Once again the readings from this week have intersected with the musings of one of our fellow subjects; Communications Histories and Technologies. I have moments when reading Networked Media materials that I seriously think this is Histories & Tech. I mean, they aren’t overly different, at least not in there focuses.
Technological determinism is something I’m familiar with through this other subject, since we had an entire week about it earlier in the semester. I was happy to to come across cultural materialism, the counterpoint theory that I had not yet encountered.
It’s kinda simple: technological determinism believes that technology evolves outside of social influence, only then emerge and be the principal causal agent in social and cultural change. Cultural materialism, on the other hand, focuses on contextualised changes in culture and society that occur for reasons outside of but also including technology, which is in turn affected by the needs and priorities of the world at the time. I’m definitely a cultural materialist: the idea that technology is destined to evolve and cause specific changes is… kinda stupid, to me, anyway.
Technology is invented because of what society needs and wants, and also what other technologies have proven successful or have failed. The prevalence of mobile phones and computers has necessitated the evolution of wired connections to Wifi, which in turn has led to the implementation of wireless connections to create cordless speakers and lights and power switches that can be controlled over an invisible network. We wanted this, and we expected it to arise. The internet has shaped the way that current society works and what our technological priorities are, but it was an older society that dictated how the internet would be shaped.
Another thing covered in the reading this week was that technology is – or isn’t – ‘neutral’. I mean, what the frig? Technology doesn’t make decisions. A gun might increase the risk of death but it doesn’t decide to shoot someone in the face. An atomic bomb doesn’t get up and walk to a city then explode all over the place. Some bastard has to drop the fucking thing. Don’t blame the damned bomb. It doesn’t care what you think because it’s an INANIMATE OBJECT. My god. Are you people stupid? Disease vaccines aren’t invented that immediately cure all disease, nice volunteers and doctors have to administer them. INANIMATE.
INANIMATE.
THEY DON’T CARE.