Technology usage alone fails to indicate real social power
Evidence
“If this is post-patriarchy,” writes Jodi Dean, “something is missing.” The “something missing” is the economic equity and access to democracy promised by proponents of network society. Unfortunately, the belief that everyone counts in network society—or will, once they are given access—is a naïve one. As Andrew Calcutt points out, technology use alone is a poor indicator of social power: “the CEO who has not got time to send emails and values his privacy so much he refuses to carry a mobile phone, would be counted among the ‘information-poor:’ while the woman working in a call center for little more than the minimum wage, appears in the list of ‘information-rich.’” Yet until this personal data is used as a tool for political action, notes Dean, we will continue to live in a culture that believes “anyone can be discovered, that everyone is unique, that everyone counts, everyone has a voice, that on the Web everyone has a home page.” — Theresa M. Senft, Camgirls, 85
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to media-systems and network-theory criticism strands; echoes arguments from Communication as Culture about access not equaling participation. — connects to: Technology carries no inherent politics; usage determines its effects; Network-society scholarship neglects how new capitalist technologies create collective myths and imaginaries — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 284; Electronics’ core meaning is enlarged social scale and centralizing power, not entertainment — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 556 (+10 more)
Broader Connections
- Technology carries no inherent politics; usage determines its effects
#expands(0.90) - Technology’s liberating or enslaving character is decided politically, not intrinsic
#expands(0.90) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 63 - Internet communication reflects rather than transcends offline power relations
#corroborates(0.90) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 58 - Electronics’ core meaning is enlarged social scale and centralizing power, not entertainment
#corroborates(0.85) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 556 - Technological determinism falsely credits tools alone with causing social change
#expands(0.85) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 59 - Smartphones under communicative capitalism function as workplace tools, not luxury goods
#corroborates(0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1592 - Activist technology and institutional structure are mutually constitutive, not separable
#expands(0.80) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 104 - Network-society scholarship neglects how new capitalist technologies create collective myths and imaginaries
#corroborates(0.78) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 284 - Political change becomes social change only through redirecting technology
#corroborates(0.78) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 801 - Positivists mistook technology’s social regression for scientific progress
#corroborates(0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 827 - Luhmann’s 1975 theory redefined power as communication-steering rather than personal property
#expands(0.75) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 28 - Power functions like a catalyst, not a cause, in social systems
#expands(0.72)