Democratic Rationalization

Democratic rationalization is a term coined by Canadian philosophy professor Andrew Feenberg to describe the nondeterministic development of technology according to social factors—a notion he put forth in opposition to technological determinism, a popular model of the development of technology. Feenberg's work has been mainly in the philosophy of technology, his views on which he developed primarily in his Critical Theory of Technology trilogy: his 1991 Critical Theory of Technology (later revised and republished as Transforming Technology), his 1995 Alternative Modernity, and his 1999 Questioning Technology.

The critical theory of technology builds on the social critique of technology as articulated by Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, and Martin Heidegger (all of whom Feenberg has written books about), amplified with science and technology case studies. Feenberg describes technology ...