It is Innis and especially Marshall who gave credence to the concept of technological determinism.
THE BASIS
McLuhan divided human history into four periods:
- a tribal age
- a literate age
- a print age
- an electronic age
- The Tribal Age
The tribal village was an acoustic place where the sense of hearing, touch, taste and smell were developed far beyond the ability to visualize. McLuhan claims that the people of this time led fuller lives because unlike the eye, the ear is unable to select the stimuli it takes in. Also, because the spoken word which they relied upon, is more emotionally laden than the written word, people acted with more passion and spontaneity.
- The Age of Literacy
Once people learned how to read, the eye became the dominant sense. Writing made it possible for people to leave the tribe without being cut off from the flow of information. When oppressed people learned to read, they became independent thinkers. Literacy moved people from collective tribal involvement to private detachment. Literacy encouraged logical, linear thinking, and fostered mathematics, science, and philosophy.
- The Print Age
The invention of the Gutenberg printing press made reading and writing widespread. In other words, it made visual dependence widespread. McLuhan states that this invention sparked the industrial revolution. He states that the printed book glorifies individualism. The development of fixed national languages produced nationalism. McLuhan regarded the fragmentation of society as the most significant outcome of print.
- The Electronic Age
The age of print was over with the invention of the telegraph. The electronic media that has been invented and will be invented in the future, is retribalizing the human race. Instant communication has made touch and sound more important than sight. We are all members of a global village. Closed human systems no longer exist. In an electronic age, privacy is a luxury or a curse of the past. Linear logic is useless in the electronic society; we focus on what we feel.
McLuhan states that the progression from one age to another was neither gradual nor evolutionary. Each age was brought on by a technological advancement. According to McLuhan, the crucial inventions that changed life on this planet were the phonetic alphabet, the printing press, and the telegraph.
McLuhan claimed that changes in modes of communication are the primary cause of cultural change. Family life, the workplace, schools, health care, friendship, religious worship, recreation, politics, nothing remains untouched by communication technology. He states that every new form of media is an extension of the human body. The book is an extension of the eye. The wheel is an extension of the foot. Clothing is an extension of the skin.
It is perhaps the evolution of technology after the invention of the telegraph which is especially fitting to the argument of technological determinism. The 20th century had impacts on the societal structure with every new technological advancement that took place. The inventions of the telephone, followed by the radio, then the television, have made uncountable changes in the ways society interact. The rate at which technology evolved in the last century had far exceeded that of any century before it, and just as accordingly, the rate at which the society had changed in the last century was unprecedented.
(Crowley & Heyer, 1995) Messages were distributed farther, faster, and with less effort. News was packaged differently, and had a new emphasis, as did popular entertainment. These developments were paralled and influenced by a century-long transition to a predominantly industrial economy, with its accompanying urbanization. One result was the emergence of “mass society”. This same period also saw the bicycle, automobile, and airplane emerge as significant modes of transportation. The sense of space they fostered, coupled with the increased speed of railway and steamship travel, led to World Standard Time via the creation of time zones, further shifting cultural identification away from the immediate and local.
McLuhan saw electronic media as a return to collective ways of perceiving the world. His "global village" theory posited the ability of electronic media to unify and retribalize the human race. What McLuhan did not live to see, but perhaps foresaw, was the merging of text and electronic mass media in this new media called the Internet.
The above is the basis for the technological determinism argument. Its basis is in the belief that technology is at the root of our social change. When technology advances, society follows in its shadow.
DIFFERENT VIEWS
Technological determinism is a controversial concept. There are those who agree with it, and those who strongly oppose it as well. Even amongst those who agree with it, their views on the concept vary greatly.
Agree
(Chandler, 1995) Some fanciful evolutionary determinists project future technologies which develop to an evolutionary level (involving machine consciousness) which is held to be superior to that of humankind. Such writers often note our increasing dependence on mechanical devices and machine-like features of current human behaviour as evidence of an increasing symbiosis of human beings and machines. These predictions are quite common amongst optimistic writers with a faith in rationalism.
Enthusiasm for technological progress typically involves technological determinism.
However, technological determinists are not always enthusiastic and optimistic: Jacques Ellul is the best example of one who is strongly pessimistic.
(McLaughlin, 2001) Ellul sees technology as a system with no regulation. We create new technologies to repair problems in the old ones and the system itself determines who makes decisions and who must act. One of the problems that an unregulated system presents is that it is impossible to predict the future patterns of growth or outcomes. Technological growth in other words represents the growth of chaos. Technology is symbolic of a cancer which as it grows increases the fundamental danger to its host, in this case society. Technology in and of itself is ambivalent and rational, in sharp contrast to the irrationality of humanity. Ellul decrees that we are faced with a fundamental and serious issue. Politics cannot be the answer because it is synonymous of the old system; we must in essence face this reality as a challenge to be overcome as was the case with nature and society.
We may not agree totally with Ellul’s extreme pessimistic stance but many of us would at least agree that technical solutions tend to introduce new problems.
Disagree
Some critics argue against technological determinism on the grounds that technology is 'neutral' or 'value-free' (neither good or bad in itself), and that what counts is not the technology but the way in which we choose to use it. (Aibar, 1996) According to the neutrality thesis, technology is essentially independent of any social factors. These social factors (including political or ethical values) can only play a certain role in the use of ready-made technology once it gets to the diffusion stage. In other words: any particular technology can be used for good or bad purposes.
(Aibar, 1996) Social constructivism defends a different point of view that runs counter to the neutrality thesis. First of all, technology is embedded in society from its very first stages of development and not only in the diffusion stage. Secondly, and as a consequence, values and other social constraints do play an important role in the shaping of technology as well as the use of new artifacts, and the course of events in controversial technology issues can also influence values in significant ways. Finally and most importantly, as opposed to technological determinism, the relation between values and technology must not be seen in terms of necessary links but as constructed and contingent associations that can change as a product, for instance, of the involvement of other social or technical actors.
MODES OF DETERMINISM
(Chandler, 1995) The association of different media with particular cognitive consequences by McLuhan and others can be seen as related to linguistic as well as technological determinism. And it is this variety of determinism which is sometimes referred to as media determinism. McLuhan equated communications media and technologies with language, and just as Benjamin Lee Whorf (who supports linguistic determinism) argued that language shapes our perception and thinking, McLuhan argued that all media do this. A moderate version of media determinism is that our use of particular media may have subtle influences on us, but that it is the social context of use which is crucial.
Some writers argue that particular developments in communication technology were essential preconditions for the development of modern industrial societies. Causal theories vary in the degree of determinism they reflect, although this is seldom made explicit by those expounding them. Critics have sometimes made a distinction between 'hard' and 'soft' technological determinism, the latter allowing somewhat more scope for human control and cultural variation.
Hard technological determinism
Hard (or strong) technological determinism is the extreme stance 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). Either way, certain consequences are seen as inevitable or at least highly probable. This is an exciting theory, but social scientists have to consider the evidence for theories. If the strong case is to hold, there should be no exceptions, or anyway none that cannot be explained away and it is not difficult to find exceptions to the strong case using other forms of determinism.
Soft technological determinism
Soft (or weak) technological determinism, more widely accepted by scholars, claims that the presence of a particular communication technology is an enabling or facilitating factor leading to potential opportunities which may or may not be taken up in particular societies or periods (or that its absence is a constraint). Other 'mediating factors' are also involved, and techno-economic determinism is sometimes associated with this stance. The 'weak case' more in accordance with the available evidence, and is more commonly accepted by social scientists.
CONCLUSION
It is true that technological determinism is a dominant force that shapes and changes society. It can either be seen as a threat to our own free will, or it can be seen as a guiding tool that leads us to more effective ways of communicating. It is a force that cannot be overlooked. Nevertheless, it is impossible to justify the insistence that technology or media is the fundamental factor which propels society. But it must be admitted that the evolvement of technology has widespread consequences which cannot be denied. Any technological change which is large enough is likely to produce some social change.
Technology is just one of the many mediating factors in human behaviour and social change. In the face of the evidence which can be drawn from the past century, I am compelled to believe in the theory of technological determinism. But as mentioned, there are different modes of determinism for this theory, and it is the “Soft technological determinism” which makes the most sense to me. It is less extreme and allows the possibilities of other factors to determine the trend of the future. It is my belief that after technology has permeated every section of our society, other factors will play a much bigger role than technology in the influence of our society.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Aibar, E (1996). The Evaluative Relevance Of Social Studies Of Technology. Retrieved May 17, 2003, from Journal of the Society for Philosophy and Technology.
Web site:
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Chandler, D. (1995) Technological or Media Determinism. Retrieved May 17, 2003. Web site:
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Crowley, D & Heyer, P (1995). Communication in History. New York: Longman
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Goguen, J (2001). CSE 275: Social Aspects of Technology and Science. Retrieved May 18, 2003, from University of California, San Diego, Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Web site:
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Hugill, P. J. (1999). Global Communications since 1844. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.
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McLaughlin, G (2001). Jacque Ellul: The Present and the Future. Retrieved May 18, 2003, from University of Missouri - St. Louis, Department of Sociology. Web site:
