Media, Information and Technoculture 2500A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Friedrich Engels
13 Aug 2016
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Document Summary
Most provocative idea surrounding technology and society is the idea that technology has political qualities. Machines, structures, and systems of modern material culture can embody specific forms of power and authority. Almost all major advancements in technology have at one time been described as democratizing, liberating forces. It seems rather odd to see technologies as having political properties in themselves people have politics, not things. The social determination of technology = it is not the technology itself that matters it is the social or economic system from which it is produced that matters. Theory of technological politics: suggests that we pay attention to the characteristics of technical objects and the meaning of those characteristics. Politics arrangements of power and authority in human associations. Highways, overpasses have become part of our natural environments we no longer notice them. On long island, overpasses are unusually low. Even if one notices this structural peculiarity, one would not attach any special meaning to it.
