Reading Response

The assigned reading is an impressive “assemblage” of the argument that exists between technological and cultural determinism. 

After reading the assigned chapters the majority of my thoughts had me wondering where my stance and ideas from last classes debate would end up on the spectrum of all the ideas in the chapter.  I can’t find a way to defend the side of technological determinism and I’m now on the side of articulation and assemblage.  Although I feel that is mostly because of the way the three chapters have moved my thoughts.  Technological Determinism and its subcategories Simple Causality and Symptomatic Causality all drop-out when considering the human factor: someone created the gun and someone picked it up.  During class I wanted to defend Technological Determinism by giving an example of human evolution constantly manipulating itself to contingencies in the environment, and stating that only those who were affected by the latest evolutionary change survived to the next stage.  Stating that technology like evolutionary change manipulated life.  Technology much like evolutionary change is just an extension of evolution except sped up to allow us to experience what we desire to have sooner. However, that is completely alienating the process of which evolution takes place and it takes us so far away from actual technology that the point becomes irrelevant.  Fundamentally I now understand that the human factor is latched on to technology and technology is latched on to human beings. We the creators of ‘essence’ and ‘critical factor’ are constantly manipulated by articulation and the development of networks that constantly find themselves considering contingencies and being delivered by agency produce an assemblage that is worthy of analysis and yet impossible to analyze completely.  I find myself actually motivated to see the next part of the argument and understand the directions that are constantly being taken for the sake of comprehension.      

“What is the benefit of thinking of technology in terms of agency? For one thing it greatly enriches and complicates our view of the world we live in.” 

The complications brought up in these chapters have caused me to look at things differently.  Nonetheless, to see the world through the shades that were manufactured in this reading for the reader I feel like I still need to understand articulation a bit more.  What creates the web? Do we search for an essence or multiple essences that would then begin the process of networking? Or should we search for the creation of the fundamental technology and search for that initial human mind set and try to understand its change?  Have human minds evolved with the creation of technology, and technology has evolved the human mind, in both good and bad ways.  I don’t think there is any better example for that statement than looking at computers, but saying that could begin to make me look like I’m on the side of technological determinism again.