After reading both Marx and Winner's opinions on technology, I think they would both support my research topic because it emphasizes a few strong points of both of their arguments and examinations of technology.
The restriction and refusal of hydrogen car production because of insufficient supporting infrastructure is certainly very political in nature. Winner states that one way a technology becomes political is by requiring "The creation and maintenance of a certain set of social conditions" (31). This certainly defines the technology of hydrogen fillings stations because they will completely change American's views of transportation, and alter our embedded and accepted petroleum infrastructure. These changes would come as a large shock to the current social conditions. Some of the reasons for the opposition to hydrogen cars and their supporting infrastructure could be very political in nature, and therefore assisting in the technology itself becoming political.
Marx's statements about technology and progress being assumed to always walk hand in hand even though in many cases technology inhibits progress holds a lot of water with Americans today. Many people have come to question technologies, as some become more dangerous than beneficial. The creation of a hydrogen filling station infrastructure is certainly a progressive technology that will benefit the American people. Marx states that for a technology to create progress we must be able to define what we want the technology to accomplish. The widespread increase in hydrogen filling stations will prompt automakers to produce hydrogen automobiles, therefore eliminating our dependence on foreign oil, and seriously lowering our nation's impact on the environment. If Americans can believe in this new progressive technology, it will be successful. It is hard to change such an accepted and developed infrastructure, but the time to change has come.
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