This article discusses the opposing views of technological determinism and social constructionism on the relationship between technology and society, and argues why technological determinism prevails in the modern world.
Humans are often referred to as social animals. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine human life without technology. As such, technology and society are central to human life. Since technology and society are so closely related, it’s only natural that people have been interested in the relationship between the two. This interest has led to the development and discourse of the relationship between technology and society as a discipline. The fact that the discussion of the relationship between technology and society has been able to persist is because many people agree that these two elements are on an equal footing. However, there is also a point where people’s opinions diverge. This is the question of which came first: technology or society? The question of whether society was able to develop because of technology, or whether technology was able to develop because of society, has been at the center of a constant debate that has created two opposing camps.
There are two discourses that have developed. One is technological determinism, which states that technology causes social change. The other is social constructionism, which argues that society causes technological change. But the reason these two opposing discourses have been able to coexist for so long is that, paradoxically, the relationship between technology and society is a two-way street. Neither technological determinism nor social constructionism is dominant, but the center of gravity shifts back and forth between technology and society. Therefore, it is not appropriate to claim that only one discourse is applicable at a particular time. However, the center of gravity in our time seems to be tilted in favor of technology. We’ll demonstrate this in a few steps.
Before we get into the discussion, let’s clarify what we mean by technological determinism. It is difficult to define technological determinism precisely, but for the purposes of this article, we will divide it into two parts: the determinism of technology on technology and the determinism of technology on society. This is because the impact of technology on society will affect both technology and society, so the discussion is not complete if we exclude either the impact of technology on technology or the impact of technology on society. As mentioned earlier, if technological determinism is currently dominant, it is necessary to demonstrate the validity of both ‘technology’s determinism of technology’ and ‘technology’s determinism of society’ in order to prove it. In this section, we will first discuss the technological determinism of technology and then the social determinism of technology.
The determinism of technology to society implies that society cannot be the cause of technological change. To demonstrate this, let’s look at four cases that arise in the presence or absence of a preliminary technology and in the presence or absence of social demand. In each case, by considering whether the technology can evolve, we can identify the direct causes of technological progress. On the other hand, technological change is a causal event, so we should not make the mistake of thinking along the time axis. Therefore, in setting up the four cases, we chose the words “preliminary technology” and “social demand” to refer to the causes of technological change, and “resultant technology” to refer to the outcome of the change.
The first case is when the ‘enabling technology’ for the ‘resulting technology’ exists, but there is no ‘social need’. In this case, the emergence of the resulting technology is possible even if society does not accept the resulting technology and it disappears into history. The second case is when a preliminary technology exists and a social need exists. In this case, the resulting technology will come to the forefront of history with the full support of society. Third, there is no ‘preliminary technology’ for the ‘resultant technology’ but there is a ‘social need’. In this case, the resulting technology cannot emerge despite the existence of a social need because the preliminary technology does not exist. An example of this is the lack of a readily available cure for Ebola, a disease that has recently become a problem. Finally, there is no ‘preliminary technology’ and no ‘social need’. If we compare this case to the first one, the lack of a preliminary technology makes it impossible for the resulting technology to even emerge by chance.
In all four cases, it is the existence of the ‘preliminary technology’ that enables the emergence of the ‘resultant technology’ and not the ‘social need’. Therefore, it is the technology that can cause the technology, and society cannot cause the technology. Instead, society accepts, values, and directs technology. Sometimes society is seen as the cause of technological change because a technology that is highly valued by society receives more support and is able to move forward quickly. On the other hand, in contrast to the gradual emergence of technologies discussed earlier, new technologies can suddenly appear at the forefront of history. In this case, society may appear to be the cause of the technology, as the ‘enabling technology’ is not explicitly visible. However, even if the “enabling technology” cannot directly cause the “resulting technology”, the sum of the “enabling technologies” can cause the “resulting technology”. This is what makes new technologies appear non-causal, because people can’t see all of the “precursor technologies”.
As we have seen, in the case of incremental technological advancement, it is the technology that can be the cause, and in the case of leapfrog advancement, it is still the technology that is the cause, because it is not a single technology that is the cause, but the ecosystem of technologies that is the cause. Therefore, we can conclude that the ‘determinism of technology on technology’ is valid.
The determinism of technology on society needs to be more carefully described. Because the relationship between technology and society is bidirectional, technological determinism and social constructionism are dialectical, not dominant. In the past, humanity has experienced periods of social constructionist dominance and periods of technological determinism. To prove this claim, we need to look at the understanding of technological determinism in each of these periods and compare it to the current one. In doing so, we can also see how the objections to technological determinism that have existed in the past can be addressed in the present.
People have been interested in the relationship between technology and society since ‘history of technology’ began to be established as a discipline. However, the early history of technology was motivated by the need to provide a discourse that would allow society to respond to the emergence of technologies that threatened the survival of humanity as a whole, such as the emergence of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Therefore, early historians of technology focused on perfecting a discourse that placed technology under the power of society. This is one reason why technological determinism was challenged by social constructionism. According to technological determinism, technologies that could threaten society could also come to the forefront of history, and proponents of social constructionism were wary of this.
But technological historians are the ones who study technological history because they have an above-average favorable view of technology, so it was natural for a discourse to emerge that favored technology over society. Technological determinists argued for the primacy of technology over society with effective examples such as the invention of the stirrup, which led to the rise of the knightly class through the development of horsemanship, the invention of the printing press, which led to the Renaissance, and the invention of the steam engine, which led to the Industrial Revolution.
In the process, however, technological determinism has given way to social constructionism for two reasons. The first is that, when subjected to rigorous social scientific scrutiny, the causal links in Soghi’s examples were not as clear as he claimed: in the case of stirrups, the emergence of the knightly class was already underway independently of stirrups, and in the case of printing, the Renaissance was already socially ready to happen. Second, as technology evolved, some theories of technological determinism began to be politicized: making a technology appear to determine society has the effect of making it irresistible. A good modern example of technological determinism is Moore’s Law. Since the electronic memory industry followed Moore’s Law and influenced society, Moore’s Law has been considered a good example of technological determinism. However, there was a lot of work done behind the scenes to make Moore’s Law a law. Samsung Electronics claimed the “Huang’s Law,” which shortens the time period from Moore’s Law to one year, and even demonstrated it for a period of time. This artificial technology determinism has actually strengthened the argument that society determines technology.
To sum up, we can say that the dominance of social constructionism over technological determinism was based on the ‘wariness of threatening technologies’, the ‘incompleteness of technological determinism’, and the ’emergence of artificial technological determinism’. However, as we have argued, technological determinism is once again becoming dominant. The three reasons why technological determinism was overwhelmed by social constructionism in the past are now working in the opposite direction, as social constructionism is overwhelmed by technological determinism. I will conclude my argument that we are passing through a period of technological determinism’s dominance by restating these three reasons.
First, the weaknesses of technological determinism that have been present in the history of technology since the beginning of time, namely that it is no longer as effective as it once was at keeping technologies that might threaten society under the influence of society. Of course, there are still technologies that can threaten society. Nuclear and biological weapons can threaten humanity at any time, and the high-profile U.S. government surveillance scandal of 2013 suggests that we could be under surveillance at any time. Nevertheless, it’s only because we’ve become so dependent on technology in our lives that attempts to subjugate technology to the power of society are no longer as vigorous. Technology permeates every aspect of human life. The development of electricity, the development of communication, the development of medicine, the development of mechanical engineering, and so on have already enriched human life, and it is impossible to reject technology. It is no longer possible to place society above technology, and society is directly affected by technology.
Next, technology is compensating for the incompleteness of technological determinism. In the past, the incompleteness of technological determinism was problematic because it was based on examples from a time when technological determinism appeared to be dominant, but technically the influence of technology and society was mixed. However, given the bidirectionality of technology and society, any example is bound to contain incompleteness, and such examples can always be debated. However, the impact of technology on society is now greater than it was in the days of the stirrup, printing, and the steam engine, and the imperfections of technological determinism are becoming less and less pronounced. In other words, the imperfections of technological determinism are an inevitable but diminishing factor in the relationship between technology and society.
Finally, the political discourse that the previous technological determinism showed, which did not originate from the properties of technology, still remains, but it has reached a point where technology can develop its own discourse. Technology is gradually developing its own logic. This means that it is becoming increasingly difficult to artificially create technological determinism. The failure of once-dominant companies like Motorola to maintain their influence and lose out to smartphones shows that even politically entrenched organizations cannot create technological determinism. While there is less and less room for society to intervene in technology, technology is reaching a point where it can influence society and set standards for society. The 2014 Hong Kong pro-democracy movement sparked by social media is a good example.
So far, we have discussed the meaning of technological determinism in two parts, and why we are living in a time when technological determinism prevails over social constructionism. In “Determinism of Technology on Technology,” we showed that technology causes technology. In “The Determinism of Technology on Society,” we showed that technology is overcoming the “wariness of threatening technologies,” the “incompleteness of technological determinism,” and the “emergence of artificial technological determinism,” which were the basis for the argument that social constructionism is superior to technological determinism. Taken together, these findings suggest that we are entering a period in human history where technological determinism is once again dominant.
However, it is important to note that the problems and weaknesses of technological determinism from the perspective of social constructionism have not yet been resolved. Current technological determinism has a way of masking its problems and weaknesses with its strengths. Now that society has come to be judged by the standards provided by technology, it has become very difficult to keep technology under the influence of society. While it’s fair to say that the times we live in are shaped by the discourse of technological determinism, we need to be wary of absolutizing that discourse and allowing its problems or weaknesses to affect society.
