In my own position of privilege, technology has benefited me. I grew up using my mother’s Microsoft - a toy to play anything from Age of Empires to Warcraft. Pre-Facebook, the German Schüler-VZ (“ver-zeichnis”, meaning registry) allowed me to connect with peers. My father introduced me to Limewire and digital libraries. Unwillingly, he introduced me to the peer to peer world that allowed me to access any digital thing as if in a candy shop.

Fast forward into the next decade. I matured into my later teens, and in parallel, the world of digital platforms matured into a monopoly of the few. In 2013, I remember my grandfather pointing me to Edward Snowden and suggesting to always look beyond the surface. I was too young to understand, too busy with school…

As I come closer to graduation from my bachelors, comes Trump. The 2017 elections were a pivotal time for me as I witnessed how technology moves the masses. How it can manipulate and shape public opinion, how it can create rifts and divide. Soon after followed Cambridge Analytica. Knowledge is power; technology is political, it is driven by an agenda - always.

Out of naivety - some might say - I wanted to witness an alternative, to see the beauty of peer to peer. I found Bitcoin, blockchain and the thoughts of Vitalik Buterin on alternatives to the Airbnb’s and Uber’s of this world. But why did none of these exist in reality? Does there always need to be profit? Are actors always selfish? And are the claims of the blockchain world genuine? 

Today, as social scientist, I too am asked why I study technology. I don’t care to solve the worlds problems and pitch technology in a deterministic manner; I don’t care to define principles that make one technology “more” trustworthy, or ethical, or efficient, or (x) over another. In fact I do not study technology at all.

In my first masters class in Edinburgh, our lecturer, Robin Williams, sluggishly came into the room and introduced himself. He asked if we had done the only mandatory reading – Langdon Winner’s Do Artefact Have Politics (1980). We all nodded. “Good,” he answered, “now let us think about how we identify those politics.” The following months we went over all the must reads from the actor-network world (John Law, Bruno Latour, Michel Callon to name a few), the Dutch scholars (Arie Rip, Judy Wajcman, and Wiebe Bijker), and Edinburgh’s own rooster (Robin himself, Donald MacKenzie, and Neil Pollok). For my thesis, I took apart Bitcoin and its claims to decentralisation. As others claimed before me, Bitcoin is, in short, centralised. 

The reason why I study technology is because I care about controversies. They are the trail of blood left behind in cases of inequality, in cases of fraud, of plain bullshit. Jathan Sadowksi is right, “technology - both the things themselves and the larger industry - is one of the most important ways that power and authority exists today.” Just consider how Trump’s pick for vice president leaped into power.

Individuals shape technology. They decide what values to embed, what to prioritise, how to settle disputes. These individuals are the few. But, for better or worse, it is the many - us - that live by the consequences of those decisions.

I choose to look beyond the surface of technology, to study the politics of artefacts. I do so by picking controversies. By picking the side of the many and looking at the decisions of the few. By asking questions that make technologists cringe. Who benefits and why? Who pays for this and why? Why are decisions taken in such way, for certain reasons - and over alternatives? Why prioritise certain opinions over others, why exclude some from the dialogue?