[liberationtech] Deep Divers, there is no such thing as liberation tech

[Doug Schuler]

Technology absolutely has politics since it's embedded within social (and
material) contexts. I like Langdon's quote in the Whale and the Reactor:
"Because choices tend to become strongly fixed in material equipment,
economic investment, and social habit, the original flexibility vanishes
for all practical purposes once the initial commitments are made."

On the other hand, technology is not strictly deterministic. A hospital can
be used to help heal people or it can be used to imprison them and to
perform experiments on them. Television doesn't have to be a solely
corporate dominated medium nor does the internet — but they are.

— Doug



On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 7:39 AM Aram Sinnreich <aramsinnreich at gmail.com>
wrote:

> What do you make of Langdon Winner's work, arguing that sociotechnical
> artifacts have inherent "politics?"
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On May 5, 2020, at 10:33 AM, grarpamp <grarpamp at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Technology is but an agnostic tool.
> > There is no such thing as a liberation tech,
> > only applied tech via paths toward something.
> > One cannot apply a tech toward liberation
> > without first considering what a state of being
> > of actual liberation might variously be about,
> > to know where to go, what to make with the tech.
> > Democracy being nothing more than a
> > decentralized form of the murderous dictators
> > many claim to be liberating themselves or people from,
> > both forms hardly a state of liberation at all,
> > yet worshipped and profferred by all too many,
> > we therefore continue this random series
> > on path choices...
> >
> > How to be a tyrant. Sound Familiar?
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4LtEciQUF8
> >
> > Deep Divers, let the balloon go!
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbX-Bvb2u_w
> >
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U3lEc-IFr8
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWLntHoTgDA
> >
> > --
> > Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable from any major
> commercial search engine. Violations of list guidelines will get you
> moderated: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/lt. Unsubscribe,
> change to digest mode, or change password by emailing
> lt-owner at lists.liberationtech.org.
>
> --
> Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable from any major
> commercial search engine. Violations of list guidelines will get you
> moderated: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/lt. Unsubscribe,
> change to digest mode, or change password by emailing
> lt-owner at lists.liberationtech.org.



-- 
Douglas Schuler
douglas at publicsphereproject.org
Twitter: @doug_schuler

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Public Sphere Project
     http://www.publicsphereproject.org/

Mailing list ~ Collective Intelligence for the Common Good
     * http://lists.scn.org/mailman/listinfo/ci
<http://lists.scn.org/mailman/listinfo/ci>4cg-announce*

Creating the World Citizen Parliament

http://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/may-june-2013/creating-the-world-citizen-parliament

Liberating Voices!  A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution
(project)
     http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/lv
<http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/>

Liberating Voices!  A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution (book)

 http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11601
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ghserv.net/pipermail/lt/attachments/20200505/33f0fbab/attachment.html>