This book provides an account of community through the lens of the politics of technology. That is, how do the artifacts, infrastructures, sociotechnical systems and techniques that constitute everyday life influence the answer to “who gets what community, when and how?” This book responds with a conceptualization of community as a multidimensional phenomenon, which aids in the illustration of how different techniques, artifacts, organizational technologies and infrastructures encourage or constrain the enactment of the various dimensions of communality. Later chapters build upon this analysis ... More

This book provides an account of community through the lens of the politics of technology. That is, how do the artifacts, infrastructures, sociotechnical systems and techniques that constitute everyday life influence the answer to “who gets what community, when and how?” This book responds with a conceptualization of community as a multidimensional phenomenon, which aids in the illustration of how different techniques, artifacts, organizational technologies and infrastructures encourage or constrain the enactment of the various dimensions of communality. Later chapters build upon this analysis, asking “How might everyday technologies better support a thicker practice of community life?” In order to describe how more community-supportive technological societies might be possible, the various social barriers to thick communitarian technologies are explored. In other words, what policies, subsidies, institutional arrangements and patterns of thought would need to change in order to enable more citizens to strive toward thicker local communities? The book ends with a proposal for an “intelligent trial-and-error” approach to governing innovation so that any risks posed to thick community are reduced. Intelligent trial-and-error, however, is not merely a means for ensuring that technical innovations are properly assessed prior to adoption according to their effects on community life but also constitutes a set of strategies that can help assure the success of communitarian technologies. This book, as a result, contributes to the “reconstructivist” school of science and technology studies and extends the political philosophy of technology toward the good of community.