Do Artifacts Have Politics?

Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.

The statement makes sense. The gun doesn’t shoot itself. It needs some force—almost always a human—to pull the trigger.

So . . . why does the person holding the gun decide to use it?

Is he or she angry? Jealous? Was a crime being committed? Were drugs involved? Is the person psychotic?

All those questions relate directly to the person holding the gun, but maybe there are other factors that play in the decision to use that gun.

Maybe there is something about the gun itself that plays a role in the decision. Maybe the technology inherent in the weapon is part of the question.

Maybe we should be asking other questions:

· What effect does holding a gun have on the person holding it?

· Does the lightness or heaviness of the metal play a role the use of the weapon?

· How does that sensation play a role in the way the person decides to use the technology?

· Does the lightness of the weapon or the ease of use play a role in the use of the weapon?

Landon Winner raises a similar question in “Do Artifacts have Politics?” originally published in Daedelus in 1980 and then reprinted in The Social Shaping of Technology. He states that there is “no more provocative claim than the notion that technical things have political qualities . . . can be judged . . . for the ways in which they can embody specific forms of power and authority” (28).

He acknowledges the most obvious objection to this claim, stating that what matters “is not technology itself, but the social or economic system in which it is embedded” (28). In other words, it isn’t the technology itself, but the “social circumstances” of the development and use of a particular technology. To put it simply, technology isn’t political; people are political.

The theory of technological politics draws attention to a variety of important studies including the momentum of large-scale sociotechnical l systems, the response of modern societies to technological demands, and the adaptation of human purposes to technology. Winner asserts that it “offers a novel framework of interpretation and explanation for some of the more puzzling patterns that have taken shape in and around the growth of modern material culture” (29).

The strength of this theory is that it takes the actual technical artifacts seriously. Instead of focusing entirely on the “interplay of social forces,” this theory suggests that we should study the “characteristics of technical objects and the meaning of those characteristics” (29).

Technologies have a way of defining the ways we build in the world. Sometimes the decisions to politicize technology can be made intentionally, as in the case of Robert Moses, who wanted to keep buses (and minorities) away from Jones Beach and therefore decided to keep the bridges built to specifications that would prohibit high profile vehicles from going toward the beach. Sometimes the decisions are unintentional. Regardless, those decisions may lead to long-term consequences. It’s not likely that the city of New York is going to replace those Moses’ bridges any time soon.

A more controversial theory would be the “belief that some technologies are by their very nature political in a specific way” (33). In this theory, it is believed that “the adoption of a given technical system unavoidably brings with it conditions for human relationships that have a distinctive political cast” (33). In other words, the social consequences are inherent in the technology, and the adoption of a certain technologies actually requires the “creation and maintenance of a particular set of social conditions as the operating environment of that system” (33).

Winner cites the example of nuclear power plants. Once we begin using them, we must also adopt what he calls a “techno-scientific-industrial-military elite” (33). If we don’t have those people in charge, we can’t have nuclear power. Use of solar power, according to Winner, is more democratic than the use of coal.

I like to think that people are political and technology is just a tool, but I am beginning to wonder.

Winner suggests that we should pay more close attention to the nature of technologies and the anticipated consequences of adopting certain technologies.

The invention of air conditioning meant that people moved to places like Phoenix, Las Vegas, or Palm Springs. It meant that skyscrapers could have comfortable environments. The widespread use of air conditioning has changed the landscape, the weather, and the animal population in those areas.

Should we have considered the sociotechnical aspects prior to adopting something like air conditioning, something that also has the potential to save lives?

Could we anticipate those changes? And if we did, would we do anything differently?

Our discussion focuses on technology related to rhetoric and literacy.

What sociotechnical consequences are inherent in the use of computers?

Writing is a tool—a tool that changes every culture that adopts it as a primary form of communication. Writing changes the way we think. It changes the way we interact with the world. It allows us to turn inward and reflect.

And what about computers? They have already changed our methods of research, data collection, and communication.

The momentum is building. There really is no turning back.

I don’t know that any of us want to.

But it should make us think.

Ong: Writing is a Technology

Some years ago, I started praying on a regular basis, but it seemed like the words in mind disappeared as soon as I thought them. I couldn’t anchor my thoughts or my prayers in any significant way, and so I began writing down my prayers. I’m pretty sure God doesn’t care if I speak my prayers aloud, whisper them in my thoughts, or write them down, but to me it seemed like the written prayers were weightier, almost tangible.

I’m surprised I didn’t think of this sooner. Writing has always had a profound effect on the way I view the world.

In fact, writing isn’t something I choose to do as much as it’s something I must do.

Every morning I make lists of things that I want to accomplish. I walk around the house with a pen in my hand just in case I need to write something down. I obsessively take notes in meetings, in class, during conversations, while on the phone. I may never refer to the lists, the random thoughts, or the notes, but the process of writing situates the words in my mind, helps me remember my thoughts, and helps me organize random, abstract thoughts into cohesive, progressive, productive ideas.

I need to write in order to think the thoughts that I think.

Not only that, but I need to read what other people have written to develop those thoughts and to expand my understanding of various concepts.

I can’t be me without writing, and I know that intuitively, but it’s not something I think about much. It’s just who I am.

On some level, I think everyone should be able to write.

Ong says that writing is imperious; it sets itself up as the standard to which all should attain. It takes itself as “normative for human experience and thought” (19).

He argues that even if we believe writing is essential in our society, even if we believe it offers power to the writer and that it would be good if literacy were available to all, we should endeavor to understand “what natural human processes are before writing takes possession of consciousness” (19). We should become aware of what writing does to our mind, to our thought processes, what advantages it has, and what disadvantages.

Writing, as normative as it has become, is technology, whether it is written by hand or typed onto a screen. It is a tool humans have created. It is artificial. This isn’t a bad thing. Ong says that to “say writing is artificial is not to condemn it but to praise it” (23). Indeed, writing “is essential for the realization of fuller, interior, human potential,” and it is an exterior aid to “interior transformations of consciousness” (23). When I write down my thoughts, my thoughts speak to me. I speak to them. I add to them. I can develop new ways of doing things that matter to me. I can help other people. Ong cautions that these “transformations of consciousness can be uplifting, but they can also be alienating” (23). Writing “distances” our thoughts from their natural spoken habitat so that we can view them from another perspective, raising our consciousness, giving us the potential for a “fuller human life” (23).

I don’t tend to think about the distance created when I put my thoughts onto a paper, but it’s true. Writing gives me the ability to say something and look at something from another angle. It gives me the ability to walk away and return to ideas later, to alter them, to extend them, to reorganize them in a more effective way.

The distance can be powerful.

Write Write?

Why Write? A Reconsideration

Young and Sullivan assert that certain types of thinking are impossible without writing. Honestly, their conclusions seem obvious. Their studies are interesting, but not earth shattering.

I can’t imagine a world without writing.
• I journal daily, and the process helps me sort out my thoughts, my emotions, my fears.
• I write down things I want to remember—quotes from books, songs I want to buy, writers I want to read, things I need to do.
• Taking notes helps me focus when I am listening to conversations or lectures. I don’t usually refer to the notes, but I remember things when I write them down.
• Writing in the margins of books and articles helps me find things I need to refer to later.
• I ask questions, make comments, and give myself instructions.
Really?
What proof?
I don’t think so.
What about xyz?
Check such and such a writer and see what he has to say.

I need writing to be me.

Not everyone would agree with Young and Sullivan.
Not everyone is compelled to write.

I find it ironic that Plato questions the value of recording thoughts in some kind of semi-permanent form His mentor, Socrates, wrote nothing, and if it weren’t for Plato, we probably wouldn’t even know Socrates’ name. Without writing, Plato himself would probably be anonymous. Instead, his questions, his theories, and his arguments are still with us.

But writing as a form of producing rhetoric was a new technology in Plato’s time, and there’s always a group of people resistant to new technologies—and change in general. Change brings about the unknown, and the unknown is . . . well, it’s unknown.

I wonder: Have we lost anything with the development of writing? Did this “invention . . . produce forgetfulness . . .”? Do we “seem to know many things” although we are actually “ignorant and hard to get along with . . .”?

A few hundred years later, Cicero asserted that is was the pen (writing) that was the best teacher for the art of speaking.

It would seem that Plato was wrong—or perhaps the way we learn has changed, and the new ways are not better or worse, but just different.
Young and Sullivan wrote this article in 1984, during a time when most of us were not using computers. I was still in college, producing all my papers on typewriters and longhand. I did all my research in libraries and took notes on paper. The world has changed in ways I don’t think they could ever have imagined, and I wonder what changes in our learning patterns have taken place over the last 25 years.

This, of course, isn’t the point of their article, but because they include certain predictions, it is worth asking: What has changed? What is changing? How have social networks, online journals, blogs, and other forms of writing affected the way we think? Do we think differently when we see the words come on a screen instead of on a sheet of paper?

I think we do, but does it matter? If so, how?

Technology and Me

When I was in eighth grade, I took AP Algebra. I'm not sure why they put me in the class because I didn't really understand anything about math, but I was a good student, and they funneled all the good students into AP classes.

Our teacher, a former military man, kept a giant computer in his office. It was 1973, and the computer was big and gray and took up about two-thirds of the small space. In the remaining third, there was a desk with a tiny monitor, and all the boys in our class would gather around the monitor and do computer things. I really don't have any idea what kinds of computer things. I'm short, could never make my way to the front of the crowd, and finally gave up trying to get into the room. Besides, I didn't really care.

I much preferred to think about words and putting them together and telling stories.

I never imagined that computers and words would be so closely linked together.

Machines of any kind tend to make me a little nervous.

I finished my BA using an electronic typewriter. I would type a draft, mark it up, type it again, mark it up. As many times as I needed.

We bought our first computer in 1994. It ran on Windows and had 4 mg of RAM. It didn't do much, but my kids seemed to have fun. They played games. Learned to chat with people. It was frustrating though because it didn't have enough memory to do much of anything and so we upgraded after a year.

The next computer changed my life.

I began working in medical transcription using a DOS version of Word Perfect. I learned to create macros and files.

I paid my bills.

I got an email account.

I booked vacations online.

I learned to create spreadsheets.
I could do research without leaving my desk.

And I started writing again.

I think differently because of my computer.

And it's not just me.

The world is different because of the options we have available to us.

I can't keep up.

My eighth grade fear of technology comes back every time I have to learn a new program.

My kids, who grew up with computers, seem to know and understand everything intuitively.

There is a new technological culture, and my kids are a part of it. I am not.

I need to immerse myself in this culture, as if I were immersing myself in a foreign culture, and I need to learn to move and operate in this culture.

If I'm going to teach, I need to understand how students think and how they learn.

I'm here because I'm not in eighth grade anymore. I have faced fears and overcome them. I don't know what a drupal or a Moodle are, but I can learn.