Technology and Democracy

It was interesting watching student's unravel Winner's "Do Artifacts Have Politics" article the other day. We tend to rest on our own socially constructed versions of reality, creating concrete ideas of what is real and what isn't, and how objective reality works. It isn't often that an idea comes along that challenges our beliefs and makes us reconsider the world around us.

After reading Winner for the first time, my intertwined reality with technology became so much more complicated. By teaching the article, I was able to dive in to the theoretical underpinnings and implications in new and different ways. By far, the most provocative idea that Winner posits is that choosing particular technologies also subordinates our existence to certain types of political organization. He uses the ship example where by choosing to use the ship to fish, transport goods, and for war a heirarchical and authoritarian political structure is necessitated. The ship would not run the way it needs to run if it was operated in a decentralized, egalitarian way. Order and authority are direct political results that are required by adopting the technology of the ship.

I have been trying to pin down technologies that enable egalitarian and democratizing political systems. I suppose it depends on how you understand democracy - I think of it in terms of its roots - one person, one vote and the radical idea that the will of the people governs and can genuinely change systemic inequities. So - what do new technologies do? For example, what political system is inherent to the adoption of the internet and world wide web? I suppose that initially it was designed in a way for egalitarian principles to take hold. Tim Berners Lee chose to keep the web free and did not "register" it as intellectual property to gain a profit. The "freeness" of the internet was intended to make it available to everyone - however: inequities in knowledge, access, and finances have really allowed those who have the means and the will to dominate this medium. So, is this a democratizing medium?

A segment on KSL last night highlighted a USU student who heard about the $30 million budget cuts in Utah public higher education and started a facebook page to organize a rally at the capital and sign petitions. This, to me, seems to be democracy. The will of the people to speak to their government and let the government know what they want. The ability to organize through facebook is one way that it has been used to "level the playing field". This coupled with the reporters belief in the amazing and influential abilities of the internet play into our ideas of how we need to continue to keep up with the technologies that dictate our world. So - these college students were able to organize a rally - they have the knowledge, access and ability to use these systems in ways that empower their specific group. I have to ask, however, what about the hispanic community on the West Side of Salt Lake who does not have the same level of access, knowledge or finance to use these technologies to their advantage?

According to Fox & Livingstone from the Pew Internet and American Life project,

Latinos comprise 14% of the U.S. adult population and about half of this growing group
(56%) goes online. By comparison, 71% of non-Hispanic whites and 60% of non-
Hispanic blacks use the internet. Several socio-economic characteristics that are often
intertwined, such as low levels of education and limited English ability, largely explain
the gap in internet use between Hispanics and non-Hispanics.

So, is there equal access to political power if the primary language on the internet is English, if poor neighborhoods don't get the same access and exposure to computers, and if students only get to use these tools at school? Their voice is not as loud, yet their resources are in jeopardy and they are much more needed just to get to the place that the USU students are at.

So, is this a democratizing technology or another way for those who are already in power to sustain power?