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What is Technological Determinism? Here’s a Bite-sized Explanation
“Technological determinism” essentially suggests that the process of technological development structures and impacts our sociocultural constructs and values. Numerous theorists have contemplated the nature of the relationship between technology and society, both spatially and temporally, i.e., in terms of geographic spread and relevance in specific time periods. Their interpretations often oscillate between perceiving technology as causational or as correlational in determining societal structures and behavior.
According to the renowned media theorist Marshall McLuhan, television “has transformed the world into an interconnected tribe (called) a “global village”” and that the “future villager, who feels especially at home with our new gadgets — the telephone, the television — will bring our tribe even closer together”. However, McLuhan also demonstrated the microscopic influence technology can cast over a specific geographic community in an interview archived in the Marshall McLuhan Speaks Special Collection. In an excerpt from “The Future of Man in the Electric Age”, he recounts a personal anecdote on his observation of the emergence and proud display of regional dialects in England over a period of 20 years, describing it as “a normal feature of electronic forms because of this circuitry that involves us deeper and deeper in ourselves.” Additionally, McLuhan displayed varied perspectives in his work on this subject, especially by diversifying his study from an examination of contemporary times to also a consideration for bygone eras. For instance, in a piece titled “The Later Innis” which was published in Queen’s Quarterly, McLuhan comments on political economy professor Howard Innis’ notions that technology “had solved the problem of production of commodities and had already turned to the packaging of information”. McLuhan believed in the potential of technology to act collectively as a global phenomenon, a bridge between cultures and as the determinant itself of economic and industrial change.
However, various other beliefs either coincided with or contradicted those of McLuhan. Particularly, in the introductory chapter of Empire and Communications, Innis cites John Stuart Mill to state that it is an “almost irresistible tendency of the human mind to become the slave of its own…
