Search

This article takes the political engagement of hackers as a prism for examining the relations between technological determinist thinking and collective action. The concept ‘collective action framing’ is borrowed from social movement theory to describe how hackers have appropriated notions of a post-industrial, information society in their struggles against intellectual property laws and state censorship. Hackers have reintroduced an element of conflict and antagonism into otherwise politically innocuous visions of post-industrialism. This residual of antagonism can be traced back to the roots of the post-industrial myth in Marxist, historical materialist theory. By exploring these origins, the article proceeds to compare the hopes invested by hackers in the emancipatory force of information technology with the earlier beliefs of labour movements that the forces of history were on their side. Building on this comparison it is argued that technological determinism does not always lead to political resignation, but can also serve as a foundation for collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues that cultural analyses of electric light, including aspects of actor-network theory, may raise the spectre of complexity, but do not do it justice when they omit to provide analysis of the intertwined roles of culture and political economy in the formation of the provision and use of electric light. The essay looks at the marketization of electric power, at outages in the eastern and western US megacities, at the collapse of the public utility model and chaotic implementation of market models in Mumbai, Lagos and other poor megacities, and concludes that while theft of power provides a temporary solution, abandoning centralized market models in favour of microgrids is the only sure way to return agency to slum dwellers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the wake of national educational reform, the author discovered a secondary education style where all students were taught through centrally aired TV-lessons beaming from a studio in the capital city. In order to understand the motive behind the reform and its impacts on teaching, the author collected qualitative data for critical analysis. Collection of policy documents is the key method for analyzing the reform discourse. Empirical data were also collected through informal interviews held with teachers and students. Classroom observation of teaching-learning events was also conducted. Critical Discourse Analysis strategy was adopted to analyze the qualitative data. The resulting key themes spotlighted that a pragmatically necessary reform was hijacked by the states' ideological desire to control teachers and students charged with the weak philosophy of technological determinism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For some time now technological determinism, a theory that, broadly speaking, explains the relation between technology and humans in terms of historical causation, has been the target of intense criticism. In this article, I reassess a few of these criticisms in light of what I consider constitutes a new temporal sensibility. Rather than explained in causational terms, I characterize this sensibility as a tendency to place causes in the future. Placing causes in the future means a conversion of technological determinism into an instance of indeterminacy. This then allows religious groups, political actors and global media corporations to act while an imminent future effects the present. Referencing the journalistic mediations by global news broadcasting corporations of events such as the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings or Pastor Terry Jones’s threat to burn copies of the Quran on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, this study focuses on the temporal medium of threat to offer an alternative epistemology on time and mediation in politics, religion and media. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Pronouncements about the value of information and communication technology (ICT) (hereafter traditional, new, and social media) to social movements – hyperbolic in popular media references to new and social media (e.g., Facebook revolution, Twitter revolution, etc.) – invite scholarly inquiries that critically assess the implications of these assumptions for African countries. Sensing the tendency toward technological determinism, a position which Castells warns is fraught with failure to recognize complex interactions between society and technology; authors examined popular press vis-à-vis scholarly assumptions about the value of media during social movements. Questions that critically analyze the roles and power of old versus new media in social movements should be posed particularly about 21st century iterations with citizens increasingly doubling as creators and disseminators of news and information. For example: to what extent do various media comparatively facilitate or constrain activists in social movements? How have new ICTs assisted citizen activists in circumventing the power and reach of traditional media? How have the roles of traditional versus new media in social movements been framed in the popular press and academic journals? What contextual factors (e.g., communal networks; third-party- and foreign-interventions, digital divide, etc.) may be accountable for the take-off and successes of social movements? In a continent fraught with cultural, political, and socio-economic divisions of historic proportions, authors critically assessed cases across Africa of variegated employment of old (i.e., radio, newspaper, television) and new media platforms (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, mobile telephone text messaging) by four social movements spanning 35years. Assessments underscore citizen empowerment and multiplier capabilities of new media but affirm the value of contextual factors that minimize hyperbolic assumptions about the contribution of new media to the formation and progression of social movements. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses the new technologies and services that grate against social norms, often resulting in negative public response and allegations of creepiness. Topics discussed include business models that have earned companies the unenviable label of creepy such as ambient social apps, data-driven marketing and social listing along with the shortcomings of the law. It also discusses several strategies for avoiding creepiness against technological determinism and privacy lurch.

Technological determinism as a theory of social change has been thoroughly tarnished in social theory, science and technology studies, and the discipline of International Relations. If once claims to an ahistorical development of technology (e.g. Cohen, 1978) were treated with significant respect, this is no longer the case. Indeed, it is by now a ritual to disclaim any notion of technological determinism in theories of international relations and the non-human world (Peoples, 2010; Herrera, 2006; McCarthy, 2011). Yet we must be careful of not throwing out the power of technological determinations with the teleological bathwater. This article attempts to develop a sociological account of technological determinism as dependent upon ‘the International’. I will argue that technological determinism operates due to the presence of multiple political communities. Technological determinism is thereby reconceptualised as a distinct form of power in international politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Media studies as a field has traditionally been wary of the question of technology. Discussion of technology has often been restricted to relatively sterile debates about technological determinism. In recent times there has been renewed interest, however, in the technological dimension of media. In part this is doubtless due to rapid changes in media technology, such as the rise of the internet and the digital convergence of media technologies. But there are also an increasing number of writers who seem to believe that media theory, and more widely social science and the humanities, needs to rethink the question of technology and its relationship to society, culture and cultural production. Andrew Feenberg has characterized the two most dominant positions as, on the one hand, the social constructivist or 'technology studies' approach to technology, and, on the other, 'substantivist' theories of technology. The social constructivist approach, aims to counter technological determinism by showing how the development of technology is shaped not by technical and scientific progress but by contingent social, cultural and economic forces. The limitation of this view, however, is that it tends to see technology as no different from any other social process and it may lose the ability to distinguish between the technical object and any other social formation or cultural artefact. Doubtless constructivism would like to see technology as a subset of the cultural artefact and not vice versa, therefore explaining technology in terms of culture and society. But there are powerful arguments for arguing something like the opposite: in other words for understanding culture and society in terms of or as technical objects. In recent years this argument has been put most forcefully by the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler and it is to his work and its implications for media theory that this essay is dedicated. In particular I will show how Stiegler might defend his ideas around technics from the charge of technological determinism. Firstly, technics is not understood in the narrow sense of techno-scientific technology but in the wider sense of all the ways in which the human is exteriorised into artefacts or organized inorganic matter. Technics in this sense is therefore inseparable from culture and society and it makes no sense either to talk of technics determining culture and society or vice versa. Culture and society are not constituted by technics as if by a cause but rather constituted through it. Secondly, technics in Stiegler's sense does not represent scientific progress or a deterministic evolution; rather, however strange this may seem, technics is a kind of pure accidentality or contingency. For Stiegler it is because of the exteriorisation of the human into artefacts or inorganic organized matter that culture and society constitute themselves contingently. Stiegler's work therefore offers a way for us to rethink the relationship between culture and technology in ways which can productively reconfigure the concerns of critical theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies a significant gap in existing work within the field of educational technology-the failure to explain technology theoretically-and proposes an agenda for addressing this. While there are discussions of theory within educational technology research, these typically focus on learning. Technology itself is seldom considered, being treated instead as 'natural' or given. This is in marked contrast to other fields of study, in which robust theories of technology have been developed. The consequence of this is that technology is treated as if it will cause learning-and when it does not, there is no clear explanation of why. To advance this discussion, two traditions of work theorising technology are introduced-one positivistic, including work on affordance, and the other (largely unrepresented in educational technology) that provides a social account. An example of each is used to analyse a case study, so as to contrast the kind of claims that currently get made about technology with those that we could make. It is argued that adopting a social account of technology would enable richer, better-integrated claims to be made about technology use. Practitioner Notes What is already known about this topic Technology is a central concern of research in the field, but it is not clear how we should think about this term., While work in the field some decades ago tried to conceptualise technology, it is now treated as a taken-for-granted category., What this paper adds Systematic evidence is provided that we rely on a 'common sense' understanding of technology., The idea of technology is explicitly debated in other fields of study, and two of those traditions are reviewed here., An example is provided that illustrates that these other conceptions of technology can provide richer accounts of empirical work than those currently dominant in the field., Implications for practice and/or policy We cannot assume that technology will simply have 'effects' on people., Alternative accounts of technology provide richer explanations of technology use, and would benefit the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits Goody's arguments about literacy's influence on social arrangements, culture, cognition, economics, and other domains of existence. Whereas some of his arguments tend toward technological determinism (i.e., literacy causes change in the world), other of his arguments construe literacy as a force that shapes and is shaped by disparate social processes. This article also reviews the critiques of Goody's work developed in the subfield of sociocultural literacy studies. Although the critics are right to object to the elements of technological determinism in his work, their rejection of his larger project leads them to miss ideas that can help clarify literacy's role in the transformation of society. Moreover, their misreading of Goody's work contributes to the field's underestimation of the distinct force of literacy and overestimation of the force of local cultures. In other words, how they misread Goody's work limits the depth of the answers that they provide to questions about literacy and its relations to culture, economics, politics, and other social spheres. These relations can be better understood when Goody's work is reread with an interaction model of literacy that figures changes in literacy as conditions of and conditional upon changes in other domains. Equipped with this model, researchers may rectify the supposed technological determinism of Goody's approach and the cultural determinism of some sociocultural accounts of literacy. Researchers may then synthesize these ideas to develop approaches that clarify literacy's evolving relations with other aspects of the world. This article concludes by explaining how a revised understanding of genre may bring into view the interplay between literacy and different social processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the Egyptian revolt (see Zhuo et al., 2011) of January/February 2011 from two discrete perspectives. The first perspective is a contextual marker that takes into account long-term and forecast trends in democracy from 1952 through 2011. The second perspective reports the opinions and viewpoints of Egyptian citizens living in a remote fishing village and resort town through impromptu in-person interviews conducted between 23 and 30 January 2011. The statistical findings evidence that the Internet and mobile phones have helped to facilitate sociopolitical instability and democratic change over time, while the personal interviews paradoxically suggest circumspection in making generalizations about how these events have proceeded across a large population and through a period of tightly suppressed communication when Internet access was shut down. Taken together, characterizing the events in Egypt as having been just a social media revolution therefore appears to misrepresent the evolution of political change in the country through this time period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The ideas of technological determinism and the autonomy of technology are long-standing and widespread. This article explores why the use of certain technologies is perceived to be obligatory, thus fueling the fatalism of technological determinism and undermining our sense of freedom vis-à-vis the use of technologies. Three main mechanisms that might explain “obligatory technologies” (technologies that must be adopted) are explored. First, competition between individuals or groups drives the adoption of technologies that enhance or extend human capacities. Second, individuals and groups may become dependent on technologies. Third, technologies induce changes in social norms and values that may come to be enforced through various social mechanisms, including the law. The widespread ideology of the beneficence and inevitability of technological progress in our culture helps this process along. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An essay is presented on copyright infringement protection as of July 2012, focusing on technological determinism, utilitarian accounts of copyright, and the tension between intellectual property rights and user rights. The author reflects on the outdated quality of DVD region codes as of 2012 in the wake of technological innovations such as Blu-ray technology and other high-capacity media forms.

This paper discusses the problematic influence of technological determinism in popular news media coverage and analysis of the Arab Spring events of 2010-11. The purpose is to develop insights into how and why elements of a 'soft' technological determinism inflect both journalistic practice and news discourse in relation to the Arab Spring. In particular it discusses how the 'bias of convenience' and a journalistic obsession with the 'continuous present' connect with this determinist inflection to create a potential distortion in the journalists' 'first rough draft' of history in relation to significant and complex events such as social revolution. Debates about the significance of social media and communications technologies more broadly in generating mass outbursts of protest and even violence have raged in the popular news media for the past decade at least. A wave of interest in 'theories' about how and why new services like Facebook and Twitter may create or enable mass protest was generated by the revolutionary events in Iran following the June 2009 elections (Hirst, 2011). Many of the arguments then and now, in coverage of the Arab Spring, are suggestive of a form of technological determinism that is coupled with other underlying and little-investigated assumptions inherent in most forms of news practice and discourse. The question of the influence of technological determinism within journalism studies is a far from settled debate and this paper follows Mosco's argument and suggests that the idea of a social media revolution is a myth of the 'digital sublime' (Mosco, 2004). At best social media is a new battleground in the struggle for information control. At worst it can blind activists and commentators to reality (Morozov, 2011). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pervading conceptualizations like "information society", "knowledge society" or "computer age" since 1970's have been propounded by adducing similar technological developments. The aim of this work is to discuss the social fictions that I mention within dynamics of capitalistic devolopments and bringing up their essential technological determinist intellectual themes. In this context, Masuda's semi-utopian Computopia prediction is treated within the tendency of technological determinism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the contribution of sociological theory to the academic study of young people, education and digital technology. First it discusses the shortcomings of the technological and socially determinist views of technology and education that prevail in current academic and policy discussions. Against this background the paper outlines the benefits of a number of different sociological perspectives on the social shaping of technology that, despite their popularity in other areas of science and technology studies, have been employed rarely in analyses of educational technology. In particular the paper outlines the provenance of theoretical approaches such as the social construction of technology, studies of domestication of digital technologies, feminist critical theory and the political economy of technology. Drawing on all these theoretical traditions the scene is then set for future empirical and theoretical examinations of young people’s use of digital technology in formal and informal educational settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Problems / Problemos is the property of Vilnius University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper provides a synthesis of current knowledge on the patterns, drivers, and characteristics of historical energy technology transitions. This historical evidence is then compared to the treatment of energy system dynamics in the scenario analysis on climate mitigation. The paper concludes with a discussion of generic implications for clean energy and technology innovation policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of linguistic globalization is much felt in the language use in the domain of electronic devices for communication. The devices used for communication are English-friendly. English as an instrument of knowledge and prestige entered almost all the countries in the world. National seminars, international seminars, conferences, and workshops are being organized in English all over the world. In countries like India, where multilingual scholars interact every day, English plays a vital role of being contact language and link language. As communication is part and parcel of human life, it is also enriched by technological development. There are a number of devices being used to enhance the mode of human communication. It is being realized that English is predominantly used in all these technological devices. Internet, e-mail and Short Message Service (SMS) have become common and normal modes of communication. Computer, mobile phone and digital multimedia all have become part of everyday communication. The present generation finds it easy and convenient to communicate through these media resulting in a change in the traditional mode of communication. Among the various devices used in technical communication, it is the mobile phone that has become quite common and ordinary. Its affordability multiplies the number of users day by day. Many of its users feel uncomfortable if they do not hear their mobile ring tone even for a few minutes. Multiple versions of technologically advanced phones have come into use in the market. As mobile phone has become common and widely used in everyday communication, it is necessary to analyze the role of language used in this device and the impact of this device on language. In this paper, the author has limited his study to the texts of SMS in mobile phones and made a critical analysis of the linguistic features of English from the collected data at phonological, lexical and syntactical levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study does not represent an exhaustive research but an overview of the Romanian cultural blogs and the influences of technological and cultural determinism. While traditional media confronts with severe problems regarding cultural journalism, and is rapidly disappearing, new media combines the existing media sources and it is becoming more efficient, even though sometimes it respects low qualitative standards. The present research concentrates on how media form changes cultural information and how the practice of culture causes technological changes. Also, we presented a short analysis of the strategies for using and consuming new media which are distinct from the one referring to the consumption of the so-called traditional media. We tried to show that technological determinism looks at the new media explicitly as a channel - mediated through digital transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cinta de Moebio is the property of Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Ciencas Sociales and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article analyzes crisis as part of deeper trends determined in historical development from the perspective of two important theoretical streams: firstly, Analytical Marxism, and secondly, the Critical Theory of Society (the Frankfurt School). It shows both general determinants of historical development and pathological determinants of historical development. Examining Analytical Marxism and its theory of technological determinism, the article explains crisis in respect of situations of systemic changes mainly from the perspective of the relationship between forces of production and relations of production. Examining the Critical Theory, the article clarifies the role of the pathological determinants of instrumental rationality in human history in relation to efforts at human emancipation. In the article, crisis is seen as the superficial appearance of the historical developmental trends where there are inherent permanent tendencies to crisis. Crisis is a temporary eruption of the deeper contradictory development of the capitalist mode of production and other systems within the history of human civilization. The article discusses an issue of determinism as a necessary framework for the interpretation of crisis, and offers an interpretation of the preconditions of crisis not only from the economic point of view, but also, on a deeper level, in a civilizational sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Synthesis Philosophica is the property of Croatian Philosophical Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The academic discipline of television studies has been constituted by the claim that television is worth studying because it is popular. Yet this claim has also entailed a need to defend the subject against the triviality that is associated with the television medium because of its very popularity. This article analyses the many attempts in the later twentieth and twenty-first centuries to constitute critical discourses about television as a popular medium. It focuses on how the theoretical currents of Television Studies emerged and changed in the UK, where a disciplinary identity for the subject was founded by borrowing from related disciplines, yet argued for the specificity of the medium as an object of criticism. Eschewing technological determinism, moral pathologization and sterile debates about television's supposed effects, UK writers such as Raymond Williams addressed television as an aspect of culture. Television theory in Britain has been part of, and also separate from, the disciplinary fields of media theory, literary theory and film theory. It has focused its attention on institutions, audio-visual texts, genres, authors and viewers according to the ways that research problems and theoretical inadequacies have emerged over time. But a consistent feature has been the problem of moving from a descriptive discourse to an analytical and evaluative one, and from studies of specific texts, moments and locations of television to larger theories. By discussing some historically significant critical work about television, the article considers how academic work has constructed relationships between the different kinds of objects of study. The article argues that a fundamental tension between descriptive and politically activist discourses has confused academic writing about ›the popular‹. Television study in Britain arose not to supply graduate professionals to the television industry, nor to perfect the instrumental techniques of allied sectors such as advertising and marketing, but to analyse and critique the medium's aesthetic forms and to evaluate its role in culture. Since television cannot be made by ›the people‹, the empowerment that discourses of television theory and analysis aimed for was focused on disseminating the tools for critique. Recent developments in factual entertainment television (in Britain and elsewhere) have greatly increased the visibility of ›the people‹ in programmes, notably in docusoaps, game shows and other participative formats. This has led to renewed debates about whether such ›popular‹ programmes appropriately represent ›the people‹ and how factual entertainment that is often despised relates to genres hitherto considered to be of high quality, such as scripted drama and socially-engaged documentary television. A further aspect of this problem of evaluation is how television globalisation has been addressed, and the example that the issue has crystallised around most is the reality TV contest Big Brother. Television theory has been largely based on studying the texts, institutions and audiences of television in the Anglophone world, and thus in specific geographical contexts. The transnational contexts of popular television have been addressed as spaces of contestation, for example between Americanisation and national or regional identities. Commentators have been ambivalent about whether the discipline's role is to celebrate or critique television, and whether to do so within a national, regional or global context. In the discourses of the television industry, ›popular television‹ is a quantitative and comparative measure, and because of the overlap between the programming with the largest audiences and the scheduling of established programme types at the times of day when the largest audiences are available, it has a strong relationship with genre. The measurement of audiences and the design of schedules are carried out in predominantly national contexts, but the article refers to programmes like Big Brother that have been broadcast transnationally, and programmes that have been extensively exported, to consider in what ways they too might be called popular. Strands of work in television studies have at different times attempted to diagnose what is at stake in the most popular programme types, such as reality TV, situation comedy and drama series. This has centred on questions of how aesthetic quality might be discriminated in television programmes, and how quality relates to popularity. The interaction of the designations ›popular‹ and ›quality‹ is exemplified in the ways that critical discourse has addressed US drama series that have been widely exported around the world, and the article shows how the two critical terms are both distinct and interrelated. In this context and in the article as a whole, the aim is not to arrive at a definitive meaning for ›the popular‹ inasmuch as it designates programmes or indeed the medium of television itself. Instead the aim is to show how, in historically and geographically contingent ways, these terms and ideas have been dynamically adopted and contested in order to address a multiple and changing object of analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the enregisterment of an internet-specific language variety and its features. The enregisterment of internet language is explored through several sites of metadiscourse: academic scholarship about computer- mediated communication, uses of the metalinguistic terms netspeak andchatspeak in print media, and online comment threads about language and the internet. This metadiscourse provides evidence of a shared concept of internet language as comprising distinctive written features, primarily acronyms, abbreviations, and respellings. Internet language's enregisterment emerges from standard language ideology and deterministic views of technology, where the construal of these features as both nonstandard and internet- specific articulates the perceived distinctiveness of internet interactions. Yet empirical evidence shows that these features are relatively rare in instant messaging conversations, one form of interaction to which internet language is attributed; this discrepancy has implications for the application of indexical order to enregisterment. (Enregisterment, language ideology, computer-mediated communication, internet, metadiscourse, indexical order, Standard English, technological determinism, mass media [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, there have been many discussions in both academic and policy communities about the role ICT play in social, economic, and spatial development patterns. During the process, the concept of intelligent cities has emerged and in most cases that concept comes with a sheen of technological determinism. In broad terms, this concept articulates the relationships within and between the city and its surroundings, emphasizing the importance of organizational capacity, institutional leadership, creativity, and technology as drivers for change in a globalized and knowledge-driven economy. Bearing in mind that the changing role of government in service provision and the need for a collaborative-based approach are extensively gaining increasing recognition, on the one hand, and using the Portuguese case as an example of policy approaches in this domain, on the other hand, the article seeks both to bring critical commentary to this arena and to issue a challenge to policy makers to engage in a more appropriate set of discussions about this subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Borrowed from ecological psychology, the concept of affordances is often said to offer the social study of technology a means of re-framing the question of what is, and what is not, 'social' about technological artefacts. The concept, many argue, enables us to chart a safe course between the perils of technological determinism and social constructivism. This article questions the sociological adequacy of the concept as conventionally deployed. Drawing on ethnographic work on the ways technological artefacts engage, and are engaged by, disabled bodies, we propose that the 'affordances' of technological objects are not reducible to their material constitution but are inextricably bound up with specific, historically situated modes of engagement and ways of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the history of the nuclear arms race and technological determinism related to the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). The author considers the choices of weapons by superpowers during the Cold War and similarities between U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals and manned spaceflight programs. The deterministic aspects of modern warfare are considered in the context of technological production.

The article presents a speech by Susan J. Douglas, Professor and chair of the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan, delivered at the SHOT 2009 annual meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the occasion of winning the 2009 Leonardo da Vinci Medal. Topics discussed include the rise of social constructivism, technological determinism, and technology and gender.

Research on the adoption and applications of information and communication technologies (ICTs) often proceeds from a systemic level concentrating on the actions of states and their agencies. Few addresses usage patterns at the individual level even as they are fundamental to an understanding of the interface between technology and users. This research uses data from interviews, questionnaires and observation to examine the patterns of ICT usage by a section of the civil society in Nigeria from a micro-level perspective. It reinforces a common fact: technologies are cultural artefacts and come with a set of ideas. However, particular usage patterns and context can converge to significantly transform the nature and functionalities of the technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The adoption of Augmented Reality (AR) in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry will be facilitated by quantifiably demonstrating the benefits of AR in tasks with AR prototypes. Having identified inspection as one of the promising AR application areas in industrial construction in a previous study on the suitability of AR technologies, the authors now detail the development of their AR prototype system for steel column inspection, the ARCam. The detailed technical methods for the operation of the ARCam are discussed, as are developments required for field application that were revealed through the development of the ARCam. The required developments are not limited to the ARCam, but also provide the general prerequisites for AR systems for construction sites. Achieving the required developments should enable AR to be applied in construction sites more practically and effectively. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Within the field of the geography of knowledge and technological innovation, specific attention has been paid to the phenomenon of the spatial concentration of high-tech activities and to the factors that influence the growth of new industrial areas. Within this research stream, the present work is focused on areas characterized by high levels of specialization in high-tech, and more specifically on the concept of technological districts. Technological districts (TDs) are considered to be territorial systems specialized in high-tech activities and characterized by the presence of innovative resources, such as qualified human capital, advanced research activities, the capacity to generate innovation and new technologies, and an entrepreneurial culture. Beyond discussing theoretical concepts, a methodology is proposed for the analysis and identification of TDs through the definition of a taxonomy of local systems with different levels of concentration of high-tech activities and innovative resources. The methodology has been applied to Italy and allows the identification of the most advanced technological areas,which present the basic characteristics of TDs. This methodology is also important because it can be used to compare different geographical contexts and to discuss and evaluate different possibilities in the field of innovation development policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question concerning the essence of technology is still relevant in the philosophy of technology. In the contemporary debate, many constructivist philosophers and sociologists believe this concept is an illusion, an abstraction or an historical misunderstanding, arising from methodological inadequacy in technological studies. However many essentialist philosophers argue that without its essence, we cannot properly understand an effect that technology has made upon human, society or environment. This paper is a philosophical investigation of this crucial issue. First of all, while essentialists provide contemporary concepts of essence which are helpful in understanding technological phenomena, they cannot deal with technological evaluation at a satisfactory level. On the other side, while constructivists provide strong arguments against an essence of technology and technological determinism, they cannot dismiss technological essence completely I'll propose a new concept of essence that takes advantages from both sides: a relational concept of technological commitment, which in itself is indeterminism and also covers evaluation issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Luminance contrast is a new illumination technique in light microscopy recently developed by the author, which leads to extraordinary contrast effects, enhanced focal depth and supramicroscopic resolution when transparent stained or unstained specimens are examined. This method is characterized by a small illuminating light beam running centrically to the specimen, so that the specimen is illuminated very homogenously. Within the objective, the illuminating beam is blocked by a small light stop. When all parts of the illuminating light are totally blocked, the background is completely dark; when small parts of the illuminating light pass the light stop, the background is moderately brightened. The microscopic image is a result of scattered light components, which are bent or reflected by the specimen. When the illuminating light is not completely blocked by the light stop, the transmitted illuminating components interfere with the scattered light components coming from the specimen. Additional three-dimensional effects are achievable when the illuminating light passes the specimen obliquely. The resulting variants of illumination are similar to dark field, negative phase contrast and interference contrast. In all modes of luminance contrast the specimen is illuminated very homogenously so that it appears as a self-luminous, fluorescent body – similar to fluorescence microscopy. Luminance contrast can be carried out when mirror objectives are used or common objectives containing glass lenses are equipped with individually adjusted light stops. Further aspects of technical developments are discussed in full details. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The application of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in the educational context has been in place for decades. Despite acclaimed benefits, there seems to be an existing tension between the ideology of technological determinism, which believes that computerization of educational institutions will automatically revolutionized education offered there, and real impact of ICT on education and educational institutions. Inspired by Divine Word University (DWU) students participating in an ongoing PhD research, this paper discusses new emerging issues associated with ICT application in contemporary academia and calls for deep reflection on how to translate financial investments in technology into educational success. The importance of such debate lies in the fact that DWU might be considered to be the leading university in Papua New Guinea (PNG) in terms of using ICT. The lessons learnt here are of great importance for other educational institutions which will follow DWU in technological development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently researchers have made efforts to reconceptualize digital inequality into discrete levels. These levels reflect access to and diffusion of technologies, proficiency in Internet usage, and propensity to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by information and communication technologies for assistance in daily life. We assess the utility of this approach for studying digital inequality across rural, suburban, and urban counties. Based on data from a 2005 nationally representative random sample telephone survey of 2,185 adults, the results provide mixed support for using this approach to studying digital inequality. In particular, we find that rural residents use Internet technologies less for assistance in helping with economics and other daily activities when compared with individuals from suburban and urban areas; however, our results suggest that this relationship is the product of the slow diffusion of advanced technologies to rural areas. The implications of these findings for understanding this under-theorized form of inequality are discussed, and we make contributions to this literature through empirically addressing issues of digital capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides a discussion of diverse delays occurring in technology development, and an explanation of reasons why, when seen holistically from outside, the process of technology development might appear as an autonomous, self-determining, uncontrollable process. When seen from inside, however, the process is far from being uncontrollable. This paradox is explained by the fact that technology development contains many processes with delays, in total amounting sometimes to fifty years; when seen from outside, such a process might appear uncontrollable, even if it is very much controllable when approached internally and in detail. Therefore, the definition and types of technology creation as well as stages of technological processes are discussed in some detail in this paper. Some aspects of the contemporary informational revolution and some recent results on micro-theories of knowledge and technology creation are also reviewed. It is suggested that one of possible ways of changing the paradigmatic attitude of philosophy of technology is to invite some such philosophers to participate in the development of modern tools of knowledge civilization era, such as software development and evaluation. The conclusions of the paper stress the need of essentially new approaches to many issues in the time of informational revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Iran needs to base its national information and communication technology strategy on a much greater consideration of local cultural and social issues. The government has a major role to play if the country wants to stand in the information arena. It is believed that hard technological determinism can only be countered by very real and well thought out national strategies. The national IT strategy will need to address the issues of resistance to change due to cultural, personal and infrastructural factors. These are viewed as culturally sensitive and will need to be constructed as evolving, and learning system. It is important for every developing country to have a national IT strategy as a foundation whereby the great potential of IT can be realized, promote development, exploit technology and alleviate communication problems. The government must play an important role, not only as a major user, but also through its other role as regulator, promoter and diffuser. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lawrence Lessig shaped the nascent field of cyberlaw. In particular his argument that "code is law" has become a central tenant of the writings in the field. This Article offers a fundamental critique of Lessig's core argument—and thus of core assumptions of cyberlaw scholarship. It first focuses on the role Lessig ascribes to the market and how he sees it functioning. By emphasizing market choices, Lessig conceptualizes societal problems through a particular lens of atomistic decisions, of outcome rather than process, thereby failing to capture the full dynamic at play in free speech, intellectual property and privacy cases on the Internet. Second, for Lessig, markets function because of assumed or regulated information symmetry (that may not exist in most market transactions) causing him to overvalue transparency. A third fundamental weakness of Lessig's theory is the relationship between technology and society. For Lessig, markets drive technology, which in turn shapes society. This linear, directional view has been discredited by much of the research in science and technology studies over the last four decades. Using two examples of the path of a particular technology (one from Lessig and one more recent)—cookies and podcasts—I show how Lessig's technological determinism fails to capture the complex dynamics of innovation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - To provide an analysis of the notion of "information poverty" in library and information science (LIS) by investigating concepts, interests and strategies leading to its construction and thus to examine its role as a constitutive element of the professional discourse. Design/methodology/approach - Starting from a Foucauldian notion of discourse, "information poverty" is examined as a statement in its relation to other statements in order to highlight assumptions and factors contributing to its construction. The analysis is based on repeated and close reading of 35 English language articles published in US journals between 1995 and 2005. Findings - Four especially productive discursive procedures are identified: economic determinism, technological determinism and the "information society", historicising the "information poor", and the library profession's moral obligation and responsibility. Research limitations/implications - The material selection is linguistically and geographically biased. Most of the included articles originate in English.speaking countries. Therefore, results and findings are fully applicable only in an English language context. Originality/value - The focus on overlapping and at times conflicting discursive procedures, i.e. the results of alliances and connections between statements, highlights how the "information poor" emerge as a category in LIS as the product of institutionally contingent, professional discourse. By challenging often unquestioned underlying assumptions, this article is intended to contribute to a critical examination of LIS discourse, as well as to the analysis of the discourses of information, which dominate contemporary society. It is furthermore seen to add to the development of discourse analytical approaches in US research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional ways of understanding technological change often rely on technological determinism, the idea that technologies have an internal logic or force. Technological change is supposed to be the result of such a logic or force, just as changes of the earth's surface are due to tectonic plate movements. Alternatives to deterministic explanations are often of a constructionist sort. Under this view technological change is understood as the result of local interactions of interests. Both models have difficulties in incorporating relevant normative considerations in the explorations they provide. I suggest a different view based on the exploration of the concept of trajectory-dependent technologies. The key point I defend is that there are multiple and charging inter-dependent components of technological innovation and change. Explanation of change must appeal to multiple contingent and historical factors in complex socio-technological systems. In such a model, normative considerations can enter into the generation and promotion of technologies as part of the interdependencies which shape technological change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a possibilistic conception of technological artifacts facing technological determinism. Technological artifacts are considered points in a space of pragmatic possibilities determined by the abilities of different socio-cultural aspects. The determination process of one possibility is the design of an artifact that comes true as long as the abilities are effective. A design is a process of creation at several levels of reality: material, functional, usefulness. At the same time, the idea of design may also include the social participation of the community, which hereby collectively expresses its desires. This proposed alternative responds to determinism as well as to social constructivism [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that some of the most popular treatments of the development of accountancy in Britain do not accord with the historical evidence. This is true of the functionalist's altruistic view of the profession and of the predominant paradigm - the Weberian 'professional project'. There is no evidence in the early history of British accountancy to support the concepts of, for example: monopolistic closure, credentialism, or the social construction of skill. Instead, using a model based on technological determinism, the article reasserts the importance of the industrialisation process in forming the accountancy profession, and sees the formation of the chartered societies as largely set up to brand the accountants' training and thereby preserve the value of their human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an analysis of the Final Report of the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina. It discusses the relation between concepts of technological determinism, the definition of crisis within technological discourses and the role of media coverage.

In light of Lucamarini–Mancini's secure deterministic communication without entanglement [Phys. Rev. Lett94, (2005) 140501], by introducing an additional operation for encoding and additional classical information for decoding, we propose a new secure deterministic bidirectional communication protocol without using entanglement. In our protocol, two legitimate users can simultaneously exchange their different secret messages in a direct way with a set of communication devices. The proposed protocol is asymptotically secure in the limit of transmitting long messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The word ‘transformation’ is frequently used in connection with modern educational change, particularly when such change involves new technologies and ‘education for the information society’. Closer examination reveals that ‘transformation’ as a descriptor of change is used in a number of ways. In this paper I argue that, though the term ‘transformation’ suggests fundamental changes to structures for learning and teaching, some of what we see is little more than the same thing done somewhat differently. The rhetoric around the role of ICT in the process frequently carries overtones of technological determinism, with agency being ascribed to the technology. Some of these issues are examined in relation to the introduction into schools of interactive whiteboards. Whilst the notion of transformation often carries positive overtones of change ‘for the better’, this implication is open to critical examination. I problematise the notion of transformation itself and draw on activity theory to offer a better understanding of what it may mean. This necessarily includes emphasis on the roles of teachers and researchers as social agents in the process of true ‘educational transformation’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regulation Theory (RT) approaches have had considerable success in explaining how social institutions have sustained capitalist regimes of accumulation in modern industrial economies. But they have been criticized for an excessive dependence on technological determinism in explaining change, as ignoring political conflicts over recognition (as opposed to redistribution) and as failing to incorporate changes in the international or global political economy in the sustenance and reform of domestic social compromise. This paper examines the EU as a mode of social regulation from a political science perspective. The paper examines recent developments in RT in the light of literature on European integration and finds that rights – civic, political, social and economic – are a focus of both literatures. RT rights are seen as a way of legitimating forms of capitalist accumulation and in political science as a way of integrating societies. It then examines the distribution of rights between the national and European level in the Fordist and then the post-Fordist period to examine the impact of changes in the distribution of rights on the government of member states. The paper concludes that by examining what modes of social regulation do (legitimating certain embedded strategic responses) as opposed to what they are (configurations of institutions), changes in regime of accumulation can be described over long historical periods and across diverse societal contexts. It also suggests that the supranational level has had a far more significant impact on the maintenance of domestic societal compromises than previously acknowledged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are implemented in business in the hope of obtaining benefits in the form of improved communications and increased efficiency through the standardization of information technology (IT) across functional business areas. The benefits, and in some cases problems, associated with implementation have been well documented, however there is little information available on their effectiveness in a different form of organization. This paper looks at ERP implementations in Government Owned Corporations (GOC) and discusses implementation issues by looking at the way we perceive such organisations. A GOC case study is presented and explored in terms of the ERP and GOC literature in the context of existing social research approaches. This paper examines why end users in a GOC appear to be neither complying with, nor fully exploiting the potential of the ERP. The paper contends that discourses by staff at the operational level are different to that of staff at the managerial level. The paper also confirms previous research stating the importance of end user input for effective IT systems and ERP implementation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of geographic information systems (GIS) has raised a useful debate in the discipline of geography over the connection between technology and society. Proponents of GIS have argued from the beginning that their work had a value that warranted adoption; hence, that technology brought something to society. A wave of criticism argued that there were implications and risks to society in adopting these technologies. While this debate served some useful purposes, it was only a start on the issue. The focus on implications risked the simplification of seeing GIS as an inexorable, implacable force, a form of "technological determinism." This paper argues for a full circle of implication: GIS -- the daily practice, the data stored, the software -- is constructed and maintained by social processes embedded in historical and geographically contingent settings. The full circle requires an openness to studies of the influence from the social realm to the technology. By tracing the full circle, too, we can better appreciate the implications to society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]