CMC Magazine / February 1, 1996
| SPECIAL FOCUS ON TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISM |
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Shaping and Being Shaped
Engaging with Media
by Daniel Chandler
Modern social scientists have
widely critiqued
technological
determinism
and have come to
occupy
four primary
stances
with respect
to it.
In this article,
I examine the
tone of technological determinism and
the corresponding
attitudes towards technology these stances imply.
I use a
framework
which is broadly applicable to both the macrosocial and microsocial levels.
The
selectivity
of media shifts the
purposes that a user originally had in using it.
This transformation gives rise to
resonances which can best be understood from a
perspective which acknowledges
interacting frames.
Dr. Daniel Chandler (dgc@aber.ac.uk) is a lecturer in Media Theory at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, United Kingdom. His primary interest is in the phenomenology of engagement with media. He provides a fuller treatment of technological determinism in his web, http://www.aber.ac.uk/~dgc/tecdet.html. His book, The Act of Writing, examines writing in the light of his perspective on technological determinism.
Copyright © 1996 by Daniel Chandler. All Rights Reserved.
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