Notes for the First Meeting
Remarks: I should have issued a warning in class: because I encourage participation, things may sometimes seem confusing, or even disorganized; however, I will always draw it back together with little remarks along the way; if you miss these in class, you should be able find them in the lecture notes. These notes are intended as an outline of the main points, rather than a careful exposition; moreover, I cannot guarantee that they will always be complete, or available immediately after class.
1. Introduction
Our civilization is deeply involved with technology, and recently, especially with information technology; therefore so are all of us. Many people want to know, Where is it all going? Newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and of course the internet, are all full of predictions, both dire and glorious. The result is enormous confusion, with thoughtfulness sacrificed for flashiness, i.e., for media market share. So better questions than "Where is it all going?" are "How do we think about all this?" and "How do we tell truth from trash?" In a way, this course is about being cynical, about questioning what you read, hear and see in the media and otherwise. It is also about learning to think for yourself.
2. Technological Determinism
The basic question addressed in this lecture was: What counts as an explanation? (for the relationship between society and technology).
Technological determinism is the theory that technology is an autonomous force that changes society. This provides explanations for many changes that can be observed in society, and it has a very simple cause/effect form.
Social determinism is the theory that society is an autonomous force that changes technology. This provides explanations for many changes that can be observed in technology, and it also has a very simple cause/effect form. It is the converse of technological determinism.
Both of these theories come in hard and soft forms, where the "soft" form only claims that this is one influence among many, and not an absolute determinant. The hard forms claim that the force is irresistible. Both of these determinisms are forms of reductionism. A reductionist theory reduces some class of phenomena to some (allegedly) simpler phenomena of another class.
The direct opposite to reductionism is holism, where a holistic theory says that some process or phenomenon cannot be broken into parts, and therefore certainly cannot be explained by reduction; the phenomenon only works as a whole. In general, this theory is probably true of very complex phenomena, but since it does not explain anything, it is not useful as a theory.
Social scientists today almost universally reject determinist and reductionist explanations of complex social phenomena, despite their appeal.
Marshall McLuhan introduced the special case of media determinism, which tries to explain various social phenomena through the nature of the media employed. His most famous quote is "The medium is the message". Claims that writing, or later on printing, changed society have been around for a long time. McLuhan extended this to newspapers, radio, and television. The media love to cover this sort of theory.