Technological Determinism

Determinism

Determinism stands opposed to several other possible doctrines. The first is that of free will. Even if we put aside the deeper philosophical issues at stake, social scientists must assess the extent to which social changes can be said to be determined by anything but human will in individual or aggregated form. Second, determinism stands opposed to the idea that social structures and technologies coevolve in unpredictable, emergent patterns. Finally, in a more postmodern vein, some argue that determinism bears the burden of convincing skeptics of the very possibility of objective knowledge of causal structures.

Determinism comes in “harder” and “softer” variants. In debates over TD, this distinction characterizes views of both technology's effects and its causes. In its assessments of technology's effects, soft TD argues that technology is one important force among others, while hard TD argues that technology is the main or the only significant driver; anti-TD views assert that technology is “neutral” and that its effects are mainly or entirely a function of social context. As concerns technology's causes, one form of soft TD allows that social factors may shape technology even though, once shaped, technology's effects are (weakly or strongly) determinate; hard TD argues that social influences have little effect on the nature of technology; anti-TD views highlight the social forces that shape the design and development of technology.

Technology

Different determinisms highlight different drivers: Alongside technology, other social scientists have highlighted economics, culture, geography, biology, and language. TD and the resulting debates focus on technology as tools and equipment. By extension, previously processed raw materials should also be included. More rigorously, technology is the knowledge that is embodied in these artifacts. Arguably, we should also include the knowledge that is required to use such artifacts and, by extension, include also the principles of productive organization. Conventionally, workers' skills—the complement to equipment in the Marxist concept of forces of production—are excluded from this family.

Some technologies are intrinsically less “flexible” than others and thus might be expected to have more determinate effects: Large, complex, hardwired systems can be contrasted on this dimension with more decentralized, flexible, malleable, computer-based technologies. For some scholars, such interpretive flexibility renders the whole TD enterprise suspect. On the other hand, “information society” TD theorists argue that computer-based information technologies have deep effects precisely because of their malleability.

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