Writings Reflecting on the Neutrality of Technology

A recent set of posting on the Association of Internet Researcher's email list generated an interesting list of sources reflecting on and/or challenging the notion that technology in general and the Internet in particular is "ideologically neutral". I would like to share a selection of sources \ for those who might be interested in also exploring these debates.

Daniel Chandler, Shaping and Being Shaped Engaging with Media article from 1996 in the Journal of CMC http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1996/feb/chandler.html

Susan Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting

Ellul, J. (1964). The technological society (J. Wilkinson, Trans.). New York: Vintage Books. (Original work published 1954)

Andrew Feenberg, Questioning Technology

Andrew Feenberg's Critical Theory of Technology (1991), which lays out a very useful heuristic distinction between instrumental ("technology is neutral"), substantive, and critical perspectives on technology development and use.

Mary Flanagan, Daniel Howe, Helen Nissenbaum, Embodying values in technology: theory and practice, Information Technology and Moral Philosophy, Eds. Jeroen van den Hoven, John Weckert, chap 16, Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Johnson, J. (1988). Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The Sociology of a Door-Closer. Social Problems, 35(3), 298-310. [Bruno Latour's article which he published under Johnson pseudonym]

Marcus Leaning (2009)The Internet Power and Society: Rethinking the Power of the Internet to Change Lives, Chandos: Oxford.

Carolyn Marvin, When Old Technologies Were New

Arnold Pacey, Technology: practice and culture, Amherst, New York, Controlling technology: contemporary issues, Ed. Eric Katz, Andrew Light, William Thompson, Prometheus Books, 2007, http://carbon.cudenver.edu/stc-link/weblink/water/materials/pacey.html

Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Tom Streeter, Selling the Air: A Critique of the Policy of Commercial Broadcasting in the United States

Sally Wyatt, (2008) *Technological Determinism is Dead*; Long Live Technological Determinism. The Handbook of Science & Technology Studies, MIT Press.

Langdon Winner's "Do Artifacts Have Politics?", also to be found in his book "The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology".

"Algorithmic Ideology. How capitalist society shapes search engines", http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2012.676056