ABSTRACT

IMAGES COUNT. Every image, whether in CAD/CAM models or cultural stereotypes, makes some things visible while hiding others. The analytic exercise of making more visible things that get hidden and then locating these alongside the dominant image can constitute a significant intervention by reorganizing the relationships among them. The dominant cultural image of technology outside society establishes a sharp boundary between humans and machines that hides human experiences of connectedness, including both an anthropomorphic sense that machines live with human agencies and a robotic sense that humans lives with the agencies of machines. Perhaps the most important contribution one can make in revealing what images hide is to begin to imagine how things might have been otherwise, both an assessment of history and a policy statement about future possibilities. If such a practice of image reevaluation became routine, might both popular and academic audiences become more open and receptive to alternatives such as those posed by academic theorizing in technology studies?