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The Online Technology and Society Reader |
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Part 4, Section Two: The Conversion of Political Capital |
| Reading 1. Andrew Feenberg (Inquiry) - Subversive rationalization: technology, power and democracy | |
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In this article
Andrew Feenberg argues that technology needn't undermine democracy
provided that democracy is extended to technological
decision-making. He offers what he calls a "critical theory of
technology," that technology is not just the rational control of
nature; both its development and impact are intrinsically social. I will
then show that this view undermines the customary reliance on efficiency
as a criterion of technological development. This is not an
"easy" article to read, but Feenberg packs it with a discussion
of the major issues relating to technology and control. His basic
point is that technology is not inherently authoritarian, and that the
politics of technology are subject to social forces.
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| Reading 2. Richard Sclove - From Democracy and Technology | |
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The first chapter
of Richard Sclove's book, Democracy and Technology explores the
questions we ask about new technologies, and, more importantly, the
questions we don't ask. he examines how the Old Order Amish address
the impact of technology on their lives and suggests that we can learn
from them.
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| Reading 3. David Banisar (Covert Action Quarterly) - Big Brother goes high-tech | |
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One way that
technology threatens individual freedoms is through the development of surveillance
tools that rival anything that George Orwell imagined in his novel
1984. In this article David Banisar traces the history of
surveillance technologies and outlines the extent to which our lives and
activities are already catalogued and traced.
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| Reading 4. Jon Katz (Free!) - Corporate assault on privacy through neo-Orwellian technology | |
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In
this article, Jon Katz argues that we may have more to fear from
corporations than we do our governments. Internet shopping, for
example, opens the way for collecting all sorts of knowledge about
people's behavior, particularly buying habits.
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| Reading 5. David Lyon - From Big Brother to electronic panopticon (from Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society) | |
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In
this article, David Lyon extends Jeremy Bentham's idea of the Panopticon
(later expanded by Michel Foucault in his book Discipline and
Punishment) and explores the extent it helps us understand the
expansion of surveillance technology. He compares the Panopticon
metaphor with that of "Big Brother" envisioned by George Orwell
in 1984. This article (a chapter from Lyon's book) was published in
1994, and our technological capacities have been vastly
expanded--especially since September 11, 2001.
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| Reading 6. Eli Noam (Netfuture) - Will the Internet be bad for democracy? | |
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In
spite of the use of technology to compromise individual freedoms, many
believe that the Internet promises to strengthen democracy. In this
article, Eli Noam examines that proposition, and offers some reasons why
the proposition is false.
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