ICT 300 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Determinism, Technological Determinism, United States Note
16 Sep 2018
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People believe that the spread of television or the internet was inevitable. Most people find the idea of a modern world without automobiles unimaginable. History provides counterexamples to apparently inevitable technologies. They rejected the new weapon and it disappeared (it did reappear in 1853) The amish do not permit any device to be used before they have carefully evaluated its potential impact on the community. Both the japanese rejection of the gun and the amish selective acceptance of modern farming equipment show that communities can make self-conscious technological choices and can resist even very powerful technologies . A society or a group that is able to act without outside interference can abolish a powerful technology (p. 18) Technological determinism is widely accepted in individualistic societies that embrace laissez-faire economics. What many people have in mind when they say that television or the internet was.
