RESCUING LADY NATURE
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mediums, technology is a social medium that represents a cultural practice of
technics or a prosthetic engagement with the world. Social mediums such as
art, language, and technology are often determined by social institutions such
as the state, capitalism, or patriarchy. For example, today, while corporations,
the state, and universities determine much of what will be considered ‘high5 art,
they also determine what will be considered ‘high5 technology. Although there
exist popular grassroots artists and technicians who maintain degrees of
autonomy from large hierarchical institutions, their cultural practices impact far
less dramatically upon society than those subsidized by powerful institutions.
In France, language is actually controlled by the patriarchal state which
manages and sustains not only highly gendered linguistic standards, but the
incorporation of foreign language and food as well.
However, while it is wrong for the state, corporations, or universities to
autocratically determine any aspect of social media, we cannot abolish
authoritarian institutions merely by protesting against language,
art,
or
technology per se. Attempts to upgrade social media by creating for instance ‘a
feminine language5, ‘a people’s art5, or a ‘low technology5, fail to eradicate the
source of control of social media. Whereas we may create the alternative of a
feminine language, there will still exist patriarchy and the state which oppress
women. Similarly, while we may create a people’s art or a low technology, we
will still be confronted by a state, a corporate edifice, and an educational
system which controls our lives and destroys the earth in a vast array of other
dangerous ways. Finally, proposing ‘low5 technologies, while opening up
potentially thoughtful dialogue regarding the ethics of technology, does little to
oblige people to consider the political and economic conditions which allow
corporations and governments to autocratically create social and ecological
injustice in the first place.
What is more, the ‘lowness5 of a technology does not determine the
justness of its social application. Despite romantic dreams of the inherent
goodness of technologies of the past, there exists much in our technological
history that is to be desired. As Bookchin points out, while the pyramids in
Egypt were built by slaves using very low technologies, early American settlers
clear-cut miles of native forest merely by burning and felling, as opposed to
using the “high-tech55 chain saws of today.25 Furthermore, before implementing
the ‘higher5 and more efficient modem technologies of mega gas-chambers,
Hitler was quite effective in using simple bread trucks and exhaust hoses to
round up and asphyxiate entire villages of Jews (before ‘advancing5 to gas
chambers). Clearly, we could not say that technological ‘advance5 was the
determining factor for the death of six million Jews. Rather, it was a set of
social relationships that allowed for the horrific collusion between a fascist
state, a racist ideology, a legacy of anti-Semitism, and an entrepreneurial factor,