The idea that techonlogy can have a political bias is a particularly interesting one. I think that technologies can certainly help different ideologies but only to a point and most can be skewed different ways. I believe that it really comes down how we use the technologies. You could say guns exert a totalitarian political view because if someone walks into a room holding a shotgun, most normal people will give them complete control. However, if you put a gun in every persons hand then everything is going to become extremely democratic. This example shows that the actual kind of technology doesn’t control the way we view the world; the way we use the technology shows the world how we view it.
In the article the tomato picking machine was actually a good example of the way we use a technology defining a purpose rather than the actual technology defining its purpose. The author, Winner, says that the tomato picking machine changed the social relationships of the tomato farmers and their workers. This is only because of the way it was used however. Large farms that could afford the machine became the sole producers of tomatoes because they could put the other small farms out of business because of their efficiency with these new machines. If someone who lived in a town with small tomato farms had bought one of the pickers and ran a business of bringing it to each farm during picking season and even hired former pickers to drive the machine, work in the shop, etc. It could still be a very productive business perhaps even saving farmers money from paying so many people for such long hours and they could even expand perhaps. This shows that it isn’t technology that defines the way our society works. It is us, the people, the human beings that choose the way we use technology. We decide what kind of political skew a technology may appear to have by using it for those gains whether they be good or bad. Think about it…
I definitely see what you're saying, but I really think it's more of a mix between human agency and technological determinism. The tomato picking machine caused the farmers to create a hardy (worse tasting) tomato in order for it to withstand the strength of the picker. And as you said, it reduced the amount of man labor needed and put smaller farms out of business due to it's high productivity. However, if this machine had been designed differently, perhaps they would not have had to change the type of tomatoes grown or had to condense the amount of workers needed. If a personal machine to make each individual picker for efficient had been made, or a cheaper piece of machinery had been made, or a more delicate piece of machinery, the politics of the tomato growing business would not have changed. Now, I definitely believe that humans had a large hand in this, not only in the creation of the technology, but the choice to use it, to make it a popular form of production. However, the technology does "act" on the network of tomato production as well, changing the way the networks functions and therefore the politics of the situation. Technology is therefore political to the extent that humans allows it to be.
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