Thompson Generalized

Thompson’s exploration of technology’s effect on privacy is interesting to say the least. Using reproductive technologies as her focus, she charts her way through the myriad interactions that naturally flow from an attempt to understand an incredibly complex topic melded with an incredibly complex technology with potentially far-reaching implications.

Whereas I fundamentally agree with her assertion that the various aspects of reproductive privacy she explores ‘suggests that the biomedical and life sciences need to be integrated into political philosophy in a way that goes beyond how science and technology are generally discussed in relationship to democracy, agency, and social order’(212), I’m not entirely convinced that its inclusion should be done at the exclusion of other types of disruptive technologies. Indeed, two of the three aspects of privacy that she explores in the piece (autonomous scientific research and the private sector) are intrinsic to all large-scale scientific enterprises in this country. One can always ask of any technology, “how much of a role should government have in regulating it?” and “how does the activity and characteristics of the private sector influence its use?” Reproductive privacy, the third aspect of privacy that she examines in the article, can be slightly altered depending on which technology one examines – one could speak of financial privacy, or behavioral privacy, or any other permutation of privacy that is infringed by any certain technology.

In a sense, I’m arguing that Thompson doesn’t give herself enough credit concerning the applicability of her framework to other, particularly emerging, technologies.: all three of the above aspects of privacy could be applied, with a little massaging, to, for instance, social media privacy. There are questions concerning the rights of the state to interfere with the exchanges of information inherent in social medias (private sector privacy), questions regarding what kinds of data mining techniques should be developed and applied (autonomous research), and questions regarding the current state of electronic privacy and the usefulness of prior conceptions of privacy on the Internet in general (Internet privacy). Her framework could be more powerful than she herself indicates.

Her ‘monopoly of desperation’ (240) explanation is very interesting, and I wonder how similar this is, in some respects, to Jasanoff’s co-production. A full analysis is way beyond the scope of this blog post, but I can’t help but think there may be at least some surface similarities. In Thompson’s conception, the monopoly of desperation is created by the consumer of reproductive technologies as their demands are met by the providers of that technology. In turn, consumer demands are shaped by the technologies and techniques of reproduction available at the time. This negotiation between what is wanted and what is provided, and the change that proceeds from the two, shares similarities with societal coproduction, albeit as a microcosm of coproduction’s macrocosm. From a selection of technologies, Thompson’s reproductive consumers make their choice, and their choices determine the progression of technological innovation.

Thompson’s unwillingness to reach beyond her specific chosen technology is understandable in light of her research interests (and probably the constraints that the editors placed on her chapter), but there’s a lot of good material here I’d like to see pressed forward a bit more.