Today’s excellent (and final) media lectorial focused on the idea of “Media Materialism”. One aspect that particularly interested me was a debate between social constructivism and social determinism, two conflicting ideas which attempt to explain the past, present and future of both technology and humanity.
Is humanity in charge of its own future? This is the question that stands at the forefront of social constructivism, a theory that suggests technology is not sentient, it is something which is created and progressed by the actions and decisions of humanity, and thus humanity is in charge of its own fate.
Social constructivism suggests that humanities history of innovation and invention is murky and unpredictable. A history of trials, tribulations and mistakes occupy just as much time as the successes and progressions do.
Theories which contrast this often fall under the argument of social determinism, which would instead suggest that technology is a naturally progressing, sentient force which cannot be controlled by humanity.
If you’ve ever been to a cinema, or sat down to play through a video game, you’d be aware that this is an idea that content-makers obsess them selves over.
The Last of Us, a masterpiece game set in an post-apocalyptic earth, is a good example of the argument that humanity determines its own future, however bleak that future may be.
It could be argued that it began with Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein. Where Victor Frankenstein creates a conscious being out of recycled human parts, and it progresses to turn against its master. Often people will cite Frankenstein as a form of evidence to support the theory of social determinism. Yet it, in my opinion, omits the crucial point that Victor was the one who created the monster in the first place. It could even further be argued that the monsters somewhat misanthropic attitudes are not a natural progression, but are developed as a reaction to the negative reception and judgment he receives from the world around him.
Following Frankenstein, this obsession with the future of technology has been closely inspected throughout film history. Even just recently, George Millers arguable 2015 masterpiece, Mad Max: Fury Road, deals with a world that has been created by humanities mistakes.
Whilst exposition is often deliberately omitted in all the Mad Max films, it is made clear the apocalyptic setting is caused by humanities own actions. Whilst social determinism would argue that this wasteland and death of humanity is a natural progression, the theory of social constructivism would contrastingly argue that each and every aspect of the world, including even the weather patterns, is due to the mistakes of the society before its time. Something else I found fascinating in Fury Road is Miller’s presentation of a humanity obsessed with recourses. Whilst films like P.T. Anderson’s There Will be Blood would argue recourses control humanity, Miller instead presents a character titled “Immortan Joe”, who cultivates the recourses and presents himself successfully as a God-like figure to the post-apocalyptic society around him.
The theory of social constructivism is clearly represented in both Fury Road and the original Frankenstein. Humanity in these novels is not determined by technology, and technology does not determine itself. Instead, humanity makes it’s own mistakes, and possesses the abilty to damn itself out of it’s own existence.