“Living constantly inside an environment of our own invention, reacting solely to things we ourselves have created, we are essentially living _inside our own minds_. Where evolution was once an interactive process between human beings and a natural, unmediated world, evolution is now an interaction between human beings and our own artifacts.” (p 32)
“Thus, as more and more of daily life in the real world of technology is conducted via prescriptive technologies, the logic of technology begins to overpower and displace other types of social logic, such as the logic of compassion or the logic of obligation, the logic of ecological survival or the logic of linkages into nature.” (p 92)
References used in presentation at Graduate Students Conference on Indigenous Knowledge and Research in Indigenous Studies, 2018.
“Many technological systems, when examined for context and overall design, are basically anti-people. … When students are seen as not sufficiently competent, it is likely to be computers that the school purchases rather than extra teacher’s time and extra human help. And when security agencies in this country feel that Canadian citizens harbour thoughts and might contemplate actions that the state doesn’t like, they don’t invite these citizens to discuss their grievances or alternate thoughts openly and on a basis of equality. Instead, telephones are tapped or files are assembled by purely technological means.” (p 71-72)
“One of the reasons I emphasize the link between public policies related to the provision of infrastructures and the spread of technology is the following: Rarely are there public discussions about the merits or problems of adopting a particular technology. … Regardless of who might own railways or transmission lines, radio [page break] … frequencies or satellites, the public sphere provides the space, the permission, the regulation, and the finances for much of the research. It is the public sphere that grants the ‘right of way.’ It seems to be high time that we, as citizens, become concerned about the granting of such technological rights of way.” (p 64-65)
“It is my conviction that nothing short of a global reformation of major social forces and of the social contract can end this historical period of profound and violent transformations, and give a manner of security to the world and to its citizens. … The viability of technology, like democracy, depends in the end on the practice of justice and on the enforcement of limits to power.” (p 5)