ATS1280 Chap.2 Technology, Determinism and Media Change
Technology, Determinism and Media Change
Media are always technologies even though technologies are not always media, and Monash notes that media technologies have become so representative of technology in general that a technological explanation for media change now arrives automatically. This chapter interrupts that habit.
It starts with disruption, a word that looks like an explanation and is really a label for the thing needing one, and shows what it hides: the financiers, regulators and workers who never appear in the sentence. It then takes apart a live public argument, in which two premises about what artificial intelligence can do are used to reach a conclusion about rules, and lists the five roots the unit gives for that way of talking.
Finally it names technological determinism precisely, as the belief that a technology by itself brings about how people think and how societies are arranged, immediately and on its own account, and replaces it with the position the unit actually holds: technology matters, and it is always shaped by and shaping the rest of society.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Media technologies as the representative case of technology in general
- 02
Disruption as a label rather than an explanation, and the three cases the unit names
- 03
Something does not have to be digital to be a technology
- 04
The case against rules, premise by premise, and the gap it steps over
- 05
Five sources for the narrative: greed, progress, national decline, science fiction, founding claims
- 06
Determinism about technology, defined, and the two words that carry the definition
- 07
The sociotechnical replacement, and how to keep the technology in the argument
Rewrite a determinist claim without losing its content
- 1Diagnose the original against the definition. One technology is the only actor, so the claim is independent; a social outcome follows from a device with nothing in between, so it is direct. Both words apply, which is what makes it determinist.
- 1Restore the other actors named in the week: finance, business and jobs. Advertising revenue rewards engagement, engagement is measured, and measurement selects for content that provokes a response.
- 1Name a mechanism rather than an effect. A ranked feed makes an unchosen comparison group continuously visible and rewards material that provokes reaction, which is something that can be observed rather than assumed.
- 1Say what would defeat it. If engagement ranking were removed and the same pattern persisted, the mechanism is wrong and the explanation lies elsewhere. A claim with no such test has not left the determinist form.
Key terms
- Disruption
- A term used to explain media change by placing a technology in the subject position and an industry in the object position. The unit treats it as the thing to be explained rather than the explanation.
- Sociotechnical account
- An explanation in which technology is one of several interrelated factors rather than an independent force. It keeps the technological attributes of media in the argument while restoring finance, business, regulation and labour to it.
- Narrative of progress
- The assumption that the new supersedes the old as a matter of course. The unit lists it among the sources of confident public claims about technology, alongside commercial interest, national anxiety and science fiction.
Technology, Determinism and Media Change FAQ
Is it determinist to say technology matters at all?
No, and the unit is careful about this. It states that the technological attributes of media are important and that histories of technological change explain a great deal. Determinism is the narrower claim that a technology acts apart from society and brings about social results on its own account, and it is the two words independently and directly that mark it.
Why does the unit use artificial intelligence as the example?
Because the argument is currently visible in public and its structure is unusually clean. Two premises about what a technology can do, that everything is about to be remade and that a rival state is racing for it, are used to reach a conclusion about rules. Nothing in either premise is about rules, and noticing that gap is the transferable skill.
Assessment move
The trap in this chapter is that it is easy to agree with and hard to apply, so drill application rather than agreement. Take three sentences about media change from anywhere outside the unit and run the two word test on each: is the technology acting independently, and is the effect attributed directly? Then repair each one by restoring an actor.
Keep the AI example as a template for argument analysis rather than as a topic, since its value is the shape, a capability premise reaching a regulatory conclusion, which recurs constantly in media policy debate. Be equally suspicious of pessimistic determinism, because a first year essay is far more likely to smuggle it in than the optimistic kind and it is exactly as structurally faulty.
Finally, remember that this chapter is a discipline for the later ones: whenever chapters 3 to 6 give you a technical fact, ask what commercial and legal arrangements had to accompany it.
Working through Technology, Determinism and Media Change in ATS1280? Sia is AskSia’s AI Media and Communications tutor — ask any ATS1280 Technology, Determinism and Media Change question and get a clear, step-by-step explanation grounded in how ATS1280 is taught and assessed. Read this chapter free, then take your hardest questions to Sia.
