Media Tech
What is 'technological determinism'? Does it help or hinder our understanding of contemporary mass media?A theme that appears over and over in discussions about technology is whether or not technology is the cause of major social, cultural, political, and economic changes in modern society. Of course, we can find many, many examples of technologies associated with enormous social changes. The automobile, for example, is often spoke of as "causing" a whole array of social changes, from the creation of suburbia, to the development of the fast food industry, to the paving of farm land, to the imported oil vulnerabilities of the 1970s. The popular media is filled with similar examples of new technologies that are going to change everything, from computers to new technologies to new medical devices. And we are often told that we must find ways to accommodate ourselves to these new devices and to the changes they will cause, that we must strive to ride the wave of social flux produced by emerging technologies, or face the dire prospect of being "left behind."In this essay I will define the meaning of technological determinism. In doing so I will also assess whether this view helps us to understand contemporary mass media or does i
Being critical of technological determinism is not to discount the importance of the fact that the technical features of different communication technologies facilitate different kinds of use, though the potential applications of technologies are not necessarily realized. Technologies do no doubt, as Richard Sclove puts it, 'constitute part of a society's core political infrastructure' (Brook J, 1995) just as do laws regulating behaviour and taxation, but I think it's worth making the point that they are not likely to be any more predictable in their effects than those. According to technological determinists, particular technical developments, communications technologies or media, or, most broadly, technology in general are the sole or prime antecedent causes of changes in society, and technology is seen as the fundamental condition underlying the pattern of social organization. In a reductio ad absurdum, Marshall McLuhan interprets Lynn White's book, Medieval Technology and Social Change as suggesting, in McLuhan's words, that 'such inventions as the horse collar quickly led to the development of the modern world' (McLuhan & Watson 1970: 121). For example, letter writing seems sometimes almost to have died out. If we choose to use technologies such as literacy or computers for repressive rather than liberatory purposes we have only ourselves to blame. McLuhan has been criticised for technological determinism, and for neglecting the analysis of how technology is developed and used in particular social orders. Similarly, I tend now to ring my parents rather than send them letters. McLuhan argued that media also had an effect on the understanding of time and space.
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Acceptance Essays
