How to anticipate technological shifts in power
A guide to interrogating the technological systems that shape power
Overview
Technologies can shift who has power. Lewis Mumford, a historian and philosopher of technology, divides technologies into “authoritarian technics” and “democratic technics.”
Democratic technologies are “human-centered, relatively weak, but resourceful and durable.” These are tools; they are used by people in service of their objectives. The objectives might still be really bad — a hammer can be used as a weapon — so it’s the user’s objective that matters.
Authoritarian technologies are “system-centered, immensely powerful, but inherently unstable.” These are technologies that become a system — which then acts on people, rather than the other way around: power shifts from the people, to the system.
Technologies can empower people, putting the objectives of their users first. Or they can shift power from the individual user to the broader technical system. Take the Moses’ overpass again from “How to critically analyze technology.” The story isn’t simply that Moses embedded his politics into the overpasses, but that together, the overpasses became a system that regulated behavior. As I referenced in Technologies encode politics Langdon Winner referred to this as “specific ways of organizing power and authority.” Anticipating technological shifts in power, then, starts by analyzing how technologies become systems that shape power.
