A practical brief on Franklin’s argument that technology is a social practice—organized work, mindset, and procedures—and how the distinction between artisanal (holistic) and prescriptive technologies shapes power, freedom, and everyday life.
Technology is more than machines: Franklin defines it as organized practices, procedures, symbols, words, equations, and a mindset that shape social relations.
Two models of practice matter: holistic (artisanal, end-to-end, variable quality) versus prescriptive (process-fragmented, consistent output, worker fungibility).
Prescriptive systems scale control: authorities and institutions convert work into prescriptive processes to make people and places more legible and manageable.
Franklin's The Real World of Technology Exploring how tech and engineering interact with power, belief, and structures of freedom and control. Every couple weeks, we'll dive into a book, article, or other source of ideas that are sparking current stories, or that have untapped potential to do so. Each article will include an overview of the source(s), a review of its readability and plausibility, and highlights of the best two or three "seeds" found there.
This section feels more dated, largely because patterns that she attributes to TV's one-way communication have continued into the age of the internet. Returning to community, Franklin warns that we tend to focus on what new techniques could do to address existing problems, at the cost of considering what kinds of activities they may prevent or reshape. Her caring is informed by feminist theory and socialism (as they stood in the '80s), without being overwhelmed by them.
--> For compliance with applicable privacy laws: Reactor Home / Artisanal Technology and Mechanical Brides: What actually shapes such consequences, beyond an author's desire to comment on surveillance tech?
Berry describes the beautiful working relationship he had with his wife, Tanya. She typed his work on a Royal standard typewriter. Source
One often-repeated anecdote about Milton Friedman has the famous economist visiting a canal under construction in nineteen-sixties China. Noticing the sheer number of human laborers digging away with shovels, he asked the official in charge why they weren’t getting the work done faster with excavators and other modern
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Despite the fact that AI seems to be everywhere these days, a surprising recent poll from NBC News found that AI is even less popular among the US public than ICE. So it is no wonder the same industry that is developing AI for corporate gain and warfare is moving into the seemingly benevolent fields of reproductive hea
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