Technocriticism is a branch of critical theory
devoted to the study of technological change.
Technocriticism treats technological transformation
as historically specific changes in personal
and social practices of research, invention,
regulation, distribution, promotion, appropriation,
use, and discourse, rather than as an autonomous
or socially indifferent accumulation of useful
inventions, or as an uncritical narrative
of linear "progress", "development" or "innovation".
Technocriticism studies these personal and
social practices in their changing practical
and cultural significance.
It documents and analyzes both their private
and public uses, and often devotes special
attention to the relations among these different
uses and dimensions.
Recurring themes in technocritical discourse
include the deconstruction of essentialist
concepts such as "health", "human", "nature"
or "norm".
Technocritical theory can be either "descriptive"
or "prescriptive" in tone.
Descriptive forms of technocriticism include
some scholarship in the history of technology,
science and technology studies, cyberculture
studies and philosophy of technology.
More prescriptive forms of technocriticism
can be found in the various branches of technoethics,
for example, media criticism, infoethics,
bioethics, neuroethics, roboethics, nanoethics,
existential risk assessment and some versions
of environmental ethics and environmental
design theory.
Figures engaged in technocritical scholarship
and theory include Donna Haraway and Bruno
Latour (who work in the closely related field
of science studies), N. Katherine Hayles (who
works in the field of Literature and Science),
Phil Agree and Mark Poster (who works in intellectual
history), Marshall McLuhan and Friedrich Kittler
(who work in the closely related field of
media studies), Susan Squier and Richard Doyle
(who work in the closely related field of
medical sociology), and Hannah Arendt, Walter
Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, and Michel Foucault
(who sometimes wrote about the philosophy
of technology).
Technocriticism can be juxtaposed with a number
of other innovative interdisciplinary areas
of scholarship which have surfaced in recent
years such as technoscience and technoethics.
== External links ==
American Society for Bioethics + Humanities
Border Crossings: Cyborgs
Critical Science and Technology Books and
Journal Articles
Ethics and Information Technology
The Information Society: An International
Journal
Modern Fiction Studies 43.3/Fall 1997, Special
Issue: Technocriticism and Hypernarrative
Science, Medicine and Technology in Culture
Program at Penn State University
Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts
Technocultural Studies at the University of
California at Davis
