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Session 4

Session 4. Technological determinism(s) and alternatives to, More on the history of the telephone in America . Technological Determinism.

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Session 4

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  1. Session 4 Technological determinism(s) and alternatives to, More on the history of the telephone in America

  2. Technological Determinism • (HARD) technological determinism: science develops according to aninternaland purely rational process and technology is the application of science. Technological inventions enter into society, are taken up according to an economic rationality and consequently produce a social impact. R&D Science Tech Society

  3. Technological Determinism(s) • ‘Billiard-ball’ model (Ogburn 1950s) • Comparing national trajectories – material items have consequences, but are also socially conditioned -- i.e. different trajectories for the trolley in different countries • ‘Impact—imprint’ model – an essence or style to technology, technology transfers its qualities to users

  4. Alternatives to Tech Determinism • Symptomatic approaches – tech as expression of culture, Geist – spirit of the age (rationalization in the industrial age) • Social Constructivism – struggle, negotiation over development and invention (see Bjiker bicycle next week) • Fischer’s “User Heuristic” – emphasizing user agency in realizing the unfolding consequences of technology

  5. Book Outline America Calling • Introduction • Chapter 2 – The Telephone in America • Chapter 3 – Educating the Public • Chapter 4 – The Telephone Spreads: National Patterns • Chapter 5 – The Telephone Spreads: Local Patterns • Chapter 6 – Becoming Commonplace • Chapter 7 – Local Attachment, 1890-1940 • Chapter 8 – Personal Calls, Personal Meanings • Conclusion • Appendices • Notes • Bibliography

  6. What questions for further investigation can you extract from this graph?How does it support or call into question a technologically determinist view of technology?

  7. Becoming Commonplace From luxury to ‘necessity’: • Disappearance of the infrastructure • a humiliation (social status issues), exclusion from shared experiences

  8. Recurrent Themes With Each Tech Cycle • That technologies of distant connection destroy locality (chap. 7) • The fear that mediated communication is inauthentic (chap. 8) • Threat to morality or safety (especially of youth) • Moral panics: (sexting, bullying, online predators) Is Facebook making us lonely?

  9. Which Tech Generates Moral Panic? Those that: • Change our relationship to time • Change our relationship to space And • Change our relationship to each other Is Facebook making us lonely?

  10. Personal Calls, Personal Meanings Sources: • Oral histories • ‘Eavesdropping research’ in 1909 (on party lines, categorizing calls)

  11. Gender Differences in Use • Women, up to the date of publication of America Calling were more frequent phone users • Married women’s duties as social manager • Women’s role in the home and isolation • Generally more sociable

  12. “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.”– Western Union, internal memo, 1876 Inevitability, Uncertainty

  13. Promise and Threat

  14. Promise and Threat On the telegraph and its use after the assassination of President James Garfield: “It was the touch of the telegraph key…that welded human sympathy and made possible its manifestation in a common, universal, simultaneous heart throb…the nations stand in sympathetic mourning: a spectacle unequalled in history…indicative of a day when science shall have so blended, interwoven, and unified human thoughts and interests that the feeling of universal kinship shall be…constant and controlling.” - 1881, Scientific American

  15. Guess the Technology "Children in the public schools will be taught practically everything by X. Certainly they will never be obliged to read history again.”

  16. Guess the Technology "Children in the public schools will be taught practically everything by moving pictures. Certainly they will never be obliged to read history again.” - D.W. Griffith

  17. Guess the Technology "Those who acquire X will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on Xto bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of on their own internal resources.”

  18. Guess the Technology "Those who acquire writing will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writingto bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of on their own internal resources.” - Plato, Phaedrus, c. 370 bc

  19. Administrative • For Tuesday: The chapter on the history of the invention of the bicycle (Bijker) is long, not necessary to know every single early variant of the bicycle, but do be prepared to explain these concepts: • Relevant Social Groups • Interpretive Flexibility • Closure

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