The term ‘technological determinism’ was coined by American sociologist and economist Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929). This is a ‘reductionist’ theory, the premise of which is that the entire social and historical framework, such as cultural values, social and family structure, history, is rooted in one defining factor – technology. It is the belief that new technologies have an intrinsic, independent power to shape and transform society. Some prolific people in this field have summarized technological as: “The belief in technology as a key governing force in society…” (Merritt Roe Smith), “… the belief that social progress is driven by technological innovation, which in turn follows an “inevitable” course.” (Michael L. Smith), “The idea that technological development determines social change…” (Bruce Bimber), and “… the belief that technical forces determine social and cultural changes.” (Thomas P. Hughes) (“Technological Determinism”)
Technological determinism is one end of the spectrum whereas the other is social determinism, which says that society and its influences are the defining forces behind the innovation of technology as well as its outcomes. Two ideas at the core of most theories of technological determinism are (a) technology is developed in a fairly predictable manner, which is not affected by any sort of cultural or political stimuli and (b) once a technology has been introduced, it largely influences society to the extent that society itself champions the technology further along.
Hard determinists and soft determinists are the two schools of thoughts, the former believing that technology has a huge impact on social structure, the outcome of which can not be controlled by us. The latter school has more of a passive view of technology’s interaction and consequent impact on society, believing that we do have the power to control the ways in which technology shapes our society (“Technological Determinism”).
Raymond Williams (1921 – 1988) was a Welsh academic and a staunch critic of technological determinism. He believed that this theory ignored the powerful effects of social hierarchies, their dealings with each other and the consequences of social events. He gave the example of the development of broadcasting technology to explain how a definite social process is carried out through which decisions to convert an invention into an available technology are made. Broadcasting was developed not in isolation, but rather as a consequence of the urban changes in society, which signaled the need for such a technology (Williams, 1974).
Williams (1974) also criticized technological determinists on their point that innovation of technologies is a predetermined event. He believed that the way technologies are innovate upon and the functions they eventually end up serving are strongly influenced by decisions humans make regarding them. An example of how this happened was when radio was still being developed, an idea to make it as something similar to the telephone was proposed. However, this was shot down by the main American telephone network showing how power positions at any given time in society determine the nature of the technologies being innovated then. In the same manner, a technology might not end up becoming what it was initially intended to as it would be impacted and shaped by the social struggles of that age. Events happening in the political economy could possibly influence technology’s forms and functions, but never in an absolute manner so as to become its sole determinant.
He also disagreed with the notion that a new technology is an unavoidable fact of life. He believed this to be something marketers convinced people about solely to ensure that the new technology is easily absorbed into society and even welcomed by it.
Television was a technology which Williams paid close attention to and was highly bemused by, especially regarding the extensive advertising that had started becoming absolutely unavoidable. In his famous 1974 book, “Television – Technology and Cultural Form”, written more than 30 years ago when television was nowhere near what it is today, Williams prophesized how television could strongly influence and control society.
“Over a wide range from general television through commercial advertising to centralized information and data-processing systems, the technology that is now or is becoming available can be used to affect, to alter, and in some cases to control our whole social process.” (Williams, 1974, p. 151)
He wrote about how this one technology could lead to a number of extensions such as “inexpensive, locally based yet internationally extended television systems” which would facilitate communication and information-sharing in ways that would not have seemed possible in pre-television days. His political economist views were that these modern communication tools could lead to an “educated and participatory democracy” and effective communication in multi-tiered urban and industrial societies. However, aside from the above uses of contemporary tools of communication, Williams offered a valuable insight which might have seemed ahead of his times when the book was published in 1974. He proposed that these tools could also be used by corporate players who, under the pretense of competition and providing consumers with choice, would “further reach into our lives, at every level from news to psycho-drama, until individual and collective response to many different kinds of experience and problem became almost limited to choice between their programmed possibilities.” This was the way in which Williams believed technology to be influenced by societal forces and used by the “powers-that-be” to further their own interests. He also quoted the early history of television as an example in this regard. This was a promising technology which was exploited in significantly different ways by the different cultural and political regimes that comprised Britain, the United States and the Nazi Germany (Williams, 1974, p. 151).
He argued that people must understand new technological innovations, specifically those relating to communications, and the ways in which other technology, society, culture, law and economic conditions shape them. He believed this was necessary otherwise technological determinism as a concept was a dangerous one to believe in, politically and morally. It premised that people do not have the power to avoid the harmful aspects of new media or to derive social and moral benefits from it and he did not agree with this. His research suggested that the impact of new technology, and he stressed on innovations in media, was not revolutionary, but evolutionary. It would cause debates and discussions but would not have the sole power to transform society. It would be dealt differently by people depending on how open or resistance they were to change, whether they were new players or well-established ones. Some would publicly announce their support or lack of it, while others would reserve their opinions and operate covertly. These factors would all have a role to play in the way the technology develops and affects society and way of life (Williams, 1974).
Ithiel de Sola Pool was a pioneer in the field of social science. He believed that “technology shapes the structure of the battle but not every outcome”. He belonged to the school of thought of weak or soft technological determinism, which claimed that when technologies are developed, they enable, facilitate or create potential for opportunities which may be furthered by societies or not. In his book, Technologies of Freedom (1983), he laid the groundwork for the relationship between communication technologies and democracy. His book is still considered a very momentous work in the field of communications as it shows the relationships between emerging digital technologies with human freedom and social and political setups.
He accepted that whenever modes of communication become easily available and are decentralized, such as the case with printing presses and microcomputers, it encourages freedom. And in the opposite case, when means of communication are highly centralized and scarce, there is greater control in the centre and with fewer entities. In that age where the mainframe computer symbolized a monopoly of power, Pool proposed his vision of a media age where power would lie with each participant and a democratic culture would prevail. He believed that home computers would lead to a stronger democratic framework, as citizens and organizations would be able to spread their thoughts and ideas farther than what was earlier possible. But he did not think that this was the only outcome possible, or was inevitable.
“The characteristics of media shape what is done with them, so one might anticipate that these technologies of freedom will overwhelm all attempts to control them…” (Pool, 1983, p. 251)
He gave the example of the printing press, that while as a technology it formed the very basis of modern democracy, the responses it got ranged from one extreme to another: it resulted in censorship at times and greater freedom of the press at other times. Different situations and times will determine the outcome. At one instance, the new media welcomed the opportunity for more open debates and discussion, while at another instance, all opportunities for discourse would be strictly discouraged for fear of the barrage of criticism or another unwanted outcome. Not only this but emerging media is often treated as another variation of an existing or older technology and is hence regulated in the same way, which has a restrictive effect on the progressive capacity of the innovative technology. As a consequence, the drastic transformations that had been predicted as the technology’s impact are often subdued by the conservative curbs implemented on it.
He, along with Raymond Williams, had envisioned Television to have been developed, marketed, and regulated in a very different way from what it is now its reality of being a centralized mode of communication. They had predicted it to be similar to a two-way participation, open system, like the phone system, in which viewers are also broadcasters. Hence, technology’s power to alter society is determined to a large extent by the restrictions placed on it or freedom given to it to allow it to grow. Technology’s function and form, and consequently its impact, is influenced by the cultural and societal forces prevalent at the time of its inception, development, introduction and even later in its life cycle. Technological determinists might purport their theory of all historical and cultural phenomena being driven by technology, but the relationship is more of a mutually influential one, a complex two-way street with various forces at play.
Bibliography
- Pool, I. d S. 1983, Technologies of Freedom: On Free Speech in an Electronic Age, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
- Williams, R. 1974, Television: Technology and Cultural Form, Routledge, London.
- “Technological Determinism”, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Web.