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by TeMPOraL 4949 days ago
To quote from the Wikipedia article:

"Advocates of SCOT—that is, social constructivists -- argue that technology does not determine human action, but that rather, human action shapes technology."

Sounds like another case of people not understanding feedback loops - that A can both determine, and be determined by B.

1 comments

Obviously you're going to see a gradient, but I don't think most would contend human action isn't shaped at all by technologies in ways that are often unexpected. Plus, you get a sort of chicken-and-egg problem at some levels...

But people very, very commonly fail to see the embedded social factors in technologies, and are very quick to ascribe autonomy to technology, which is in my mind fallacious. You see this when the news has stories like, "Technology just keeps advancing. How will it change our lives next?" instead of understanding it as part of a relationship between people, their environment, and their artifacts, technology gets put on some magical self-propelling trajectory that just isn't true. Yes, Moore's Law is great - but it's a social/human driver, as is Intel's Tick-Tock, not something innate in technology!