Communication Technologies and Their Impacts
Week1:
Communication Technologies: applications of scientific knowledge which enable society to
communicate and create, Access, store, transmit and manipulate information
Utopia versus Dystopia
Utopia: a quasi-realistic account of a vastly improved society, enabled by technologies, that
offers hope and direction in an uncertain World
Utopia – Sir Thomas More à institutional utopia
Ideal place – imaginary place – impossible place
Religious utopia – heaven, Nirvana, sci-fi movies, mythological utopias
Robots, humanoid
Sophia – Hanson Robotics
Humans losing control over technology à
Dystopia: a speculative future (society) characterized by negative elements enabled by
technologies
Can happen when technology is in bad hands
Black Mirror – nosedive
“technological innovations of any substantial extent involve a reweaving of the fabric of
society, a reshaping of some of the roles, rules, and relationships that comprise our ways of
living together”
Is the distinction utopia vs. dystopia relevant?
They are both speculations and very often concerned with technological determinism
• Could you explain the difference between utopian and dystopian discourses?
Utopia is a quasi-realistic discourse that is a positive speculation about an ideal world that is
improved whereas the dystopian discourse refers to a world were technology takes over
humans, the dystopian discourse offers negative speculations about the future society. In
utopian discourse the technology is used for human good, contrarily it is supposed that in a
dystopian society the technology is in bad hands.
Technological change and its impact?
Concepts from articles
“Are we able to analyze the impact of technological developments in our own day and age?
According to Fisher & Wright article : No
• Why is it important to take a historical perspective if we want to study the impact of
communication technologies on our current society?
,Cultural lag theory: time lag between the launch of a technology and the distribution to
people, and latter how society adapted/social adjustment to it. In order to understand how
technologies shape the society over a time spectrum. We can not understand the exact
impact of technological developments of our own time. (Fisher & Wright) the effects of
technology may not be visible to social actors until sometime after its introduction technology
moves forward and the social institution lags behind in varying degrees.
It is important because if we pay attention to the historical evolution of technology and how
we were discussing the introduction of new communication technologies along the different
moments in history, we realize that the utopian and dystopian discourses at each of these
specific moments were always similar. When a new communication technology such as the
printing press, or the radio or the television were introduced, we were afraid
about how this would impact the ways we relate to each other as individuals, or if these
technologies will impact our jobs, or if these technologies will be used to share misleading
information, for example. If we compare what happened when the printing press was
introduced to what happened to when the internet was introduced, we will find many
common points in these discourses. This means also that we as a society have also an impact
on how these new technologies are used and the way they impact our daily lives.
Cultural lag:
Historical understanding and critical
Explains the time lag between a technology’s invention, its distribution to society, and the
social adjustment that follows
While technology changes, the society doesn’t change immediately
Industries – Governments (try to regulate) – social philosophies (the way scholars understand
these technologies)
Techno-realism
Social media empowers!
“The internet causes information overload” - but this was also happening before
Biggest criticism towards the cultural lag theory:
Technological determinism: force that changes society
1. Technology is invented and shaped outside of society, without interference of politics,
economics and culture
2. Fundamental changes in society are primarily brought about by technology, free will
or user freedom is an illusion
• How does technological determinism understand the impact of communication
technologies?
According to the technological determinist theory, communication technologies are developed
outside the society without human intervening. These technologies have an impact on how
our lives are shaped and humans don’t have a say in that. Even though the society thinks they
have agency, that is an illusion. Communication technologies are seen as the driving force of
,changes in society. Technology and society exists together and they both have an impact on
how the society will be shaped.
Langdon & Winner article
Remote Encoding Center
Technological development is not straight forward but should be understood as a social and
political phenomenon
Cyberlibertarianism: an ideology that links incredibly enthusiastic ideas about the
opportunities that new technologies offer us to right-wing ideas about freedom, social life,
economics and democracy
Cyberlibertarianism is the belief in the liberating power of technology. An example could be
the idea that thanks to the internet minority groups could have their voiced heard and they
will not be silenced anymore. However, we know that this does not work exactly this way, as
there are algorithms that filter information and decide what exactly is shown to us. These
algorithms are designed by the influencer of specific economic or political interests, therefore
not because some information is available or published online this is going to reach a wide
audience.
Ideology that advocates the use of technology as a means of promoting individual or
decentralized initiatives and less dependence on central governments
Mutual shaping perspective when understanding the effects of communication
technologies
Comm tech are tools for the society, depends on how it is used by society = good or bad,
influence on how they develop
Communication technologies are tools for society to interact and change for the better or the
worse. The way society uses communication technologies influences their further
development.
Intermezzo
• What are technological affordances?
Technological affordances are the actions that can be taken by users that are allowed by a
particular type of technology. All a user can do with a specific technology. The properties and
possible uses of a technology.
Technological affordances
Affordance is generally used to describe what material artifacts such as media technologies
allow people to do
Environment
Relational properties - Perceiving nature through affordances
, Affordances are not useful if they are not visible to users – intentional properties à
affordance: the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental
properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used
Perceived affordances by Norman: indicate how the user is to interact with the device, when
affordances are taken advantage of, the user knows what to do just by looking
Exploration by Gaver – Technological Affordance
Affordances are properties of the world defined with respect to people’s interaction with it
Acting organism – acted upon environment
Affordance is both perceivable and hidden
Useful tool for user-centered analyses of technologies
Social affordance – Wellmann et al.
The possibilities that technological changes afford for social relations and social structure
Both functional and relational – communicative affordance (Hutchby)
The possibilities for action that emerge from given technological forms
• How does the social shaping (mutual shaping) of technology perspective
understand the impact of communication technologies?
When trying to understand the impact of communication technologies, one should be aware
that the effects are mutually shaped. Meaning that these technologies are made for society,
and its effects are determined by looking at how they are used by humans. The use of these
technologies, good or bad, has an impact on how these technologies have a role in our lives.
• What do different theories on how media impact us (such as selective processing:
people avoid or ignore messages that are at odds with their existing beliefs, social
learning and catharsis theories) teach us about how we should understand the
impact of communication technologies?
The different theories on how media impact us shows that technology and its influence on
society can be understood from numerous different perspectives which differ from positive to
negative or its approach to media.
• What is technological domestication?
Technological domestication is the inclusion of technology in society’s daily routines without
the people even realizing. Communication and media technologies has a place in our live and
therefore became a part of our everyday routines. The technologies are becoming increasingly
integrated in our lives and our habitats are also dominated and mediated by technologies.
Constantly connected.
