26 June

One of the great myths of technology is that it's 'only technical'. That humans only relate with humans, and when they decide something in all that chatter, then you can go and build something. In reality technology is the most social part of human life. A speed bump for example takes the never-ending arguments about people speeding, and bypasses them completely, making speeding impossible. There is no such thing as a 'speed bump' outside those disputes. The technology is literally made from human argument, in material form. All technologies are this, they're the way you create peace and stability. Once they're built people then have to be disciplined to maintain and use them - again it silences argument, suddenly everything is no longer possible, one direction has been chosen and embedded in material form. Also why what Tesla does is fascinating to me. I ignore all the human hot air disputes around Musk the person. Tesla's genius and contribution is in what it *builds*, and how what it builds shapes us socially. What new ways of being human that begins, and what debates and disputes its technologies settle. Also Shaw's point about Undershaft the industrialist, in Major Barbara. The world doesn't give a shit what humans think or say, in their petty status games. It only notices what they build. Building is where human and non-human (the world) meet and interact.