Technological literacy reconsidered: a model for enactment

The enactment of technological literacy is how knowledge and personal engagement are put into ‘action’ in the world through social engagement. This enactment requires a particular set of competencies in action, which together helps shape the situation: recognizing needs; articulating problems; contributing towards the technological process; and analysing consequences. These will be discussed in turn below.

If you do not recognise need, you cannot participate in the technological process. We argue that in every particular situation, needs are reconstituted. This is highlighted by means of the following example: Imagine that you are sitting watching television at home and suddenly feel thirsty. Most likely, your reaction will be to fetch a glass, turn on a tap and then sit down again to enjoy your refreshing cold water—free from germs, dirt and other worrying problems. In this situation, you have (probably unconsciously) reconstituted your need for liquid, and articulated this as the problem of making use of the infrastructure present in your home. All this changes the minute your water pipe bursts—your focus is then on the system that provides the water (taken for granted in the first instance) and not on the water per se. On the other hand, the reason your water pipes are there in the first place, is because the need of water is recurrent in many aspects of life.

Contributing towards the technological process is very much about realizing potential from knowledge and personal engagement—in an environment of interacting with others and the world in the situation through social engagement. This is often manifested through some sort of design process. Similarly, each contribution moves the process along one of the multiply available paths towards possible solutions to problems. Being able to elect not to enact all that you have the potential to enact in a particular situation is a further sign that not everything needs to be considered in every part of every process. We might say that in the practice of technology, there are always black boxes that we locally take for granted. In the example of quenching your thirst above, the water reticulation system is typically such an instance of a black box—you do not think about it very much when it is there, even though you could.

Analysing consequences forms an important part of the feedback loop that shapes the final output of a technological process in question. It may be essential, for example, to change the strategy of skills employed, or the raw material used. A ‘professional’ has the ability to anticipate the result of a process before it occurs, and feed that result back into the decision making process. This then corresponds with the potential for evaluation. We see the analysing of consequences primarily on three levels: functional, personal and societal. Functional is evaluation of what the function of the outcome will be—to be compared to the intention. Personal refers to consequences for me as an individual (and other individuals involved in the process)—effort, danger and recognition. Societal refers to more overarching considerations, such as those related to environmental effects and the limited amount of primary and secondary resources available. Within societal we also include organisational considerations.

To be considered technologically literate, an individual needs to constitute a certain potential and have the possibilities to enact this potential (in relation to the situation). Learning that implies participating in a series of situations where aspects of knowledge come to the fore, motivations for personal engagement become clear, and framings of social engagement become manifested. Furthermore, the experience of enactment must become figural. In such a way, an individual can learn to reconstitute technological literacy in processes that have importance in his/her life. It is important to note that we are still considering technological literacy with the relational perspective discussed earlier. However, in this section we focus on how individuals moving from one situation to another consequently develop a ‘history’ of technological literacy based on different situations.

The context defines the role that an individual takes within a process. For example, say you are in the process of renovating your house. You have a project manager to ensure that the process is completed as per your requirements. As the owner, your level of technological ‘literateness’ is not relevant in the process—even though you may have the space to contribute—because you have employed a professional project manager. Thus, the role that you take is one of passive involvement. The moment you engage more actively in the process, perhaps as quality control, or perhaps just by discussing the progress with the craftsmen on a level which engages with the technology being enacted, both parties are now enacting a potential for technological literacy—and are thus, in this situation, considered technological literate. In particular, a discussion of this type would draw on evaluation as a key aspect of personal engagement, and you and the craftsman would have included each other in a participatory exchange. There may also possibly be scope for more active involvement on your side if, for example, you decide that you would like to complete a particular aspect yourself such as installing the wooden kitchen counter top. You would now take on the role of craftsman, and if the craftsman is present, s/he may engage you in a discussion on the details of what you are doing—you have reversed your roles in this part of the process.

This brings us to a key point in our argument. Roles that individuals can assume in a process that embodies technological literacy cannot be assumed to be fixed. Rather, they are something that are negotiated, through social engagement, where there is scope for this to take place—presupposing that the potential for enacting the process exists. Through this process, there is also the possibility for developing the various pillars of an individual’s potential for technological literacy (see Fig. 1), and in that way preparing to take up other roles in similar situations.

Analysing a process must be undertaken with respect to several contexts at the same time—be they local contexts constituted in terms of spacial and temporal aspects, or otherwise as part of a greater scheme. An individual’s enactment may adhere primarily to any of these levels, but is necessarily participating and shaping the process in all of them. A process that embodies technological literacy is characterised by bringing several of these levels to bear on each other. If this is not the case, quite disastrous results may emerge. A recent newspaper article (Engelbrektson 2007) told the story of a Swedish family who had bought a piece of land where they wanted to build a house. They consulted an architect who made a drawing of a house which fulfilled their requirements. As the next step they hired a carpenter to build the house for them, which he duly did. When the house was almost complete, a building inspector from the local municipality came for a standard inspection of the building. He decided to condemn the house as uninhabitable (and the owners were not allowed to enter the house) as it did not have proper supporting walls in place. Six months later the family, the carpenter, and the architect found themselves in court to decide with whom the blame lay—and who would have to pay to rectify the error. What happened here? It emerged that the drawing from the architect was not sufficient to build a structurally sound house. The carpenter, in turn, had simply followed the design specifications of the drawing—putting in windows in the context of putting in windows, building a wall in the context of building that particular wall—without considering the whole of the house (which was the intended outcome of the process in the greater scheme). The family did not realise that they had assumed the role of the top-level managers of the process; and that they had the overall responsibility for a successful outcome. Following our argument, we would characterize the three parties as not taking part in the same process—and lacking in terms of personal engagement—especially in terms of evaluation of consequences for the outcome. Furthermore, we would argue that there were elements of capability, content and skill missing.

Underlying our reasoning above is a recognition of the heterogeneity of individuals and situations. There are a multitude of roles to take, competencies to develop, and technological goals to pursue in our daily life. What we believe would flag an individual as technological literate is their display of a capability to bring knowledge and personal engagement to bear in the enactment in different roles and in so doing, allowing for negotiation of work-sharing, intention, problem, need, as well as roles with others. The complexity of an individual’s life and different competencies does allow for a blending of roles from different aspects of life—that can have impact on technological processes in different ways. Developing your technological literacy thus means to develop the parts that give you best flexibility in the roles you assume in your life, and gives you the ability of being open to assuming different roles. Technological literacy does not mean that you do, choose to do, and are able to do everything in a particular situation.

In addition to the implications discussed for the individual, we want to stress the importance of the societal perspective. In society, there are numerous technological processes going on which have shaped and are currently shaping the very structure of our lives. For example, many of the things we do to improve our quality of life includes the process of producing and using various technological artefacts. To manage the successful outcome of these processes, there are a multitude of experts of various kinds—defined, for example, by profession or position in society. Looking at the interaction between these groups, we can ask whether these processes can be characterized as embodying technological literacy. For example, we can ask whether the social engagement is open to negotiation around the roles (and responsibilities) taken by different kinds of experts. Or we can ask whether there is a mutual personal engagement in evaluation of the appropriateness of the process they are involved in. A particular aspect we wish to raise is the inherent power relationship between the persons involved and the consequences this can have for social engagement. In some cases, influence is matched by the level of potential and enactment, while in others, the most relevant potential may be excluded from the enactment through access barriers to social engagement, for example, specific communities of practice may not easily draw on knowledge from the outside. We suggest that an important aspect of technological literacy is to handle the impact of power relations on technological processes.

As an example, the role of the master craftsman, or expert, as the keeper of knowledge associated with these technological processes began to change with the emergence of the printing press. It was then possible for information to be more widely disseminated and for non-traditional ‘technologists’ to begin to develop an understanding of the field and move toward having the possibility to be technologically literate. Not surprisingly, it was around this time that patents emerged as a way of formalizing rights to ideas and processes as individuals engaged in protecting their rights in a society that was rapidly moving towards the sharing of knowledge (cf. Hansson 1996). Thus, in broadening the discussion from the collective of ‘expert groups’, it is important to consider how technological literacy manifests itself in society for ‘the rest’ of the population. It is common cause that most people find themselves in the role of a consumer of technology. The implication of this role is that their possibilities to engage in the process are very limited. Keirl (2006, p. 90) points to the importance of broadening the public’s participation in technology from the application of technologies stage, to earlier stages in the life of technologies, for example the manifestation stage, where technological artefacts finalize their form and function. This would open up the possibility for interacting with that technology, and relate its form and function to an analysis of consequences, as well as ethical aspects of its very existence. We can summarise this as the importance of allowing democratic elements to structure technological literacy in society, which implies the reduction of barriers of entry into this social engagement around technological artefacts that populate and shape our lives.

Following on from the development of such social engagement is the establishment of technological literacy as a proto-democratic practice and ‘a form of life’ (Molander 2002, p. 363) concerning technology in society. The establishment of such a practice also opens the space for discussions and negotiations about what the purpose of technology and technological literacy (or life in the broader picture) is. This immediately points to ethical discussions on technology in our lives, for example, the good life as depicted by Borgmann (Borgmann 2006; Higgs et al. 2000), or, more broadly, discussions around technology and values in the philosophy of technology (cf. Hanks 2010).