Whilst I would agree that the force of technology is outside of the control of society, I would argue that it isn’t quite on the same level as a ‘force of nature’ in that the force of nature is uninvited; we did not expect hurricane Katrina or the tsunami on Boxing Day in south-east Asia and I don’t think they can be compared to the effects of technology. Conversely, technology and its growth is something which we encourage and is assumed to be helping our lives, evidenced by the prevalence of technology in our day to day lives nowadays and the amount of money invested into developing new technologies. Whilst the individual may be powerless to resist the effects of these technologies, society itself shapes how they manifest themselves and how they are used. For example, the way in which technologies come to replace one another, with CDs replacing cassettes, mp3s replacing CDs and so on.
Socio-determinism seems the logical argument to me as the different technologies which replace one another are determined not by a whim or by chance, but by other social forces such as profit margins, distribution and marketing. For example, to go back to the music format example, mp3s were a more practical way to listen to music in that they weren’t physical in the same way that CDs and cassettes were, you can’t hold them or “give” one to someone as such. Therefore distribution was easier; it could come straight to you on your computer through ITunes, meaning that profit margins could potentially be higher (ignoring illegal file sharing) therefore the popularity of this format came about through social forces, as argued by socio-determinism.
Hi Kayley,
ReplyDeleteI think you've got the basics of techno vs socio determinism right. "Force of nature" does tend to make it something which can't be argued with doesn't it?
The example of Mp3 is interesting, because the technical demands of storage at the time 'pushed' people into looking for ways to make small digital files -Jpeg visual files come from the same source (the 'p' stands for 'picture' in both!). There are several competing versions but Mp3 was an 'Open Standard' -whereas Sony's ATRAC system (arguably technically better) wasn't and they tried to profit from the licensing of their technology.
Mp3 is a poorer quality than the previous digital system as used in CDs and digital tape systems (and audio/video editing systems). But its free use and resultant plethora of cheap players etc. made it take off. Originally it was an obscure technical aspect of the digitisation of the movie industry. (The 'M' in Mp3 stands for 'movie' not music as many people think.) I reckon there's an interesting dissertation in the socal phenomenon that is Mp3.