Techno-pessimists and techno-optimists share flawed determinist and exceptionalist assumptions

Evidence

While much work on Web 2.0 tends to stress its positive aspects, an increasing number of popular books take the opposite approach. Andrew Carr’s The Shallows argues that social media, text messaging, and web browsing are distracting people and making it difficult to concentrate. Former cyberutopian Jaron Lanier claims in You Are Not a Gadget that values “baked in” to social media technologies emphasize robotic conformity over expressive individualism. Andrew Keen’s Cult of the Amateur contends that user-generated culture is dreck that crowds out expertise. While these books can be provocative and engaging, they often make the same rhetorical moves as Web 2.0 supporters. In other words, they fall into both digital exceptionalist and technologically determinist traps, the difference being that for these authors, the effects of social technologies are uniformly bad (Keen especially goes off the rails, blaming Web 2.0 for child pornography and online poker). Rather than drawing from empirical data, both techno-optimists and techno-pessimists extrapolate grand, singular theories about technology. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 60

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘digital exceptionalist’ and ‘technologically determinist’ traps and shows both polar positions fall into them.
• XREF: connects to: Technological determinism falsely credits tools alone with causing social change — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 59; Technological determinism is a fiction; context shapes technology use — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 59

Broader Connections

• Technological determinism is a fiction; context shapes technology use #corroborates (0.83) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 59