Towards a Technology for the People

Contrary to commonly held belief, science and technology are not the neutral application and advancement of knowledge and technical capabilities. They are political, primarily designed and developed for the benefit of a society’s ruling class. Powerful military weaponry, advanced surveillance capabilities, job-eliminating automation, increased job precarity through Uber and the like—these are not natural and inevitable progressions of technology, but an intentional program set forth by the class that funds and directs it.

This political analysis of technology is one of the many significant contributions that Science for the People (SftP) made in its original publication run during the ‘70s and ‘80s. Of course, technology has come a long way since that time: the smartphones we carry in our pockets today are a lot more powerful than the supercomputers that used to take up entire rooms. But many of the political questions that we face today around technology are largely the same as they were then.
Science for the People provided many other political analyses that we can and should build off of in our current struggles, including structural critiques of the impacts of automation on workers’ struggles, the lack of diversity in STEM fields, the increased capacities of the state to conduct surveillance and repress dissidents, the development of AI and its relationship to the military, and many others. Below is a small selection and summary of these contributions from the latter half of SftP’s original iteration, paired with commentary about their connections to debates happening today, and followed by thoughts on where to take our movement going forward.
Also well documented is the question of what advancements in computers and automation mean for office workers. The automation trends that were taking place in the clerical industry at the time are discussed in this article by Working Women. It explains how these developments could make work less boring and more creative. However, because technology is controlled by management rather than workers, it will be used to eliminate jobs, reduce wages, and make work even more boring and repetitive. The piece also details the disproportional impact these trends would have on women workers, who made up the majority of the clerical workforce—and what it would take for them to resist. William F. Laughlin, vice president of IBM, certainly understood whose side he was on when he said, “People will adapt nicely to office systems if their arms are broken, and we’re in the twisting stage now.”