Welcome to this new blog, which is starting out as a collective project of U of Toronto's ANT442 class, a.k.a. Anthropology and New Technologies.
To get started I thought I would draw your attention to one of the more interesting stories I've read recently about new technologies. It takes place in a rather unexpected domain, but one which is dear to my heart: traffic engineering. The story is of a maverick traffic engineer by the name of Hans Monderman. Monderman lives in the Netherlands, where he has worked as a traffic engineer for many years. How can a traffic engineer be a maverick technologist? Learn about it here and here.
What does it mean when governments start eliminating signage and 'downloading' traffic responsibilities on to citizens? Are we ready to fend for ourselves? Is this another example of neoliberal governance or is it an example of enlightened approaches to the balance between human responsibility and delegation to non-human actors (cf. Latour)? (Image from the NY Times)
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