Task 12: Tool or medium?

There has been a tremendous change in the way people live, work and play over the past couple of decades, since the Internet reached a critical mass in the early 1990s and the adoption of personal computer by the public allowed rapid global communications and networking to shape modern society. The past ten years or so have seen changes at a much faster pace. Modern digital technology in its various forms (PCs, notebooks, netbooks, tablets, pocket-sized devices, and the web applications or Web 2.0 phenomenon) has been the key player in promoting these changes.

"Technology runs in the veins of society. It is the fuel that drives our lives. It is an integral part of daily life. It has definitely benefited society. It has brought luxury in the life of the common man," writes Manali Oak on Buzzle.com. While this is true that the automation brought about by technology (for example the electronic gadgets that have entered the homes of the common man) has saved human effort and time to a large extent, we could hardly find a more general term to decribe computers and their importance in the societal activity than to define them as mere tools or just instruments.

According to Rückriem, "Computer technology, taken as a tool, is just a new technology like many others, say e.g. motorcars or airplanes." Cars and planes change our activity when we make use of them, but they change it not, if we don't. They make a difference in societal practice, but we can always find alternatives to using them. At the same time, it is becoming more and more obvious that computer technology is in fact without any alternative, unavoidable, irreversible, general and even universal. It changes not only one specific concrete activity but revolutionizes the societal activity structure as a whole. "There is no revolution with broader or more fundamental consequences than the invention of book printing or computer technology. There is no medium with a broader range of impact. In our days it touches even the last tribe in the Brasilian jungle," finds Rückriem. Therefore, as Rückriem suggests, if we insist on characterizing computer technology as a "tool", we must be aware that it is a tool of its own with quite a different quality, or better yet, we need a qualitatively different and unmistakable concept. That means the concept of "medium", where media are both: material substratum and meaning, actuality and potentiality at the same time, storing not only specific technologies but the specific form of societal activity.

The computer technology, needless to say, has changed the face of the world. There is no doubt the uses of technology and society interact strongly. Computers can store, organize and manage huge amounts of data and process large amounts of information. Internet that seeded from the computer networking concepts is the most effective communication platform and the largest information base existing today. Web 2.0 sites and applications give users the no choice but to interact or collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as both producers and consumers of user-generated content in a virtual community. The Web is therefore "a collaborative medium", a place where we can all meet to read and write. The expansion of media production through new technologies that are accessible and affordable to the general public (including all digital media technologies, such as question-answer databases, digital video, blogging, podcasting, forums, social networking, mobile phone photography and wikis) has probably made the interaction of technology and society the one thing more than any other that gives society a meaning and defines us as human beings.

However, in recent years it has become popular to point fingers of accusation at technology as if it were "autonomous" and driving us all to perdition. But isn't it rather naive to think of aggressive technology affecting a passive society? Admittedly, there is always the potential for abuse or misuse of a technology, but technology is not inherently destructive. Or as Feenberg says, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people". In the same way, it is upto us how constructive or destructive use we make of the tools and media provided to us by the current Digital Age. It is also true that information and communication technology has involved us in technology so intimately that our activities have begun to shape its development. We are working towards even better technical solutions and quite obviously an even more integrated relationship between technology and society, but we do it because it brings along some explicit and evidential advantages for important institutions, such as schools, social work services, public health system, and sciences, to name a few. These advantages are able to outweigh the disadvantages as long as we are able to keep things under control. (If we can, is another question.)

To conclude, I think it is unquestionable that digital computer technology represents a fundamentally outstanding technical revolution which changes our living and working completely, and revolutionizes our societal practice as a whole. It is a combination of a "tool" that has proved helpful for both the critical processes in the industry as well the household and a "medium" that gives contemporary society a meaning. There is no question whether we should or could or shall ignore it. We cannot resist or struggle against technological innovation, at least not when we keep finding it so attractive and utterly useful. As Rückriem says, "It [computer technology] seems to mark an already ongoing process of new drafts of our societal existence as a whole emerging. Its revolutionary importance is therefore not comparable to any other existing technology. No political revolution is comparable with computer based globalization. This urges us to reflect on digital information and telecommunication technologies as catalysts of a new social system emerging."