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Updated: Jun 7, 2025
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Published on: April 24, 2016
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Artefact design and societal worldview.
Elisabeth Stockinger1, Michael Mandlmayr2
1Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences, ETH Zurich, Zurich 8092, Switzerland.
Summary
Technological artifacts shape societal worldviews, especially when unequally distributed. Participatory design is crucial for mitigating bias and promoting equitable digital governance.
Area of Science:
- Social Sciences
- Technology Studies
- Sociology
Background:
- Technological artifacts embody designers' values and influence human perception and interaction.
- Large-scale adoption of technology can permanently alter societal ethos and values.
- Unequal resource allocation in artifact design can exacerbate societal disparities and inequities.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how technological artifacts, when unevenly distributed, bias societal worldviews.
- To analyze the impact of artifact distribution on worldview clustering and diversity.
- To emphasize the role of institutional structures in shaping technology's societal effects.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of how technological artifacts influence agent clustering based on worldviews.
- Examination of the relationship between artifact distribution, frequency, and diversity within and between worldview clusters.
- Exploration of the impact of asymmetries in worldviews embedded in artifacts.
Main Results:
- Unevenly distributed technological artifacts significantly bias societal worldviews.
- Artifacts can promote or inhibit intra- and inter-cluster diversity depending on their distribution and frequency.
- Worldview dynamics are sensitive to the distributional effects of institutional domination structures.
Conclusions:
- Technological artifacts possess a strong potential to bias societal worldviews, particularly when distribution is uneven.
- Addressing asymmetries in worldviews embedded in artifacts requires procedural interventions like participatory design.
- Participatory design can help redistribute power and mitigate negative societal impacts of technology.
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