"An Interview with Andrew Feenberg," by Mark Zachry

In 2007, Mark Zachry interviewed Andrew Feenberg - a leader in the philosophy of technology, whose work deals with the relationship between technology and society, for Technical Communication Quarterly. Zachry explains that before Feenberg’s work, “technology was treated as an irresistible or deterministic force (453).” Since then, it is accepted that people play a key role in the evolution of technology, and society’s actions determine technology’s course. (It seems that Feenberg and Marshall McLuhan are on opposite ends of the spectrum here).

One of the first questions that Zachry asks Feenberg is, “How did you get interested in computers?” and the answer contains an interesting history lesson. He was working at the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in the early 1980s when he received his first computer. At this time computers were rare, and a personal computer cost around $5,000! Also, in these early days, computers were used primarily for filing and calculating, but he and his colleagues used them for communicating. He refers to this as “computer-mediated communication (456).”

He continued to study computer-mediated communication through his work with the Minitel, which was “a domestic computing network with a very simple interface that anyone could learn to use (457).” The Minitel was intended as a means for people to access information, such as, train schedules and phone listings, but hackers figured out how to instant message via the technology. (Wouldn’t this be an example of remediation?)

Throughout the interview it is obvious that Feenberg, like Donald Norman, is very interested in the influence that user’s have on the redesign of technology. He explains that the design of the Internet changed because it’s more commonly used as a communications device opposed to an information device. Another interesting detail that he provides is that computer companies used to think that they were connecting people to machines, but there came a time when they realized that they were rather connecting people to people. This observation lead them to design a program that allowed people to communicate with one another (458).

Zachry also asks about the relationship between critical theory and the design process. As Feenberg explains, critical theory “is a critique of domination exercised through the organization of technically mediated institutions (459).” I’m still not sure that I understand this term, but I think that it refers to a generalization of the characteristics of society, and companies design products with these characteristics in mind.

Towards the end of the article, they discuss online communities and education, and I thought that this section was particularly interesting. In the 1980s, Feenberg spent years experimenting with online education, but it never really went anywhere until years later when this technology became all the rage. All of a sudden, the president of the state college and university system in California decided to put the equipment into the classrooms for online education, even though nobody knew how they were supposed to use this technology to teach (468). This reminds me of the Norman reading, when he discusses the implementation of the university’s phone system. They spent millions of dollars installing these fancy phones without trying them out, and unfortunately most of the staff dislikes the phones (Norman 19). In both cases, the ideal would be to test the equipment and work out the kinks before installing such expensive equipment.

Click here to view the entire Interview.

Works Cited

Norman, Donald A. The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books, 1988.

Zachry, Mark. "An Interview with Andrew Feenberg." Technical Communications Quarterly, 16.4 (2007): 453-472.