Jon Clark’s study of the effect of the modernization of a telephone exchange on exchange maintenance work and workers is a solid contribution to a debate that encompasses two lively issues in the history and sociology of technology: technological determinism and social constructivism.
Clark makes the point that the characteristics of a technology have a decisive influence on job skills and work organization. Put more strongly, technology can be a primary determinant of social and managerial organization. Clark believes this possibility has been obscured by the recent sociological fashion, exemplified by Braverman’s analysis, that emphasizes the way machinery reflects social choices. For Braverman, the shape of a technological system is subordinate to the manager’s desire to wrest control of the labor process from the workers. Technological change is construed as the outcome of negotiations among interested parties who seek to incorporate their own interests into the design and configuration of the machinery. This position represents the new mainstream called social constructivism.
The constructivists gain acceptance by misrepresenting technological determinism: technological determinists are supposed to believe, for example, that machinery imposes appropriate forms of order on society. The alternative to constructivism, in other words, is to view technology as existing outside society, capable of directly influencing skills and work organization.
Clark refutes the extremes of the constructivists by both theoretical and empirical arguments. Theoretically he defines “technology” in terms of relationships between social and technical variables. Attempts to reduce the meaning of technology to cold, hard metal are bound to fail, for machinery is just scrap unless it is organized functionally and supported by appropriate systems of operation and maintenance. At the empirical level Clark shows how a change at the telephone exchange from maintenance-intensive electromechanical switches to semielectronic switching systems altered work tasks, skills, training opportunities, administration, and organization of workers. Some changes Clark attributes to the particular way
management and labor unions negotiated the introduction of the technology, whereas others are seen as arising from the capabilities and nature of the technology itself. Thus Clark helps answer the question: “When is social choice decisive and when are the concrete characteristics of technology more important?”
The information in the passage suggests that which of the following statements from hypothetical sociological studies of change in industry most clearly exemplifies the social constructivists’ version of technological determinism?
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文中信息指出来下列哪一个观点最能举证社会构建主义对于科技决定论？
A. 科技更能决定雇员的能力
B. 产业科技中的程序都是由科技和人类需求中发展和谈判开来的
C. 一些组织改变是由于人的改变，一些改变是由于科技
D. 大多数行业中的科技创新是通过研究和发展
E. 一些行业会减少工作岗位，但是会教育雇员通过科技学会新的技能
题目解析：
A. 正确正确。本选项的描述与建构主义者的观点一致，即科技决定论认为技术是在社会之外影响工人的技能。
B. 根据原文 “ technologcal determinists are supposed to believe...that machinery imposses appropriate forms of order on society”表明并没有提到谈判。
C. 根据原文的描述，社会构建主义者认为科学决定论相信科技，并不是人，是组织改变。
D. 原文并没有描述
E. 原文并未谈到减少工作岗位
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