Technology and Culture
A response to an excerpt from the Murphie and Potts book ‘Culture and Technology’.
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Ah, this Murphie and Potts excerpt is something I’ve read earlier this semester in another course! vogmae.dropmark.com/133224/2324267
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We looked at Technology in our Communications Histories and Technologies class earlier this semester, albeit with a lot more detail about the interaction between Culture and Technology. It was very interesting to look at some of the linguistic and ideological fallacies we take for granted in our society.
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It’s a very specific – but not necessarily concise – discussion of technology, it’s relation to culture, and vice versa.
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The ideas are great but once again I deplore the unnecessarily complex nature of the text like a lot of other academic texts. I still fail to see what justifies such confusing language. Is it a relic of an era when society had more diction, is it just meant to be exclusive so only smart people can read it?
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It does well to explore the very convoluted idea of ‘technology’, and by that I mean it explains it in a very convoluted way.
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Ironically the complexity of the discussion is reflected in the language, perhaps it was for some kind of poetic emphasis.
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What it does plainly state though is how the definition of technology changes with culture and society so it has meant very different things
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At least in a similar publication by Raymond Williams books.google.com.au/books/about/Wh… he defines Technology, Technique, and Technical Invention.
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Since Technology as a definition wavers, technical invention better isolates the tool or apparatus, and technique defines the skill applied.
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Technology, by Williams’ terms, remains a very broad definition, where he says it’s more like the knowledge behind the technique.
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This is where the definitions get a bit airy for me, and I feel like I’m getting the jist of it but not quite. This is my understanding of Williams’ definition though so feel free to correct me.
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What he gets at is that Technology is not just a TV set, or a phone, or a car, but the cultural context that it is used and perceived in.
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Leaving Technical Invention to be the physical tool itself, and Technique the use of said tool through physical or mental skill.
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This supposes that Technology does not change the world as it surfaces, but rather the way society receives and incorporates it.
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This bit gets me really excited though, the nitty gritty of the concept and how it works in real-time.
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In simpler terms, the Technical Invention of the TV did not change the world, but rather HOW we used it in society changed the world.
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Becoming aware of these kind of things really does influence how you think and operate day to day, at least it does for me. There are a lot of unelaborated ideas we subscribe to as members of society without really thinking about them.
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Consider the ‘Couch Potato’. The TV did not cause this, it is the prolonged use of the invention that created this Potato Person.
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The key word there being ‘use’. Conversely a person could watch and train with an aerobics program and become healthy. Again, HOW it is used
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This is the best example I could come up with on a whim, nevertheless I feel it demonstrates (at least on a basic level) how Technology does not necessarily dictate change in society, or individuals. The claim that it does is an idea you can see on the end of the originally linked excerpt: Technological Determinism.
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Toward the end of that Murphie and Potts reading is a great definition of culture from Brian Eno, in short ‘Culture’ is the superfluous.
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“…we have to eat, but we do not have to have ‘cuisines’, Big Macs, or Tournedoes Rossini.” He says Culture is simply the bonus stuff.
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In that case pretty much anything apart from eating, sleeping, breeding, metabolising etc. could be considered culture.
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The ideas about technology raised in that Murphie and Potts reading are simply ways of thinking more critically of our society.
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Saying that I’m not entirely sure what applications they might have, but it’s fun to understand them better!
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It certainly is more fun, and the more you think about these things the more you realise how much we get away with in our daily lives by pinning it in inanimate objects or some intangible phenomenon.
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