Technology in the Political Landscape

Politics can shape technology most obviously through direct choice, whereby political or business leaders, technologists, or consumers choose to produce, use, or promote a certain technology or technological system because it fulfills a political aim. But politics can also shape technology indirectly, through the construction of legal, regulatory, or economic structures by forming a landscape that can discourage technological change in certain directions and encourage it in others. Of course, such structures do not come from nowhere; they are themselves the residue of earlier political choices. Nevertheless, they can affect technological change in ways unintended, or at least unimagined, at the time of their creation.