Culture and Technology

This book, by two Australian academics, is in essence an extensive review of writings on the relationship of culture and technology. Murphie and Potts “do not provide a dominant ‘line’ to explain the cultural impact of technology. Rather, [they] discuss a wide range of theoretical perspectives …”. Their book is an excellent introduction to the subject as discussed by many of the numerous writers who have contributed to it. Some 240 references are cited.

The impact of technology on culture is so pervasive – indeed, all‐invasive – that we are apt not to notice it. Both “culture” and “technology” are impossible to pin down either in precise meaning or at a particular point, because they are dynamic. The terms are relatively recent in their present senses: technology used to mean “the study of the arts”, and culture “cultivation”. The authors approve of Eno's very basic and broad definition of “culture” as “everything we do not have to do” (e.g. “we have to eat, but we do not have to have cuisines”).

As the Introduction and chapter 1, “Theoretical frameworks” say, technology has always had an impact on culture: as the various media for communication have changed, so has the matter communicated. Obvious examples are the invention of printing and of computers. Some, notably Marshall McLuhan, have argued that “the medium is the matter”. His and Baudrillard's technological determinism is balanced by the “cultural materialism” of Raymond Williams and others, who see culture as largely determining technology (the invention of printing in China had little effect because the culture was not able or willing to accept it). There are various positions in between. As the authors say, there are plenty of examples of a new technology having major effects on culture (e.g. mobile phones), and also many where long‐term cultural change has led to the development of a new technology. It is not a question of either technology or culture having an overriding influence on the other; they continually interact.

Chapter 2 deals with the influence of technology on the visual arts. Of more direct interest to the LIS community is the next chapter, on “Digital aesthetics” – how digital technology has affected the ways we create and communicate. Among the various issues covered are copyright and the concept of “author”; we are reminded that the concept of “author” does not exist in some cultures and that IT is changing it, since digital artefacts are dynamic (photographs, once viewed as reliable records of visual events, can easily be manipulated), and collaboration (sometimes with unknown others) is frequent. IT and media technology also allow – indeed, encourage – the creation of totally new forms, chiefly in the visual arts and music. Steven Johnson has pointed out that the “interface culture” means that “a machine was imagined not as an attachment to our bodies, but as an environment, a space to be explored”. Also, both a time dimension and a space dimension have been added by technology (both have been exploited in the presentation of text). Relevant to the effect of technology on communication is a recent (January 2003) finding that children are losing the habit of talking with others because they spend so much time watching TV.

The chapter on “Science fictions” starts with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and works through Karel Capek's robots and H.G. Wells’ utopias to the dystopias of Zamyatin, Huxley and Orwell, pointing out that most modern fiction is distinctly dystopian. It ends with a quotation from J.G. Ballard: “Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use these languages, or we remain mute”. From here the book moves on to concepts of the cyborg and the relationship of technology with the human body, including the possible takeover of the operations of the body.

And not only the body but the mind: the chapter on “Technology, thought and consciousness” covers evolutionary psychology, the problem of consciousness, the use of machine models to understand the mind, reductionism, the “universal machine”, and artificial intelligence. Technology is affecting the way we think, and also the way we perceive thought and the workings of the brain. And if, as the authors say, computers influence the way people write, so even more do email and text messaging on mobile phones, which encourage short messages and little care for spelling or grammar. Technology goes further, as it has an impact on the sense of self. Artificial memory, stored in records of various kinds, both enhances and interacts with our individual memories. These developments can be seen as largely negative (e.g. by Raymond Barglow) or positive (e.g. by Sherry Turkle). But the most attention in this chapter is directed to Heidegger, specifically to his 1977 essay “The question concerning technology”, which, inter alia, distinguishes between “technicity” (technology in itself) and “techne”, which is subservient to culture. Heidegger, a pessimist, nevertheless sees a way out of technicity through technology's “saving power”. The authors end the chapter itself hopefully: “We can create – and think – the new with machines. We do not have to see them as destroying the old”.

The next chapter ranges still further, to the effect of technology on sovereignty and the erosion of the nation state. It can be used to impose order on the world or to impose control and values; the questions are who is to do the imposing, whose values, by what right, and in what way – highly topical issues. The last – the method of control – is bound to be mainly if not exclusively military – a “total war machine”. As the previous chapter focused on Heidegger, so this one deals extensively with Manuel Castells and his profound and hugely influential book The Rise of the Network Society. Castells does not see technology and culture as separable but as constantly interacting. He also sees “informationalism” as a new “mode of development” in human society, and a replacement of the mass media by interactive networks.

The final chapter, “Living with the virtual”, uses as its first focus Felix Guattari, whose 1995 essay “On machines” rewrites the concept of “ecology”, identifying three ecologies: the environment, the subject or self, and the “socius”. What, Murphie and Potts ask, “do we wish to conserve in our new configuring of the world?” – not in the sense of pickling, but as a system of relationships, etc. The second focus of the chapter is Jean‐François Lyotard's book The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Knowledge is made exterior to the “knower” by technologies affecting its production and transmission, and thus becomes “a power sold to the highest bidder”, “mobile and subject to piracy”. The “true goal of the system … is the optimisation of the global relation between input and output – in other words, performativity”. Although we are all more and more”’nodal points’ of specific communication circuits” through which messages pass, we are not entirely powerless over the messages. The tendency to exclude anything that does not perform is something that has become more familiar since Lyotard wrote in 1979.

The book has no conclusions, perhaps because the authors generally keep silent about their own views. My own very brief one, for what it is worth, is that technology, which used to be seen as progress (albeit with shortcomings), has in the last 50 years tended to be viewed as either neutral or destructive as it has invaded every aspect of life and culture, including language and thought. We have to accept it as a permanent dynamic force and interact with it. This has a crucial effect on culture, society, ourselves (and our selves), politics (national and supranational) and the future of the planet. Technology can be liberating, controlling or destroying; which of the three turns out to dominate remains to be seen.

Wide‐ranging though the book is, I missed any discussion of the effect of technology on teaching and learning; which receives one tiny mention. The effects, which are already being experienced, will profoundly affect the way we learn and handle knowledge in future, and thus have a wider cultural influence.

The book is almost free from misprints, but not from several grammatical lapses, e.g. the preterite of “bid” (as in “bid for”) is not “bade” but “bid” (p. 20). Also, on p. 63, “Ondes Martinet” should be “ondes Martenot”. An article by Foucault mentioned on p. 67 is not referenced. The index is barely adequate. If one suspects that some of the writings covered use sociological jargon to conceal a paucity of original thought, that is not the fault of Murphie and Potts, but it has to be said that they are exceptionally reluctant to pass judgement.

The reader should by now have gained some idea of the scope and nature of Culture and Technology. It is not cheap, but it is highly concentrated, and I know of no other book that covers this massively important field (more of a country than a field) so thoroughly and clearly. If the above review leaves readers breathless, the book will do the same: of its nature it is not easy or speedy reading. If some of the review is confusing, it is because I wanted to convey in a small space something of its nature and to entice readers to look at the book itself. It not only summarises and leads to many other writers; it is in itself a good starter for thinking about some of the many issues addressed. While little of it is directly relevant to the LIS world, it deals with much of the world in which LIS has increasingly to operate, and thus is important reading for us all. I shall personally return to it repeatedly.