art of communication i7.02

8/3/2019 Art of Communication I7.02

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Technological Determinism

Termed coined by ThorsteinVeblen in 1920s

Belief that technology is the agent of socialchange

Technology moulds society and changes our

behaviours and interactionsThorsteinVeblen (1857 1929)


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The technological determinist view is atechnology-ledtheory of social change:technology is seen as 'the prime mover' in

history. According to technological determinists,

particular technical developments,communications technologies or media, or,

most broadly, technology in general are the soleor prime antecedent causes of changes insociety, and technology is seen as thefundamental condition underlying the pattern ofsocial organization.


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Technological Determinism states that media

technology shapes how we as individuals in asociety think, feel, act, and how a society

operates as we move from one technological

age to another (Tribal- Literate- Print-Electronic).


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Most interpretations of technologicaldeterminism share two general ideas:

the development of technology itself follows apredictable, traceable path largely beyondcultural or political influence

technology in turn has "effects" on societies thatare inherent, rather than socially conditioned orproduced because that society organizes itself tosupport and further develop a technology once ithas been introduced.


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Technological determinists interpret technology ingeneral and communications technologies inparticular as the basis of society in the past, present

and even the future. They say that technologies suchas writing or print or television or the computer'changed society'. In its most extreme form, the entireform of society is seen as being determined bytechnology: new technologies transform society at

every level, including institutions, social interactionand individuals.At the least a wide range of social andcultural phenomena are seen as shaped bytechnology. 'Human factors' and social arrangementsare seen as secondary.


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The model of medium theory, proposing thatthe most significant cultural and social effects ofmedia derive from the intrinsic properties of the

media themselves, has historically been viewedwith suspicion within studies of media andtechnology, especially on the critical Left.

An extensive literature drawing on political

economy and critical sociology has denouncedthe technological determinism inherent inmedium theory, advancing instead a socialshaping of technology thesis.


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Around 370 BC, Plato warned in the Phaedrusthat writing was the debasement of memory,the degradation of thought.

In 1882, Nietszche wrote of the typewriter: Ourwriting instruments contribute to our thoughts(Kittler 1990: 195).

These two giants of Western philosophy, at

variance in many other ways, and separated bytwo millennia, pointed directly to the structuringeffect on consciousness of media technology;yet this perspective has retained a minoritystatus in philosophy and critical thought.


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Ong maintains that: More than any othersingle invention, writing has transformed

human consciousness. (Ong 1982: 78).

Goody, who developed the notion ofintellectual technologies, asserts that

writing creates a different cognitivepotentiality for human beings thancommunication by word of mouth(1977: 128,cited Tofts andMcKeich 1997: 46).


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For Ong, writing is a secondary modellingsystem (8); it is dependent on the prior primary

system, spoken language, yet it fundamentallytransforms the potential of language. Thewritten word becomes the bearer ofinformation, acquired by the visual sense. The

shifts in consciousness made possible by thisinvention include the development of analytical,rational thought, the cultivation of artificialmemory, of precision, linearity, abstraction.


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ORALITY

Additive

Agreggative Redundant or copious

Conservationalist ortraditionalist

Empathetic andparticipatory rather thanobjectively distanced

Homoestatic

LITERACY

subordinate

Analytical Possibility for editing


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McLuhans articulation of the model is atonce the most succinct and the most bold of

all its exponents; he is also (like Baudrillardafter him) deliberately provocative in hisstatements. ForMcLuhan, all media,including print, invest our lives with artificial

perception and arbitrary values; the messageof any medium is the change of scale or paceor pattern that it introduces into humanaffairs (1974: 16).


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Each new medium of communication alters

the patterns of perception steadily and

without any resistance (1974: 27). Eachmedium alters the sense ratios of perception;

this relates to both the act of individualsengagement with the medium, and the

hierarchy within the human sensorium indifferent historical epochs.


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This hierarchy of the senses is shaped by thedominant media forms of the time, such as printor electronic mass media. Thus the primacy ofsound in oral cultures gives way to the primacyof vision under literacy. Corresponding to thisshift, the means of attaining information is alsoaltered. The collective audience of listeners inoral societies becomes an agglomeration ofindividuals in literate societies: atomisedreaders.


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CoolMedia

A cool medium,whetherthe spoken word or themanuscript or TV, leavesmuch more for the listener

or user to do than a hotmedium

HotMedia


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Technological determinism as an explanation is

monistic or mono-causal.

Reduces the arguments to cause and effect

It is however very suggestive and very appealing

LewisMumfordargued that equating technology

with tools and machines is itself reductionist


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McLuhan denounces this position because for

him the most important point is the way

technologies structure usother theorists contend that new media

alters the communicative relationshipallowing for a diversity of relationships

or that a new technology creates aprecondition for cultural change


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Baudrillard for instance argues that

contemporary culture is increasingly

determined by an array of technologicallyproduced simulacra which has come to hi-

jack reality itself

McLuhan however was optimistic while

Baudrillard is pessimistic (TV is thepornography of everyday life beamed back

at us)


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Rather than accepting televisions advent andthe shaping of societies in its image the TVage Williams is concerned with the social

needs which were met by the development ofradio and TV. Specifically, there was a primaryneed to connect the domestic space of familyhomes to large-scale urban communities.Aswell, Williams analyses the complex ofGovernment policy-making and corporateeconomic interest which controlledbroadcasting, in varying alignments, around theworld.


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Horkheimer

Adorno

Distrust ofMassMedia Passive receptacles

Discrimination of taste


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The SecondMediaAge

Old BroadcastModel

NewMedia Interactive

Two way

Multiple Producers


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The Frankfurt School developed an influential

critique of mass culture as an industrialised

apparatus all part of a heavily administeredsocial system

Many critics (Marcuse,Adorno, Ellul,

Mumford) argued against technology as

neutral - rather that technology had becomea powerful regulating system in itself


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Langdon Winner asked if in fact certain

technologies are inherently political

Do some technologies demand political andcultural responses in themselves?

Do technologies have ideology built intothem?

art of communication i7.02

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