techno-race and technological determinism
On a principal level I seriously dislike the pace of the technological development of everything digital. There's no way you can buy a new computer, digital camera, cell-phone, mp3-player and plasma-TV every second year just because new means bigger, faster, better, and to a lower price. Even if you had the money. The production process is far too heavy. I don't want to be an uncritical consumer, even if, say, I donated my old stash to somebody else.
So, I just read an article by Paul E. Ceruzzi: Moore's Law and Technological Determinism published in Technology and Culture. I believe he has a point, arguing that technology does have a determining power (which doesn't mean that he's oblivious to the importance of social appropriation of technologies): "Computing power must increase because it can". Question is: how do I handle it.
3 Comments:
I'm not so sure about determining power of technology. I don't belive it's really possible to speak about technological determinism without underestimate social use and social appropriation of technologies. Otherwise how could you explain a lot of technological flops we saw during the years. In fact I belive that to write an history of technology we should write an history of aborted technologies.
yes, yes, yes, I'm totally with you. I love discussions about technological and social development and the interrelationships between technology and society. I realised that this post could make me look like a technological determinist. In all my previous writings about technological development I have always tried to emphasise the significance of both technical elements and technology (the social implementation and appropriation of technology). Like Andrew Feenberg's revised constructivist approach to understanding technological development. Still, I enjoyed Ceruzzi's emphasis on the seemingly endlessly progressing development of computer technology (esp. memory chips).
But seriously, are there any pure technological determinists left in the world at all?
I doubt it! ;-) In a moment of abscenmindedness, I just wrote something in my own phd outline which was dreadfully technologically deterministic and made myself jump. delete delete delete! ;-) off to read the article now..
btw - i liked what you said about Janteloven and left a reply to you some days ago.
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