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Who pays for this blog?
I receive no fees, considerations, etc. etc. for the posts on this blog nor do I have any plans to accept any. My salary is paid by Canwest Global Communications Corp. I work for that company as the Ottawa-based National Affairs Correspondent for Canwest News Service.
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Re: Andrew Feenberg, technology, and democracy
by Sean Calder
The contexts of technology include such things as its relation to vocations, to responsibility, initiative, and authority, to ethics and aesthetics, in sum, to the realm of meaning.
I have to agree 100% with this statement. Technologies exist, or are developed to fill a certain need and/or requirement of society; for better or for worse. As such, Technology is not inherently innocent or neutral. Take a gun for instance (I use this example not only because it's so frequently used, but it's one most people can understand), and the arguement you quoted earlier in your post here. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Wrong. Guns kill people when in the hands of people who intend to kill other people. The gun becomes the vessel through which the intent of the person is projected. Why was a gun designed? In the large scope of things, what is it's purpose? To kill, to maim, to injure, to subdue. A more efficient means of defeating your opponent in combat. In general terms, these actions are negative (evil) actions. Therefore, logic follows that to design and create an object through which such actions are made simpler, makes said technology negative (evil). Or, in the context of your article David, value inherent. I will agree too, however, that there are neutral intended technologies. Items such as an axe which was designed to fell trees, but which could also be taken and used in negative (evil) action. Items such as the clock which performs a very simple and neutral task in and of itself, but if taken and combined with certain psychological factors and intent, can be turned into something nefarious, as difficult as that might be. In the end, Neurtal Intent is not Neutrality of Technology.
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