The Politics of Artifacts B

The main idea of Winner’s article “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” is that inventions, creations, etc., have societal consequences regardless of the reasons that that they were created. This idea according to Winner can be seen as an extension of or a branch of technological determinism. Winner discusses Robert Moses and the construction of overpasses on Long Island designed to keep out minorities. This of course is a pretty obvious example to us because he said that the bridges were constructed for this specific reason, but if we didn’t know, the bridges would probably just go unnoticed and it would seem natural that buses and other forms of public transportation are not supposed to enter that area. This section of the article was a perfect example of how one seemingly insignificant piece of architecture could have such a big impact on people. One little overpass acts as an permanent gate separating the rich from the poor. It made me think of living in the city vs the suburbs today. Large spacious homes are located the suburbs but because buses only have stops in cities, it’s not really possible for a person to live in the suburbs without a car. This could also be an example of the social construction of technology as it relates to class, and transportation.

Nuclear power is one thing that makes most people uneasy. The idea that an entire area can be decimated in a fraction of a second by a hunk of explosives no bigger than a car strikes fear into the heart of millions. What would happen if all of the U.S.’s bombs just went off at once? In order to prevent a disaster such as this, hierarchal systems have been created specifically for these bombs. We have created entire systems around the technologies that we have created in order to keep them from harming us because with the crazy new emerging technologies today, it really is possible for a lot of our technologies to harm us if this example can be taken to the extreme. Because of our dependence on technology, non-dangerous objects that we use could be used against us. For example, a lot of us heard in the news about an ipod exploding in a 15-year olds pocket.  As a pretty crazily extreme example, if we heard from a credible news source today that all of the U.S.’s ipod devices would explode tomorrow, I’m pretty sure that people would be in a panic and our societal systems would be forced to act. Some people believe that in some ways the media controls our society. 

“No reasonable person believes that ships can be run democratically.” I agree with Plato’s idea. We create ships that need to be run by a crew and the crew needs to be run by a captain in order to keep the order. Without a leader, things usually tend to fall apart. Companies need a CEO institutions need a leader figure. Even Wikipedia has multiple editors that act as one.  Although this isn’t always the case, it often is.

Winner quoted Friedrich Engels and his idea about complex systems and the way that they enforce control. Most of the institutions that we deal with on a daily basis have within them some sort of complex system with a specific hierarchy. Although Engles was talking about the systems within factories, the factory itself is of course part of a larger complex system. Looking at it from this point of view, every system that we create needs to be regulated and has some sort of hierarchical system that allows it to run smoothly. Do ships need a captain? Looking at the 10 minute video on the telephone specifically and the way that the dialing system works, can the systems we create run themselves? Should we let them?