ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to clarify a theoretical basis for social critique of contemporary technology. Andrew Feenberg's goal is to develop a critical theory of technology that evades the positivism that puts technology outside of social processes and changes, while at the same time it must avoid lapsing into a relativism that sees each technological artefact simply in terms of its own, local, social history. The chapter addresses the problem of what the defining essence of technology must be, Feenberg combines ontological and practical perspectives in his theory of instrumentalisation. The problem with Feenberg's, highly sophisticated, model of the hegemony of technological rationality is that the instrumentalism at its core is too readily associated with empowered social positions. For Feenberg, probing the limits of the technical consists less in hands-on tinkering with technology than in a technological sub-politics that tries to act upon the horizons of technological development. Feenberg's work provides the conceptual resources with which to radicalise contemporary critical theory.
