Media, Information and Technoculture 2500A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Langdon Winner, Jacques Ellul, Escherichia Coli
13 Aug 2016
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Document Summary
Langdon winner describes how tomato harvesting was altered by larger machines. Today, a series of harvesters are able to do the whole process in a much shorter amount of time. Winner describes how the use of the mechanical harvester was perfected over a period of decades. To accommodate the rough motion of these harvesters, agricultural researchers bred new varieties of tomatoes [the hard tomato], which, are hardier, sturdier and less tasty than those previously grown. The harvesters replaced the system of handpicking in which crews of farm workers would pass through the fields three or four times, [picking] ripe tomatoes and saving immature fruit for later harvest. langdon winner, do artifacts have politics? . These machines are employed to save time and money while increasing production. However, these machines come at a cost: very large, very expensive, adaptable to a very specific type of farming.
