I recommend the paper: Do Artifacts Have Politics. You can find it for free online if you search the title. It’s a classic HCI paper. Even if you disagree with

I recommend the paper: Do Artifacts Have Politics. You can find it for free online if you search the title. It’s a classic HCI paper. Even if you disagree with everything I write, it’s worth reading. The paper asks the question (that you asserted). Essentially: divorced from creator or user intent, can an artifact (or technology) influence how it is used (its politics)? They make very compelling arguments that, yes, the mere existence of a technology (regardless of how people chose to use it) shapes and influences us. So while you might be technically correct, that it’s up to the individual: the larger system (and by extension the technology) does in fact influence us. It’s like the saying that the law applies equally because it prohibits both paupers and princes from stealing bread. It’s technically true, but it (intentionally, to prove a point) misses the point: that the system is set up so no prince would need to steal bread. In Code 2.0 (Laurence Lessig, creator of the Creative Commons) makes a point to say that a variety of things influence our behavior: markets, norms, laws, and architecture. New technology falls under “architecture” in this categorization. Technology will exert itself on your behavior and give you new choices, but those choices cannot be divorced from the other legs: laws, norms, and markets.