CS378, History Of Computing
Week 8, Weekly Report
Due 2004 Oct 14

Reports for History of Computing CS378
Joseph Lopez
2004 Oct 14

A Look at Emerging Technology Theory

Introduction

Vannevar Bush wrote this article at a time when war greatly influenced the advancement of technology. His paper focuses on the future of technology after WWII. In this paper I will look at how Bush uses technological determinism in order to describe the future of technology by looking at other sources which discuss emerging technologies. Technological determinism is when one assumes that technology pushes the state of the art rather than society. The National Academies describes technology determinism as:

“Technology seems to appear "out of the blue" with little if any input from its intended users. Technology has a dramatic, direct, one-way effect on our lives. In other words, technology affects society, but society does not affect technology. This idea, sometimes called technological determinism, suggests that technology follows its own course independent of human direction.”(4)

Vannevar Bush

Vannevar Bush’s article when first read seems to not be technologically deterministic. He states, “It is the physicists who have been thrown most violently off stride, who have left academic pursuits for the making of strange destructive gadgets, who have had to devise new methods for their unanticipated assignments. They have done their part on the devices that made it possible to turn back the enemy.” (1). This statement gives the impression that he has taken into consideration social construction by discussing the transition of the physicists’ jobs during times of social change such as war. However, this explanation makes the physicists seem less like people and more like robotic operators of innovation. It is this thinking that is repeated throughout Bush’s essay that makes it seem that he has not taken into consideration the social impact of emerging technologies. This is important because his essay seems to have had a large influence in the discourse of technology.

Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin is a theorist from the Frankfort School in Germany. He has written on many topics, however for the purposes of this paper the focus will be on “The work of art in the mechanical reproduction”(2). This paper looks at technology from a social constructionist point of view. It is a good example of the other extreme where one takes technology as a whimsical device to be used at society’s convenience to explain abnormal events. For example, Benjamin states, “Instead of draining rivers, society directs a human stream into a bed of trenches; instead of dropping seeds from airplanes, it drops incendiary bombs over cities; and through has warfare the aura is abolished in a new way.” (2) This type of writing offers poetic insight into technological determinism by showing how technology has advanced the way we kill, but not the way we find peace.

Raymond Williams

Raymond Williams is a technology theorist from Great Britain. His attitude towards technology is very like that of Bush. In his book “Television: Technology and Cultural Form” Williams discusses technology’s ability to change the way society operates and integrates. When discussing television he has this to say about its invention: “We have seen that the complex process of its invention had a specific military, administrative and commercial intentions, and each of these interacted with what were, for real if limited periods and in real if limited ways, scientific intentions. At the sate of transition from invention to technology, the process of its development came to be dominated by commercial intentions, though still with some real political and military interests.” (3) This statement is very much in tune with Bush in that it offers technology as the main stay for human progression, that through technology man will evolve.

Conclusion

Having briefly discussed three different pieces predicting the future of technology, it is evident that Bush’s view of technology resonates quiet a bit with technological determinists rather then social constructivists. In a social constructivist view, Bush’s writings and many other technological determinists have directly affected computing by creating a false sense of how technology has progressed and driven our society to be what it is today. From a technological determinist view, Bush has thoroughly reinforced that technology has changed society and that great computing innovations will continue to bring new ways for the human race to evolve.

Notes

1. Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think," Atlantic Monthly 176, no. 1 (1945 Jul), 101-108. Also available online at http://www.w3.org/History/1945/vbush/ (World Wide Web Consortium, accessed 2004 Oct 4).

2. Benjamin, W. (1969). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In Illuminations, New York: Schoken Books.

3. Williams, R. (1975). Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken Books.

4. “National Academy of Engineering” National Academies. http://www.nae.edu/nae/techlithome.nsf/weblinks/KGRG-55ZQYK?OpenDocument (National Academies Accessed 2004 Oct 20)