he name of urban renewal, projects like Chicago’s drugs
and crime-ridden Cabrini Green became notorious examples of how aesthetics, technology,
and class converge. Another example well known to Canadians is the building of private
highways, such as Ontario’s Highway 407, which can cost car drivers close to $20 for a one-
way trip along its 100 km length. Members of the public who cannot afford to pay the fees
are relegated to the crowded Highway 401 that surrounds Toronto; regular commuters on
407 pay thousands a year.
We often make the mistake of thinking our technologies and our physical infrastructure
(highways, bridges, buildings) are shaped only by concern for efficiency or other technical
considerations. In fact, many are consciously and intentionally designed to reflect the biases
of their inventors, funders, builders, etc. We have to see our technologies (and built
environments in general) as embodying ideas about the social order, whether well or ill-
intentioned.
technologies are organized within certain kinds of social and political
arrangements
Technological realists argue that technologies summon up, or at the very least are strongly
compatible with, certain kinds of social and political arrangements in society. In other words,
and in a manner echoing Lewis Mumford’s work, realists suggest that there are “democratic”
technologies and “authoritarian” technologies. A recent example of how technologies and
ideologies al英语论文网 【http://www.51lunwen.org】ign is the case of the libertarian response to the Internet. Libertarians—people
who favour individual liberty and are suspicious of government control—regarded the
Internet’s arrival enthusiastically, believing that it decentralized information, evaded
censorship, and gave the individual more power over culture.
The more dependent a society is on massive technological investments, e.g., nuclear
power, the more it tends to believe that highly hierarchical forms of administration are
necessary to their maintenance. The more complex our society, the more willing we are to
have it and its technological infrastructure managed from the top. Indeed, a management
ethos or style has left the factories and offices where it originated, and entered into society
at large. Increasingly, our economies, public spaces, and governments are managed by
technocrats, civil servants, and others committed to a hierarchical model of technological
power. What politicians often call “pragmatic” government is another word for the
technologically intensive administration of life, a style that reduces our ability to act freely.
2. AC640 reading: Howard Rheingold, “Technologies of Cooperation”
“… more people pooling resources in new ways is the history of civilization…”
(Rheingold, Smart Mobs, p. 31)
Howard Rheingold is a social critic and author with a remarkable research pedigree in
technology and its consequences for human consciousness and society. He
本文来自：英语论文网 【http://www.51lunwen.org】 |
论文编号：
lw200707250757417537 
