What is Technology?

What is Technology?

As we begin our exploration of the social dynamics of communications technology several questions arise: Just what is technology? How does it impact communication? How does communication impact technology? What is the interplay between technology and human interaction? This posting is an attempt to answer those questions through the lenses of Lengel, Thurlow and Tomic (2009) and Postman (1998), focusing specifically on the genesis and maturation of PowerPoint technology.

            To answer the question as to just what technology is, we need to develop a working definition of technology. Lengel, Thurlow and Tomic (2009) provide a working definition as coined by the International Technology Education Association in the United States.  The ITEA’s broad definition of technology as “how people modify the natural world to suit their own purposes” (p. 25), gives us a starting-off point. Let’s take a look at the components of this broad working definition. The key components of this definition are people, modifying the natural world, and suiting one’s own purposes.

People

            Notice how the working definition begins with people. Technology, as Lengel, Thurlow and Tomic (2009) rightly argue, does not pop out of the sky as if a gift of Divine Providence. Rather, smart people look out at the world, see the challenges presented in the world, especially the challenges to the workplace, and respond to those challenges by attempting to develop new ways to make their work easier, more efficient, and more cost-effective. In the end, it’s all about the almighty dollar. So, technology begins with people. Put another way, technology begins in the culture.  Microsoft’s PowerPoint technology, for example, as Encyclopedia Brittanica (2011) explains, was created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin for Apple Macintosh in 1987.  Gaskins and Austin did not create PowerPoint—originally called Presenter (Encyclopedia Brittanica, 2011)—in a vacuum just for the fun of it. Rather, the technology sprang forth as a cultural response. The response is what I take up next in this paper.

Modifying the Natural World

            As history exemplifies, cultures tend to act and then react to dominant ways of thinking and behaving. In literature, for example, each “ism” is a reaction to a dominant and prevailing philosophy. American Romanticism, for example, and its back-to-nature philosophy was a reaction against the heady American Rationalism that led to the gritty Industrial Revolution. The lifespan of a given technology works much in the same way.  People react to dominant questions or concerns, or—in the case of the corporate world—lack of efficiency and convenience. This reaction takes the form of some modification of the natural world in order to answer the questions and concerns, or to make our world more efficient and convenient. This phenomenon illustrates a movement from culture to technology. The technology is the response to a cultural request to modify the natural world.

While at Apple, Gaskins and Austin were presented with a problem: how to facilitate visual demonstrations for group presentations in a business environment. Before the advent of computer-generated projections, business presenters were faced with having to carry around posters, easels, and transparencies—relatively minor inconveniences—a problem that Apple attempted to solve and to find their own market share of this new technology. Franklin (1990), as described in Lengel, Thurlow and Tomic (2009), sees this attempt at making business presentations more convenient as an example of a typical first step in the stages of a technological advancement (p.37). But after the technology is developed, people begin to use it, and it begins to be passed around outside of its intended market.  I take up this phenomenon next in this paper.

Suiting One’s Own Purposes

            A close look at the lifespan of technologies reveals a tendency for the technologies to metamorphose into something completely different than what they are originally intended to do. As Lengel, Thurlow and Tomic (2009) put it, there is a tension between what technologies are designed to do, and what people actually do with them (p. 37). Although Gaskins and Austin designed PowerPoint for a particular market, it began to be used for other purposes than business presentations.  As educators, for example, adapted the technology, PowerPoint’s intended venue, scope, and audience were suddenly different; therefore, the technology needed revising. After Apple sold PowerPoint to Microsoft, Microsoft had to respond to this call for revision. As a result, as Hewitt (2008) recaps, PowerPoint has gone through ten revisions since 1988. Franklin (1990) would see these revisions as the second step in the stages of a technological advancement. So, we can see that the advances illustrate a dynamic that moves from culture to technology back to culture, as users change the scope, venue, and audience of the given technology.

            As the venue, scope, and audience (and users) of a given technology broaden by its increased usage, the technology becomes more engrained in the general culture.  As Franklin (1990) puts it, the technology forces us to use it, and we become dependent on its usage (Lengel, Thurlow & Tomic, 2009, p. 37).  Here is where people can be tempted to get on one of two bandwagons. One can either adopt what Judy Berland (as stated in Lengel, Thurlow & Tomic, 2009, p. 39) calls a cyberutopian philosophy of naively equating technology with progress, or one can adopt a technological determinist view (as stated in Lengel, Thurlow & Tomic, 2009, p. 40), namely, that the advances in technology necessarily determine cultural and societal transformation (many times, to the culture’s detriment). The former is utopian. The latter is more dystopian. Neither extreme view is particularly helpful in understanding a healthy interplay between technology and communication. Yes, technology, as Postman (1998) argues is not additive. It changes everything. But the change happens much differently than the utopians and the dystopians think.  Technology is both mover and moved. It is both shaker and shaken. Scientists and engineers both develop and refine technology. They develop the original prototype in response to a problem in a specific segment of the culture. They refine it after new and broader segments of the culture exponentially change its usage. So, depending on the phase of development, scientists and engineers are responsible in very different ways to the culture that calls upon them to develop and refine their technologies.

 The other danger, as I see it, is that during this process, a technology naturally becomes, as Standage (as stated in Lengel, Thurlow & Tomic, 2009, p, 39) argues, “invisible”, or as Postman (1998) puts it, “mythic” and “god-like.” When the technology becomes so engrained in our lives, we tend not to notice it. Anything that loses itself is no longer scrutinized. And that is the danger. My students, for example,  assume PowerPoint is going to be used in our classes. They assume they will use it, and I will use it. They know every little nuance of the technology, and can make it do whatever they want it to do. It has become “invisible” for them, just as “invisible” as picking up their telephones. But is the technology increasing the ease with which these students are able to deliver well-designed presentations (it’s original purpose), and is it facilitating student learning (its purpose as shaped by its usage)? These are interesting questions illustrating how the scientists and engineers at Microsoft shape and are shaped by a cultural need.

References

Hewitt, J. (2008, October 29). MS PowerPoint: From humble beginnings to business
     meeting standard. Retrieved October 30, 2011, from Bright Hub website:
     http://www.brighthub.com/office/collaboration/articles/13189.aspx.

Lengel, L., Thurlow, C., & Tomic, C. (2009). Computer mediated communication:
     Social interaction and the internet. Los Angeles, CA: Sage. (Original work
     published 2004).

Microsoft PowerPoint. (2011). In Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Retrieved from
     http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1491611/Microsoft-PowerPoint.

Postman, N. (1998, March 27). Five things we need to know about technological
     change. Keynote speech presented at a gathering of theologians and
     religious leaders., Denver, CO.

What is Technology?

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