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Leading up to 1980, a steady stream of innovations in science and technology began to draw the attention of the public who supported the creation of important, modern artifacts. Langdon Winner, author of Do Artifacts Have Politics? specifically notes the creation of the Robert Moses’ massive Long Island Parkway, the automation and modernization of Cyrus McCormick’s molding machines, and the University of California’s tomato harvesting machines as early examples of these. He identifies these artifacts as having cultural importance from their profound long-term effects within society. He argues that they are not only inherently politicized, but that this politicization is a fundamental aspect of their legacy.
Up until the period when Winner wrote, technological innovation had been accepted with little to no academic critique and had been embraced by an unquestioning public. In his essay, Winner expresses his belief, though not explicitly, that the systemic social and economic consequences of these innovations went unacknowledged by members of the public, who cared only about the effects of adoption on an individual level. Here we are introduced to a conceptualisation of this widespread ambivalence, what Dr. Liam Young has introduced as “technological sublime”, by Winner. The term technological sublime refers to a technologist revision of the Marxist historical dialectic: capitalism incentivises scientific innovation for individuals and competition encourages the adoption of said innovations by other groups, driving an endless progression of better-than-the-last technologies, each solving problems that bring the world closer to a more perfect society. This philosophy normalises and justifies individual disregard for potential negative social or economic effects of adoption. When these are brought up, they can be dismissed with casual one liners such as “sounds like a problem for the next guy”, “someone much smarter than me will have to come along and figure that one out” or even “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. Young gives us the example of the invention of the car: not only is the car invented, but so is the car accident. Seatbelts, just one of many solutions, required government legislation to become mandatory, decades after the first car accident. In consequence, solving the problem of the car accident becomes politicised by a widening group of indirectly related actors such as lawyers, doctors, politicians, and insurance salesman, all advocating solutions aligned with their own interests. As such, Winner believes that the political aspects of technological artifacts are intrinsic to their value proposition.
Winner authored this essay to communicate a message to members of the public (academics, non-academics, low- and high-income demographics, etc.) who are not conscious of the lasting effects of technological artifacts. Technology tends to reinforce pre-existing power structures; strengthening the inequalities of the current system of white patriarchal capitalism embedded in Western society. This essay represents Winner’s enlightenment of the public, calling them to be critical of technological progression and mindful of the long-term social effects created by technological artifacts. There are problems that can only be solved when members of the public battle the technological sublime and continued ambivalence towards technology in society.
So, how does Winner argue that technological artifacts have politics? By identifying the idea that artifacts, intrinsically, have a deterministic impact on our interactions with them and the role they play in society. Winner argues they are indicative of communal issues and differences in power inscribed within society. He utilises the critical paradigm and uses quantitative and qualitative methodologies, as indicated by his attempt to invoke critique of technological artifacts and his use of historical and case analyses alongside data collected (as in the case of his analyses of UC’s tomato harvesting machine) to highlight his ideas. Winner introduces Moses’ Long Island Parkway as a physical embodiment of social and economic relations in the United States of the time of writing and how the parkway brings these relations into the future. The overpasses, designed by Moses, had specific height restrictions to disable any buses from reaching the destinations alongside the parkway. This was intended to impair the ability for “undesirable” demographics, namely those of low-income people of colour, who rely on public transportation to reach these destinations. As the modification of the structural components of this artifact is not an easy task and is not deemed economically feasible, the social effects of this artifact are resistant to change. The power hierarchy of the time period remains an important aspect of its legacy, avoiding redefinition and actively impacting a society that has otherwise progressed beyond it. Similarly, he analyses the other aforementioned innovations in technology and their social effects and consequences, those being McCormick’s moulding machines and UC’s tomato harvesting machine.
This essay has become one of the most influential essays about technology in the last 40 years because it offers a very different and interdisciplinary perspective on scientific progression. He identifies bias and subjective-ness in scientific progression, where the profession of science has prided itself on its ability to remain objective. The claim that science was indeed subjective and that technological artifacts have politics was a previously untouched argument and allowed other scholars to reconsider the advancement of science and technology. As such, the road was paved for a new way of thinking about the technological progression and allowed for scholars to form their own ways of thinking about the effects of technological artifacts on society.
The strengths of this essay lay in its interdisciplinary approach to the effects and consequences of technological progression and in its indications to real-world examples of artifacts. The use of an interdisciplinary approach made it possible for Winner’s argument to cover all aspects of politicisation of technological artifacts and to be understood clearly by academics and non-academics alike. It also adds to the persuasiveness of the essay and it appears to cover all possible aspects of the argument thus leaving little room for readers to contradict the stated facts and conclusions. The use of real-life examples allows for readers to be further persuaded of his argument as they can see the modern political effects of technological artifacts. However, this also introduces us to a limitation of Winner’s research and his writing. Contemporary examples of technological artifacts cannot be included in his essay as the social effects and consequences of these artifacts would not have been observed and it is impossible for readers to see aspects of his argument happening in real-time. The examples used, however, included examples that affected various political realms, thus proving Winner’s essay to be an overall persuasive piece of writing.
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