Fourth Law: Although technology might be a prime element in many public issues, nontechnical factors take precedence in technology-policy decisions.
Fourth Law: Although technology might be a prime element in many public issues, nontechnical factors take precedence in technology-policy decisions.
In many instances, to say that some technologies are inherently political is to say that certain widely accepted reasons of practical necessity–especially the need to maintain critical technological systems as smoothly working entities–have tended to eclipse other sorts of moral and political reasoning.
Langdon Winner • Do Artifacts Have Politics?
Anyone trying to apply science via technology must reason through contingencies, constraints, and behavior in specific circumstances. Questions like What is most appropriate and desired in this context? arise. Science focuses on necessity and universality; technology focuses on contingencies and specificities. Thus, technology does not just follow ... See more
Saffron Huang • What is Technology? — Letters to a Young Technologist
I digress but the main point is simple: the drivers of social coherence, such as culture, governance, morality, law, shared stories, and shared values might as well be considered “technologies”. These stories, at least as much as our manipulations of fire, matter, and information, sustain our relationships with one another and with the planet. Thei... See more
Matt Prewitt • Secret Societies, Network States, Burning Man, Zuzalu, and More: Thoughts on New Political Communities
"I used to be much more of a technological determinist, where I believed that the course of history would play out according to what was technologically possible, and that technology shapes our world in a strong way. I've come to appreciate that culture actually plays such a large role in shaping our world. The ways in which people decide to use te... See more
The issue here does not concern how many jobs will be created, how much income generated, how many pollutants added... Rather, the issue has to do with the ways in which choices about technology have important consequences for the form and quality of human associations.
Langdon Winner • Do Artifacts Have Politics?
I used to be much more of a technological determinist, where I believed that the course of history would play out according to what was technologically possible, and that technology shapes our world in a strong way. I've come to appreciate that culture actually plays such a large role in shaping our world. The ways in which people decide to use tec... See more
The Old is Dying
Without question, technology can increase our capabilities. But there is much that technology cannot do: deal with the unpredictable, manage uncertainty, construct a soaring building, perform a lifesaving operation. In many ways, technology has complicated these matters. It has added yet another element of complexity to the systems we depend on and
... See morereadwise.io • Checklist Manifesto
But technology is a poor guide to what comes next. The reaction to technology is frequently not what the technologists want to see.