Democratic technics

If, to echo a theme from the first session, technical configurations embed social and political order, then can technologies be democratic, or be rendered as such by specific modes of technological governance? This session will explore this question through a recent report on digital infrastructure and hidden challenges of open source software, paired with a classic piece on technology, democracy, and authoritarianism.
—  The first piece is Nadia Eghbal’s 2016 report Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure (Selected Chapters: “History and Background of Digital Infrastructure”; “Challenges Facing Digital Infrastructure” — the rest will be summarized by AJung).
— The second piece is Lewis Mumford’s “Authoritarian and Democratic Technics” (Technology and Culture, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Winter, 1964), pp. 1-8.).

Published by architecture-software on October 6, 2019 at 4:13 am under notes on readings.

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