ICT 300 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Technological Determinism
16 Sep 2018
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Nick carr worried that google was making us stupid. As he himself articulates, carr"s essay is in keeping with a long-standing tradition of technological determinism in which the technology is conceptualized as an external agent that acts upon and changes society (p. 25) The language and forms of evidence may have changed, but the concern that communication technologies make us dumber is as old as writing (p. 26) Technologies have characteristics that are transferred to those who use them. Technologies change history bt transferring their essential qualities to their users, imprinting themselves on users" individual and collective psyches. There are strong direct effects of technology when a technology is new because people do not understand it yet. Direct effects are also tied to thinking of technologies in a simplistic way: the more you use them, the more they use you, and the more you are influenced by them (p. 26) By avoiding technology, people are able to avoid technological influence.
