When reading "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" by Langston Winner, the first thing that came to my mind was articles I've read over the past few years about algorithms having the biases of those who programmed them. Discriminating algorithms: 5 times AI showed prejudice. Yes, artifacts can and do have the politics of their creators, and too often we dismiss anything that is the white, non-disabled, hetero, male perspective as "political" while not considering that the "standard" is in itself political.
I think that any bias in an organization, even unintentional (perhaps especially unintentional) can be partially addressed by having a diverse group of employees working on all projects. Thinking back to a news story about a sensor that doesn't detect dark skin, would that have happened if a dark skinned person were developing the sensor or at the very least in the usability testing group? Looking at the politics of classism, I also remember when the RTC unveiled those double decker buses for the Strip in 2005-2006. Made to look fancy for tourists, they started using them on residential routes where they would have to take detours because of trees and would break down on inclines (hello Eastern south of Warm Springs!). Made to look like a fun place for a tourist family inside, there were seats facing each other in the middle which I personally saw lead to arguments because no one wants to face a creepy or aggressive stranger when your exhausted and coming home from work.
On a more personal and somewhat sillier level, I think of the small side streets in expensive areas with lights that almost immediately make the light on the larger arteries turn red as soon as a pressure sensor on the small posh street is triggered. Why does the Summerlin area have so many lights like this? Inversely, why do I sometimes have to wait two or three light cycles to turn left from Tropicana onto Spencer because the light going to several low-income apartments doesn't get any precedent and rather is delegated to the next light cycle if a vehicle isn't on the pressure sensor well before a light cycle begins?
One final note on a line that I believe relates to UNLV, "[O]ne can
visit any number of grotesque concrete buildings and huge plazas constructed
on American university campuses during the late 1960s and early 1970s to de
fuse student demonstrations." While I don't appreciate the anti-Brutalist tone (pretty buildings kill), having been in the English Department when it was in the FDH I'm familiar with the maze like structure inside. I once asked an older professor who had been at UNLV when the FDH was built and they said it was specifically in response to the California student protests of the 60's.
There's a lot more in this reading I engaged with (especially handicapped accessibility) but I don't want this to be too long so I'll go ahead and end here.
