ABSTRACT
Langdon Winner is professor in political sciences in the Department of Science and Technology Studies of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. He became known especially for his studies of the social and political aspects of modern technological development. Winner opposes both a technological deterministic approach, which supposes that technological artefacts have inevitable social consequences, and a social deterministic approach by which artefacts are regarded as neutral utilities that can be used for good and for evil. The structure of technological artefacts and systems is not something to be changed in less than no time. In his first book Autonomous Technology, he takes a critical stand on Ellul's conviction that technology has to a great extent become autonomous. Autonomy is at the heart a political or moral conception that brings together the ideas of freedom and control. To be autonomous is to be self governing, independent, not ruled by an external law or force.
