For Nazis, the IBM technology was a tool for their racist project. For the census, the technology for the census changed and shifted racist ideology. Is technology going to dictate us or is it going to serve us? Is there a hidden essence to technology that can be revealed, or is technology simply a tool that humans manipulate? If there is an internal essence, is it dangerous or freeing? Heidegger p. 307 "when we once open ourselves expressly to the essence of technology we find ourselves unexpectedly taken into a freeing claim." But Heidegger says we remain unfree and chained to technology (p 287).
If that's the case, then what exactly is the role of technologies in social processes? Does it determine what plays out, or is it simply a tool of pre-existing social interests? What is the synergy between racial ideologies/practices and technology? Nobles seems to think the census technology actually shaped racial thinking.
What about when capitalist interests are involved in promoting technology? Can capitalism really defend its claims to be morally neutral and colorblind, even when its products are used in such extreme ways, as by the Nazis? What about the ways capitalism is used to perpetuate a racist, but also colorblind ethos in marketing and consumerism? In this case, IBM and Watson are implicated as such during the Holocaust. Does capitalism need to take responsibility for supporting racism? How would that work?
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