Deck 4: Technology and Science

Question 1

What did Foucault mean by the term power-knowledge?

A) The structures of power shape both what we take to be knowledge and what knowledge we seek out.
B) Science and technology are situated outside of the hierarchies of human institutions.
C) Humans and technology act on the other.
D) All of the above.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

According to your text, what is the leading cause of death in the U.S. for individuals between the ages of 1 and 35?

A) AIDS
B) Youth-on-youth violence
C) Traffic accidents
D) Environmental exposure to toxins

Answer 2

C

Question 3

The author argues that the "hidden subsidy" for automobiles is an example of which of the following?

A) Negative externalities
B) Evidence that private transportation pays for itself
C) The unseen pollution produced by car exhaust
D) The added benefits that private autos provide the economy

Answer 3

A

Question 4

In cooperation with the United Nations, WHO proclaimed 2011-2020 the Decade of Action for Road Safety to try to turn what frightening trend around?

A) A steady increase in deaths of children under age 5 due to incorrect usage of child restraints
B) Traffic accidents trending towards being the third-leading cause of death worldwide by 2020
C) An increase in accidents among baby boomers
D) Pedestrian deaths trending upwards of 50% of fatalities in developing countries

Question 5

What is the average number of traffic deaths each year in the U.S.?

A) Under 4,000
B) About 10,000
C) About 30,000
D) Well over 100,000

Question 6

According to the author:

A) technology shapes culture.
B) culture shapes technology.
C) Both a and b.
D) Neither a nor b.

Question 7

The story of the National City Line demonstrates:

A) the obvious superiority of buses to electric streetcars.
B) the limitations of streetcars for inter-urban transportation.
C) a reasonable corporate strategy to develop a market.
D) anti-trust violations that eliminated automobile competition

Question 8

According to the text, which of the following is a "hidden subsidy" for automobiles in the U.S.?

A) Road construction, maintenance, and repair
B) Emergency services responding to motor vehicle accidents
C) Military intervention in the Middle East
D) All of the above are hidden subsidies

Question 9

What has been the result for air quality from strict emission controls?

A) Strict emission controls have resulted in a dramatic improvement in air quality.
B) Strict emission controls are largely ignored thus air quality has dramatically decreased.
C) Strict emission controls have led industrialists to be contrite and to stop polluting.
D) The growth in use of automobiles/trucks has wiped out much of the gain from emission controls.

Question 10

How many people are estimated to die each year in Great Britain as the result of auto exhaust according to a government study?

A) Approximately 10,000 people are killed each year.
B) Nearly half of all deaths in England each year are the result of auto exhaust.
C) Strict emission controls have all but eliminated deaths due to automobile exhaust.
D) There has been no government study of the health implications of auto exhaust.

Question 11

According to your text, what percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions come from automobiles?

A) 10%
B) 20%
C) 32%
D) 62%

Question 12

What is Langdon Winner posing in coining the term "technological somnambulism"?

A) Why is routinzation of new behavior so hard to accomplish?
B) Without culture, would we know what to do with our technological means?
C) Why is the black box of technology so hard to crack open?
D) Why, even as technology negatively impacts society, are humans so complicit in this reconstitution?

Question 13

What, according to Lewis Mumford, central tenant of modern society did Y2K threaten?

A) The fallacy of the naturalistic fallacy of scientific knowledge
B) The unfinalizability of cultural change
C) The quasi-religious character of our technological faith in machines
D) All of the above

Question 14

Phenomenology is best defined as:

A) the manner in which we experience everyday life.
B) a chain reaction of simple events.
C) the finalizability of technological inevitability.
D) paradigm shifts.

Question 15

What was Weber's view of science?

A) It is then up to those who pick the fruits of science to decide what best to do with scientific knowledge-not scientists themselves.
B) Science shouldn't be polluted with culture, values, interests, and ambitions.
C) The point of science was to measure the world and to refine our methods of thinking.
D) All of the above.

Question 16

According to Steven Shapin, Teller, a scientist working on the Manhattan Project, viewed that "it was the scientist's job to discover the laws of nature, not to pronounce on whether the laws permitting nuclear fusion ought to be mobilized for the construction of a hydrogen bomb." What is this view an example of?

A) Moore's naturalistic fallacy
B) Latour and Woolgar's "black box"
C) Joliot and Curie's "chain reaction"
D) Weber's "fabrication"

Question 17

Black box, a term proposed by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, understands science as:

A) hybrids between facts and science.
B) outwardly logically defined, but actually compiled over time as a result of many debates.
C) phenomenological recipes.
D) paradigm shifts.

Question 18

Latour sees our understandings of the world as factishes as:

A) hybrids between facts and beliefs.
B) the essential act of fabrication.
C) the simultaneous creation of knowledge and actor networks.
D) all of the above.

Question 19

According to the text, which of the following exemplifies the concerns of the "black box of technology"?

A) The Fukushima-Daiichi disaster
B) The California drought
C) The moral peril of feedlots
D) The reliance of convenience on automobiles

Question 20

Which of the following statements best elaborates on the key idea that "technology is not imperative"?

A) Technology and the science behind it are often presented to us as final, inevitable, unchangeable structures.
B) We do have control over technology even as it has control over us.
C) Human decisions are behind which technologies to build and scientific questions to ask, and which not.
D) All of the above.

Question 21

Unfinalizability means that we always have the capacity to affect at least some change in social outcomes like technology and science, however inevitable they may appear.

Question 22

Annual subsidies for cars in the United States, according to the World Resources Institute, are less than $100 million?

Question 23

Scientific capital gives a scientist a vested interest in protectingthe institutions of science for their own personal benefit.

Question 24

Boundary work makes it clear whose knowledge bears authorityover the situation at hand.

Question 25

True False Access to the elite goes through a leaky pipeline, with white males leaking out all down the line.

Question 26

A naturalistic fallacy claims that what is real is what is good, and what is good is what is real.

Question 27

Joliot and Curie documented how methane could be split, setting off chain reaction.

Question 28

Explain three ways that cars contribute to the "erosion of social commitment" according to the author?

Question 29

Technology is frequently considered to be an "independent agent of social change." Do you agree? Explain why or why not. Critique this claim?

Question 30

Explain the concept of "technology as dialogue.?

Question 31

What does the author mean by the "social organization of convenience?" Give an example and explain how it applies.?

Question 32

Cars are associated with a complex array of changes in the way Americans live. Using the example of cars, explain the dialogue of technology and the social organization of convenience?

Question 33

Define and give an example of a broken technological "recipes of understanding.?

Question 34

Matching: Please match the term, thinker, and/or text with its complement or correspondent , by placing the appropriate identification letter/number in the space provided. (You may use answers more than once.)
-____ Robert K. Merton

A) Self-fulfilling prophecy
B) Technological somnambulism
C) Recipes of understanding
D) Alfred Schutz
E) Bruno Latour
F) G.E. Moore

Question 35

Matching: Please match the term, thinker, and/or text with its complement or correspondent , by placing the appropriate identification letter/number in the space provided. (You may use answers more than once.)
-____ Langdon Winner

A) Self-fulfilling prophecy
B) Technological somnambulism
C) Recipes of understanding
D) Alfred Schutz
E) Bruno Latour
F) G.E. Moore

Question 36

Matching: Please match the term, thinker, and/or text with its complement or correspondent , by placing the appropriate identification letter/number in the space provided. (You may use answers more than once.)
-____ Alfred Schutz

A) Self-fulfilling prophecy
B) Technological somnambulism
C) Recipes of understanding
D) Alfred Schutz
E) Bruno Latour
F) G.E. Moore

Question 37

Matching: Please match the term, thinker, and/or text with its complement or correspondent , by placing the appropriate identification letter/number in the space provided. (You may use answers more than once.)
-____ Phenomenology

A) Self-fulfilling prophecy
B) Technological somnambulism
C) Recipes of understanding
D) Alfred Schutz
E) Bruno Latour
F) G.E. Moore

Question 38

Matching: Please match the term, thinker, and/or text with its complement or correspondent , by placing the appropriate identification letter/number in the space provided. (You may use answers more than once.)
-____ Actor Network Theory

A) Self-fulfilling prophecy
B) Technological somnambulism
C) Recipes of understanding
D) Alfred Schutz
E) Bruno Latour
F) G.E. Moore

Question 39

Matching: Please match the term, thinker, and/or text with its complement or correspondent , by placing the appropriate identification letter/number in the space provided. (You may use answers more than once.)
-____ Naturalistic Fallacy

A) Self-fulfilling prophecy
B) Technological somnambulism
C) Recipes of understanding
D) Alfred Schutz
E) Bruno Latour
F) G.E. Moore