Technological Determinism

Technological determinism is a negative response to the question of whether or not technology is designable according to societal expectations and values. It regards the development of technology, at large, as being ruled by systemic self-dynamics rather than by political or societal influence. Thus, technological determinism claims that technology development is out of the range of political and democratic control. Social sciences' research on technology, however, proved naive technological determinism to be false and motivated, fueled by the social constructivist theory, and approaches of social shaping of technology. The latter is dominant in most activities in the field of nanotechnology and society, while technological determinism is still in place, mainly among many engineers and natural scientists.

Scientific progress and technological advance have been the most powerful driving forces of and in society for decades. It is plausible to raise the questions of whether the dynamics of science and technology results out of purely internal roots and origins, whether or not this dynamic could be influenced from an external perspective, for example, by politics, and in which way society should act according to the answers determined by these two questions.

Technological determinism assumes a strong inherent dynamics of science and technology in place and gives a negative answer to the question of whether technology is designable and controllable by society. The course of development of technology is regarded as a result of those internal and inherent dynamics. Society and policy makers should, therefore, not aim at steering technology because this may not prove successful. They can only prepare themselves for the new technologies coming and try to deal with their impacts and consequences in the most socially compatible way. Technology itself is, in this perspective, not a subject for societal and political influence at all—only the way society deals with the impacts of technology would be subject to political measures.

Understanding of the relationship between technology and society was prevalent in the 1970s and in the early 1980s. It had a decisive impact on the early concepts of technology assessment (TA). If, according to technological determinism, technology could not be influenced by society and had to prepare itself for coming technologies and their impacts (positive aspects as well as risks), TA was mainly seen as a means of forecasting and predicting the impacts and consequences of technology, in order to enhance the opportunities of early societal action and adaptation. The idea of the “early warning” function of TA has been coined against this background.