Abstract
Keywords
As autonomous technologies such as artificial intelligence increasingly permeate and empower everyday life, it is necessary to revive the discussion of technology and power. When discussing power, Van Dijk is dissatisfied with previous theories that fail to integrate different forms of power or treat them equally. Van Dijk argues that previous theories do not fully encompass social, technical, and natural power within a framework. In particular, while the dialectical view of technology attempts to connect three forms of power, it mainly highlights technical and social power while neglecting natural power. To move beyond these theoretical limitations, Van Dijk’s book proposes an integrated framework that advocates treating all entities equally and analyzing their interrelationships in the natural, technical, and social worlds. By examining this comprehensive power framework and its interrelationships, the book aims to explore a path toward technological development that enables symbiosis between humans and nature.
Social, technical, and natural power reveal the sources of power, while material, physical, and mental power illustrate the levels of power operation (Chapter 2). Distinct levels of power, in terms of sources and operation, have an interactive relationship. Social and technical power operate across material, physical, and mental dimensions. However, material power is also grounded in natural power. Building on these foundations, the chapter identifies nine appearances of power. Material power manifests as force, construction, and coercion, which draws upon natural, physical, organic, and social resources. Physical power operates in the liminal space where bodies intersect with technology, and its intersection can be human-to-human or human-to-machine. Physical power takes the forms of domination, discipline, and dependency. Mental power encompasses information, persuasion, and authority, which is closely tied to socio-technical dynamics (p. 17). Finally, the book introduces the dual manifestation of power, including power-over and power-to. Specifically, the former means control exerted over others in social science, while the latter is the capacity to act upon natural and technical objects (p. 22).
While most historians and philosophers of power (Lukes, 1974; Mann, 1986) have extensively theorized power, they have seldom systematically engaged with technology as a constitutive dimension. The book highlights technology as a central concept, as indicated by its title Power and Technology. In the following, Chapter 3 distinguishes technology from technics. Technology denotes macro-historical practices of artifact-making and usage, while technics comprises micro-level methods, skills, and procedures embedded in specific operations (pp.43-45). Based on this definition, technology is not simply an instrument but an active mediator between users and artifacts, connecting with social, cultural, and knowledge practices (pp.47-48). From a historical perspective, the evolution of technology as a human activity is shaped primarily by social, organizational, cultural and communicative contexts (p.46). The authors outline eight stages of technological evolution, progressing from the tool era to that of embodied technology (p.49). Throughout this evolution, new technologies do not supersede but superimpose upon old ones, coexisting in stratified layers that constitute a fully technologized society. Technology progressively transcends instrumentalist frameworks, becoming integrated into the body and mind. Technological actors are taxonomized into three categories, creators, makers, and users/participants, across nine distinct roles (p.64). Evolution generates three interlocking trends. Functional specialization fragments roles as technology advances. Role clustering merges producers and owners, who employ inventors and designers while controlling workers and operators. Finally, users and other stakeholders, particularly regulators, must proactively assert governance aligned with societal interests to forestall misuse (p.74).
The integrated framework’s internal dynamics are further illuminated in Chapter 4 through the concepts of mediation and interaction. These concepts reflect a relational view of power between and within the natural, technical and social world, demonstrating that power is only realized in practice and does not consist of independent entities with fixed attributes. Mediation refers to the ongoing shaping between two subjects involving actors, actants, or natural entities via a third party. Mediation constitutes a relational framework, offering a novel perspective for integrating technology into social power and the other two forms. Interaction is a temporary two-way action of at least two different agents without a mediator (p. 95). Interaction drives the dynamic process of elucidating power flow, particularly between social and technical systems (p.98). Social power, rooted in interrelationships, is created, circulated, and allocated through ongoing mediation and interaction among the technical, human, and natural worlds. Through the substantiation of mediation via interaction, six causal effects help illustrate the framework of interrelationship between technology and social power at all social levels. The concepts of constraints and affordances constitute the basic conditions for defining the boundaries of possible actions. Perceptions interpret sensory information and drive humans to create technology and social arrangements through constructions. These constructions ultimately lead to actions and workings, while operations regulate the execution of technical artifacts (p. 101). In the next three chapters, van Dijk applies this power framework along with related theories, including the six causal effects, mediation, and interaction, to illustrate a dialectical framework of technology and society at various societal levels.
Chapter 5 examines the human-machine interface between users and technical systems through mediation and interaction. The six causal effects are employed to explain the human-machine actions and events, ranging from exercising mutual goals to responding feedback. Moving to the meso-level, Chapter 6 maps the relations within a socio-technical assemblage that encompasses organizational and technical systems. Managers and workers mediate the organization and its machines or programs by using them, while machines programs largely realize the technical systems of the organization. Supervision, monitoring, and automation are interactions, illustrating the tendency of power to flow from social to technical systems. The causal effects such as construction (organizational design) and action (driving and using) remain operative in the mediations and interactions at the organizational level. Despite increasing technical autonomy, humans maintain organizational effectiveness through adaptation, resistance, and creativity. As at the micro and meso levels, the social and technical dimensions of society mutually shape each other through mediations and interactions in Chapter 7. The nine appearances of power framework, grounded in the logic of causal effects, further explains the mutual shaping between technology and society. However, this mutual shaping is not always symmetrical. Some power appearances, such as force and authority, emphasize technological constraints exerted by the social system. In contrast, others such as construction, coercion, dependency, and persuasion accentuate the social choices and constraints under the technological conditions. A relatively balanced mutual operation between the technological and social factors occurs in power appearances such as domination, discipline, and information. Across three chapters, technology imposes constraints at the individual, organizational, and social levels, but humans continuously resist and adapt, ensuring that the interplay between technology and society remains dynamic.
In Chapter 8, the author further applies this integrated framework and its theory to a specific case of artificial intelligence (AI), explores AI as a system technology that mediate across nature, technology, and society. Specifically, social power has created AI, and its applications are driven by goals set by social systems (p.220). In the context of AI, the reconceptualization focuses on the flow of social power within social systems. AI does not equally distribute social power within society. Instead, it has become a mediator reinforcing the position of the strong while diminishing that of the weak. For instance, AI designers, producers, and providers determine the direction of AI development, thereby regulating users’ decision-making and monitoring their behaviors (pp.221-223). This raises a critical issue that AI developers wield increasing social power, while individuals and small companies hold relatively little. To address technology governance issues, Chapter 9 implies that control is the result of power and proposes practical strategies focusing on social forces, including four core strategies: technology evaluation, ethical guidelines, self-regulation of individuals and organizations within communities, and laws and regulations. Although there are advantages of each method, each also has its own drawbacks.
This book applies a power-based theoretical framework to cutting-edge technologies, especially within the fields of media convergence and digital media studies. For example, Chapter 5 focuses on the human-machine interface as the hub of micropower. It reveals how digital media, such as websites, social media, smart personal devices, mobile applications shape user perception and regulate their behavior through interface design and algorithmic manipulation, while reducing individual users’ level of control. In this process, the technical power of digital media increasingly dominates the social power of individual users through the human-machine interface. Furthermore, from websites to personal assistants, digital media exhibit a deepening convergence with users’ daily lives. In the case analysis of social media platforms, the book elaborately demonstrates mutual shaping between technology and users, discussing more how technology exercises its technical power to dominate individual users’ social power, while the social power of users receives less attention. To avoid excessive imbalance, the book should further strengthen the case discussion from users’ perspective. For instance, it could discuss users’ creative resistance, showing how users consciously manipulate feedback signals to train the recommendation algorithms of digital media, allowing these systems to more precisely cater to their personal needs (Siles et al., 2020). Overall, the book follows an integrated framework and provides an important basis for understanding technology and society from the power perspective.
