Technological Determinism And The Relationship Between Technology And Society

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现代西方技术哲学 第8章作业 2015080103 金延燮 Q. 试基于案例分析说明你对技术与社会之间关系的认识？ The human society of the 21st century cannot be separated from technology. Technology and society are becoming more and more correlated and co-dependent as time flows. It has been long since digital devices became an essential part of our daily lives, and humans have started to interact with technological software for a while. This relationship between technology and society can be viewed from two different perspectives. One theory is called technological determinism (技术决定论), which dictates that technology determines a society’s cultural values, social structure, and the progress of its civilization. On the other side lies the social construction of technology (社会建构论), which argues …show more content…

It incorporates the idea that the development of technology follows a regular and predictable path which in turn affects the direction of social development. Technological determinism can be classified into two categories: Hard determinism and Soft determinism. The first one, hard determinism, claims that technology produces powerful forces that control humans’ social activity and its meaning. Technology is an absolutely independent factor in that the outcome of technological forces are beyond humans’ control, and we do not have the freedom to make a choice regarding them. Thus, technology is superior to other sorts of social concerns. Meanwhile, soft determinism is a rather moderate and passive point of view of technological forces. Advocates of soft determinism do concede that technology is the leading force in society’s development, but they also insist that technology is a relatively autonomous factor. As such, humans still possess the chance and right to make decisions regarding technological outcomes in the socioeconomic environment. As a result, technology is not considered as the sole factor that propels social …show more content…

The social construction of technology holds that the path of technological development is more or less shaped by society itself. In other words, political decisions, economic allocations, and social arrangements influence the direction of technological progress. The framework of the social construction of technology is mainly based on the pessimism towards technology and science from the mid-20th century. In the early 20th century, humanity saw how evil technology could become by human manipulation. The brutal human experimentations committed by the Nazi and Japanese troops and the use of biochemistry medicine and nuclear energy as weapons of mass destruction revealed how humans could exploit technology to attain inhumane goals. As world leaders began emphasizing the need to control the course of technological development, some scholars began to suggest the social construction of technology theory in contradiction of the conventional technological determinism

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