WInner + Joerges(incomplete) Flashcards
What does Winner think of political authors’ treatment of technology?
He notes that many political texts contain some ill-defined statement of the power of technologies but little more
Where does Langdon Winner take his anecdote about Robert Moses?
From biographer Robert Caro
What does Winner/Caro observe about the Long Island parkway bridges?
The clearance is too low and prevent buses from passing underneath
When did Robert Moses build his bridges and overpasses?
1920s-1970s
Winner says: According to the evidence provided by Robert A. Caro in his biography of Moses, the reasons reflect Moses’s…
Social-class bias and racial prejudice
Why does Winner believe the bridges are political?
Tallow whites and upper classes who owned to pass underneath but don’t allow the people who took buses; poor and minorities
From where does Robert Caro base his information about Moses?
From anecdotal evidence provided by people who had worked with Moses
What other evidence does Winner provide to show Moses’s true nature?
He vetoes a proposed extension of the Long Island railroad to Jones Beach
How does Winner believe Moses was able to outlast the social structure?
“For generations after Moses has gone and the alliances he forged have fallen apart, his public works… of concrete and steel embody a social system of equality” and basically enforce power relations from way long ago
What does winner point to for Baron Haussman’s Boulevards
Wide streets in Paris constructed to be able to repress uprisings
What does Winner charge about Cyrus McCormick in the 1880s?
He adopted pneumatic molding machines in order to eliminate skilled workers that formed led the Iron Moulders Union
Why does winner believe McCormick’s step was intentional?
The machines produced worse products at higher cost and after a few years, when the Union was broken, the machines were abandoned
What does winner believe about social context of the tomato harvester?
It was not intentionally developed to be harmful to small-scale producers and farmers, but just that it was developed in a system of power at the behest of large companies
What effect does winner show the tomato harvester had on tomato growers.
It eliminated the number of tomato growers by a factor of eight and eliminated 32,000 jobs in the tomato industry in California
What does winner believe are the two choices associated with the adoption of technology?
-DO we adopt it or not
-What features do we want to adopt with respect to this technology
