familiar faces

"All around us today are artifacts that were generated in the
technological dramas of their time: railways, canals, aviation
artifacts, radios, and more. And yet their meaning, together with
their location in what was formerly a deeply felt grammar of political
action, is utterly lost; in their place is what appears to be nothing
more than a material record of `technological progress.' What was
once the conscious product of human cultural and political action,
passionate and meaningful, is now a silent material reality within
which we lead our daily lives, mutely acting out patterns of behavior
that once had obvious connections to the root paradigms of our
culture... To become fully aware of the political circumstances of
their lives, new generations of students, at every level of education,
must be trained (as Hughes suggests) to `fathom the depth of the
technological society, to identify currents running more deeply than
those conventionally associated ith politics and economics.' Because
Social Study of Technology offers a way to recontextualize
technological artifacts, it is therefore the political philosophy of
our time, and it deserves to stand at the center of any curriculum
that teaches political awareness and civic responsibility." Brian
Pfaffenberger, "Technological Dramas", quoting Thomas P. Hughes,
American Genesis; cited in "Commons Based Peer Production" by Benkler
and Nissenbaum