Is Technology Value Neutral?

According to the Value Neutrality Thesis, technology is morally and politically neutral, neither good nor ‎bad. A knife may be put to ‎bad use to murder an innocent person, or to good use to peel ‎an apple for a starving ‎person, but the knife itself is a mere instrument, not a ‎proper subject for moral or political evaluation. ‎While contemporary philosophers of technology widely reject the Value Neutrality Thesis, it remains unclear whether claims about values in technology are just a figure of speech, or non-trivial empirical claims with genuine factual content and real-world implications. This paper provides the missing argument. I argue that by virtue of their material properties, technological artifacts are part of the normative order, rather than external to it. I illustrate how values can be empirically identified in technology. The reason why value-talk is not trivial or metaphorical is that due to the endurance and longevity of technological artifacts, values embedded in them have long-term implications that surpass their designers and builders. I further argue that taking sides in this debate has real-world implications in the form of moral constraints on the development of ‎technology. ‎