Do Artifacts Have Politics?

In controversies about technology and society, there is no idea more provocative than the notion that technical things have political qualities. An eagerness to interpret technical artifacts in political language is by no means the exclusive property of critics of large-scale high-technology systems. Hence, the stern advice commonly given those who flirt with the notion that technical artifacts have political qualities: What matters is not technology itself, but the social or economic system in which it is embedded. It is no surprise to learn that technical systems of various kinds are deeply interwoven in the conditions of modern politics. This chapter shows why so much of modern social and political thought contains recurring statements of what can be called a theory of technological politics, an odd mongrel of notions often crossbred with orthodox liberal, conservative, and socialist philosophies.