IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2022 - 49

essay of Van de Poel and Kroes [22] on the value
sensitive design (VSD) of technology, and Brey's [2]
article in explaining the role of technology in the
realization of the values required for building a good
society, are some works that are worthy of mention.
But Feenberg's ideas about the relationship between
value and fact-here, the technology-will shed light
on how to confront this philosophical problem. Feenberg
[9] summarizes the relationship between value
and fact in this short but key sentence: " Values are
the facts of the future. " Accordingly, he believes that a
technology is the materialized expression of some values
that attended the process of its creation. Likewise,
Feenberg maintains that current values will turn into
facts one day in future.
However, now the question is how Feenberg's
proposition about the relationship between value
and fact can be employed to gain a better understanding
about the relationship between society and
technology. Here the article by Pinch and Bijker is
referred to discuss the issue and to define the mechanism(s)
that embed values in technology. Criticisms
of a social group about a given technology
can affect builders and companies through public
demands expressed through public rallies and other
means, forcing them to embed the values that are
demanded by the public.
Different social groups have various and, at times,
contradictory values. It is crystal clear that in such
situations, conflicts will occur, as each group will
seek to impose their own values on the development
of a given technology, and of course preferences
of the more powerful and dominant groups will
prevail over the values and demands of other, less
powerful groups. The history of the bicycle, as narrated
by Pinch and Bijker, is a beneficial example.
They have implicitly mentioned the role of the skirt,
the custom dress of women, and the common value
in women's clothing, that influenced the bicycle
manufacturers, and thus the whole process of bicycle
production [19].
Here, the explanation offered by Pinch and
Bijker somehow clarifies the role of social groups.
However, it is worth mentioning that according to
the heterogeneous engineering approach, it is not
just social groups that influence the development
of technology. Rather, there are some other more
important heterogeneous social engineers such as
politicians and investors, who have their own values
and can embed it in a given technology.
March 2022
Figure 6. Bicycles with different pedals,
the proposed solution by the bicycle
manufacturers accommodating women's
clothing [19].
As has been stated earlier, Feenberg has taken
significant steps toward explaining mutual relationship
between technology and HEs in " the paradox
of action, " but he has clearly discussed this mutual
relationship in his proposition under " the democratic
paradox. " Feenberg uses the " co-construction
of society and technology, " the known term in the
literature of technology studies, to illuminate this
relationship. This obviates the difference between
Feenberg's approach and that of the three aforementioned
approaches. According to " the democratic
paradox, " technologies that form a given society
are criticized and changed by that society. In other
words, technology and society construct each other
[9]. Technology can deeply modify the interests of
social groups by presenting new functions, and on
the other hand, it is these same social groups with
new interests, who in their turn influence the development
of the technology as an HE.
49
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2022

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