Technological Determinism
In the last week class meeting, we had a very vibrant and interesting conversation regarding technological determinism which is the theory contending that a society’s technology determines the development of its social structure and cultural value. As technological determinism is inherently debatable, I was not surprised to see our classmates holding various viewpoints about it. While further learning on this topic, I came across this ETEC540: Text, Technologies – Community Weblog, which is the collaborative blog of students in the University of British Columbia’s Masters of Educational Technology. The topics discussed in this blog is quite relevant to our conversation in our class, so I think it would be helpful to share it here.
On this blog, I have found the Hard vs. Soft Determinism post very interesting as in such a short piece of writing, we can acquire a pretty comprehensive overview of the topic together with tenets from multiple influential authors in the field. I think before getting into further discussion, it is worth reflecting on two poles of determinism spectrum defined by Daniel Chandler (1995). While “strong (or hard) determinism” assumes that “a particular communication technology is either a sufficient condition (sole cause) determining social organization and development, or at least a necessary condition (requiring additional preconditions)”, “weak (or soft) determinism” defines “presence of a particular technology is an enabling or facilitating factor” (Chandler, 1995). In response to hard and soft determinism, there are two groups of scholars who are in favor of one or the other and the third group, to which a majority of our class seems to belong, who as Chandler described “are unclear (perhaps sometimes deliberately) about whether their stance is that of hard or soft technological determinism.”
It does not matter where we are on the spectrum, we all agreed to some certain extents that the interaction between us or our society and the technology that we have created are undoubtedly a two-way road. Over the course of our history, we have been continuously creating and improving technology to serve us a more comfortable and convenient life. The technology in turn has been gradually shaped our individual beliefs and the entire society’s value system. In our group discussion, as social media has been dramatically growing its ubiquity and become integral part of our daily life, it was not coincidental that all of us picked Facebook to exemplify our points of the impact of technology on us and our society.
We are all aware of the way technology has changed how we communicate in particular and how we socialize in general. Nowadays, there are more and more people prefer texting or calling to meeting in person. Even worse, when we meet up with friends, we still cannot take our eyes off the phone and keep engaging with our virtual world rather converse and interact with people in front of us. It is undeniable that social media encourages us to travel more to explore the world around us, immerse ourselves in different cultures, and widen our perspective. However, it is not uncommon that many of us travel for the sake of “check in” on our social media only. While we are busy with updating our status or uploading photos, we miss many valuable opportunities to learn more about the place where we travel to as well as its culture and people.
Along our discussion, Caroline, one of our teammates raised a very good question that really made us think. Is it necessary to use social media? We all know that there are many essential technologies that we cannot live without, but it is not the case of social media. Humans would still survive and live a normal life without social media, so why we are so insisted on (and sometimes addicted to) social media. Personally, I think we, as humans, always have a desire to connect with other people, in other words, to be a part of the community where we belong to. Furthermore, we also want to care for and to be cared by other people in our community. These are basic human needs that people are motivated to achieve as Maslow described in his Hierarchy of Needs. In case you have not heard about this model before, here is a brief explanation.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory in psychology comprising a five tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid. Maslow stated that people are motivated to achieve certain needs and that some needs take precedence over others. Our most basic need is for physical survival, and this will be the first thing that motivates our behavior. Once that level is fulfilled the next level up is what motivates us, and so on. Read more...
