[PEN-L:9730] Technology critics (Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bill McKibben)

["frances bolton" <fbolton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rod writes:
>
>I don't know what "do artifacts have politics" means. Is this the old
>neutrality of technology debate dressed up in new clothes?

The way you refer to the debate gives it an air of fustiness that I don't
think it deserves, but in answer to your question, yes.

WDK writes:
>
>Who do you suggest is a good critic of technology I should read, rather
>than Manders?  You're right about him, by the time I got through reading
>his diatribe against TV, bad as I hate TV, I was almost ready to plug in
>my own TV set again.


Michael P. writes:

>Who do you have in mind?

I'd read Langdon Winner's *The Whale and the Reactor*--it's got the famous
"Do Artifacts Have Politics?" piece. His analysis of the bridges Robert
Moses built on Long island was pretty damn convincing. For those who haven't
read the piece--Moses was built Jones Beach and some other state parks out
on LI and was building roads to go out to them. He designed the overpasses
so they'd be too low to allow buses to go under them. That was his way of
keeping poor people, who relied on public transport, off his beaches. You
could only go if you could afford a car.  I'd also read Mumford, Neil
Postman's *Technopoly*, maybe. Andrew Feenberg, Heidegger's *Question
Concerning Technology*, Judy Wajcman has a book on feminism and
technology--the title escapes me at the moment. I'd read some David Noble,
but not that last thing he published on the priesthood of technology or
whatever it was. I think Lenin's short piece "On Authority" is crucial. SOme
of the classics are so worth reading--McLuhan's *Understanding Media*,
Ellul's *The Technological Society*, Leo Marx's *The Machine in the Garden*.
Manuel DeLanda's *War in the Age of Intelligent Machines*, Roseanne
Alluquere Stone's *The Wart of Desire and Technology*, Anne Balsamo's
*Technologies of the Gendered Body*, *Zone 6: Incorporations*, oh, and JG
Ballard's *Crash*.

That's too long of a list. I'd start with the essay by Winner and the thing
by Lenin and *Crash* because dammit we're not reading enough novels anymore.

Frances