Ryan Rayer- Technological Determinism, Social Constructivism, and Obsolete Technology

Ryan Rayer
CAS 283 Blog 1
9/12/14

                During the past two weeks of class, we have gone over many concepts that I have connected with. Specifically, I have connected with the technological determinism theory of technology, and our discussion on obsolete technology.

                The discussion in class about technological determinism vs. social constructivism was one of the most thought provoking lectures thus far. Technological determinism was introduced first, and as we were discussing it, I believed it was the theory that describes how I feel about technology. This was my train of thought until the topic of social constructivism was introduced. Technological determinism is the belief that technology is changing society/changes society. Social constructivism is the idea that technology is always subordinate to use and context, and the application of technology brings about social change. Growing up, I have always believed that technology was changing society. I will use the iPhone as an example. The iPhone was revolutionary for many reasons. As an 8^th grader, it wasn’t about the technology or what the iPhone could do that my Lg Voyager couldn’t, it was about getting the newest, best phone available. When I purchased my Lg Voyager, it was one of the best phones available; it had a full touch screen and a full keyboard. People were envious of my phone when I first got it. All of a sudden, my phone was obsolete compared to the new iPhone. Due to those sequence of events, I wanted to get rid of my perfectly good phone and get the iPhone. Due to that new technology, societies view on what was new and cool changed, and so did mine. Due to that experience and others similar to it, I wouldn’t have thought any differently than the fact that technology changes society. In class, when the topic of social constructivism was brought up, I was given new perspective on what could really be going on. Before, I was blind to the fact that technology is made by humans. It doesn’t come out of thin air, we make it for what we want it to be. We wanted something better, so we made something better. Technology only changes society in the ways we want society to be changed. Technological determinism and social constructivism are not opposing viewpoints, but theories that work together to explain why we do what we do with technology.

                The other topic that got to me the most was our discussion on obsolete technology. Before our lab, I had this picture in my head of what obsolete technology was. I pictured type writers, telegraphs, and floppy discs. I didn’t picture that different technologies become obsolete daily. Different technologies are constantly making themselves obsolete with new innovations to their old inventions. For lack of a better example, I will discuss the new iPhone 6. One week ago, if someone were to buy an iPhone 5S, they had the best possible iPhone available. It was the top of the line choice for somebody in the market to buy a new phone. Today, the iPhone 6 is available, making that same iPhone 5S that was top of the line one week ago now obsolete. Obsolete technology simply means something that is no longer used because something newer/better exists. One thing that I thought was interesting was the thought that different obsolete technologies are coming back around because of different nostalgia’s or even “hipsters”. For example, many people are now interested in using old gaming systems like Nintendo 64’s or the original PlayStation because of the amount of nostalgia these items have. Also, vinyl records are now being produced again because there is a new demand for them. My argument here is that different technologies may be made obsolete by newer or better things, but that’s not to say that they may not come back around in the future for different reasons.