COMS 230 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Artificial Scarcity, Path Dependence, Net Neutrality

• School: McGill University
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMS 230
• Professor: Cayley Sorochan

Document Summary

There are three main ways to talk about how technical codes are political: Technical codes condition outcomes that are political because they restrain conduct in a way. Codes can be considered political because they arise from political conditions and re ect distribution of policial power. ability to share codes is not equally accessible. most of us live with codes that have been produced by others. Politics tend to disappear into technical code because. It is privatized in many cases especially looking at technologies like software, the actual code built into the software is protected and private. Politics of code is rarely raised as a democratic issue however this is beginning to change with increasing awareness of the role of code in our lives. Once normalized, technical codes are not experienced as political, they become inherent characteristics of the technologies that surround us. alternatives appear unavailable.