Technological Determinism?

Photo: Alekso Aaltonen via Flickr
Photo: Alekso Aaltonen via Flickr

The Potts and Murphie reading from Week 8 discussed technological determinism ; the idea that technology drives social change, and therefore determines what we do and essentially, the choices we make. However, I disagree with this argument.

I believe technology is an important factor in social development. In considering more simple, ‘old fashioned’ technologies we might imagine how books and writing have allowed us to absorb knowledge, which in turn has led to the making of many opinions and decisions. But books themselves didn’t determine what we did, instead we used books – technology – to create change.

When thinking about modern-day technologies such as the Internet, the same principal can be applied. We use the Internet to do many different things, all of which contribute to social change. Importantly however, it is us who decide how we use this technology to create cultures that lead to social change. A good example of this can be read here.

The Potts and Murphie reading has raised my awareness to the dangers of thinking technology controls us, because in doing so we leave everything up to technology and ignore the important human factors that have always been present in social development and change.

Post a comment

You may use the following HTML:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>