Example of reaction paper about technology

Relationship Between Technology and Democracy Reaction Paper
Subject
Writing

Question Description
My guess is you've never considered a relationship between technology and democracy except maybe to think about electronic voting (and more recently, its hacking vulnerabilities.)

Your readings include two classic articles by Richard Sclove and by Langdon Winner and a more recent article from Issues in Science and Technology. Winner and Sclove introduce the relationship between technologies and organizational structures. Each structure has its own corresponding democratic implications. The more current article by Jones and Reinecke will look at the history of democratizing efforts.

Before I go on, I want to share the definition that I like for political process. I think it’s relevant. According to political scientist Harold Laswell, the political process is “the process by which it is decided who gets what, when they get it and how they get it.” The opposite is also true. Since there are hardly ever enough resources to go around, the decision of who gets what will most likely, by default, decide who doesn’t get what. (When? Last or never.) And notice this definition doesn’t say anything about government. Workplaces have politics, as do families and friend groups. Keep that in mind as you consider these articles.

In the Winner article it's the story of urban planner, Robert Moses, and his bridges that gets me cranked up. Robert Moses had a vision for the Greater New York City area that was very car-centered. He also wanted beautiful public beaches on Long Island. But didn’t want ALL of the public there. To get from NYC to these beaches, the road (parkway) he built detoured around the estates of the wealthy but cut the property of many farmers in half, often ruining them. (He called his roads parkways to avoid a public approval process.) The technology he used to discriminate was bridges. He used low-clearance bridges (one is pictured in the banner for this module) to keep out busses, that is, public transportation. The ironic thing is he never learned to drive. He always had a driver.