Do Artifacts have Politics?

            While reading this article, the first section that really stood out to me was the discussion of the very intentional height overpasses built on the New York/ New Jersey highway system.  It is ironic that something like an overpass, which most of us don’t usually think much about, can have such a hidden agenda.  I didn’t even know that something like that was possible! Well, I guess I had an idea, but an overpass with an agenda was very surprising.  Essentially, this section was saying that the overpasses were intentionally built too low to accommodate buses.  This was done to prevent public transportation and poor people away from places like Jones Beach.

            I was also interested in the section about the way technologies are built.  This relates to a lot of what we have discussed in class about intended and unintended effects of technology.  This section defines technology as something that was created to help put order in our world.  So much of the way our lives are today is defined by certain technologies that we have.  For example, without the creation of the alarm clock, what time would we get up for work in the morning? Without cars, many people would have to walk or bike to work. Furthermore, without cars, people might not even have been able to have to opportunity to work far from home.  Cars allow us to commute far distances in a short amount of time, which we never could have done before.  It’s very hard to imagine our lives without these simple technologies.  Also, what would our society be like without these things?  And, are the technologies really putting order into our lives, or just making them more complicated?