Neutral Technologies

I just read Rachel’s recap of the lecture- very informative so props to you Rach!

The idea of Neutral Technologies got me thinking and I ended up with a headache, maybe it’s due to a lack of water but I’m pretty sure it’s the result of some in-depth thinking about technologies that until this course, my brain has never delve into.

Rachel wrote that when we apply our understand of “neutral” to the term “neutral technologies” we conclude that :

Technology does not relate nor provide any cause and effect with anything else in this world.

Now, this just doesn’t sit right.

Stating this idea in such away allows it to become techno- deterministic. Technology didn’t grow legs and a brain and start persuading people to rise against or stay neutral eating Swiss chocolate in the Alps.

By driving technological devices with advertising and the consumers’ needs it becomes powerful.

Take Instagram-

This was just an app developed to respond to a niche in the market that hadn’t been filled. Standing alone the app is neutral because it is just a bunch of code and graphics. When it is used, the technology is influenced by the users, by their needs and desires of the app. They tell their friends, who tell their friends about the great new app and through word of mouth it is given power.

Perhaps then those who don’t have the app become a majority – if so does the app take a societal stance and become active in cause and effect? Nope. Because these humanistic qualities are just injected into the technology by the users who take a deterministic stance about Instagram.

As long as a technology is in use- it will never simply be neutral.