Bike sharing system and its politics
According to Langdon Winner in Do Artifacts Have Politics?, an object embodies ideas and politics of its own. Objects — or technologies — can be define as “smaller or larger pieces or systems of hardware of a specific kind” (Winner 123). All objects have its own politics because any creation cannot be separated from the creator and the thoughts that went into. Sometimes the intention and purpose of the designer is clearly shown in the form of the product. At other times, the consequences of employing usage of such object can be unforeseeable and surprising. “We usually do not stop to inquire whether a given device might have been designed and built in such a way that it produces a set of consequences logically and temporally prior to any of its professes uses” (Winner 125). How can this view be applied to the shared bike system in New York City, CitiBike? What politics does the bike sharing system have?
CitiBike’s main purpose is to provide its riders with an alternative transportation method other than subways, buses, and taxi to travel from Point A to Point B. Is this goal well represented in the design of the system? In Winner’s piece, he talks about Robert Moses and his deliberate designs of bridges and parkways on Long Island to prevent usage of mass transit, and opposition to expand railroad service to Jones beach to restrain visits of minorities and low-income population. While Robert Moses’s designs limit access, CitiBike aims to make as widely available as possible to public. Deliberate design decisions have been made into the system for the company’s goal; the stations are located throughout the city, the process to borrow bikes are relatively easy, the cost is not too high, etc. The intended politic/message of CitiBike is clear in its form. “Features in the design or arrangement of a device or system could provide a convenient means of establishing patterns of power and authority in a given setting” (Winner 134) The bike sharing system creates different patterns of how people can travel and commute.
According to Winner, “the invention, design, or arrangement of a specific technical device or system becomes a way of settling an issue in a particular community” (Winner 123) and it “encompass[es] purposes far beyond their immediate use” (Winner 125). In addition to its main goal of providing an alternative mode of transportation, CitiBike also has made positive social changes in the community. With more bikes on the road, it helped to increase awareness from drivers and pedestrians, lessen traffic in the city, boost bicycle culture for public. However, there are some negative effects as well. Local bike renting businesses are shuttering partially due to wide accessibility of the bike sharing system.
As Winner state in his writing, all objects have politics of their own. “The adoption of a given technical system unavoidably brings with it conditions for human relationships that have a distinctive political cast” (Winner 128). Introduction of the bike sharing system in NYC not only brought an alternative modes of transportation, but also made changes to the community beyond its initial purpose.
— Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” Daedalus 109:1 (Winter, 1980): 121–36.
— Bruno Latour, “Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts’’ in Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, eds., Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992, 225–258.
— Ruth Schwartz Cowan, “How the Refrigerator Got its Hum,” The Social Shaping of Technology: How the Refrigerator Got its Hum, eds. Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman (London: Open University Press, 1985).
