Digital Bibliography

Technologies are social and political. More than merely functional objects and software packages, technologies of all sorts represent the intersection of myriad social, political, economic, and cultural forces. Using a technology is a political act. Purchasing (or stealing, for that matter) is also a political act. We have a material impact on the world when we use a technology; that same technology has an impact on us when we use it. None of these assertions is new or novel. Marcuse, Ellul, Feenberg, Heidegger. More germane to this blog’s projects: Ong, (C) Haas, Bolter, Drucker, Chartier. But I want to take a step back and expand the scope of this reflection to include discussions of technology in general. Because lately I’ve been feeling like a contradiction. But it’s a contradiction that I seem to be embracing. I’m making the switch to Mac. It’s a transition, sure, but I’m committed to it at this point.

But what, exactly, is it to which I’m committing? Apple is now the biggest, most dominant technology company in the world. They are a company who basically blew-off their relationship with the die-hard fan base that helped same them from extinction in the nineties. They purposely leave out functionalities for their products in order to include them in a later model to encourage their customers to purchase more items. They are the pot calling the kettle “closed and proprietary” in terms of their ongoing battle with Flash. They are a company who, in their attempt to revolutionize (this is gonna change everything) the way we use computers, gave us a device which made it much, much harder for users to actively produce and contribute mediated cultural content. And yet, in the last year, I’ve purchased a phone, a laptop, and and iPad from them. What sort of a political gesture is this? Read the rest of this entry »