An Interview With Andrew Feenberg

An Interview with Andew Feenberg, by Mark Zachry, illustrates Andrew Feenberg’s professional ideologies and theories. Feenberg is known for his ideologies of technology in contemporary society. He is said to focus on the ways in which technologies and society interact with and influence one another. He studied the creation of advancing technologies and redefining of current/past technologies. Much of his work is centered on human agency. His concerns with agency refer to the ability to act upon something and shape it; his main interest is the influence of users on the recreating of technology. Suggestions derive from usage by users. Feenberg seems to be fond of hackers, yet mainly because he wants to get more people involved and encourages decentralization.


Feenberg explains that technology cannot be designed without some type of agenda yet the technology should still remain open and neutral. By remaining neutral, the technology/device serves many purposes and can be used in many ways. A portion of the interview entailed structures that limited human choices as well as the consequences of such limitations. Feenberg also noticed that people tend to change information technologies into communication technologies of which they more naturally relate to. For example, the telephone was primarily invented for government, business, political, and policing means yet it mutated into a device shared by all people for social purposes. In the past, Facebook was only available to students who went to college yet outsiders hacked system which served as an eye-opener for Aaron Greenspan, Facebook founder, and his committee. Not long after, Facebook became available not only to students, but to everyone. Feenberg’s theorizations may relate to that of McLuhans in terms of technological determinism. In a nugget, his main goal is to rethink technology, invention, design, and be able to involve users. It is necessary to beware of technology being used in unintended ways and to highlight those ways.