Technological Determinism

Well, what do you know?  

I always thought of Thorstein Veblen as a giant due to "Theory of the Leisure Class".  And, I always was enamored by him because of his quirks:

"...he gave all his students the same grade, regardless of their work, but when one student needed a higher mark to qualify for a scholarship, Veblen gladly changed a C to an A"

"...he once told a girl who inquired what his initials T.B. stood for that they meant Teddy Bear; she called him that but no one else dared"

"He wrote of philanthropy and called it "essays in pragmatic romance"; of religion and characterized it as "the fabrication of vendible imponderables in the nth dimension.  He wrote of the main ecclesiastical organizations as 'chain stores' and of the individual church as the 'retail outlet'- cruel but telling phrases"

"The Worldly Philosophers" by Robert L. Heilbroner

Didn't think I would come across his name in my MOOC class "e-learning and Digital Cultures" (thanks, Coursera!).

Anyway, my two "take-aways" from week 1's readings on technological determinism:

technological determinism: "presumes that a society's technology drives the development of its social structure and cultural values" wiki

1. technology is not neutral

- "the absolutely erroneous assumption that technologies are "neutral", benign instruments that may be used well or badly depending upon who controls them... Many technologies determine their own use, their own effects, and even the kind of people who control them. We have not yet learned to think of technology as having ideology built into its very form" (quoting Chandler quote Mander)

2. technology doesn't drive itself

-"technology does not, indeed cannot, determine itself"... "the medium in itself cannot give rise to social consequences, it must be used" (quoting Chandler quote Finnegan)

At the core of these two is still the human touch.  And with that, I end this first entry with the quasi-philosophical Daft Punk.