonder if we could ideally implement Woodhouse's system, with employees holding comparable power and say to executives. Wouldn't this also be a self-feeding and driving system? Better pay, input into what goes on in the company would make employees enthusiastic about their work and the growth of their company. Consumers would know more about the products they are seeing and what goes on behind it, encouraging them to purchase the products of companies with these policies and fair treatment. Employees would purchase their company's products out of pride and support for their hard work. Thus, the economy would be stimulated from within and on fair and powerful principles that would allow for change via personality and the input of the citizenry the company is involved in. Executives would learn from employees and be held accountable for the effects their decisions make, and would only become wiser and more responsible. In this ideal world, our economy would thrive and reflect the culture and drive of its consumers and workers, citizens would have a healthy, clear view of products and would be able to make change through what they do every day.

Chapter 7- Potential Economic Innovations

Summary

Chapter 7 looks into how to better motivate executives to benefit our economic system holistically, rather than a few people. The change needs to come from the higher-ups that are currently getting most of the benefit. The author's main argument was the specific types of problems that occur and where the solution lies, rather than what exactly the solutions were. For example, cheap products that break over and over result in more repairs and replacements for customers, as well as more employee time. While the original product is cheap, these costs end up eliminating any profit the company would have made, as well as causing burdens for the consumer and decreasing their likelihood of purchasing from the company again. Cheaper products also come with more environmental and societal costs, like pollution and cruelly low wages, due to executives not wanting to make the investment that would cost them personally. Woodhouse argues the solution lies in the hands of executives and the creation of a double-check system, where a network of groups would govern major changes and approve ones that executives made. This way the changes could be viewed holistically and assured to be generally beneficial.

Analysis & Synthesis

Throughout this chapter I was caught by all the vagueness and confusing missing links in the world's current innovation infrastructure. Woodhouse wants to eliminate things like the number of repairs and replacements and employee time spent on such things. He argues that no move has currently been made because "no one knows just how well businesses eventually could perform" (82), but "a process of improvement could be launched without knowing the eventual level of achievement" (83). The problem is that executives and economists aren't going to make those moves unless they have proof or clear promise of improvement. The system operates on profit incentives, and if that isn't laid out for them, of course they won't take it. He lists off general changes he wishes to see:

• Induce executives to combine drive for profit w/service to customers
• Better employee service
• Better service to general public
• Reduced toxins
• "toxics could not have become an environmental horror story without the initiatives taken using corporate executives' discretionary authority" (85)
• Better safety in product
• Reduced pollution
• Business executives that make a system that provides good prices, durable products, safety, fair employment, job opportunities, fair treatment, opportunities for employee advancement

All of these are fine and well and wonderful, and his solution of a consulting/accounting system makes a lot of political and logistical sense. However, I believe the problem is in our natural tendencies and behaviors as humans. Is there anything really wrong or unnatural about hierarchical, dominant or selfishly motivated behavior? Are these behaviors what needs to be changed to effectively better our economic system? Those behaviors are what allowed us to live in the wild as well as successfully survive and build society. The problems come in when the behaviors are used at the expense of others or in a corrupt or harmful way. Behaviors that are profitable need to be consistent with socially positive norms. In other words, the system needs to be reorganized so that maybe not the cheapest, but cheap manufacturing "induces farmers, factory managers, retailers, and others to adapt their behaviors" (89) so as to bring about those changes. In the chapter, Woodhouse used the example of making textile substitutions for cotton, a highly environmentally damaging crop in production and the amount of water and electricity needed to care for it. If the clothing was stylish, or comfortable, if celebrities endorsed it, if it was advertised well, or if it was cheaper than cotton clothing, consumers would buy it. It wouldn't matter that cotton was the tradition. Then, more companies would use the cotton substitutes as sales increased and cotton would slowly be weeded out or at least thinned out within the system. This could be done with anything if it follows the same profit incentives to slowly add in the changes Woodhouse sees as benefiting the system.

Chapter 6- More Intelligent Trial and Error

Summary

In Chapter 6 Woodhouse discusses the idea of risk in innovations. He presents the two forms of dealing with risk: the Precautionary Principle and Intelligent Trial and Error. The Precautionary Principle allows us to decrease the harm done by a product even if the inventors do not know the likelihood of it, whereas Intelligent Trial and Error allows innovators to pinpoint potential problems and their probability and stop them before it enters the market. He argues the key to success is maintaining flexibility in innovation. The general process for products starts at a high flexibility in the design state and slowly decreases through testing, etc. By the time the product is sent out it has little or no flexibility to change or account for any problems. By implementing strategies like phase-ins and tackling multiple approaches to one problem at once, as innovators we can intentionally add flexibility, decrease risk, and cope with problems that occur gracefully. He concludes by discussing the potential problems we already have in place that prevent us from seeking this approaches, mainly our Legacy Thinking and stubbornness.

Analysis & Synthesis

Woodhouse began by stating that good versus bad innovation "depends in part on how those with greatest influence approach their tasks" (69). I was convinced the chapter was going to highlight the poor decisions of leaders of corporations. However, throughout this chapter Woodhouse focused on examples of how inflexible our society is. In terms of the Precautionary Principle, which he explained as based on how we do not need to know the likelihood of something to know if it is a fatal risk, he described our insurance systems. Homeowners know that there's a possibility that the house may burn down or flood, which is enough to put the safety of insurance in place (70). This is an inflexible process in that "precautions will not prevent problems, but can make them less costly" (71). The Precautionary Principle does not decrease risk in any way, it just lessens its harsh effects. A similar case extends to manufacturing. Originally, government officials would have to go to court to prove pesticides unsafe. The government instead employed a law so "manufacturers are now required to demonstrate prior to marketing that their products do not pose 'an unreasonable risk'" (71). Once again, the pesticides themselves have not been made any more flexible during their process so as to eliminate more risks. Instead, they are merely required to show they are not catastrophic. Here, as Woodhouse provided in the beginning, the bad innovation is in the hands of the head honchos who decide what "unreasonable risk" is.

Once an innovation is out in the world the consumers ingest it to a point that screeches any available flexibility to a halt. This is a time sensitive matter. Woodhouse's main example was cell phones. This really drove the point of our society's inflexibility in for me. What if cell phones were found to cause brain cancer? (72) I know many people who would just keep using them. After all, how can the thousands of people and systems that rely on cell phones be expected to magically disintegrate this technology from our daily lives? It's simply impossible to even fathom how the world's technological systems could make that change. I truly believe that as consumers we have been brainwashed into this mindset by an inflexible society. Consumers take successful or popular innovations and drive them into the background, the framework, of our daily lives. What if vacuums were suddenly deadly risks to us? Or refrigerators? I have a strong feeling that the people effected would do what this system has trained us to: sit and wait for a new innovation to come and save us.

Chapter 4- Pros and Cons and In-betweens

Chapter 4- Challenge 3: Innovation Too Slow

Summary

Woodhouse talks about our motivation as a society to implement new technologies in Chapter 4. There are many perspectives he highlights. First is the general population, who find it "easier to perceive bad things happening than good things not happening” (45)—we see this obviously with online customer reviews. More posts are written about a product for cons or problems than satisfactory or positive experiences. If people are satisfied, they're less likely to go on and write a review. Next he goes into the view of the head of biomed corporations who control whether a vaccine is researched, publicized, and where it is sent. Their motivations are highly political and personal, often with profit motives or incentives put in place by the business model. He ends with a view of car purchasers and home ownership contradictions, and how our motivations as homebuyers are often nonsensical or have to do with an infrastructure that discourages us from inputing new technology.

Analysis & Synthesis

Dengue fever is extremely deadly and at risk to some 2.5 billion people, according to Woodhouse. It is officially considered a neglected illness by World Health Organization, which couldn't be more obvious. I've heard about it all of 2 or 3 times in my life. It feels unfair, how little society motivates us to learn about these issues in the world and how little information is made available. The unfairness continues when people in charge of vaccines for these types of diseases make decisions “based partly on whether there is likely to be a paying clientele”(46) and they find “it more profitable to emphasize drugs for curing disease rather than drugs for prevention” (46). I find this infuriating, frankly. Drugs for curing diseases get so much hype but prevention is worth a million cures! I think we need to start implementing systems and rethinking the current medical system to drive doctors and research groups towards prevention, awareness, and more open sources of information about personal health and disease. Profit incentives are understandable and feed on a very human attribute, but we need to use them to our advantage to progress and create good in the world.

The exact same thing needs to be done for Green Housing. The product Woodhouse spoke most about in this chapter was Geothermal Heat Pumps, which take hot or cool air and pull them up from the ground and use it to heat buildings. These are ideal for schools as parks and parking lots provide plenty of underground space to bury the pumps and tubes. GHPs are extremely efficient and while requiring a larger installation cost, have a largely lower utility cost compared to electric heating and AC, and are much friendlier to the environment than natural gas when installed correctly. However, there is a huge lack of experienced contractors available due to lack of educational opportunities. The part that really irritates me is that banks do not taking utility costs into account and thus do not home owners to borrow the extra $10,000-$25,000 to install the GHP system. Homeowners are virtually shut out unless they have excellent academic standing and the motivation for a greener home. They would have to develop this motivation on their own and do their research to even know about GHPs.

Essentially, the point of this chapter is“just because people have needs, and just because technoscientists have the techniques to help meet those needs, does not mean that economic, political, cultural, and other barriers will not interfere” (54). This is exactly, why people still buy Victorian homes despite their lack of energy or spacial efficiency. Our motivations come from outside the market: because we have always wanted one, or it’s “in” to own one in the neighborhood we're buying in, or because we grew up in one. That is why we will buy crappy homes in the new market. The market and our society simply isn't adapting to motivate people to make this shift, and even those who want to are shot down for their efforts. This is no way to create a sustainable, progressive economy for innovations.

Chapter 3- Toilets as Social Justice

Chapter 3- Challenge #2: Unfairness

Summary

Chapter 3 highlighted the accessibility of water and sanitation throughout the world, focusing on the struggles of the lower class people of Mumbai, India. He raised many questions about how to address circumstances like those in Mumbai, which are far from an acceptable standard of living. He looked at what exactly the situation is, highlighting accessibility to resources, unfair social systems in place within the poor communities and the classes above them, the political corruption and the sewage and water systems currently in place. It's not just a question of how bad the circumstances are, but "how might one figure out what is fair, what is socially just?" (35). It's not just a question of accessibility. We need to consider social factors, political factors, and environmental factors. It's a question of making a new system that will sustain itself and propel itself forward into a better standard of living.

When it comes to fairness, we all have a clear idea of what is fair for everyone to have. The hard part comes in when deciding exactly how much that is, under what circumstances should someone get what amount of anything, and who is going to continue to decide that. In Woodhouse's words, "by what criteria would you propose to determine who deserves what?” (43).

Analysis & Synthesis

The U.N. made a goal to reduce the percent of its population without access to sanitation and water by half. This seems like a modest goal, which “suggests the problem must be widespread and difficult to solve" (36), because we all know how it goes, "politicians tend to over-promise”(36). This is the stem of the lack of action towards better water and sanitation. These shiny promises create huge disconnection between technosocial innovation and the public. We expect it to happen so we wait...and wait...and wait...And nothing gets done. Then the promises made next time are lower and lower until a new person steps in. It's a vicious cycle.

Other vicious cycles are in place within the areas with poor access that prevent them from developing and progressing. Women and girl children walk miles a day to get water, keeping the girls out of school for their necessary labor, which slows their social and economic development. They cannot improve their lifestyle if they cannot get educated and get jobs, and so they are stuck their whole lives.

I was severely shocked by the danger that lack of sanitation puts onto these women. When there are no bathrooms available, people take it into their own means to dispose of their waste in public areas, sides of roads, railroad tracks, bushes, etc. With this lack of privacy, women are regularly molested, to the point where they decrease their food intake to avoid taking the risk. No human should ever be forced to compromise their health even further to compromise their safety.

What also surprised me was how much people's health is being compromised and yet nothing is being done about it. With people defecating in public areas and being pressed into tiny urban spaces germs have spread extremely rapidly, with  “cholera cases increasing by some 500 percent” over the past 20 years (39). Why, then, would the more well-off people do something to help these people if it would help keep themselves healthy?

In terms of what's being done, many organizations “are attempting to raise necessary funds, muster expertise, organize residents of poor communities, and encourage city officials to tackle the challenge more vigorously” (41). This sentence made me hopeful, because it’s NOT just an institutional problem, it’s not JUST an accessibility problem, it’s all of the above and all of the above is necessary to improve people's lives. It's about making utilities "more responsive to a diversity of needs through enhanced public scrutiny of administrative and financial actions”(41)—THIS is social problem solving, this is progressive, this is sustainable, this is toilets as social justice.

Chapter 2- Land mines, Car Crashes and Corn

Chapter 2- Challenge 1: Unintended Consequences

Summary

In this second chapter Woodhouse discusses the many examples and ways that innovation can go wrong. He discusses how poorly prepared we are for even the simplest, most common problems that can be life threatening, like cars running out of gas, or supplying soldiers with the right kind of vehicle to protect them from landmines. He highlights how very afraid we are of things going wrong, and how we support government control to make us feel like we're being protected, but in reality it doesn't do anything. We cannot fight the complex forces of our politics and economy. Right now our innovation process is far from fool-proof, and many things are overlooked or simply not put any effort into.

Analysis & Synthesis

We have learned growing up that when you fall down you get back up, and that falling time and time again is what allows you to get stronger, more aware, so you fall less and less. This pattern is nonexistent in many corporation's head leaders, and we live a life of ignorance is bliss. Despite falling and falling, "many facets of sociotechnical life proceed as if those in authority expect everything to work out fine. Time after time, they appear not to anticipate unanticipated consequences", or appear to not anticipate the severity of such consequences or the effect they'll have down the line. One major example Woodhouse gave was that of PSD. Even now, "U.S. military officials still are not giving soldiers returning from combat sufficient psychological support to head off long-term post traumatic stress disorder -- despite the fact that what once was known as "shell shock" has been recognized for a century and understood for decades.” (21)

This devastation gets even simpler than that. We all know the feeling of zoning out in the car, driving down the highway, thinking of a loved one or getting lost in the song that's playing, and these daily little things “could impair any driver's attention to fuel supply. Might one expect that automotive engineers and manufacturers would anticipate on a statistical basis what some fraction of individual drivers will not foresee?”(22) It's something we all experience and has put people in life threatening situations, dying of heat or freezing or girls getting stuck on a road at night and getting raped or kidnapped or killed. We have failed to account for even the smallest things that are deadly or life threatening and yet we have GPS and radio and phone chargers and cars that call when you get in an accident, but the air bag doesn’t deploy when you get hit from behind! Thousands of drivers die or get severe brain damage from being shot through their windshield when rear-ended. This could easily be fixed and save so many people.

What can we do as citizens? Well, the most common way consumers interact with the market is to “ support 'government intervention' to reduce the severity of economic downturns."(24) However, this can work to the disadvantage of consumers simply by lack of awareness. For example, subsidies. Subsidies on produce and products like milk allow it to be cheaper in the store and keep farmers in their jobs. This gives the false impression to consumers that it is cheap and affordable but actually, the farmers are losing money, and where does that money come from to keep them in business to supply our groceries? Consumers need to be more aware of the market and how it works, and understand how to work with it, even when it is against our nature. Naturally, we welcome the positive consequences, but  “most people consider it unwise to passively accept the negative [unintended consequences]” (24). Maybe it is time to accept that "don't fix it if it ain't broke" attitude when it comes to the market.

Chapter 1- Asking the Right Questions

Chapter 1- Introduction

Summary

Woodhouse begins the analysis of Science, Technology, and Society by a general discussion of the world we live in. He lays out how technology and innovation in the 21st century seems amazing compared to the previous century, everything from communication, weaponry, food availability and quality, to new ice cream flavors. All of these would seem incredible to someone from the 1940's, and now not only are they available but available to all classes. Then he goes into a deeper analysis of how these technologies are being used, and more importantly, where they're not. While we live in a world full of available resources, intellectual and physical, we have governing rules like politics, racism, religious and gender biases, personal priorities, that impede their accessibility and use. He highlights the basic needs that are not met for billions of people: water, safety, food. Finally, the chapter ends with his thesis that "at a higher level of generality, this book asks: What would be required to guide science and technology toward better fulfilling more humans’ needs more of the time? How might those with influence build upon what is wondrous about science and helpful about technology?” (6). The rest of the chapter gives brief paragraphs on the topics of each following chapter.

Analysis and Synthesis

The chapter began hopefully, declaring how “the best spirit of global understanding can feel incredibly uplifting as people in diverse cultures discover that other humans are not so different from themselves” (2). Our new communication, travel, and education innovations have been crossing borders in so many ways to allow for deeper understanding. This is taken very seriously and considered a truly beneficial part of our lives; I have always been encouraged to save my money and travel, find out about my heritage in Europe, study abroad, all of which would allow me to gain knowledge I could not have gotten with a text book and photographs. Of course, I cannot ignore the negative consequences that come with this, via terrorism and missiles and spy programs. However, even when we wage war, we are not waring clans that know nothing about each other except whatever happens when we meet to fight at our borders. The people we fight are people who supply your city with resources, people who have relatives that are citizens, they're the family of your best friends who are exchange students. This sort of global understanding is incredible, and allows people to make better decisions about whether or not to wage war, whether or not to join the military, or support political moves. Even in the face of terror or violence, it is something to value and I believe in the future may help eliminate physical violence all together.

The second main discussion in the Introduction was about the capability of technology to induce progress, but it does not always. The way Woodhouse related this to everyone was “the extent to which you now accept the technocratic belief that scientific knowledge and technological innovation translate automatically into greater freedom and a better way of life.” (2) When people think of new technology, they think about it making life easier, and this is true for a lot of innovations like the cell phone and biomedicine. However it doesn't always translate. For example, “almost everyone would share the goal of stopping children’s suffering— and yet it persists decade after decade” (2). A shared goal and value simply isn’t enough to bring action in our world of political and social boundaries. When the system does allow for action, it doesn't filter what innovations are necessary or whether their benefits are lesser than their damages. For example, scientists concerned about climate change were interested in adding iron into our water supplies to help refract some of the solar glare. “Oceanographers and ecologists reacted with horror to the possible secondary and tertiary effects on complex food chains, but U.S. law does not cover actions by non-U.S.-flagged vessels on the high seas, and the international Law of the Oceans does not cover iron, a natural substance.” (5) Woodhouse is clearly emphasizing just how complex a system one is entering when at the front of innovation; there is little room for error.

After making these points Woodhouse poses a question that I would like to address. He asks, “would you count reliable supplies of clean water for many more people a form of real progress?”(3) Personally, of course that would be progress, but it depends on at what cost we are able to do it. I counter with a series of questions of my own: Where is this water coming from? Are we able to supply it because we’re learning to use water more efficiently, more sparingly? Or is it because we found a new highly pollutant-filled method of extracting it from yet another Earth source that will inevitably make things worse in the end, or put different problems unto our citizens?

Chapter 5- The Pace of Innovation According to Consumers, Innovators and The Global System

Chapter 5- Challenge #4: Pace Too Rapid

Summary-

This chapter focused on the stresses of pace of innovation on society. It covered many likely causes of slowing pace in technological innovation such as screening time, companies holding back markets from expanding and official policy. It also highlighted the opposing consumers' sense that technology is developing too quickly, and the overwhelming feeling that drives them away from new products. Some of these products and their innovation and introduction timelines were shown to demonstrate the flaw of a Trial and Error system. The strongest example was the disappointing and destructive rushed initiation of Nuclear Reactors. In a Trial and Error system, products and technology are tested on a trial and error basis, which often leads to long term disadvantages being missed before their launch and allows technology to easily be rushed onto market on a need basis. This was exactly what happened with the nuclear reactor, where many environmental, social, and political needs were overlooked, to a catastrophic end. Overall the author concluded there are too many systems in place that ebb and flow in different directions and differing times such that control of the system speed is simply not feasible. It would require a great shift on all sides of innovation, public to corporate. However, the system can be changed, just as it was for slavery, women's rights, human sacrifice and so on, all of which required a great system-wide shift to be fizzled out. If the interest is there to slow down the pace of advancement, it can be done.

Analysis and Synthesis-

There were a couple of things that shocked me in this fifth chapter. Very early on the author stated that "the national Institutes of Health in the U.S. now takes more than $30 billion annually from taxpayers and gives it to biomedical researchers; and U.S. military R & D is about ten times higher than that” (55). Clearly rapid innovation requires funding, but I had no idea such large amounts were being extracted every year from tax payers in the U.S. On this note, his later comment on America's attitude that "progress is unstoppable" makes sense. Progress is being fueled by you, whether you like it or not, coming out of your personal finances every single year. Meanwhile many tax payers make a lot of noise about technology moving to fast and having to contribute to progress they do not want. However, I must agree that "it is difficult to separate out their concerns over the pace of technology from their concerns over the direction". Most people I know who are afraid of technological advancement is not because of the advancement speed. Those who claim to truly be afraid of the speed of it are, more frequently than not, technophobes. It makes me wonder what exactly that means for designers, producers and controllers of the market. What about our market makes people fear that things are moving too rapidly, and what does that mean? 

If we could, and did, as Woodhouse suggests, slow the market so innovations were coming at a less overwhelming speed to the consumers, how could we get the entire world market to operate at a cohesive pace? It would not and could not be an individual case basis for each market on the micro and macro scales. As Woodhouse describes, the speed at which things advance, and the speed at which people perceive things are advancing at, depends on the context they're living and acting in. This is obvious. However, this is not obvious in terms of what it means for the global economy. For the market to be the right speed in one country would require massive change for another, and so on and so forth. This would all too easily create a chain of inconvenience and cause other countries markets to run at an inconvenient and uncomfortable pace. It is impossible for this to be effective, so I must disagree with Woodhouse's claim. While it is true that a market can be slowed, or sped up, it is impossible to keep this consistent throughout the global market. Slowly this will come back to effect the same market, altering its speed of innovation once again. It is simply impossible to effectively control the speed of global technological innovation.