[Air-L] Technology as ideologically neutral?

Sat Jul 7 10:41:04 PDT 2012

Another crucial variant is the "it's just a tool" formulation, commonly
found in popular debates. This kept cropping up during discussions of the
role of new media in the Arab uprisings and, in my view, impeded real
discussion.

I think that scholars have been so eager to stay away from technological
determinism that we've lost sense of how to argue really about the
structural accordances of technology. Too often, the more acceptable
formulation, "it's socially constructed," also leans towards "it's just a
tool" in essence.

-z

On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 7:48 AM, Cristian Berrio Zapata <
cristian.berrio at gmail.com> wrote:

> Pls do not let McLuhan out of the scope... in McLuhan, M. (1995). The
> Playboy Interview. Essential McLuhan, 233-269.
>
> “*In the past, the effects of media were experienced more gradually,
> allowing the individual and society to absorb and cushion their impact to
> some degree. Today, in the electronic age of instantaneous communication, I
> believe that our survival, and at the very least our comfort and happiness,
> is predicated on understanding the nature of our new environment, because
> unlike previous environmental changes, the electric media constitute a
> total and near-instantaneous transformation of culture, values and
> attitudes. This upheaval generates great pain and identity loss, which can
> be ameliorated only through a conscious awareness of its dynamics. If we
> understand the revolutionary transformations caused by new media, we can
> anticipate and control them; but if we continue in our self-induced
> subliminal trance, we will be their slaves*.” (McLuhan, 1995)
>
> On the other hand, I am a fan of applying the "complexity" view to all ICT
> views. Therefore it would be quite difficult to sepparate politics, from
> ideology, from economics, from culture, all of them part of the
> Internet-Web pack. It  comes to be very visible when looking at digital
> divide programes applied to indigenous communities.
>
> Regarding the "amputation" problem also raised by McLuhan, ICT tools let
> "self perception" out of the scope. Self perception (proprioception and
> tactile perception) is the base of affective bound, "love". Then, what are
> we depriving new generations of?
>
>
>
> 2012/7/7 jeremy hunsinger <jhuns at vt.edu>
>
> > I find this to be an interesting debate, though mostly the question is
> > where the ideology actually exists.    Does it exist in the object
> itself?
> >  relations to the object from other objects?  relations to the object to
> > semiotic systems around it?  relations to socius or culture?  or in the
> > systems alone, cultures alone, socius, alone, etc.
> >
> > basically there is a matrix here of ideologies, contexts, objects and
> > their axiologies operating both ontologically ala mereological
> > constructions  and epistemologies.   With many blurry middle grounds.
> >
> > I hold that artifacts have politics in themselves, but i'm not sure that
> > all artefacts have ideologies in themselves.  The question i tend to
> raise
> > and ask people to write about is... what is the politics of the toaster,
> > because the toaster has a whole political economics and a politics, but
> > does it have an implied ideology.  Now the design of a toaster can
> > certainly have ideological components, but the idea of a toaster may
> > perhaps not, though granted whether the idea exists outside of the set of
> > objects is another debate for the Platonists to take up.
> >
> > however... I wonder about the neutrality of the internet because as I've
> > argued here before, that while there is no real internet beyond reference
> > to a conceptual idea that encompasses many technologies and systems that
> > lack what i'd all think of as a unity beyond the concept.  So does it as
> a
> > whole have a neutrality or an ideology?  there is a certain technocratic
> > rationality to it, and that rationality certainly has a traditionally
> > critiqued ideology, but is that in it, or in the design of it, or in the
> > relations of it within historic contexts?  and isn't neutrality and the
> > claim to it, an ideological claim?  I've always tended to argue that the
> > claim toward neutrality and objectivity is almost always ideological.
> >
> > one of my favorite authors on this technology as ideology is Paul Virilio
> > and my second favorite is Walter Benjamin in Arcades Project.
> >
> >
> >
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>
>
>
> --
> *Cristian Berrío Zapata*
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-- 
Zeynep Tufekci, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina
Fellow, Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society

zeynep at unc.edu or @techsoc
http://www.technosociology.org