serendipityoucity

Thoughts from having read -
Determinism and indeterminacy in the history of technology, Philip Scranton, Technology and Culture, v.36 #No 2, pp.31-25

The discomfort i have toward infrastructural determinism is very much associated with voluntarism, individualism, free will and agency in the construction, use and interaction of/with any kind of complex system. Comprehensive determinism is too absolutist and reductionist an approach for my liking, but i still believe there is some sort of partial or local determinism whereby structure and dynamics of a given infrastructure - possibly and/or probably determine how certain segments of its target users will act and interact with it and continuously modify it. Therefore the infrastructure is not an autonomous agent in and of its complex self, the intersection of local deterministic elements, context (where, when, culture, actors, institutions, etc.) and technological/infrastructural momentum can explain systemic change, technological directions and how humans behave with and create the structure and dynamics of an infrastructure.  Not in the positivist sense of prediction. But perhaps this is an approach to understand infrastructures - to accept their indeterminacy, and embracing conjectural complexity.

I like Hughes’ concept of Technological momentum described here by Andrew Feenberg, Canada Research Chair of Technology and Philosophy

Large scale technological systems acquire momentum as they grow. By this is meant that once the basic decisions have been made and implemented, the system tends to continue in the same direction indefinitely. The culture of the organization is shaped by its early technological choices and excludes the exploration of alternatives. Often the cost of changing direction is very high. The momentum of the system thus pulls it forward along what appears to be a predetermined pathway. So the electric power industry continues to be based on huge centralized generators although solar and other small scale generation is proving to be efficient and environmentally desirable.

As Scranton states, technological/infrastructural momentum causes local but not comprehensive determinacies.  This can explain similarities between infrastructure, not sameness nor prediction but perhaps the nature of some of the decision spaces (Carol Gilligan in Scranton).