[SOCY 284] - Midterm Exam Guide - Comprehensive Notes for the exam (32 pages long!)

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Why study technology: ubiquity, dependence, technology is important in ways involved in processes of social change, reproduction, or contestation. Important in how we connect out everyday life and societies changes: we realize that technology is more active than passive when it breaks down. Example: car breaks and you cannot get to the hospital for your job interview. What is technology: technology as a material substance (physical property): Example of a problem is facebook: technology as an artifact: Objects that have been purposefully modified, modelled, or produced by humans. Examples: weapons were created for a purpose. Misses interaction: technology as a technique: Technique = end + means to that end (heidegger) Calling it strategic + rational doesn"t work when history is examined ~ computing vs. connecting. Intent was to make the internet to be for military use, technology is more than a strategic action towards a specific goal: appropriation people alter existing technology for their, limitations: own use.