IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2017 - 16

he writes, "for someone to speak out
on behalf of the great body of your
countrymen who regard with abhor-
rence the course to which you are
committing the United States in Viet-
nam... I have a duty to say plainly,
and in public... that the course you
are now following affronts both our
practical judgment and our moral
sense... [and] cannot have any final
destination short of an irremediable
nuclear catastrophe" [15, p. 3].
Many others joined ranks with
Mumford to speak out against the use
of science for destructive aims dur-
ing the Vietnam War era, some even
forming coalitions to increase the
reach of their collective voice. As early
as 1957, the Pugwash Conferences on
Science and World Affairs responded
to the threat of nuclear war, as the
United States and the Soviet Union
armed themselves with nuclear weap-
ons. Organizations like the Union
of Concerned Scientists (UCS), and
Science for the People, were estab-
lished to stimulate an awareness of
the political, social, and economic
factors affecting science and technol-
ogy [16].The UCS boasts a particularly
salient connection to Wiener, given
that it was founded in 1969 by M.I.T.
physicists Kurt Gottfried and Henry
W. Kendall. The organization aimed
to "tap the power of science, to stem
the threat posed by science itself"
by "calling for scientific research to
be directed away from military tech-
nologies and toward solving pressing
environmental and social problems"
[17]. To this day, the UCS continues
to champion "innovative, practical
solutions to some of our planet's
most pressing problems" as it strives
to "build a healthy planet and a safer
world" [18] - these are precisely the
goals that Wiener had so loudly cham-
pioned earlier in the century.
In short, a range of thinkers and
practitioners have continued Wie-
ner's legacy of demanding ethical
vigilance around the development

16

people who got involved in the devel-
opment of this field in the 1980s
had a simple polemical purpose, to
shake the stranglehold that a naïve
determinism had on the dominant
understanding of the intertwining of
society and technology. They were
concerned that this view of technol-
ogy, as an external force exerting an
influence on society, narrows the pos-
sibilities for democratic engagement.
It presents a limited set of options:
uncritical embracing of technological
change, defensive adaptation to it, or
simple rejection of it. Against this per-
spective, STS is founded on a belief
that the content and direction of tech-
nological innovation are amenable
to sociological analysis and explana-
tion, and to political intervention.
The field of STS provides a window
into the interdisciplinary resonances
of Wiener's approach to understand-
ing technology's social implications,
particularly its imbrication in the
power dynamics of various social
hierarchies. Most often, when we
speak of a "society," we are referring
to the collective citizenry who belong
to a given region. At times they are
powerless, at other times they are
able to demand certain forms of
change. Dependent on the economic
and political systems in place, the
latitude for enacting change differs.
However, when it comes to the
type of high-stakes military affairs
that we mentioned at the beginning
of this article - i.e., when things like
potential enemy advancement or
military contracts are up for discus-
sion-the dominant change-makers
have always been governments, big
business, and the scientific elite.
Against the interests of these power-
ful groups, the voices of ordinary citi-
zens, who have every right to protest
and ask "where are we headed" and
"why are we going this way," often
get drowned out or overlooked.
Furthermore, the speed with
which information travels since the

and implementation of new tech-
nology. After all, as this chorus of
voices warns us, even technologies
that scientists, engineers, and math-
ematicians develop for what they
consider ethically sound purposes
can end up in the wrong hands, and
therefore lead to loss of life. In ret-
rospect, we can see how Wiener's
warnings established a framework
for future engagements with techno-
logical ethics. He helped us see how
important it is to understand the
intricate ways in which technology is
enmeshed in a network of sociologi-
cal, ethical, political, and interper-
sonal factors.

Interdisciplinary Resonances:
Science, Technology and Society
As we have outlined, in the decades
following World War II, concerns
about the dangers of military and
industrial technologies led to a wider
movement among intellectuals and
technicians to organize around goals
that aligned closely with Wiener's per-
spective. Parallel to this widespread
social activism, the label "Science,
Technology, and Society" emerged in
the academy in the 1970s as a means
to identify a diverse group of intellec-
tuals who were united by progressive
goals and an interest in science and
technology as problematic social
institutions. For such researchers
(and, again, in keeping with Wiener's
ideas), the project of understanding
the social nature of science has gen-
erally been seen as continuous with
the project of promoting a socially
responsible science. What developed
into the field of Science and Technol-
ogy Studies (STS) started from the
assumption that all technologies are
inherently social insofar as they are
designed, produced, used and gov-
erned by people [19], [20].
It is worth stressing that, from the
outset, the objection to technologi-
cal determinism was and is political
as well as intellectual. Many of the
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

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