Literatuur Technology Policy & Society
Artikelen
Week 1
Winner, Do Artefacts have Politics? pp: 121-136
Ideas have persisted about the notion that technical things have political qualities, with a
troubling presence in discussions about the meaning of technology, so they deserve our
special attention.
- Critics have interpreted technical artifacts in political language as property of large-
scale high-technology systems, used for authoritarian regimes, such as nuclear
power.
- However, there are also those arguing that technologies are democratic and systems
like television, telephone, etc. have democratizing properties.
Indeed, technical systems of various kinds are deeply interwoven in the conditions of
modern politics, but to go beyond this and argue technologies in themselves have political
properties seems mistaken. Humans have politics, not things.
- Social determination of technology: what matters is not technology itself, but the
social / economic systems in which they are embedded.
- This view provides an antidote for uncritical technological determinism.
- However, the shortcoming is that when taken literally it might suggest that
technical things do not matter at all. This validates the usual study of power
for social scientists, so they don’t have a special study of technologies. But
this is also only a part.
- So we can call what we need a theory of technological politics: a novel framework of
interpretation and explanation of the patterns of modern material culture. The
strength is that it takes technical artifacts seriously, rather than merely reducing them
to an interplay of social forces. This is not a replacement but a complement to
theories of social determination of technology
- As Husserl would say: back to the things themselves (phenomenology).
Now Winner will give the outlines of the 2 ways in which artifacts can contain political
properties:
1) Instances in which the invention, design or arrangement of a device becomes a way
of settling an issue in a particular community.
2) Inherently political technologies: man-made systems strongly compatible with
particular political relationships.
Definitions:
- Politics: arrangements of power and authority in human associations and activities
that take place within those arrangements.
- Technology: all of modern practical artifice
Artikelen
Week 1
Winner, Do Artefacts have Politics? pp: 121-136
Ideas have persisted about the notion that technical things have political qualities, with a
troubling presence in discussions about the meaning of technology, so they deserve our
special attention.
- Critics have interpreted technical artifacts in political language as property of large-
scale high-technology systems, used for authoritarian regimes, such as nuclear
power.
- However, there are also those arguing that technologies are democratic and systems
like television, telephone, etc. have democratizing properties.
Indeed, technical systems of various kinds are deeply interwoven in the conditions of
modern politics, but to go beyond this and argue technologies in themselves have political
properties seems mistaken. Humans have politics, not things.
- Social determination of technology: what matters is not technology itself, but the
social / economic systems in which they are embedded.
- This view provides an antidote for uncritical technological determinism.
- However, the shortcoming is that when taken literally it might suggest that
technical things do not matter at all. This validates the usual study of power
for social scientists, so they don’t have a special study of technologies. But
this is also only a part.
- So we can call what we need a theory of technological politics: a novel framework of
interpretation and explanation of the patterns of modern material culture. The
strength is that it takes technical artifacts seriously, rather than merely reducing them
to an interplay of social forces. This is not a replacement but a complement to
theories of social determination of technology
- As Husserl would say: back to the things themselves (phenomenology).
Now Winner will give the outlines of the 2 ways in which artifacts can contain political
properties:
1) Instances in which the invention, design or arrangement of a device becomes a way
of settling an issue in a particular community.
2) Inherently political technologies: man-made systems strongly compatible with
particular political relationships.
Definitions:
- Politics: arrangements of power and authority in human associations and activities
that take place within those arrangements.
- Technology: all of modern practical artifice
