Quotes from Langdon Winner

To argue a moral position convincingly these days requires that one speak to (and not depart from) people's love of material well-being, their fascination with efficiency, or their fear of death.

Fired by an emotional faith in spontaneity, the common-sense attitude toward change was discarded in favor of a mystical readiness to accept the social consequences of economic improvement

Over many decades technological optimists have been sustained by the belief that whatever happened to be created in the sphere of material/instrumental culture would certainly be compatible with freedom, democracy, and social justice. This amounts to a conviction that all technology—whatever its size, shape, or complexion—is inherently liberating. For reasons noted in the previous chapter, that is a very peculiar faith indeed.

There is the capitalist approach (make it bigger), the technocratic one (make it better), the 'revolutionary' solution (portray the problem as an example of an exploitative system) and the pre-industrial romantic fallacy (don't use it; maybe it will go away by itself). We propose a fifth alternative response: Let's invent a different answer."28

While it has wonderful appeal, decentralization turns out to be a very slippery concept. How can it have any importance in a society thoroughly enmeshed in centralized patterns?

Are we going to design and build circumstances that enlarge possibilities for growth in human freedom, sociability, intelligence, creativity, and self-government? Or are we headed in an altogether different direction?

Technologies are not merely aids to human activity, but also powerful forces acting to reshape that activity and its meaning.