CS213 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Technological Determinism, Cultural Determinism, Determinism
Review Questions:
Should not frame technology in terms of progress - tech viewed as independent, measures tech
as progress, can compare between countries, we need to get away from idea that progress is
natural, progress is not linear evolutionary model
Our conception of convenience ensures dissatisfaction and inconvenience - always finding
another limit
Overview:
● Technological culture not technology/culture
● Technology is not reducible to things
● Technologies are always already embedded in networks of connections
○ Assumption as to where new technological device will be used, must be able to
function in these conditions, eg refrigerator needs clean electricity, place to put it,
connects to car to get items to put in fridge, food system tied to it
Received View:
● Technology as progress (wrong!)
○ Imagines linear, self-generating, rational ‘evolution’
○ Privileges those on the path to technological salvation
● Convenience (not really convenient!)
○ Shift from appropriate to overcoming limits
○ From meeting the demands of the body to overcoming the limits of the body -
from ‘fact’ to ‘problem’
○ Mini-sublimes
NEW
● “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”
● What does this presume about guns? → that they are neutral
● About people? → humans are rational and use tools (human decision on how to use
tools)
● Why has this NRA slogan been so effective?
● What reality does it obscure? → that technology is an object detached from social
relations, says gun is neutral object
1. Determinism
● Causality
○ Something causes (or determines) the action of something else
○ The attribution of causal power is what permits the distribution of blame or praise
● Newton’s Third Law of Motion
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