I have experienced almost identical examples of this buffering function of intermediaries in the education environment, when dealing with municipal and provincial administrators, and while working in the construction industry trying to get money from banks. The intermediary acts as a buffer. A rthur Kroker, the Canadian media theorist who is now talking about the exploitation of digital flesh in his recent book Data Trash , has also written about the centrality of communications technologies to the Canadian sense of national identity. From the fur trade to the transcontinental railway to the Distant Early Warning line, our sense of ourselves is often implicated in our debates over communications technologies. We are our communications technologies.
Technology is the instrument of our governance.
Technology as Enhancement T here are many who would argue, however, that technology is neutral. There's some justification to this argument, since it is obvious that technology has been created by human beings, often with the best of intentions, and that tools are things to be used well or badly. This equation acknowledges the interdependency of tools and humans. Technology promises not only to enhance the human condition, it is in turn enhanced by human consciousness and responsibility. Franklin suggests that we ask the following questions of any new technology.