Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism

"A collection of essays from 1994, called Does Technology Drive History? It’s fascinating reading because it brings together mostly historians of technology and a handful of philosophers, who approach the question of determinism from different perspectives. You have Marxist historians, economic historians, feminist historians, business historians who look at the evolution of industry, all of whom are trying to answer the question of whether certain technologies influence the course of history and if so, how? On a very basic level it seems the answer is that all technologies influence history: because they change things, and they are used by humans to pursue different goals, sometimes more effectively. Sure, but the big question is: is there any vector you can identify in which history is evolving specifically under the pressure or influence of technology? I am particularly interested in this question and that’s why I like these essays. For example, for almost two decades now you have a lot of people claiming that the internet will lead to democratisation, and will undermine certain societies. There are all sorts of assumptions built into our analysis of technology, about how if we let the internet go as it is without censorship, certain governments will fall within five or six years. That actually influences policy quite a bit because it forces policymakers to allocate resources. If you think that the internet is really a driving force for democracy around the globe then we shouldn’t really worry about WikiLeaks, all the saboteurs or whatever, let’s just sit back and not control the internet and wait until Ahmadinejad is kicked out of office by a Twitter revolution. When the book came out there were people fascinated by the power of the internet who thought it would create a new public sphere, and the mailing list will be the new polis, and all sorts of nonsense. So this book provided an interesting pushback against that cybertopianism very early on, because it was all historians who had studied previous technologies from the wheel to the clock to nuclear power, and it was a very useful combination of analysis and criticisms of the ways in which we talk about technology and its social impact."