Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought

by Langdon Winner

Autonomous Technology outlines the paradoxes of technological development, the images of alienation and liberation evoked by machines, and it assesses the historical conditions underlying the exponential growth of technology. Winner brings together the ideas of several gifted observers of industrial society, among them Karl Marx, Lewis Mumford, Jacques Ellul, Herbert Marcuse, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Hannah Arendt, pointing up the importance (and shortcomings) of their thinking on technological and technocratic development. In asking the question, What have we created?, Winner evokes the myths of Frankenstein and Prometheus to illustrate the possibility that we may all face a permanent bondage to our own inventions. To answer the question, What is to be done about what we have created?, Winner explores the possibilities offered by epistemological Luddism.

Genres: Technology, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Science, Psychology, Cultural

396 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1977

Reviews

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 3 out of 5]

Autonomous Technology is an important book in the history of STS, synthesizing many school of technological critique from Ellul, to Weber, to Marx, in search of a way to talk about technology that accurately respects its power and its relationship to human society. The problem is that important is not the same as influential, or even particularly good, and I found this book confused on several critical points: what is the nature of autonomy-necessary for authentic human flourishing, or a sign of a system dangerously out of control? Speaking of control, is it a necessary part of governing technology, or a system by which elites can 'rationally program' society from the center?

Winner's original scholarly contributed is mostly rooted in a sense of nostalgia-a nostalgia he writes about in The Whale and the Reactor. It's a longing for a lost boyhood on the California coast, in a small town of orange orchards and sea breezes. That life sounds beautiful, but far to small to encompass human experience-or even the current human population. Winner proposes "epistemological luddism", a stance that people only use tools that they understand fully, with a sense of appropriateness and wisdom. Yet the first part is incompatible with any sort of urban, technological, interdependent life, and 'appropriate' and 'wisdom' are elusive virtues in the simplest of times, let alone gales of a technological revolution.

[Anna Nevmerzhytska · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t get over the fact that this was written in 1970s, but only now, in the post-2022 AI boom time, we are beginning to raise the social issues that come with autonomous tech.

This should be a must read textbook for all policymakers, software developers, tech mangers and democracy advocates. I hope as this book resurfaces in popular (or at least academic) culture, more social scientists take notice and build off Winner’s analysis to help us figure out how society can control autonomous tech.

[Dylan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is incredible. Winner takes the thought of Ellul, Mumford, Marcuse, and others and makes their collective insights into the basis for a theory of technological politics that captures exactly what is missing from modern discourse: the effects of the overwhelming influence of modern technology on all forms of human experience. And all this in an academic book that is readable! Highly recommended.

[Mikael Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic introduction to the critique of technology. He goes through the most current themes, despite it being written in the 70s. He shows how the critique of technology has related to certain topics or problematics and develops a bleak but recognisable picture of our current predicament. Overall I can recommend this book to anyone whose even slightly interested in the critique of technology. At the same time, it can be tedious at certain moments, especially in regards to the overuse of long quotes and citations.