Abstract
This article addresses the relationship between technology and institutions and asks whether technology itself is an institution. The argument is that social theorists need to attend better to materiality: the world of things and objects of which technical things form an important class. It criticizes the new institutionalism in sociology for its failure to sufficiently open up the black box of technology. Recent work in science and technology studies (S&TS) and in particular the sociology of technology is reviewed as another route into dealing with technology and materiality. The recent ideas in sociology of technology are exemplified with the author’s study of the development of the electronic music synthesizer.
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Notes
See for example DiMaggio and Hargittai (2001) on the digital divide where the actual technology of computing remains unexamined. Another telling example is Yakubovich et al. (2004), who although examining a heavily technologically mediated realm—the electrical system—define social construction to be process that has nothing to do with the technology. On the telephone, Claude Fischer’s (1992) influential book on the social history of the telephone leaves unexamined the actual technology of telephones.
Thomas Gieryn and his student Nicholas Rowland (e.g., Rowland and Gieryn 2008) are engaged in a similar project.
Another approach to skill is offered by Garfinkel (1967) and his studies in ethnomethodology. The ethnomethodological version of skill is “competence”. But for Garfinkel like Fligstein, embodied skills are only rarely the focus of analysis.
The reason for this is they believe that for many organizations like universities and museums, the cultural pursuit of legitimacy is a more profound cause of isomorphism.
In the study of productive organizations such as auto plants the neoinstitutionalists are more likely to recognize the role of technology as a factor in bringing about convergence, but again technology as an object is left “black boxed.”
This term is used in this way by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar (1979) in Laboratory Life,
This instrumental meaning has come to dominate but we should not forget also the meaning of techne within the fine arts and arts of the mind as poiesis—a “bringing forth” or “revealing” to which Heidegger (1977) draws attention.
Sociologists of technology have typically differentiated between “material technologies” that are predominately peopled by material artifacts and “social technologies” where the onus is put upon routines and practices followed by humans (Pinch et al. 1992). For example, the classic Weberian bureaucracy is a social technology whereas the space shuttle is a material technology.
The effect of Puritanism on the rise of science is part of this and has become known as the “Merton Thesis”—see Shapin (1988).
The Theremin invented by Russian physicist Leon Theremin is unique because its high pitched oscillator is controlled by the operator moving their hands near two antennas—there is no physical contact with the instrument at all. It can be heard to good effect on the record “Good Vibrations” by the Beachboys.
Moog died in August 2005. His influence is increasingly recognized with him winning the Polar Prize for music in 2001 and a Technical Grammy in 2002. A documentary, “Moog,” about his life has recently been released.
Sound itself is a key part of the new institution of electronic music. In sociology, we are familiar with visual materials but we have thus far paid little attention to sound. Sound is part of the material world. Not only must we understand how new sound technologies come into being, and are used but we must also try and understand the new sonic experiences, which these technologies enabled. The study of sound, music, noise, and even silence is part of the new interdisciplinary area of “sound studies”—see for instance, Thompson (2002), Sterne (2003), Bijsterveld and Pinch (2004).
Buchla and Moog for a while resisted using the name “synthesizer” for their invention. Moog wanted to differentiate his “real time” machine from the paper tape controlled room-sized computer known as the RCA Mark II Synthesizer used at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Buchla disliked the connotation of synthetic as in a copy of the real thing.
Buchla was very influenced by the randomness aesthetic of John Cage who was a visitor to the Tape Center where Buchla worked.
The keyboard although it looks like an organ or piano keyboard is actually monophonic (plays one note at a time); polyphony and touch sensitivity were only introduced later.
Although later Suzanne Cianni used her Buchla to make commercial sound signatures and became the Eric Siday of the 1970s.
Ironically, the instrument shown on the cover could not be played live because of the lack of patch wires. Carlos’s album was a studio achievement made with endless overdubs and by tape splicing of individual sounds. Despite its studio rendition the consensus was that Carlos made Bach “come to life.”
A large modular Moog synthesizer and tape recorder could cost as much as $10,000—the price of a small house.
This was affordable but was still the price of a rock van.
It uses the ARP 2600 synthesizer for all the sounds including those of the robot R2-D2.
The story of this sound is actually more complicated as the synthesist, Ben Burtt, found the synthesized sound to be too weak and in the end used an electronically modified recording of a natural sound—that of the engine of a Goodyear blimp. See, Pinch and Trocco 2002 for the full story.
This is a particularly interesting example because real space ship by-passes in space (a vacuum) should (according to physics) be completely silent.
A related but less radical approach is that offered by Pickering (1995), who maintains a distinction between humans and non-humans in his theory of the “mangle.”
The next stage in this project would be to tie these concepts more closely to the interests of neo-institutionalist organizational theorists in notions such as convergence, myths, loose coupling, etc. Material practices and technologies would seem to be important elements in institutional logics and how they change.
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Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2003 UC Santa Barbara conference “Cultural Turn IV: Instituting and Institutions”. I am particularly grateful for detailed written comments from John Mohr and Thomas Gieryn.
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Pinch, T. Technology and institutions: living in a material world. Theor Soc 37, 461–483 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-008-9069-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-008-9069-x