Or Chukwuemeka Afigbo, the Nigerian man who discovered an automatic hand-soap dispenser that released soap perfectly whenever his white friend placed their hand under the machine, but refused to acknowledge his darker skin. Just ask the residents of Scunthorpe in the north of England, who were blocked from opening AOL accounts after the internet giant created a new profanity filter that objected to the name of their town. They were designed to make it easier to create complicated textiles, but in the end, the impact they had on wages, unemployment and working conditions made them arguably more tyrannical than any Victorian capitalist. Sometimes it’s an unintended consequence, like the mechanized weaving machines of the nineteenth century. Sometimes it’s deliberately and maliciously factored into their design, but at other times it’s a result of thoughtless omissions: just think of the lack of wheelchair access in some urban areas. History is littered with examples of objects and inventions with a power beyond their professed purpose. Racist bridges aren’t the only inanimate objects that have had a quiet, clandestine control over people.
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