Socio-Technical Systems

Technology
Human Capabilities
William J. Frey
College of Business Administration
University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez
 Definition: Socio-Technical System
• Socio-Technical System
• “an intellectual tool to help us recognize patterns
in the way technology is used and produced”
(Huff, “What is a Socio-Technical System?” from
Computing Cases)
• Socio-Technical systems provide a tool to uncover
the different environments in which business
activity takes place and to articulate how these
constrain and enable different business practices.
 1. STS as an environment
• Socio-Technical systems provide a tool to uncover
the different environments in which business
activity takes place and to articulate how these
constrain and enable different business practices.
– Instrumenting action
• enabling us to do new things
• magnifying our ability to do old things
– Constraining or determining action
• we delegate actions and responsibility to technical artefacts
• difficulty controlling complex systems
 Complexity constrains as well as
enables
• Tightly coupled systems
– difficult to contain a failure by isolation; failures tend
to cascade throughout the system
– a tightly coupled work-study relation breaks down
when university changes a Monday to a Tuesday
• Non-linear causality
– actions “ripple” throughout the system producing
changes/effects that are difficult to predict
– no exams in the last week of classes prevents teachers
and students from leaving early (=intended effects)
– but it also leads to “stacking up” exams in the
penultimate week
 2. STS as System
• STSs are Systems
– A whole of interrelated parts that are related to
one another and interact with one another
• Requires systematic thinking:
– actions feedback on the agent
– the distinction between the agent (actor) and the
objects targeted by agents (technical artifacts)
begins to break down as artifacts
– the environment or surroundings of action also
feedback on the actor by constraining and
enabling certain directions of action
 Some examples
• Prohibiting exams during the last week of the
semester
– Goal: Prevent teachers and students from ending the
semester early
– Actual Unintended results:
• Exams “stack up” in penultimate week of the semester
• Certain pedagogical approaches are constrained while others
are enabled
– Reflective and summative activities discouraged
– Comprehensive, content based exams are imposed

• Changing schedule to respond to holidays

– Creating conflicts for students who have attempted to
coordinate working and class schedules
3. STSs and their sub-environments
• A STS can be divided into different parts or
components that function as sub-environments
– hardware, software, physical surroundings,
stakeholders, procedures, laws, and information
systems.
– constrain and enable activities individually and
collectively
• Think about how the physical environment of the
classroom embodies distinct pedagogical styles
 How classrooms constrain and enable
Teacher Centered Student Centered
Technologically enhanced Room 236. Teacher has Different computer
data display projector, stations distributed
computer, smart board, throughout classroom. No
wireless keyboard, and clear teacher stage and
mouse student receiving areas.
Maybe a central discussion
zone but information
stations where students go
to solve specific problems
Technologically deprived Traditional classroom. Chairs and tables arranged
Chairs arranged in rows to in circle to promote
maximize control and discussion. Distinction
discipline. Clear separation between teacher and
of teacher and student student zones breaks
zones down.
 4. STS embody values
• moral values (justice, responsibility, respect,
trust, and integrity)
• non-moral values (efficiency, satisfaction,
productivity, effectiveness, and profitability).
• values can be located in one or more of the
system components.
• Often these values conflict with one another
causing the system to change.

• Example of conflict from university

– Increasing tuition to cover cost increases creates
distributive justice problems for students from poorer
families
 From Ethics of Teamwork, you learned…
• that values can be designed into a STS through…
• Discovery
• discover’ the values that are relevant to, inspire, or inform a given
design project
• Translation
• embodying or expressing…values in system design. Translation is
further divided into operationalization, which involves defining or
articulating values in concrete terms, and implementation which
involves specifying corresponding design features
• Verification
• designers assess to what extent they have implemented target
values in a given system…. [M]ay include internal testing among the
design team, user testing in controlled environments, formal and
informal interviews and surveys, the use of prototypes, traditional
quality assurance measures such as automated and regression-
oriented testing, and more
• Flanagan, Howe, and Nissenbaum, “Embodying Values in Technology” in Information Technology and
Moral Philosophy, van den Hoven and Weckert.
5. STSs change, tracing out a trajectory
• STSs change and this change traces out a path
or trajectory.
– The normative challenge of STS analysis is to find
the trajectory of STS change and work to make it
as value positive and value realizing as possible.
– Value positive trajectory?
• Resolve value conflicts within system
• Resolve value conflicts between different STSs
– Value negative trajectory?
 Techno-Socio Sensitivity
Respon- Description Module Activities
sibility Skill
Techno-socio “critical Socio-technical Identifying sub-
sensitivity awareness of the Systems environments
way technology How each
Socio-Technical affects society 1. Different environments constrains
Systems in constrain and enable activity
and the way activity.
Professional How each enables
Decision Making
social forces in 2.System of distinguishable
or instruments
(m14025 from turn affect the but interrelated and
activity
Connexions) evolution of interacting parts.
3. Embody / express moral Value
technology” and non-moral values. vulnerabilities
Responsible and conflicts
4. Normative objective =
Choice for CE Harris, (2008), “The
good engineer: Giving
tracing out a value positive Plot out system
Appropriate
virtue its due in path or trajectory of trajectories or
Technology
engineering ethics,” change. paths of
(m43922) Science and Engineering
Ethics, 14(2): 153-164. change
Technology, technical artifacts,
social objects, natural objects
 Distinctions
• Artifacts: objects that are not found in nature but are made, designed, and
created by humans
• Social Artifacts: “play a role in ruling the behavior of humans, their natural
cooperation and the relationships between humans and social
institutions” Vermaas 11
– laws, government, state, marriage, driving license, traffic laws, currency
(money), organizations (corporations), contracts (including social contracts)
• Artistic artifacts: works of art created for enjoyment and beauty
• Technical artifacts: “material objects that have been deliberately produced
by humans in order to fulfill some kind of practical function.” Vermaas, 5
– technical function
– physical composition
– instructions for use (use or user guide)
• Technology: the knowledge and skill that goes into the making of technical
artifacts
– Applied science
– Craft and skill (handed down from generation to generation)
– Engineering?
 Hypothesis 1
• Society determines technology
– SCOT argues that technologies pass through three
stages: interpretive flexibility, closing of
interpretive flexibility, and the emergence of the
technical “black box.”
– From Penny Farthing bicycle to modern design
(based on Lawson bicycle)
– Typewriter and the QWERTY keyboard
• Pinch and Bijker (Social Construction of
Technology)
 Hypothesis 2
• Technology determines society
• Winner and Perrow
– Complexity (manifest and latent)
• tightly coupled systems—difficult to control because it is
impossible to isolate failures
• non-linear causality—effects of acts ripple throughout
system; non-linearity makes it difficult to predict the
consequences of actions
– Reverse Adaptation
• Because complex technologies redefine needs (and values),
we are forced to adapt ourselves (and our needs) to them.
– Technological Imperative
• Technologies transform and redefine human needs.
Machine needs become imperative and trump human
needs.
 Neutrality Thesis
• “from a moral point of view a technical
artifact is a neutral instrument that can only
be put to good or bad use…used for morally
good or bad ends, when it falls into the hands
of human beings.” (Vermaas 16)
– Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.
– At stake—Who is responsible for harms produced
by the use or abuse of technology: the user or the
designer?
 Value-Laden Thesis
• Values can be designed into technical artifacts
– Howe, Flanagan, Nissenbaum
– Value Discovery, Value Translation (operationalization and
implementation) and Value Verification
• Value Sensitive Design
• Oosterlaken: Zooming in and Zooming out
– “Zooming in…allows us to see the specific features or design
details of technical artifacts; zooming out…allows us to see how
exactly technical artifacts are embedded in broader socio-
technical networks and practices.”
• Flanagan, Howe, and Nissenbaum, “Embodying Values in Technology” in Information Technology and Moral
Philosophy, van den Hoven and Weckert.
• (See Taking a Capability Approach to Technology and Its Design: A Philosophical Exploration, Introduction, 14.
Simon Stevin Series in the Ethics of Technology). (See Taking a Critical Approach to Technology and Its Design 13
(table) and 14.)
 Again, designers can design value into a
technology
• Discovery
• discover’ the values that are relevant to, inspire, or inform a given
design project
• Translation
• embodying or expressing…values in system design. Translation is
further divided into operationalization, which involves defining or
articulating values in concrete terms, and implementation which
involves specifying corresponding design features
• Verification
• designers assess to what extent they have implemented target
values in a given system…. [M]ay include internal testing among the
design team, user testing in controlled environments, formal and
informal interviews and surveys, the use of prototypes, traditional
quality assurance measures such as automated and regression-
oriented testing, and more
• Flanagan, Howe, and Nissenbaum, “Embodying Values in Technology” in Information Technology and
Moral Philosophy, van den Hoven and Weckert.
The ontology of a technical artifact
• Technical artifacts are relational, that is, they
must be understood in relation to different
contexts
– Social context: technical artifact must be
unpacked in terms of the use guide
– But users can always develop procedures that
circumvent (work around) the guide
– STS: including laws (social artifacts), procedures,
other technical artifacts, social context,
information and information systems, economies
 1. Summarize Your Case/Article

• Summarize the article or summarize the

literature you have consulted
– The technology choice case
– Your own case

• Give the story

– How did the project originate?
– Was it successful?

• Where did it take place?

 2. Describe your Technology
• Classify it as a social, aesthetic, or technical
artifact
– Like the clock in Frey’s office, it can be more than one
– What does it do when it is fully functioning?

• What is its technical function?

• What is its physical composition? (Materials,
ect.)
• What are its “instructions for use” (User
manual—Put the paper in the typewriter,
center it, set the margin bell, etc.)
 3. Do a Socio-Technical Analysis
Identify the key sub-environments
hardware, software, physical surroundings,
stakeholder, procedures, laws, markets,
information
Identify key value issues such as value conflicts
Moral Values: justice, responsibility, respect, trust,
and integrity
Non-Moral Values: efficiency, effectiveness,
profitability…
Are there any value conflicts, value vulnerabilities or
potential harms?
Summarize this with a Socio Technical System Table
 Like this one…
Technol- Software Physical Stake- Pro- Laws (univ Information
ogy Surround- holders cedures regs) systems
ngs

Classroom Microsoft Describe Teacher, Give one of Rules on How your

Computers Office classroom your group your research group
(Social and show members, procedures misconduct assembles
Smart Networking how you, other for value dispersed
Board Media) constrains teachers, realization Crazy information
interaction other Calendar
Transferring
Data Google classmates Matricula (changing
information
Display Documents (Holding (Does this MWF to
across STSs
Projector discussions Your boss procedure TTh; No
Gantt with more (if you have embody or exams in Informed
Internet Charts than three) a job frustrate last week) Consent
Connection outside of justice?) (providing
the univ) info to
others)
 4. Discuss your technology and case using
critieria of appropriate technology such as…
• Ecologically sound • Conducive to
• Low-cost decentralization
• Low-maintenance • Compatible with laws of
• Labor intensive ecology
• Energy efficient • Makes use of modern
knowledge
• Simple, efficient, non-
violent • Gentle in the use of
resources
• Oosterlaken et al on Appropriate
Technology • Serves the human person
• Production by the masses
 5. Evaluate your technology using the
Capability Approach

• Does your technical artifact serve as a conversion

factor that helps individuals turn capabilities into
functionings?
• What environmental/STS features stand in the way
of the realization of the capabilities you have
chosen?
• Is your technical artifact a personal, social, or
environmental conversion factor?
Capabilities Approach of Sen and
Nussbaum
William Frey
ADEM
 Capabilities Approach
• “help answer the question, “What is this person able to
do or be?”
• “Substantial freedoms, causally interrelated
opportunities to choose and act.”
• “They are not just abilities residing inside a person but
also freedoms or opportunities created by a
combination of personal abilities and the political,
social, and economic environment.”
• Paradigm Shift
– Replace view that these communities are deficient (have
needs…) with view that communities are repositories of
capabilities and resources that can be engaged.
• Martha Nussbaum. Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011, 20,
33-34.
 Conversion Factors
• Importance of realizing capabilities
– Making real the human potentials of individuals is
an essential part of happiness and wellbeing
– In language of Capabilities Approach, this is
turning capabilities into “functionings”

• Means that realize capabilities are called

conversion factors: private, social,
environmental
 More on conversion factors
• Personal
– Metabolism, physical condition, sex, reading skills, gender, race,
caste

• Social
– Public policies, social norms, practices that unfairly discriminate,
societal hierarchies, power relations related to class or gender,
race, caste.

• Environmental
– Physical or built environment, climate, pollution, proneness to
earthquakes, presence or absence of seas or oceans
– Robeyns, Ingrid, "The Capability Approach", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), Edward N.
Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/capability-approach/>.
 Create the background conditions where people are
“empowered” to exercise their basic capabilities

Life Sense, Affiliation

Imagination,
Thought

Bodily Health Emotion Other Species

Bodily Integrity Practical Reason

Play Control over one’s

environment
 Types of Capabilities
• Basic Capabilities
Life
Bodily health
Bodily integrity

• Cognitive Capabilities
Senses / imagination / thought
Emotions (“not having one’s emotional development
blighted by fear and anxiety”)
practical reason (liberty of conscience and religious
observance)
 Types of Capabilities
• Social or Out-reaching Capabilities
– Affiliations
– “live with and toward others, to recognize and show concern for
other human beings, to engage in various forms of social
interaction; to be able to imagine the situation of another(freedom
of assembly and speech)
– “Having the social bases of self-respect and nonhumiliation; being
able to be treated as a dignified being whose worth is equal to that
of others (nondiscrimination)
– Other Species
– “Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals,
plants, and the world of nature.”
 Types of Capabilities
• Agent Capabilities
–Play
–Control over one’s environment
•“Political.
–Being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one’s life;
having the right of political participation, protections of free speech and
association.”
•Material.
–Being able to hold property (both land and movable goods), and having property
rights on an equal basis with others;
– having the right to seek employment on an equal basis with others;
– having the freedom from unwarranted search and seizure.
–In work being able to work as a human being, exercising practical reason and
entering into meaningful relationships of mutual recognition with other workers
 Use these Capabilities to assess your
technical artifact
Artifact / Conversion Capability Factors that constrain and
Factor enable
OLPC (XO Laptops) Sense, Imagination, Thought Classroom environment and
(education) versus Play teaching approach embedded in
technology
Waste for Life (Hot Press) Other species (natural Agricultural practices and local
environment) versus Control over climate (growing natural fibers);
One’s Environment (employment) Availability of waste products
Aprovecho (Wood Stoves) Other species (deforestation) Efficiently burning stoves,
versus Bodily Health (children availability of wood, locally
suffering from inhaling indoor available food and cooking styles
smokes)
Amish Sense, Imagination, Thought Diary Practices; Surrounding
(religious practices) versus Control communities and laws; Property
Over Environment (autonomy from Practices; Rumspringa
English)
Airplane Cockpits Practical Reason (life plan Social and legislative means; NGOs
realization) versus Control Over and other women’s support
Environment and Bodily groups; industrial-military complex
Health/Movement
Podcasts to Zimbabwe Control Over one’s Environment; Information needs; animal
Affiliation husbandry and agricultural
practices; local markets
AT Case Pivot to PR Frameworks
One Laptop Per Child Laptops to Teachers •Ecologically sound
•Low-cost
Removing gender bias from Removing social injustice from
airplane cockpit design gas pipeline design •Low-maintenance
•Labor intensive
Uchangi Dam (eng as honest Engineers as Honest Brokers in •Energy efficient
broker) PR Energy Debates •Simple, efficient, non-violent
Amish (exercise of Vieques—Are windmills an Values in technology “fit”
technological choice) appropriate or intermediate
those embedded in STS
technology for Vieques?

Aprovecho Case (NGO designs •Are wood-burning stoves an Technology serves as

and tests wood-burning appropriate technology?
“conversion factor” in the
cooking stoves) •Is there a need for these stoves
in PR? conversion of capabilities into
•Would PR be a good regional functionings
center for testing stoves?

Waste for Life (Press that Using STS analysis to explain

makes building materials out of difference between Lesotho
waste products) success and Buenos Aires failure
Mindsets or Mental Models

Paternalism and other unquestioned

assumptions
 What is a mindset or mental model?
• A framework that structures, orders, and filters
experience
• Mind sets (or mental models) are for the most
part good
• But because they filter, they leave things out
– Werhane: “resulting mindsets or mental models are
incomplete, and sometimes distorted, narrow, and
single-framed, and often turn into biased ways of
perceiving, organizing and learning.” (Alleviating Poverty, 46)
• Because something does not make it through our
mind sets, we think it unimportant
 Paternalism
• Divides the world into developed and
underdeveloped
• Developed is superior to the underdeveloped
• Responsibility of developed is to impose its
technology, social forms, economic systems,
and political views on the undeveloped
• Werhane: “encapsulates the poor as passive
recipients rather than active determinants of
their own futures.” (Alleviating Poverty, 45)
 Generalization Bias
• Closely related to bias of common sense and bias of
conceptualism

• We ignore particulars (information special to a region)

and reduce the remote and distant to the familiar and
local

• Examples:
– Children are not mature enough to have/use banks
– Women in impoverished circumstances cannot pay back
micro loans
– Individuals in impoverished nations, who are at the
bottom of the economic pyramid, are there because they
lack crucial skills or are handicapped
 Mind Sets from Bleak House
• Refusing to adopt your mind to those differently
situated
– Evaluator not participant point of view
– Heaters in PR post offices
– Using Texas highway codes for building highway 10
through the middle of PR

• Not addressing other cultures from suitable

points of view
– Attitude toward other cultures is “elitist, hierarchical,
and unidimensional rather than …
– collegial, participatory, cooperative, and democratis
 Mind Sets from Bleak House
• Not paying attention to matters of the heart
– emotions do not enter into the equation
– care, compassion, hope, and humility are not of
central concern

• Good intentions alone are enough

– XO laptops are designed with the best of intentions so
the governments of developing nations should accept
them
– Playpumps (kids play on the merry-go-round and
water gets pumped into a storage tank) can’t go
wrong
 Unquestioned Assumptions
Assumption Mental Model
OLPC (XO Laptops) Children learn through inquiry- Good Intentions alone are not
based and self-directed learning. enough; Research Bias: Theory
prevents concrete observation
Waste for Life (Hot Press) A technology is neutral and can be Neutrality Thesis
integrated into different STSs with
similar results.
Aprovecho (Wood Stoves) A stove appropriate for Addressing minds different
underdeveloped countries can be situated; Cultures from suitable
developed “in the lab.” points of view; Paternalism ( but
reverse or Inverse Peace Corps
helped matters)
Amish The Amish have abandoned Paternalism; Generalization Bias;
technology for a primitive lifestyle. Addressing minds differently
situated
Airplane Cockpits Women are physically and Gender Bias (Gender differences
emotionally incapable of flying form basis of value hierarchy)
airplanes.
Podcasts to Zimbabwe Podcasts are value neutral tools Neutrality Thesis
that can be integrated into a STS
with no “surprises.”
Application

Duchity Haiti
Concept Description Question Information Information
posed from from survey challenges:
concept and visits focus for more
relative to relative to info-gathering
development concept activities
“[S]ubstantial What are the pertinent Survey data also More data required
Capabilities freedoms, a set of capabilities affected by indicates that both on how electricity
Approach (causally) interrelated electricity availability predominant would be used and how
opportunities to and use? Can occupations are electricity stands in
choose and act. electricity play the role business/merchant relation to other
[These] are not just of a conversion factor and farming. It also energy generation
abilities residing here? establishes a strong alternatives.
inside a person but  Practical interest in the One interesting
also freedoms or Reasoning: means availability of problem. Could
opportunities created of realizing life electricity for carrying computers based on
by a combination of plans and out business/market the OLPC model play a
personal abilities and aspirations and agricultural greater, and positive
the political, social, and  Affiliations: activities. It indicates a role in education.
economic (economic and low level of interesting Electricity, thus, could
environment.” social) in using electricity to serve as a conversion
(Nussbaum)  Control over run entertainment factor in realizing
environment: devices like TVs, educational
(unemployment computers, and radios capabilities such as
and emotion and sensation,
environmental imagination, and
degradation) thought.
Hardware / Physical People, Procedures Laws Cultural
Software Surround- Groups, & Matters
ings Roles
Diesel Mountains Orphanage Measuring water Eng Codes French
Generator (stripped and YouthHaiti flow (Parish will Colonialism
unstripped of Using/Repairing not fund
Electricity vegetation) Global rebuilding Language:
generator
Wiring (inside Initiatives school in French and
School: (Rotary Club, Measuring water Pleasance)
and outside) (natural Creole
UNICEF, etc.) fall
lighting, Regulating
Individual Making Charcoal
benches, and NSF the
Generators blackboards) generation of
(inspecting new
UPRM (land electricity
school)
grant (public,
university) private,
utility)
Computers? Earthquake Universities Pedagogical Environment
and Tsunami Approaches al standards
Cell Phones? Zones Primary and (parochial non- and
Highways Secondary parochial) enforcement
Transportation (paved, Schools Student Land use
technology unpaved) Assessment
Governments
(international
context)
Education in Duchity
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Species Membership. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press,
2006.
2. Nussbaum, Martha C. Creating Capabilities: The Human
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Jeopardy and Technological Choice
• Responsible choice for appropriate technology
– http://cnx.org/content/m43922/1.8/

• Jeopardy STS IM
• Jeopardy Socio Technical Systems (with
categories on capabilities and markets)
• Technology Choice Cases (OLPC, Amish, Uchangi
Dam, Airplane Cockpits)
• Tech Choice Cases (Aprovecho, Waste for Life,
Human Capabilities)