Social technology: fundamentals, challenges, urgency and legitimacy

Author(s)

Cristiano Cordeiro Cruz

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2017-11-10

Examining board members

Pablo Ruben Mariconda; Alberto Oscar Cupani; Hugh Matthew Lacey; Marcos Barbosa de Oliveira; Gilmar Evandro Szczepanik

• Advisor: Pablo Ruben Mariconda

Abstract

This work discusses technology, giving special attention to this that is called social technology (ST) in Brazil. The thesis that is substantiated here is multiple. First, ontologically and politically, it will be argued that social technology is not only technically legitimate and authentic, but also socially and environmentally urgent. However, in order to be implementable, ST demands, on the one hand, specific engineering and scientific knowledge to be advanced. Thus, the second dimension of our thesis, epistemological, sustains the understanding that such knowledge can be produced and the mechanisms required to make such production possible do not corrupt the scientific or engineering ethos. On the other hand, ST and popular engineering also demand a specific professional profile, the educator engineer (or popular engineer). This is the third dimension of the argument we defend here. Finally, ontologically and existentially, it will be suggested that a way to overcome the substantial disenchantment of the world (Weber), the entification of Being (in its technological unveiling in which we found ourselves trapped, via enframing Heidegger), the dictatorship of instrumental rationality (Horkheimer and Adorno) or the self-production and automatism of technological development (Ellul) may precisely emerge from something like social technology. This would be so by dint of the incorporation of popular values and knowledge to the construction of the sociotechnical reality we decide to build. This fourth aspect, then, strengthens the first one, offering new supporting elements to the urgency claim associated with the development of ST in our days. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 13/18757-0 - Technology, Science, and Democracy
• Grantee: Cristiano Cordeiro Cruz
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate