Do Artifacts Have Politics?

"By the term "politics" I mean arrangements of power and authority in human associations as well as the activities that take place within those arrangements" - Winner

While reading this article I had a few different thoughts crossing my mind.

First, the most general of those thoughts was a potential relation of artifacts and politics to consumerism:

Now I may be misinterpreting things a bit but when Winner explains "inherently political technologies" as "man-made systems that appear to require or to be strongly compatible with particular kinds of political relationships" my mind goes directly to consumerism. The examples are infinite, but I'll pick one and then continue on.

Let's talk about cars. We use cars to get around. At one point in time, owning a car was enough to denote hierarchical status. In the current decade, cars have become more or less a necessity.  However, what isn't necessary is to have cars that cost $300,000. Those cars don't necessarily get you from point A to point B more efficiently than the average $20,000 midsize car. What they can do, however, is denote hierarchical status in a time when simply owning a car isn't enough to set the upper class apart from the lower class. Pushing the envelope even further are the vehicles that are not only expensive, but also unnecessarily oversized, resulting in poor gas mileage. Now obviously there are people who need big trucks because of their profession, but there are also people who buy big gas-guzzling trucks just because they can, because money is no object to them, and therefore gas being $4.00 doesn't phase them. 

My next comments pertain to the topic of healthy living and its relation to wealth and power.

Food. Is fast food a form of natural selection? In our country, our government is not making it easy for us to eat healthy. They've "accommodated" our busy schedules and tight budgets by placing fast food restaurants on every corner, each with its own "econo-menu". The result is that our lower class citizens eat at these restaurants because it's cheap, it's easy, and also because they are likely under-education on just how bad it really is for them. Then you have the upper class citizens who can afford all the glorious healthy food that is more expensive than it should be, and are unlikely to even consider eating at a fast food restaurant. There once was a time when not having money meant not being able to afford food. In the 21st century, not having money means being able to afford food, but it's food that will slowly destroy your body from the inside out. Therefore, food and health have also become symbols of social status. It takes money to eat healthy and be fit. 

Once upon a time being pale was a sign of wealth whereas people with tanned skin were those who were physical laborers working outside. Later, being tanned became a symbol of wealth because it meant being able to afford fancy vacations and being able to spend time outside instead of working. Then, tanning salons were invented. Now to me this seems like an inherently political technology. This technology was specifically invented to allowed even those people who were unable to afford fancy vacations to get a tan to emulate the wealthy. However it wasn't long before tanning lost its value as a symbol of social status due to the discovery of the health risks involved (and probably thanks in part to Snooki too). Now pale (or "natural") skin tones have once again become a symbol of beauty and wealth.

Similarly, in the 1920's smoking cigarettes was a symbol of power, fashion and freedom. Soon after, everyone began emulating this habit eventually causing it to lose its value as a symbol of status. The upper class citizens, now aware of the health risks, dropped the habit, leaving it to now instead be a symbol of lower class status. 

Artifacts do have politics. Apple keeps producing new versions of the iPad so that the wealthy can keep demonstrating their wealth. They manage to stay one step ahead of the middle class, who can afford to buy iPads, but can't afford to keep upgrading every time a new version is released. Even Apple in itself is representative of status. And why does Ford bother to make both the Lincoln Navigator and the Ford Expedition when the two are so similar? Because people will buy a Lincoln Navigator simply because of the fact that it's more expensive; because they can afford it, and because they want to let other people know that they can afford it.