Technologies as Cultural Artefacts

Abstract

Abstract What does it mean to say that technology has ”social dimensions’? Answers to this question vary widely. One view—typified by the general injunction to ”take the human element into account’—supports the idea that the design, development, and use of ICTs are driven, on the whole, by the ‘actual’ characteristics of the technology. It admits the involvement of ‘humans’, for example through their participation in economic and political decisions affecting the adoption and implementation of ICTs. But this involvement is generally regarded as having no bearing upon the hardware and software which make up the core of the technology. Such a restricted conception of ‘the social’ also supports a version of ‘technological determinism’—the belief that new technology emerges as an extrapolation of previous technologies, with the characteristics of a technology having a direct impact on social arrangements.