Friday, February 03, 2006
Technology, Society, Community, Family, and Self: Chapter One
What effect does technology have on society and persons, families, and communities within that society? Is technology everything, in the sense, that it ultimately determines the kind of society and communities we live in, the structure of our families, and our thoughts and actions as members of that society? If so, when technology changes, do society, communities, families, and our thoughts and actions change as well? Or is technology nothing, in the sense, that it has no effect on the kind of society or communities that we live in, the structure of our families, or our thoughts and actions as members of society? Or still, is the correct answer somewhere in the middle? That is, does technology affect society, communities, families, and our thoughts and actions, AND at the same time, do our thoughts and actions, families, communities, and society affect technology?
According to those who believe in technological determinism, technological change is the cause of social change. Technology determines the kind of society and communities we live in, the structure of our families, and our thoughts and actions as members of that society. In Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy and A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, the following passages are often quoted to argue that Marx was a technological determinist:
For Marx (and Orthodox Marxists), capitalist technology creates a fragmented society. Not only does it produce the system of private property and the division of labor, it also separates workers from themselves as species beings and separates individuals and families from their communities by creating and privileging private interests over common interests (Marx, 1998).[2] The community as a real, organic place of shared interests (and wills) becomes an illusion in capitalist society. What a real community is or should be is relegated to dreams, desires, and works of fiction.
In the 1960s, there was a U.S. television comedy show called The Andy Griffith Show. Andy was the sheriff of Mayberry, a small town in the south, where he lived with his son, Opie, and Aunt Bee. Mayberry was a homogeneous place, and everyone who lived there seemed to be respected as an individual and accepted as having a place in that community, even Otis the town drunk. Mayberry was a romanticized version of community, which had at its roots the vision of community described by Ferdinand Tönnies and Georg Simmel in the late 1800s. For both Tönnies and Simmel, a community was an organic whole characterized by its fellowship, custom, understanding, and consensus of its members and member families (Tönnies, 1963; Simmel, ; Fernback, 1997). Mayberry was an Americanized example of Gemeinschaft at its best, a small area on a map where folks lived together, knew each other, and were not coerced to remain silent or conform to fit into the community. [3]
The Andy Griffith Show was a television comedy show about folks in a community, but what has television as a technology/form of electronic media done for community? According to McLuhan (1964), television and other forms of electronic media are creating community by retribalizing the human race.[4] Satellite communication networks are eliminating differences in time and space, so that a person in Des Moines, Iowa, can see and hear on television what is going on at the moment in Cape Town, South Africa, or anywhere else on the planet. In this way, television is tearing down old boundaries and creating a "global village" of which everyone on the planet is a member. McLuhan's theory is grounded in a belief that the level of communication technology determines society, community, family, and how we think, feel, and act. Thus, it is another example of technological determinism. Moreover, it also presumes the existence of a natural law of inevitable progress.
In contrast to McLuhan, Putnam (2000) argues that television is contributing to the erosion of community, particularly, the erosion of U.S. communities as Americans withdraw from political and civic activities and retreat to their homes to watch television.[5] What it means to be politically involved is being transformed from engaging in political action to watching television news programs. Fundamental to Putnam's analysis of the community and the decline of civic participation in the U.S. after 1968 is the concept of "social capital," which "refers to connections among individuals — social connections and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them" (2000, p. 23).[6] Social capital is essential for community building and maintenance. However, when people substitute time watching television (being "couch potatoes") for time engaged in networks of civic engagement, such as bowling leagues, interfaith groups, or neighborhood associations, both bonding and bridging social capital decline and communities weaken.
Another and related factor in the decline of community in America, according to communitarians, is increasing individualism (Etzioni, ; Sandel, Bellah, ). In the U.S. the excesses of individualism have contributed to the creation of a society of increasing numbers of individuals, who instead of being embedded in community, are isolated from others and not directed by the community to act responsibly and reasonably (Etzioni, 2003).
Similar arguments have been and continue to be made regarding the effect that computer-mediated communication (CMC) has on society, communities, families, and individuals. In 1995, John Perry Barlow placed himself among the cheerleaders for CMC (and among utopians as well) when he stated in A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace:
ENDNOTES:
1. Critics of Marx and Orthodox Marxists, such as Kolakowski, argue that Marx's technological determinism is grounded in utopian ideals of a better world: it is believed that there is a natural law of technological/social evolution where communism is the end point of that evolution.
2. A person's "species being" is a person's true Self as a social being in a community where individual and common interests are in accord.
3. According to Tönnies, kinship (Gemeinschaft of blood), common place (Gemeinschaft of place), and shared meanings (Gemeinschaft of mind) combined in time and space to create a strong sense of community. Industrialization destroyed Gemeinschaft and replaced it with Gesellschaft, where relations were impersonal and calculative and private actions were favored over public works. Like Marx, Tönnies saw industrialization as a destroyer of community and creator of segregation. Industrialized society weakened bonds of kinship and devalued the importance of the family, which were critical to the strength of a community.
4. McLuhan argued that there are 4 stages of technological/social development: 1) Tribal Age, 2) Literate Age, 3) Print Age, and 4) Electronic Age. Changes in communication technology changes society, communities, families, and the way we think, feel, and act. The last stage retribalizes us all by unifying the planet.
5. Putnam was not the first to be concerned about the decline of communities. Ehrenheit's 1995 book The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues of Community in America was concerned with the increasing political emphasis on expanding individual choices at the expense of community and civil authority.
6. Putnam's Bowling Alone is about social change, the debate about the rise and fall of community, and public concerns about the decline of U.S. communities. Putnam states,
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Buzuev, Vladimir and Gorodnov, Vladimir. 1987. What is Marxism-Leninism? Progress Publishers. Moscow.
Etzioni, Amitai. 2003. "Communitarianism" in Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World, Vol. 1, A-D. Karen Christiansen and David Levinson, eds. Sage Publications, New York, pp. 224 - 228.
Kolakowski, Leszek. 1978. Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origins, Growth, and Dissolution. 1. The Founders. Oxford University Press, New York.
Mark, Karl. 1998. The German Ideology including Theses on Feuerbach and Introduction of the Critique of Political Economy. Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY.
---------. 1975. Early Writings. Ed. Quintin Hoare. Random House, New York.
---------. 1963. The Poverty of Philosophy. International Publishers, New York.
McLuhan, Marshall. 1964.
Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone. Simon & Schuster, New York.
Tönnies, Ferdinand. 1963. Community and Society. Translated and edited by Charles P. Loomis. Harper & Row, NY.
According to those who believe in technological determinism, technological change is the cause of social change. Technology determines the kind of society and communities we live in, the structure of our families, and our thoughts and actions as members of that society. In Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy and A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, the following passages are often quoted to argue that Marx was a technological determinist:
Social relations are closely bound up with production forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist. (itals my emphasis)(Marx, 1963, p. 109)
The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies can be summarized as follows. In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which corresponds definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness (Marx, 1975, p. 425).For Marxist technological determinists, such as the Orthodox Marxists Buzuev and Gorodnov, the evolution of technology is described by stages of technological development, which correspond to stages of social development. Thus, the handmill creates feudal society, and when the handmill is replaced by the steam-mill, feudal society is replaced by the capitalist society. In turn, the ultimate societal form emerges when capitalist technology is replaced by a new technology, which is hindered by the capitalist division of labor and system of private property; and consequently, the new technology necessitates their elimination and birth of a communist society.[1]
For Marx (and Orthodox Marxists), capitalist technology creates a fragmented society. Not only does it produce the system of private property and the division of labor, it also separates workers from themselves as species beings and separates individuals and families from their communities by creating and privileging private interests over common interests (Marx, 1998).[2] The community as a real, organic place of shared interests (and wills) becomes an illusion in capitalist society. What a real community is or should be is relegated to dreams, desires, and works of fiction.
In the 1960s, there was a U.S. television comedy show called The Andy Griffith Show. Andy was the sheriff of Mayberry, a small town in the south, where he lived with his son, Opie, and Aunt Bee. Mayberry was a homogeneous place, and everyone who lived there seemed to be respected as an individual and accepted as having a place in that community, even Otis the town drunk. Mayberry was a romanticized version of community, which had at its roots the vision of community described by Ferdinand Tönnies and Georg Simmel in the late 1800s. For both Tönnies and Simmel, a community was an organic whole characterized by its fellowship, custom, understanding, and consensus of its members and member families (Tönnies, 1963; Simmel, ; Fernback, 1997). Mayberry was an Americanized example of Gemeinschaft at its best, a small area on a map where folks lived together, knew each other, and were not coerced to remain silent or conform to fit into the community. [3]
The Andy Griffith Show was a television comedy show about folks in a community, but what has television as a technology/form of electronic media done for community? According to McLuhan (1964), television and other forms of electronic media are creating community by retribalizing the human race.[4] Satellite communication networks are eliminating differences in time and space, so that a person in Des Moines, Iowa, can see and hear on television what is going on at the moment in Cape Town, South Africa, or anywhere else on the planet. In this way, television is tearing down old boundaries and creating a "global village" of which everyone on the planet is a member. McLuhan's theory is grounded in a belief that the level of communication technology determines society, community, family, and how we think, feel, and act. Thus, it is another example of technological determinism. Moreover, it also presumes the existence of a natural law of inevitable progress.
In contrast to McLuhan, Putnam (2000) argues that television is contributing to the erosion of community, particularly, the erosion of U.S. communities as Americans withdraw from political and civic activities and retreat to their homes to watch television.[5] What it means to be politically involved is being transformed from engaging in political action to watching television news programs. Fundamental to Putnam's analysis of the community and the decline of civic participation in the U.S. after 1968 is the concept of "social capital," which "refers to connections among individuals — social connections and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them" (2000, p. 23).[6] Social capital is essential for community building and maintenance. However, when people substitute time watching television (being "couch potatoes") for time engaged in networks of civic engagement, such as bowling leagues, interfaith groups, or neighborhood associations, both bonding and bridging social capital decline and communities weaken.
Another and related factor in the decline of community in America, according to communitarians, is increasing individualism (Etzioni, ; Sandel, Bellah, ). In the U.S. the excesses of individualism have contributed to the creation of a society of increasing numbers of individuals, who instead of being embedded in community, are isolated from others and not directed by the community to act responsibly and reasonably (Etzioni, 2003).
Similar arguments have been and continue to be made regarding the effect that computer-mediated communication (CMC) has on society, communities, families, and individuals. In 1995, John Perry Barlow placed himself among the cheerleaders for CMC (and among utopians as well) when he stated in A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace:
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel. I come from Cyberspace ... We are entering a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity. Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here ... Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.Barlow suggests that CMC will create new communities by creating opportunities for bridging social capital that did not exist before because of racism, sexism, and other kinds of prejudice.
ENDNOTES:
1. Critics of Marx and Orthodox Marxists, such as Kolakowski, argue that Marx's technological determinism is grounded in utopian ideals of a better world: it is believed that there is a natural law of technological/social evolution where communism is the end point of that evolution.
2. A person's "species being" is a person's true Self as a social being in a community where individual and common interests are in accord.
3. According to Tönnies, kinship (Gemeinschaft of blood), common place (Gemeinschaft of place), and shared meanings (Gemeinschaft of mind) combined in time and space to create a strong sense of community. Industrialization destroyed Gemeinschaft and replaced it with Gesellschaft, where relations were impersonal and calculative and private actions were favored over public works. Like Marx, Tönnies saw industrialization as a destroyer of community and creator of segregation. Industrialized society weakened bonds of kinship and devalued the importance of the family, which were critical to the strength of a community.
4. McLuhan argued that there are 4 stages of technological/social development: 1) Tribal Age, 2) Literate Age, 3) Print Age, and 4) Electronic Age. Changes in communication technology changes society, communities, families, and the way we think, feel, and act. The last stage retribalizes us all by unifying the planet.
5. Putnam was not the first to be concerned about the decline of communities. Ehrenheit's 1995 book The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues of Community in America was concerned with the increasing political emphasis on expanding individual choices at the expense of community and civil authority.
6. Putnam's Bowling Alone is about social change, the debate about the rise and fall of community, and public concerns about the decline of U.S. communities. Putnam states,
Of babyboomers interviewed in 1987, 53 percent thought their parents' generation was better in terms of 'being a concerned citizen, involved in helping others in the community,' as compared with only 21 percent who thought their own generation was better. Fully 77 percent said the nation was worse off because of 'less involvement in community activities.' In 1992 three-quarters of the U.S. workforce said that 'the breakdown of community' and 'selfishness' were 'serious' or 'extremely serious' problems in America. In 1996 only 8 percent of all Americans said that 'honesty and integrity of the average American ' were improving, as compared with 50 percent of us who thought we were becoming less trustworthy. Those of us who said that people had become less civil over the preceding ten years outnumbered those who thought people had become more civil, 80 percent to 12 percent. In several surveys in 1999 two-thirds of Americans said that America's civic life had weakened in recent years, that sociall and moral values were higher when they were growing up, and that our society was focused more on the individual than the community. More than 80 percent said there should be more emphasis on community, even if that put more demands on individuals. Americans' concern about weakening community bonds may be misplaced or exaggerated, but a decent respect for the opinion of our fellow citizens suggests that we should explore the issue more thoroughly.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Buzuev, Vladimir and Gorodnov, Vladimir. 1987. What is Marxism-Leninism? Progress Publishers. Moscow.
Etzioni, Amitai. 2003. "Communitarianism" in Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World, Vol. 1, A-D. Karen Christiansen and David Levinson, eds. Sage Publications, New York, pp. 224 - 228.
Kolakowski, Leszek. 1978. Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origins, Growth, and Dissolution. 1. The Founders. Oxford University Press, New York.
Mark, Karl. 1998. The German Ideology including Theses on Feuerbach and Introduction of the Critique of Political Economy. Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY.
---------. 1975. Early Writings. Ed. Quintin Hoare. Random House, New York.
---------. 1963. The Poverty of Philosophy. International Publishers, New York.
McLuhan, Marshall. 1964.
Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone. Simon & Schuster, New York.
Tönnies, Ferdinand. 1963. Community and Society. Translated and edited by Charles P. Loomis. Harper & Row, NY.
