Go to the profile of Kristen Thometz
Kristen Thometz
Artefacts tell us how to use them based on their physical appearance and internal workings. But, I think that a lot of this agency comes from the design that is created by humans. In this way, you can trace back a technology’s bias to a human intention.
Which Came First, The Technology’s Agency or The Human’s Agency?
Jen Sanfilippo
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If technologies can be traced back to human intention, how would you explain unintended side effects?

As Slack and Wise say in the chapter on determinism: “And if they weren’t intended, then the culture no longer seems to be in complete control of technologies and their side effects. … A final problem with cultural determinism is that it discourages any response except optimism regarding technological change, no matter the unintended effects” (p. 47).

Surely no human would intentionally create a technology that would have undesirable effects. If technologies worked exactly as intended, they would be completely reliable; there would be no side effects or unintended effects, and technologies would never fail us.

But they often do fail us, and it always seems to happen at the most inopportune times. As Slack and Wise say in the chapter on control,“Finally, our tools themselves sometimes seem to have lives of their own, suggesting that they are out of control. Who among us has not at some point complained about our computers giving us a hard time?” (p. 58).

Unintended side effects and technological failures are just two examples of the agency technology has outside of the reach of human intention.