a lot of the literature i’m encountering in studying human relations in the context of digital/internet technologies leads to the relation of race as social technology, master/slave connotation and the origins of the robot as a task-machine to enforce the will of the dominant power — the robot as slave, the human labourer as robot, the modern treatment of racialised bodies as another form of slavery.

Mentions

“an autonomous device meant to obey its master: ‘robot,’ from the 1923 translation of Karel Capek’s 1921 play ‘R.U.R.’ ((the word robot having been derived from a Czech word for slave, ‘robotnik’” - Broken Metaphor#^e5d58a

power and domination

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techno-politics

can you define politics?
using technology to achieve political goals or to stabilise political orders ^8709eb
technical infrastructure as forms of order eg
- NY low bridges prevent buses reaching beach destinations. Robert Moses
  - what happens when these exclusionary structures become beloved, part of place - relates to colonialist architecture/21st century backlash against visual/cultural evidence of colonial legacies
spatial design/histories of architectures and city planning have both implicit and explicit political purpose spatial design is political
anti-protest measures
some technology is more explicitly compatible with different political systems eg solar or nuclear, tech for war and tech for good
digital technologies, internet sociology, data inequities, etc

Resources

Protest Image Scrubber

Broken Metaphor

more interesting stuff here, want to read and note more thoroughly
“an autonomous device meant to obey its master: ‘robot,’ from the 1923 translation of Karel Capek’s 1921 play ‘R.U.R.’ ((the word robot having been derived from a Czech word for slave, ‘robotnik’” -
“the issue of autonomy was particularly germane in cases where synchronization was required”
“Another possibility is that the metaphor caught on because it ameliorates a tension between a desire for more autonomous machines and a desire to retain human mastery.”
“By referring to a master/slave relation in devices, professionals may reassure themselves that they will remain masters of machines”
is it BECAUSE it is more evocative that it is naturally selected from neutral alternatives? same way you remember highs and lows or memorise info better through bawdy analogies