Post #1607263
2026-04-23 05:36 UTC
Replies (1)
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@naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-04-23 06:55
> In his influential 1980’s paper “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” Langdon Winner argues that this view of “neutral technology” does not hold up. That the politics of specific artifacts do not just come from who uses the technology and for what purpose but that technologies have built-in politics that stem from the political views and goals of the people building the technology as well as their internal structure. > > He shows this by pointing at how certain bridges were built racist: When the civil rights movement in the US got black kids the right to go to the often better schools that used to only accept white kids, politicians did for example plan roads and bridges in a way that the buses that were supposed to take the black kids to the white schools could not pass the bridges and roads. This was not oversight but design intent. The racism is built into the structure of the artifact itself. > > Winner also argues that certain technologies imply certain political or social structures in order to exist: The nuclear bomb implies not just scientists who can build it and a state thinking that that form of destruction is a valid form of acting in the world but also a security state capable of controlling and defending it. You simply cannot build a nuclear bomb without those structures, they are implied if not required, enforced by the artifact itself. > > Winner’s work does not argue that the embedded politics of an artifact are always absolute: We do know of many potentially oppressive technologies that have been taken by artists and activists to turn them against their original use. But that is always an uphill battle: Surveillance will always lean towards a more forceful, rigid, less free understanding of government for example. You can use (counter-)surveillance of course but you always have to be aware of not reproducing the logic you are trying to criticize or attack. Nobody is claiming all technology is fascist, but all embodies some politics and some of that politics is fascist.