Encyclopedia of New Media

Technological Determinism

Until the mid-1980s, technological determinism was the most popular and influential theory of the relationship between technology and society. Technological determinism views the development and diffusion of technology as developing independently of society, but producing societal effects. Scholars have since criticized this assumption, and a new, more nuanced theory of technology in society has been articulated, often referred to as the social shaping, or social constructivist, approach to technology.

Historically, the dominant approaches toward technology tended to focus on the ideology of technological determinism, where technology is perceived to be an autonomous, self-determining, and omniscient process. Such determinism treats technology as both panacea and scapegoat and, for instance, can detract from questions regarding power and political prestige. Many of these dominant discourses about technology (for example, popular media treatments) treat technology as something inevitable. This uncritical perspective is apolitical and often ahistorical; technological change is seen as something somehow divorced from societal concerns, ...

—Leslie Regan Shade