Index© Elizabeth Faint Doyle, 1997.
The notion of the 'social shaping' of technology emerges from the ongoing argument about determinism, where the prominent comparison is based on the different conceptions of determinism - whether information technology can be seen as the main force which shapes society or whether society and social values shape the way in which information technology affects our lives - can information technology be considered as revolutionary or evolutionary? This essay aims to clarify the meaning and show an understanding of the implications of 'social shaping' and the two broad approaches to it by examining the wider surrounding issues of determinism, both technological and social. It will also show how dynamic the whole issue of 'social shaping' is, and how a clearer understanding of the meaning can be gained by adding a third factor to the equation: that of consumption. Throughout the account, illustration of various points will be provided through the use of examples taken from home computing technology.
In his paper, Theorising the IT/Society Relationship, Hughie Mackay defines technological determinism as:
"…the notion that technological development is autonomous of society; it shapes society, but it is not reciprocally influenced." 1
This traditional viewpoint suggests that a technology is handed as a finished product to the consumer, who will then take it and use it in exactly the way the producer intended, to the means that the producer intended. At no time will this be questioned; it is a one-way linear process: a direct instance of cause and effect. This theoretical autonomy supposedly happens without any intervention from the social aspects of research and development: i.e. no feedback is required beyond the initial test phase. Thus, once the technology is available, it has an in-built, pre-determined impact, regardless of where it is to be used or by whom.
Considering the question of revolution versus evolution, the technological determinism viewpoint is definitely on the 'revolution' side. Revolution connotes sudden, dramatic change and a break with the past. If we accept the one-way, linear process to be correct, then we can also accept it to be revolutionary. Suddenly, we have the technology available now that was undreamed of even thirty years ago. Our lives have become akin to something from a science fiction novel. The 1995 movie
The Net, starring Sandra Bullock, depicts western society as being so dependant on information technology that the heroine need never leave her home: she can access everything she needs from her PC and modem. It is only when her electronic identity is erased from the system that we are shown the true power of the 'technological revolution' over our lives.
A small, but interesting example to illustrate the technological determinism standpoint is the two or three button mouse, a simple pointing, clicking device which makes navigation around the various software packages available very simple and has 'revolutionised' human / computer interaction. Simple, that is, in the minds of the designers, and for those who have full motor control and are right-handed. However, there are so many people that do not fit into those categories that it makes the technological determinism standpoint almost ludicrous. One type of mouse could not suit the needs of everybody and not everyone could utilise the mouse in the way the designer intended. From personal experience, one can see how important the concept of continuous feedback is. Differently abled people have now had other interactive devices designed for them and mice have been designed for left handed people. The mouse has had a tremendous impact on computer users' lives, but those same computer users have also had a tremendous impact on the 'user-friendliness' of the mouse.
Social determinism propagates the opposite ideas. Although social determinism does not and could not deny that technology has an effect on society, its emphasis is more on the social forces behind the development and implementation of technology. Here, we can align 'social shaping' with 'evolution' and consider it to be a gradual incremental change which is consistent with past developments. It is therefore possible to say that:
"Technology is produced in environments and contexts, as a result of the actions and decisions, interests and visions, of men and women at work in organizations and institutions of complex and shifting politics and economics" 2
This is most apparent in the research and development that goes into a particular technological product. Many companies have large research and development departments and consultative committees comprising of various community groups who each have input into the direction a technology takes. Software is increasingly distributed in various stages of development: 'beta versions' can be downloaded free from the Internet, with specific requests for feedback on bugs and glitches in the program. Take, for example, Microsoft Windows. The latest available version of this operating system is Windows 95, which is the culmination of many different versions, each of which has added new and different applications to the current product: Windows 3.1, Windows 3.11, Windows for Workgroups and the other market rival, Apple's OS2 and OS2 Warp. Software is constantly under development, adding, refining, improving, through many different fora: the aim being to sell as many copies as possible to as many people as possible by including as many attractive attributes as possible.
There seem to have been two basic approaches to the 'social shaping' of technology. The first is the 'social constructivist' approach, where a technological field is studied to discover where there have been ambiguities, such as different ways a product could have been designed, and studies are made to determine why one design should have succeeded rather than another. A current interesting ambiguity which exists is the design for the processor cases of home PCs. Currently there are several types of processor casing available: the normal desktop variation, where the separate processor unit sits horizontally beneath the monitor , the mini-tower system, which stands beside the monitor and positions the various drives vertically and the rarer combined monitor / processor unit, where the disk drives are located at the bottom of the monitor. At the moment neither seems to be more popular than the other, but in time, if one becomes more popular than the other, such a constructivist study could be undertaken to discover why.
The second approach to the 'social shaping' of technology is the 'neo-Marxist' approach, where rather than a particular field being studied, a social context where a technological change has occurred is studied to see what happened to cause such a change. For example, one could observe the computer games magazine industry and ask why it was that magazines on the whole changed from providing free cover floppy disks and started to provide free CD ROMs instead. The 'neo-Marxist' approach might possibly argue that it was to appeal to a higher 'class' of computer user and thus alienate those users who did not possess the required technology to operate CD ROMs and perhaps to increase the rate of technological change in favour of CD ROM drives. This approach obviously takes a much broader view of 'social shaping' and includes political and economic contexts.
The whole issue of the 'social shaping' of technology is not quite as dichotomous as it would first appear. It is not simply a matter of social versus technological: this would be a massive understatement of the complexity of the issue. A sensible viewpoint would be to see revolution as evolution: revolution defined as 'movement as if in a circle', which may seem to be rather non-committal, but is actually a more truthful and accurate statement of the interaction between technology and society. A third factor - consumption - can be added to the equation to more fully examine the phenomenon of the dynamic nature of the 'social shaping' of technology.
Once a technological product has passed through the various processes of research and development, manufacture, marketing and packaging and finally reaches the consumer, the process of social shaping is by no means at an end. This is merely the beginning of the appropriation stage:
"…a technology…- is appropriated at the point at which it is sold,…and is taken possession of by an individual or household and owned……" 3
This is the point at which we begin to realise that the technological product does not have a pre-determined impact on an individual's life. Rather, it now becomes the task of the individual to customise the product to suit their needs or lifestyle. The consumer, at this point, is possibly just as important in the social shaping of the technology as the designer. It shows yet another instance of social shaping if the product subsequently proves to be useless to the consumer and is jettisoned in favour of different product.
"The consumer is a processor, the turner of things into social and cultural values, but most active in the self-referential authorship of its own processes of consumption." 4
Taking the example of the home computer, we can begin to rationalise this process if we imagine the purchase of a brand new PC. Having set up the machine and various peripherals and booted it for the first time, there are many different procedures which must then be followed in order to define the user environment. Time, date, country, language and registration of software to begin with, followed by customisation of software: which software to load into the machine, how we would like the menu bars laid out; which font to use, what size icons, what colour background, which screensaver to activate, whether to have the system sounds activated…the list is endless. In fact, it is possible to say that this process never really ends: as people and their lives change, so does the technology with which people interact. This is social shaping at its most individual level, where the designer has no control over the way the technology is used or to what end. The common PC is a very open technology: it can be used for education, information, leisure, business applications, word-processing, music, drawing, design, time management etc. and through interaction with other technologies, the PC can be used as a television, as a radio, as a CD player, as a recording device, as an answering machine, as a fax machine, and news, weather and information can be downloaded from the Internet. There can be no way that a designer at the beginning of the home computer era could possibly have envisaged or facilitated this high level of appropriation by the consumer and since the consumer can be seen as:
the PC case study most effectively demonstrates the continually evolving and dynamic nature of the social shaping of technology, where everyone who has hand, act or part in the technology serves to shape it.
This essay has attempted to show an understanding of the meaning of the concept of the 'social shaping' of technology, which arises from the idea of determinism and the contrast between technological or revolutionary determinism and social or evolutionary determinism. It has also shown that the study of the social shaping of technology has previously been broken down into two general approaches - the social constructivist theory versus the neo-Marxist theory and has concluded that by adding the consumption or appropriation factor to the whole technological / social argument, one can begin to appreciate the complexity of the dynamic relationship found therein, which is the basis for social shaping. Throughout the essay, the various points have been illustrated by using relevant information technology examples from the sphere of home computing. The social shaping of technology can thus be understood to be the process whereby the various sectors of industry (designers, engineers, marketers, advertisers etc.) combine knowledge, expertise and feedback to present a product to the general public for consumption, where consumption is the customisation or appropriation of the product by the consumer to suit their own individual requirements. This is truly 'revolution as if in a circle' and is an ongoing process, forming the basis for the evolution of the next generation of information technology.
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