Does technology drive history?

According to Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian scholar who envisioned the creation a “global village” -the Internet and the World Wide Web, the new electronic media has the capacity to radically change how the people, think, feel and act which basically is The Theory of Technological Determinism. In simpler terms it is when the modes of communication shape how human interact and exist not only in the physical world but also to the cyber world. McLuhan believed that there are channels of communication that are the major cause of the cultural changes. As he stated, Media decisively shapes how individuals think, feel and act and how societies organize themselves and operate. He asserted that the dominant forms of media at any given time in society shape and determine the dominant human senses and the basis of social organization and collective life.
From McLuhan’s point of view, the phonetic alphabet, the printing press and the telegraph are the pivotal inventions that altered human life on this planet. He interpreted the sweep of human history from a media perspective. Before, there was the Tribal Age, where there are no specific form of communication just an oral culture based on the ear. The early people then entered the Age of Literacy when the phonetic alphabet propelled the humans to become literate. Literacy emphasized a systematic line of connected linear logic. The rapid developments of the twentieth-century was stimulated by Gutenberg’s press. The printing press made the phonetic alphabet wide spread. It started the mass production of identical products specifically, technology. Then McLuhan focused on the rapid change in the five centuries since the development of the printing press and movable type where the fourth age comes which is the Print Age. He considered it to be the prelude of the Industrial Revolution. McLuhan died in 1980 and was beginning to see the first fruits of the electronic age – the television generations as well as the fulfillment of some of his predictions. The rise of the global village wherein everyone is simultaneously in touch everywhere, all the time, instantaneously.  Electronic media has begun to retribalize the human race which leads to the extinction of closed human systems. McLuhan was greatly alarmed and disturbed about man’s willful blindness to the downside of technology, yet he was not an irrational alarmist.

 

Technology has been the biggest determinant in the cultural and social changes that have been witnessed over the years. Electricity sparked a new era, wherein humanity stopped imitating without and began replicating that which is within— the central nervous system (how things can be empowered through engines and electric currents). One great example of this is the computer (as they resemble to human brains) take basic inputs and, in parallel structuring, create complex patterns of understanding and interaction. The radio discovered by James Maxwell and Guglielmo Marconi and invented by Alexander Graham Bell, once an ornate piece of furniture that brought people together and introduced the concept of broadcast into the home for the first time, is now a ubiquitous accessory for almost every electronic device with speakers. It evolved from being a telegraph and telephone to mobile phone and tablets. Additionally, many radio stations are not even “broadcast” in the traditional sense—satellite and internet radio are popular and prevalent nowadays. Another example is the television or T.V., though it still pervade our daily lives, fared little better. Most television shows can be viewed online one example of which is the NetFlix, and many news stories have additional content that is exclusively for the internet. Speaking of which, according to Andrew Feenberg (2000), “The real revolution occurred when the Internet became a medium for personal communication.” Since the invention of the internet, printing press evolved to a more widespread of information. With various social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and the like, people now can connect endlessly. Snapchat, Reddit, Instagram, tumblr, these are few example of the sites where people can share their stories, not just sharing information but also inspiring others and bulding a more connected society.
People now live in a digital age, where broadcast television, radios, newspapers, almost all printed medium is dead, books are downloaded as electronic files, and the human voice is reduced to ones and zeroes. In conclusion, technological determinism is an extreme theory which offers students and educators to further discuss the needs of a media, message and technology to answer the needs of the society.

 

References:

1. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1994)
2. Kappelman, T. Marshall McLuhan: “The Medium is the Message” (Probe Ministries International, 2001) Retrieved from http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/mcluhan.html
3. Wood, Julia. (1997) Communication Theories in Action: An Introduction Wadsworth Publishing Company.
4. McClish, Glen. (1997). Instructor’s Manual to Accompany EM Griffin’s A First Look at Communication Theory McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.
5. Griffin, EM. (1997) A First Look at Communication Theory. McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.
6. Mass Communication Theory: Technoligcal Determinism Retrieved from: https://masscommtheory.com/theory-overviews/technological-determinism/
7.  Harrison, N. Technological Determinism: A Critique Based On Several Readings in Adult Education (2011) Retrieved from https://sites.psu.edu/natalieharp/writings/technological-determinism-a-critique-based-on-several-readings-in-adult-education/