Techpolitics

The issue of technology and whether or not it, as a collective, is political or not seems to be misunderstood, in that, the viewpoints that arise in its discussion do not seem to notice that they can comfortable coexist as both being true and valid. Technology is either political, and has certain social implications upon its creation, or its neutral and its use is a matter of human agency. A neutral aspect of an argument contains both polar opposites of the argument by design, therefore both of these arguments together are true. Do Artifacts have Politics?, illustrates this in its first few paragraphs.

The perspective that technologies have certain social uses and implications is true. The well known example of guns having a specific use is also true. Guns are made, and produced to kill, or for the very technical, to shoot. Guns are not made to be used as art, nor are they used merely as apparel. Some may argue that there are in fact guns made solely to be looked at, or used as commodities of appearance. This is correct; however, those guns are not guns because they are not made as guns. They have the shape of guns, they look much like guns, but a robot may have the shape of a human, yet it is not. This is the problem with comparing a polarized viewpoint against a neutral perspective; they both exist as truth alongside each other.

Human agency is a factor that cannot be denied when discussing whether or not technologies are political. While the gun is made to shoot, the being in possession has the choice of whether or not to use it in the manner it was created for, or not. They may choose to shoot with it, look at it, attach it to their wall or whatever else they can imagine, all of which digress from the inventions original ‘use’. Any other claims severely limit the power of choice and free will that user so obviously has.

To wrap this up, technologies do have political aspects to them. Equally true is that technologies do not exist as being neutral, rather the mindset of those using them creates this neutrality.