[Air-L] Technology as ideologically neutral?

[Cristian Berrio Zapata]

Interesting Mike:

Maybe, if we change the word "ideology" for "representation, then we could
be more comfortable. Technology as a thinking process that presents
solutions to context problems is built on historic, geographic, cultural
representations (economy and ideology included of course). Here I am
quoting Mumford.

Certain sources, materials, energies, processes and products are preferred
by those views (or representations). These views, when made real by the
tools and routines produced by technology, create habits. And habits
conform in the end, the organizational behavior of a community, an
enterprise, a society. Here is Nelson & Winter who I quote.

So technology, with or without consciousness, impose an architecture, an
order to action and thought as disciplined bodies create disciplines minds.
Here I quote Foucault. In the case of ICT, mind discipline is more evident
but it also intends to create a physical order in any society it reaches; a
reproduction of its origin.

As societies are complex, this reproduction is not perfect. It is part
reproduction and part construction. We are in that spot in our work, trying
to understand what is happening. The idea of “global” is embedded into ICT
so when it reaches a "community", this clash against the sense of “local”.
The small baker shop owner is not interested in selling to the continent,
but to his neighborhood. Same clash we have between computer (written
language) in communities that are basically oral: they prefer the cellular.

I believe these are the tips that let we brake down the ICT myth, and begin
to understand the ICT tool.


-- 
*Cristian Berrío Zapata*