Technological Determinism Termed coined by ThorsteinVeblen in 1920s Belief that technology is the agent of social change Technology moulds

society and changes our behaviours and interactions ThorsteinVeblen (1857 1929)

The technological determinist view is a technology-led theory 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 sole or prime antecedent causes of changes in society, and technology is seen as the fundamental condition underlying the pattern of social organization.

Technological Determinism states that media technology shapes how we as individuals in a society think, feel, act, and how a society operates as we move from one technological age to another (Tribal- Literate- PrintElectronic).

Most interpretations of technological determinism share two general ideas: the development of technology itself follows a predictable, traceable path largely beyond cultural or political influence technology in turn has "effects" on societies that are inherent, rather than socially conditioned or produced because that society organizes itself to support and further develop a technology once it has been introduced.

Technological determinists interpret technology in general and communications technologies in particular as the basis of society in the past, present and even the future. They say that technologies such as writing or print or television or the computer 'changed society'. In its most extreme form, the entire form of society is seen as being determined by technology: new technologies transform society at every level, including institutions, social interaction and individuals. At the least a wide range of social and cultural phenomena are seen as shaped by technology. 'Human factors' and social arrangements are seen as secondary.

The model of medium theory, proposing that the most significant cultural and social effects of media derive from the intrinsic properties of the media themselves, has historically been viewed with suspicion within studies of media and technology, especially on the critical Left. An extensive literature drawing on political economy and critical sociology has denounced the technological determinism inherent in medium theory, advancing instead a social shaping of technology thesis.

Around 370 BC, Plato warned in the Phaedrus that writing was the debasement of memory, the degradation of thought. In 1882, Nietszche wrote of the typewriter: Our writing instruments contribute to our thoughts (Kittler 1990: 195). These two giants of Western philosophy, at variance in many other ways, and separated by two millennia, pointed directly to the structuring effect on consciousness of media technology; yet this perspective has retained a minority status in philosophy and critical thought.

Ong maintains that: More than any other single invention, writing has transformed human consciousness . (Ong 1982: 78). Goody, who developed the notion of intellectual technologies , asserts that writing creates a different cognitive potentiality for human beings than communication by word of mouth (1977: 128, cited Tofts and McKeich 1997: 46).

For Ong, writing is a secondary modelling system (8); it is dependent on the prior primary system, spoken language, yet it fundamentally transforms the potential of language. The written word becomes the bearer of information, acquired by the visual sense. The shifts in consciousness made possible by this invention include the development of analytical, rational thought, the cultivation of artificial memory, of precision, linearity, abstraction.

ORALITY

LITERACY

Additive Agreggative Redundant or copious Conservationalist or traditionalist Empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced Homoestatic

subordinate Analytical Possibility for editing

McLuhan s articulation of the model is at once the most succinct and the most bold of all its exponents; he is also (like Baudrillard after him) deliberately provocative in his statements. For McLuhan, all media, including print, invest our lives with artificial perception and arbitrary values; the message of any medium is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs (1974: 16).

Each new medium of communication alters the patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance (1974: 27). Each medium alters the sense ratios of perception; this relates to both the act of individuals engagement with the medium, and the hierarchy within the human sensorium in different historical epochs.

This hierarchy of the senses is shaped by the dominant media forms of the time, such as print or electronic mass media. Thus the primacy of sound in oral cultures gives way to the primacy of vision under literacy. Corresponding to this shift, the means of attaining information is also altered. The collective audience of listeners in oral societies becomes an agglomeration of individuals in literate societies: atomised readers.

Cool Media A cool medium,whether the spoken word or the manuscript or TV, leaves much more for the listener or user to do than a hot medium

Hot Media

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 Lewis Mumfordargued that equating technology with tools and machines is itself reductionist

McLuhan denounces this position because for him the most important point is the way technologies structure us other theorists contend that new media alters the communicative relationship allowing for a diversity of relationships or that a new technology creates a precondition for cultural change

Baudrillard for instance argues that contemporary culture is increasingly determined by an array of technologically produced simulacra which has come to hijack reality itself McLuhan however was optimistic while Baudrillard is pessimistic (TV is the pornography of everyday life beamed back at us)

Rather than accepting television s advent and the shaping of societies in its image the TV age Williams is concerned with the social needs which were met by the development of radio and TV. Specifically, there was a primary need to connect the domestic space of family homes to large-scale urban communities. As well, Williams analyses the complex of Government policy-making and corporate economic interest which controlled broadcasting, in varying alignments, around the world.

Horkheimer Adorno Distrust of Mass Media Passive receptacles Discrimination of taste

The Second Media Age Old Broadcast Model New Media Interactive Two way Multiple Producers

The Frankfurt School developed an influential critique of mass culture as an industrialised apparatus all part of a heavily administered social system Many critics (Marcuse, Adorno, Ellul, Mumford) argued against technology as neutral - rather that technology had become a powerful regulating system in itself

Langdon Winner asked if in fact certain technologies are inherently political Do some technologies demand political and cultural responses in themselves? Do technologies have ideology built into them?