Do Artifacts Have Politics? (1980) [pdf]
innovate.ucsb.edu
innovate.ucsb.edu
Take military drones, for instance. People are not concerned about drones because they can be used to kill each other; we have been killing each other for millennia. What makes drones concerning is the relative ease and safety with which they allow us to kill each other. We no longer have to risk the lives of our sons and daughters to wage war in far-off lands; we can do the same from the comfort and safety of a bunker.
What does this mean? We are risking less when we wage war. Waging war is easier. This makes us much more likely to be warlike. What we previously may not have seen as a worthy cause for risking the lives of our troops may yet be seen as a worthy cause for risking our money, in the form of UAVs, robotics, ammunition, etc. On the side of the attacker, war becomes more about spending money than risking lives. That is a big difference.
Moreover, these changes have consequences for the people war is waged against as well as innocent bystanders. An occupying soldier is less likely to target and execute a civilian than a soldier piloting a drone from far away. Innocents are much easier to mistake for insurgents on a computer screen.
The psychic distance between two people is far larger when they are separated by digital rather than physical space, meaning less empathy is involved. A reduction in empathy makes it easier to risk the lives of the people you intend to ignore or protect. This is the same reason people are so mean to each other on the Internet.
http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-02539-5.html
> The psychic distance between two people is far larger when they are separated by digital rather than physical space, meaning less empathy is involved. A reduction in empathy makes it easier to risk the lives of the people you intend to ignore or protect. This is the same reason people are so mean to each other on the Internet.
I agree, but also think it's kind of a double-edged sword in a way, because the internet also brings distant people more together. This is nothing new of course, movies and TV were closing distant gaps long before it: ignoring the valid criticisms of Live Aid for a second, people got motivated to do something because they empathised with distant people thanks to this tele-vision.
Similarly the internet has been a boon for niche interest communities that would have either never gotten off the ground, or in the case of older traditions died out if the enthusiasts wouldn't have been able to find distant people with similar interests online. The older mass-medias homogenized society because they were top-down, but I firmly believe the internet is our best technological bet for bringing back cultural diversity, paradoxically by connecting everyone globally.
For a current example, contrast the products created to solve the problems of 25 year olds with too much money (https://medium.com/matter/the-shut-in-economy-ec3ec1294816), and those for people who have experienced the horrible scale of mass incarceration (http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/24/pigeon-ly/). Both tap potentially huge markets, but posit very different worlds.
Getting outside of your own experiential bubble can make you a stronger product designer and user advocate, and potentially a more successful startup founder.
Robert Moses implemented parkways according to the "spec", and did not spend actual effort trying to prevent poor people from going there. His wife was also in charity, IIRC. If you read this then I refer you to "Do Politics have Artifacts"[1] which, as the name suggests, is a brilliant counterpiece.
TLDR: Don't believe what you read, and don't write down what you believe without any factual corroboration.
My claim is based on research done by Professor Lutz Prechelt for a course I can only recommend (slides[2]). It's in german, sadly.
[1] http://www.wzb.eu/2000/met/pdf/do_politics.pdf
[2] http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/inst/ag-se/teaching/V-AWS-2011/1...
My mentor, the late David Crane, FAIA worked for Logue at the BRA. Crane's opinion of Moses reflected the standard criticisms. His actions over the course of the time I knew him and the portions of his career about which I am aware reflected values running opposite to those of attributed to Mr. Moses. The peers who he associated himself with and the projects he undertook later in his career did not reflect the values Mr. Moses is accused of having.
None of which is to deny that politics has artefacts. Crane's work on Sadat city was halted by Sadat's assassination and Mubarek's subsequent rise to power in Egypt. Logue's work for the BRA likewise reflected political will and has its own high and low spots.