Senior year of high school I took a class called Western European Cultural Studies where we explored the development of Western culture and how thought progressed from Ancient Greek thinkers to today. One of my favorite readings in the class was excerpted from Louis Althusser’s book “On the Reproduction of Capitalism.” In the readings Althusser described systems he referred to as “Ideological State Apparatuses.” On their most basic level Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) are the different systems that affect the cultural climate of a society. ISAs include but are not limited to the Scholastic Apparatus, the Familial Apparatus, the Religious Apparatus, and the Political Apparatus. And while their effects may not always be obvious each of these Apparatuses effects each individual in the society they both inhabit.
Althusser wrote about ISAs because it is important to have a model to understand the systems you exist in. Understanding the systems you exist within allows one to see how those systems affect them and cultivate themselves as an individual instead of a part of the larger societal structure. And while Althusser wrote about society as a whole I believe his model can be applied to smaller systems that exist giving members of those systems an understanding of how they are affected by the different ISAs that influence different systems in their life such as their profession, neighborhood, University, etc.
As a prospective engineer I’d like to apply this model to engineering and examine some of the different ISAs that exist within engineering and examine how they affect technological development as a whole. Thinking about the different groups that develop technology we can create a few categories. The two most general categories that affect development are government vs private sector. As we learned the goal of the group developing a technology greatly affects the path the technology takes. And the profit motive in industry has means that they will make different design decisions focused on cutting cost and increasing profit that the government might not make. The other Apparatus that affects development in my opinion is the culture a technology was developed in. When comparing technologies developed in different areas of the world one can see that different cultures have different priorities that affect design decisions as well. For example technologies developed in Europe are generally more sustainable than those developed in the United States. This is because this is a cultural priority in Europe and not as important to US consumers. Outside of public vs private and culture there are many other things that affect design philosophy even going down to the individual company (for example Apple develops differently than Microsoft) but overall I believe the culture a technology is developed in and public vs private have the greatest effect on the design direction a technology takes.