Select a technology of interest (invented anywhere, but not nuclear weapons, timekeeping, or social media). You will consider the political implications of this technology within a non-U.S. country (that may or may not have invented the technology). See brief notes after the prompt on “governance,” “political qualities” and “inherently political.”
1) Describe the relevant factual details of the case you will be discussing: the technology, where it was first developed, the country you will examine, and how people are using it in that country.
2) State your conclusion about whether or not the technology possesses inherently political qualities. To do this, consider whether it is decisive for a follow-on type of governance, given the technology. If not decisive in this strong-form way, then can you convince yourself (a) that it is definitive about exiting one form of governance and, (b) considering essential features of the technology and the way of working that it introduces, we may conclude that governance of a sort that clearly reflects the technology and way of working will emerge in the future (i.e., it constrains governance in a range). Give an argument that establishes your conclusion based on the relation of the technology to specific social factors related to governance in the non-U.S. country. That is, describe an aspect of governance, such as processes related to societal leadership and social choice, and argue that it is inherently political, or, that it is not inherently political because you show it is compatible with multiple very different sorts of governance. For a technology that has not been deployed yet (e.g., quantum computing) or that exists but has not reached mainstream use at scale (e.g., genetic engineering, blockchain), you need to project how the technology would be deployed into the selected society, and how that would influence governance (e.g., I assume it will have these properties and will be deployed in this way, and that this set of governance structures or practices would be undermined, need to change, or need to be invented … for these reasons).
3) State your conclusion about whether or not it was (or would be) ethical to introduce the technology into the selected country. Then give an argument for your conclusion that relates the deployment/uptake and then use of the technology (perhaps only by a distinct population) to social factors that resulted, and that can be judged as ethical, or not. Treat “ethical” as the technology supports general flourishing (many lives are improved, and this is achieved without requiring substantial harm to some). Treat “unethical” as the technology with high likelihood results in a society with less justice, more entrenched inequality, new or stronger barriers to freedom to determine one’s course — or in general is such that whatever benefits accrue to some are achieved in a way that necessarily and substantively harms others. Note that a technology that biases governance in favor of some (a governing or decision-making ‘elite’) would almost certainly be unethical. If you’ve chosen a technology that is not yet used at scale, then the forecast for its characteristics, deployment/uptake, and use are used to guide your ethical analysis.
brief summaries:
By “governance” we mean processes by which some actors (perhaps all!) in a society participate in the formation of choices and the taking of decisions with very substantive impact on the lives, livelihoods, roles, agency, opportunities etc., of a population of people. Decisions about who participates in future governance matters, and how, are particularly important.
In brief, technology with political qualities is technology that, when entered into practice, settles a matter of governance in a community. It may do so by dissolving an issue, by introducing new mechanisms for people to influence societal relationships in the future, or by in some manner barring or limiting the participation of some in those processes aimed at shaping our collective future (e.g., after the manner of McCormick or R. Moses).
Inherently political technology, in Winner’s definition, is technology that is only compatible with one or a narrow range of forms of governance — e.g., in the way that nuclear power/weapons require the absolute centralization and hierarchical control over decision-making pertaining to these systems. However, many modern technologies are clearly disruptive of governance, yet may be compatible with a variety of societal arrangements. We therefore generalize Winner and allow that “inherently political” can also be taken to mean that governance in the present society is essentially certain to change in substantive ways, and that while we do not yet apprehend what the precise follow-on form of governance might be, we can reasonably hypothesize its general nature considering inherent elements of the technology, and the new way of working (or using within one’s life) that is native to the technology. For example, the nature of social media, including recommender algorithms, tell us that the formation of belief systems that segregate people within larger populations (i.e., one’s ‘partisans’) will continue, and that governance in the form of social choice and leader selection will reflect deep polarization. We may also project that new non-partisan voices will emerge — in place of any expectation that partisans will seek common ground — and we may further project that these voices will not seek to rationalize the opposing views so much as present larger issues (e.g., climate change) as reflecting deeper values that all sides should make internal to their positions.