Response 10

“Do Artifacts Have Politics?” – Langdon Winner
“At issue is the claim that the machines, structures, and systems of modern material culture can be accurately judged not only for their contributions of efficiency and productively, not merely for their positive and negative environmental side effects, but also for they way in which they can embody specific forms of power and authority:”

This quote stood out to me not only because it was one of the first important points in the passage, but because while reading it i started to align this passage with Neil Postman’s “The Judgement of Thamus”. One of the key points of Postman’s passage was to recognize that even though technology may help people in many ways there are still unforeseen consequences for the near future. One of these consequences is that people have willingly given up nearly all the rights to their privacy in this generation. People feel it is necessary to inform anyone who will listen about every single move they make through social media. We feel that if we don’t concede to mass media’s grip on us we will become irrelevant or even non-existent . We have given technology and mass media the power to tell the story of our society in anyway they want.

Another way we have collapsed under the power and authority of technology is that we have allowed it to change our beliefs and epistemology. This quote also relates to another one of Postman’s passages “From Tools to Technocracy” that expressed this same idea. In this piece Postman basically said that before in the tool-using culture the purpose of the tools was to help aid humans in their daily activities, but with the introduction of new technology it now seemed to battle with the original beliefs of humans to become the culture itself. Technology become a power hungry machine, whose goal was eventually to become the complete authority over human kind.

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3 Responses to Response 10

  1. Abigale says:

    This was very well written. I’m glad you found not one but two sources to connect this passage to. I also agree with you on the point of people creating technologies to assist us and now it has completely changed us and made us dependent. The creator becomes the created. This was a good response.

  2. You made some really great points that I happened to overlook. I really liked that you connected the passage to two different sources. I agree with the points you made, I especially agree with the point that technology has changed us in ways that we never could have foreseen. I really think that that is a point that is constantly brought into awareness in many similar pieces. This is a great post and well-written!

  3. I like the connection you made with Postman’s “From Tools to Technocracy” because we need to look beyond creating technology just for out enjoyment and have some sort of balance of aiding in our daily activities like you said and for our entertainment.

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