The Liberator — Politics of an Object
There are many objects and tools that we use in our everyday lives and in our design work, which we don’t realize can have very strong political and societal effects beyond how we see them. Whether it is through a machine, new technology, or stationary artifact, almost any object can be seen as having a deeper context within the place in which it was brought into the world. The object that I would like to focus on in this piece is the 3D printer, and more specifically the recent controversy of it being used to create the first 3D printed handgun.
3D printers are now a fairly widely used technology in the design world. We all have access to them as students at our universities, they are used for commercial manufacturing purposes, and we can even buy our own personal 3D printers. This technology initially seems like a great addition to our society. Access to 3D printers gives people a whole new range of opportunities for exploring and creating and figuring out ways to improve life. 3D printers can be used in rapid prototyping, research, improved medical technologies, educational opportunities, and in construction technology as well. All of these are pursuits with great potential to make positive changes in society and improve our world, as the inventors and manufacturers most likely intended.
In the Langdon Winner article, where he discusses inherently political technologies, he references the ideas of centralized vs. decentralized, repressive vs. liberating, and authoritarian vs. democratic. I can’t help, but to think that the advent of 3D printing becoming easily available to the public was for the most part considered very liberating for all of the reasons noted above. But after this technology was used for “purposes beyond immediate use” and people were able to do things such as develop 3D CAD files for printing guns it made me wonder if this technology was really all that liberating for us?
In his article Winner references Engel who noted that, “strong authority is a necessary condition in modern industry”. I think this statement has a lot of truth in it for this situation because after this gun printing technology was made public online for anyone to freely access and create an untraceable unregistered gun, the federal government had to eventually step in and have the CAD files taken down, as a matter of public safety. The 3D printer company also recalled its’ printer from the individual who was developing this technology. But this then brings up a whole new range of issues and questions of political freedoms, government censorship, and the right to use a technology as you want without breaking the law even if it’s not how the manufacturer intended, all ongoing debates that we are still in the midst of. Not to mention that all of this is occurring in a time when we have constantly increasing issues with school shootings and often the most tech savvy people with access to and interest in 3D printing are young adults and teenagers. How is this technology going to be able to be regulated in its’ future development? And should it be? Is it lawful to screen or censor the types of files people are printing? These are probably not thoughts that crossed the minds of the people who first created 3D printers.
Because of the amount of controversy, threat to public safety, and questions in regards to government regulations, this issue is a contentious topic. It makes me wonder if this is a technology that really liberates us and gives us freedoms or does its’ wide range of uses actually cause more repression of our society and authoritarian behaviors triggering need for regulation? I’m not entirely sure, but what I do know is that as designers, whether we are building the tools or using them to create other things, it’s important for us to think beyond what we are making in the moment and take the time to consider not just our intended ideals for a project, but also the unintended societal consequences.
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).
