Daniel Chandler – Technological or Media Determinism

What are characteristics of a person a technological determinist view? How may this way of thinking be unhelpful to multimedia design practice?)


Vladimir Yevgrafovich Tatlin - Monument to the Third International - monument to technology and improvement

A person who holds a technological determinist view – that technology is the biggest cause of social change – would tend to see change as caused by technology, and not to see technology itself as being changed by society. They may embrace new technology as the way forward, as the way that society is changing and progressing. Technological determinists may not see the choice to accept technology or not, and may not see their role in shaping the way technology develops in the future. A technological determinist would therefore tend towards enthusiastic but passive acceptance of the progress of technology, or depressed rejection of the march of technology in a way that we have no power to stop or change.

A technological determinist attitude would be unhelpful to multimedia design practice because they would see new technologies as progress that needs to be embraced. Technological determinism would be unhelpful because in multimedia design practice you need to think of creative ways to use technology and imagine ways that you would like it to develop in the future, and to push the boundaries of what is possible and what you would like to be possible rather than accepting that technology is just an impersonal force acting removed from people. It would also be unhelpful to just embrace all new technology rather than exploring the rich possibilities of all technologies available to us, old and new.