"Invisible technologies"...because their role in reducing the types and quantity of information admitted to a system often goes unnoticed, and therefore their role in defining traditional concepts also goes unnoticed. There is, for example, no test that can measure a person's intelligence. Intelligence is a general term used to denote one's capacity to solve real life problems in a variety of novel contexts. It is acknowledged by everyone except experts that each person varies greatly in such capacities from consistently effective to consistently ineffective, depending on the kids of problem requiring solution. If, however, we are made to believe that a test can reveal precisely the quantity of intelligence a person has, then, for all institutional purposes, a score on a test becomes his or her intelligence. The test transforms an abstract and multi-faceted meaning into a technical and exact term that leaves out everything of importance. One might even say that an intelligence test is a tale told by an expert, signifying nothing. Nonetheless the expert relies on our believing in the reality of technical machinery, which means we will reify the answers generated by the machinery. We come to believe that our score is our intelligence, or our capacity for creativity or love or pain. We come to believe that the results of opinion polls are what people believe, as if our beliefs can be encapsulated in such sentences as "I approve" and "I disapprove".
Technopoly, p89
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