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The idea of hegemonic technological rationality is intended to encompass what the Frankfurt School called instrumental reason and what Weber analyzed as societal rationalization as these apply to technology design as a social practice. Feenberg introduces it in terms that clearly echo the Frankfurt School's definition of modern instrumental reason:
An effective hegemony need not be imposed in a continuing struggle between self-conscious agents but one that is reproduced unreflectively by the standard beliefs and practices of the society it dominates. Tradition and religion played that role for millennia; today, forms of rationality supply the hegemonic beliefs and practices.
In modern societies being instrumentally rational is common sense and capitalist efficiency is a value that we all strive to maintain. Failure to do so is widely perceived as evidence of some kind of defect, perhaps even immorality. [...] Hegemonic technological rationality enframes the judgements made about technology about key players in the design and implementation process, making some technologies appear sensible and obvious to them while others seem inherently less interesting or likely to succeed. The people making these kinds of choices [...] operate within a horizon that is set by this hegemonic rationality; they make decisions and judgements, but always within the parameters set by this ordering of the world. When presented with alternative designs they assess them in terms of the hegemonic technological rationality as it applies to their situation. They look for efficiency and they understand this in terms of enhanced control over the production process because this is the way to reduce costs and maximize desired outputs. [...]
cited from Feenberg's 2002 book Transforming Technology
this is pretty great
link this to the fact that the technologies behind FB/Google et al have BECOME implicated in the production process because a new market was created (for data in order to sell people shit)
[...] technical reason and its imperatives are "encoded" in technological artefacts. [...] Rather than coming at a technology and trying to work out how to use it, the human subject is in a sense constituted by the object; produced as a user as an effect of its power. Using technology still involves experimenting with different moves and assessing the artefact's response to see if they are appropriate but in Foucauldian terms this is exploring the margin of manoeuvre allowed us by disciplinary power. Aligning technology with discourse in this way enables Feenberg to view the hegemonic codification of technical elements that defines capitalist ideology as a kind of contestable "truth". [...]
[...] Google is popular because it is popular and it is seen as the search tool of choice essentially because other people believe that other people see it in those terms. But this standardization of a key filter for most web users in the information age must be seen as a powerful constraint on our use of the technology. This is perhaps best understood in terms of Feenberg's notion of a technologically implemented hegemony.
I lived in a town called Altadena in California. It was north of a town called Pasadena. Altadena means "higher dena," as in Pasadena. I do not know what Pasadena means. Apparently no one does. There are many things that no one knows, which is comforting, up to a point. At the time of this writing, I do not know whether I will live much longer, and you don't know what I"m talking about. I was led to this point by a simple note, marks on an odd scrap of paper, words that could have meant nothing, that I could have allowed to mean absolutely nothing. But that's not really possible, is it?
meta-commentary on writing as a practice? i was led here [broadly speaking] by marks on an odd scrap of paper
"If I was flirting, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I didn't realize I was."
"Okay."
Her "okay" was so flat, so distant, so blaming, that it actually did make me angry, and so I said nothing else. Instead I fought the urge to say something mean under my breath,not that I could have come up with anything, and stared through the open window until I believed I was asleep.
Igor finished his coffee and nodded toward a young woman walking past.
"What?"
"Don't tell me you didn't see her."
"You know you can count on me to come visit you on every third Sunday," I said. [...]
The worst feeling in the world is knowing your child is afraid, not startled or apprehensive as when about to take a test or ride a roller coaster but paralyzed by that icy cold in the pit of her stomach, confused because she suddenly believes her parents cannot make it all okay. [...] there might have been nothing wrong at all and certainly I was afraid, but the look of fear in Sarah's eyes sent that same ice lance through my center, lodged it in my spine, and stayed there, unmelting, unmoving. My daughter was my reason for waking each day, and I wanted to kill myself for having in some fashion already resigned myself to losing some part of her. [...]
[...] The students were apparently demanding many resignations because the president and his administrator were insensitive to the needs of students of color. It sounded like my college days twenty-five years earlier, when we were asking for essentially the same things. I was sadly as apolitical then as I was at this moment. I dealt with fossils. I crawled through caves and measured the bones of birds long dead. [...]
lol
[...] Signs seasons abounded in Los Angeles and around, more subtle than the abundant death of leaves that so many seemed so in love with. The blooming of flowers and trees, the appearance of various birds. In the spring, the phainopepla appeared, the males showing off their white-patched wings. Purple finches in the fall. Santa Ana winds blowing hot through October. Rains in the winter. The sun there was bright, often too bright, somehow too close, and it was so that day, hammering on me as I drove.
[...] I had fallen in love with her. I remembered the moment it happened. Sarah was three months old, and though I was happy, however scared to be a parent, my love for my daughter until that day had felt abstract, amorphous, distant. I was wiping her sour spittle from my shirt when I looked at her rather expressionless little face and I fell. Deeply. Completely. Unforgivably. Now here I was on this arid mountain, in these woods, trailing in her wake. If a bear or lion came from the brush, I would kill it with my hands to protect her. My only job in life was to keep this little animal alive, and I could not do it. Behind her there on that path, I did not consider that I wanted to be a good father, wanted to be a loving father, only that I wanted to continue being a father.