Techno-determinism. 2.1

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.