Which came first: technological or social change?

Posted on | January 2, 2011 | 1 Comment

A side project I’ve been working on lately has challenged me to do some thinking on how us humans construct our lives and especially the social side of it. While you could take an unlimited numer of starting points for this, one of the most interesting debate is the technological determinism versus social determinism – a true chicken and egg type of question.

Do advancements in technology shape the way our social structure and relationships are formed on the web or is it the changes in people’s behavior online that drive the change in technology?

Technological determinism is a reductionist theory that presumes that a society’s technology drives the development of its social structure and cultural values. Social determinism is the hypothesis that social interactions and constructs alone to determine individual behavior as opposed to technological advancements for example. Marshall McLuhan argues that the new electronic media is changing the way people think, act, and feel. McLuhan believes that the inventions in technology invariably cause cultural change. McLuhan’s famous saying “The medium is the message”, implies that the communication channels we use are the primary cause of cultural change.

Social determinism, which is often referred to as the counterpart of technological determinism, perceives technology as a result of the society in which it is developed. A number of contemporary media theorists have provided quite persuasive accounts of social determinism, including Lelia Green.

This is especially interesting if you think of the ways the market forces work. To build a technology product you need finance. The finance can really only come from previously implemented ideas that have become popular  i.e. the community has accepted them. Something that is not well-designed, properly built or do not fit the needs of the target audience, will not fly. With this thought in mind you could conclude that technology can’t be autonomous.

I am, if you did not guess yet, more in favor of the latter point of view, but obviously the question is not that black and white. Rather than focusing on this, maybe a more interesting point would be to examine people’s social constructs though social network analysis. Social network analysis, or rather theory as it’s become a paradigm of it’s own, does not assume that groups are the building blocks of society. The approach is open to studying less-bounded social systems, from communities to links on the web.

Rather than treating individuals or organizations as discrete units of analysis, it focuses on how the structure of ties affects individuals and their relationships. Social network theory does not suggest that social norms determines behavior – it focuses on the importance of relationships between people or organizations rather than the attributes of the individual actors implies that the social structure and composition have an effect on the individuals’ relationships.

Technology is not “just technology”- in isolation of the context. It is a combination of what is possible in a time and what is desirable in a certain socio-historic context.

Comments