11/4/19 Extra credit reading response

In Winner’s “Do artifacts have politics?” he examines the subtle and less obvious ways that politics sneak into our lives. At first, I thought it would be literal technology, such as tablets, phones, and computers. However, he creates a fascinating insight into technological systems such as bridges, structures, and machines. He believes that we ought to attend more closely to technical objects and how it’s situated. His main claim is, “Technical systems of various kinds are deeply interwoven in the condition of modern politics.” I believe what’s most interesting about this argument is how subtle and manipulative these concepts can be. Winner mentions Robert’s Moses infrastructure doing the 1920s-70s on Long Island. “Histories of architecture, city planning, and public works contain many examples of physical arrangements that contain explicit or implicit politi­cal purposes” (31). This goes to show Moses’ city planning of bridges that only fit cars and were not bus friendly. At first, this might seem innocent, but most minorities rode buses, therefore, they couldn’t get to where they needed to go. This is what Winner means that artifacts, DO in fact have politics. Another example he provides is McCormick’s reaper manu­facturing plant in Chicago that consisted of molding machines. This architecture at the time seems innovative, but given the context, it can be seen as implicitly political. This weaved the skilled workers who had organized the union local in Chicago and produced inferior castings.
To give insight to this, something I learned in my sociology class ties deeply this concept. In the 80s during the “say no to drugs era” if you possessed strong drugs such as cocaine, you were sentenced longer than possessing marijuana. During that time, minorities were the ones who possessed stronger drugs such as cocaine and were sentenced longer. However, I am not arguing that politics was a motivating factor behind it, but it might be an accidental, implicit, or consequential one.
I can see Winner’s claim applying to new media simply by the act of HAVING new media. Nowadays, everything that is transported and learned is through new media. With that being said, those who cannot afford interesting or do not know how to use it cannot keep up with what is going on. These people can consist of those in poverty, homelessness, the elderly, etc. Our society might deem this as being uneducated or misinformed due to not possessing the internet. Along with this, those in third world countries cannot express the help they need through this platform.
In Professor Werry’s “Imagined Electronic Community: Representations of virtual community in Contemporary Business Discourse”, he dissects the online communication and inclusivity within marketing strategies. A question I have is with this article being written in 1999, now being in 2019 online communities like Café Herpé has grown tremendously. How has this expanded for the better or for worse? Because it seems like nowadays there are online communities for a variety of things. But say group chats for people with AIDS, how do you determine who actually has it or just wants to chat for weird reasons? Along with that, is there paranoia associated with this?