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Sally Wyatt: An Example Of Technological Determinism

1919 Words8 Pages

“The devices we use change the way we live much faster than any contest among genes” (Wu, 2014). Increasingly our society is evolving into a snapchatting, instagramming, selfie-taking, facebook using, tweeting crowd of technology addicts. The thought of someone not using the internet or a mobile phone in their daily life is laughable to most young people. However, this is a relatively new phenomenon. Fifty years ago people were capable of going to lunch without snapchatting their friends and uploading a photo of their meal to Instagram (granted the technology did not exist, but they did not attempt to communicate in a similar way). So what has happened to our society? What has changed people into beings who can't go a day without logging on to social media to pour over details of their “friend's” …show more content…

There is a simple explanation: the development of technology. Technological determinism claims that “technology causes or determines the structure of the rest of society and culture” (Dusek, 2006:84). This essay will contend that social and cultural change has taken place as a direct result from the revolutionary improvements and developments in technology. There are both good and bad elements to this adjustment. To understand and examine this, the work of Sally Wyatt (with references to hard and soft determinism) will be discussed as she examines technological determinism through a symmetrical viewpoint. In conjunction with this, Marshall McLuhan's work will be analysed, with particular reference to his celebrated statement “the medium is the message”. Finally, Wyatt and McLuhan's views will be compared and contrasted in accordance with my understanding of

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