(PAGE 26-27 Article Do Artifacts Have Politics?)
What happened:Â
The mechanical harvester was introduced in California. This harvester was a game-changer in the agricultural world.”This machine can harvest tomatoes in a single pass through a row, cutting the plants from the ground, shaking the fruit loose, and in the newest models sorting the tomatoes electronically into large plastic gondolas that hold up to twenty-five tonnes of production. This harvester was a game-changer in the agricultural world”.
Political intention:Â
It was to increase the production rate and reinforce the profits of corporations.Â
 “Two students of the controversy, William Friedland and Amy Barton, specifically exonerate both the original developers of the machine and the hard tomato from any desire to facilitate economic concentration in that industry. What we see here instead is an ongoing social process in which scientific knowledge, technological invention, and corporate profit reinforce each other in deeply entrenched patterns that bear the unmistakable stamp of political and economic power”.
Fallout:Â
The invention of harvesters led to unemployment within the agricultural communities.Â
“By the late 1970s, an estimated thirty-two thousand jobs in the tomato
Industry had been eliminated as a direct consequence of mechanization.13 Thus,
a jump in productivity to the benefit of very large growers has occurred at a
sacrifice to other rural agricultural communities”.
