Langdon Winner's definition of politics says politics has relations with both people and power. Politics deals with human associations and as we can see in our everyday lives, we use technologies like automobiles and computers so the human associations contain technological aspects too. In this process, power is needed to connect people and technologies, and make things work. The power assembles people and it shapes the politics itself.
Most of the time technologies are recognized as neutral tools. Slack and Wise warn us with the quote of Arnold Pacey that as the improvement of technologies please us, we are more likely to neglect the importance to engage with technological policy. They emphasize the needs of rules, observations, and our interventions.
Reflecting on the discussion of control, whether we control technologies or technologies are out of our control, it is hard to stand at one side. But what clear here is that both politics and technologies are associated with people, and people are the very ones that run politics and operate technologies. When a person uses a gun, the person is the one who decides to use the gun for any reasons. The gun does not have an intention to be used or invented. So no matter how much the technologies seem they have control over us, I believe the final decision for its usage is reached by a person. Yet, I agree with that as people enjoy the technological improvement, they start not to care about the effects and the power that they have. Slack and Wise suggest us to observe the technological politics itself. In addition to that, I also think we need to pay more attention to the people who create and exploit technologies, and the power that articulate us, technologies, and cultures.
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