Currently reading Winner (1980) on “Do artifacts have politics?”

Recently on Bluesky, I came across a post by Bo Thomson who wrote about the article I am summarising below “I frequently had students ask “Why are we reading this in a class on …?” My answer was always the same: One day your choice of how to select, develop, or use a technology may do irreparable harm to one or more lives. If I can’t ensure you make a right choice, I can make you know why it was wrong.” So then I had to go read the article that can make sure students know why they are making the wrong choice!

Even though the Winner article is from 1980 and the examples are therefore, let’s say, historic (e.g. “It is obvious that technologies can be used in ways that enhance the power, authority, and privilege of some over others, for example, the use of television to sell a candidate“, my emphasis), the overall message is of timeless relevance.

In some cases, there is a different intention built into an artifact. For example, A bridge is not always just a bridge, some bridges are constructed to be so low that they keep out buses from an area, and with the buses, also the part of the population that relies on public transport — in the example given poor people and Black people. Introducing new machines in factories is not always just making production more efficient, in the example in the text, they were installed in order to get rid of the qualified workers that tried organising a labour union. In other cases, there isn’t necessarily a bad intention behind an artifact, just “long-standing neglect”, for example with public infrastructures that are not accessible for all.

In most cases though, Winner argues, it isn’t even about intention, but it is rather that “the technological deck has been stacked long in advance to favour certain social interests, and that some people were bound to receive a better hand“. For example, developing an automatic tomato harvester (at a university, funded by tax money) made tomato farming more efficient for the few big farmers that could afford to buy one and that could plant tomatoes in the way required for the harvesters to work efficiently, thus pushing out all small farmers and destroying thousands of jobs (again, through publicly funded research). Not because that was anyone’s intention, but “what we see here instead is an ongoing social process in which scientific knowledge, technological intervention, and corporate profit reinforce each other in deeply entrenched patterns that bear the unmistakable stamp of political and economic power. […] It is in the face of such subtly ingrained patterns that opponents of innovations like the tomato harverster are made to seem “antitechnology” or “antiprogress.” For the harvester is not merely the symbol of a social order that rewards some while punishing others; it is in a true sense an embodiment of that order“.

Winner (1980) argues that there are basically two types of choices that can be made about any given technological change:

• Yes/no; for example for food additives, pesticides, etc
• On the specific features of a design; e.g. powerline yes, but where exactly should it go? Or computer system yes, but what exact model of computers, which software, …

And it is in the second one where “seemingly innocuous design features […] mask social choices of profound significance“. “Consciously or not, deliberately or inadvertently, societies choose structures for technologies that influence how people are going to work, communicate, travel, consume, and so forth over a very long time“. But who is making those choices? Who has the power, who has the awareness? Winner (1980) argues that at the time when a technology is first introduced, this is establishing “a framework for public order that will endure over many generations. For that reason, the same careful attention one would give to the rules, roles, and relationships of politics must also be given to such things as the building of highways, the creation of television networks, and the tailoring of seemingly insignificant features on new machines. The issues that divide or unite people in society are settled not only in the institutions and practices of politics proper, but also, and less obviously, in tangible arrangements of steel and concrete, wires and transistors, nuts and bolts“.

Another question then is how technologies are linked to politics. For example, using nuclear power or nuclear defense are necessarily centralized and require a very clear, hierarchical chain of command, whereas solar power can easily be decentralized and thus works with all forms of governance. But then there are many cases where it feels like a specific technology is necessarily linked to a specific societal structure, when in fact they are not. Winner (1980) writes that “it is characteristic of societies based on large, complex technological systems, however, that moral reasons other than those of practical necessity appear increasingly obsolete, “idealistic”, and irrelevant. Whatever claims one may wish to make on behalf of liberty, justice, or equality can be immediately neutralized when confronted with arguments to the effect: “Fine, but that is no way to run a railroad” (or steel mill, or airline, or communications system, and so on)“. Phew! Yes, and it is so irritating that this is how it works still!

Also this next bit really resonated with me: “Americans have long rested content in the belief that arrangements of power and authority inside industrial corporations, public utilities, and the like have little bearing on public institutions, practices, and ideas at large. That “democracy stops at factory gates” was taken as a fact of life that had nothing to do with the practice of political freedom.” This is the same belief, that democracy (or the real world, really) ends at the edge of campus, that we encounter today when we argue for teaching through sustainability, that we should practice living together in a sustainable, just, equitable, democratic way already within the classroom!

Winner, remember, in 1980 (!) wrote “In our times people are often willing to make drastic changes in the way they live to accord with technological innovation at the same time they would resist similar kinds of changes justified on political grounds.” Imagine anyone trying to tell us to carry a device with us that tracks where we are and consumes so much of our time and attention as a smartphone (and I love my smartphone!), or to put all our personal information somewhere for all the world to see (and I love my blog, and used to love social media). Winner continues the above quote, and ends the article, by writing “If for no other reason than that, it is important for us to achieve a clearer view of these matters than has been our habit so far“.

Sooo. Is this the article that will make sure students know why they are making the wrong choice? I don’t know. It is a really interesting read and definitely worth thinking about, but it feels like this needs to be embedded in a lot of discussions and debriefing, and I am not sure how to do that at scale…

What you see below are views from our trip to Stockholm (the halo) and back (the sunset over the lake) where we went to a competition and got to see a world record happening live! Heike Schwerdtner did 9:22 STA — absolutely incredible!!!

Winner, L. (1980). Do artifacts have politics? Daedalus, Vol. 109, No. 1, Modern Technology: Problem or Opportunity? pp. 121-136 (link to pdf)