Gun’s Don’t Kill People, People Kill People | John Dyer
Chris Ridgeway | 16 Oct 2011 | 10:27
I’m chillin’ on a blog tour promoting From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology by John Dyer. A post from me every week, plus more at host site: ChurchM.ag. Check it out..
Chapter 6: Approach
101 Basics:
“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,”
goes the quote. I first recall it from hand-painted billboards posted at the edges of state highways in rural Illinois. John Dyer uses this as an example of instrumentalism, the idea that technology remains neutral, and that people imbue it with good or bad. He disagrees. So do I.
“Technology makes us…”
is the other side, more technically known as technological determinism. This is the view that technology is the leading force in societal change, and what people are believing when they wish away new technologies that are supposedly causing problems (TV is making us fat!).
Which is right? (Dyer says: middle way).
Read the rest of the blog tour at ChurchMag –>
301 Level Critique. (more for the nerds)
I fall closer to the technological determinism side. I wonder if Dyer would too if he changed his definition a bit. He focuses mostly on the individualistic effects of technologies (e.g. my cell phone makes me over-available), and he says determinism might say that we don’t have a choice, we must answer. But this isn’t the kind of determinism I’ve ever read about. What is might be more accurate is to day that determinism says that your individual choice to answer or not answer becomes insignificant in the wave of ecological change that the cell phone brings as a whole. Put another way, plenty of my friends who are dads started out with “I’m not gonna answer that thing,” but now would be in serious trouble with the wife if they didn’t pick up. This isn’t technology forcing their personal choice. This is technology remaking societal expectations in relationships (and that’s in the short run!).
I also think that technological determinism and societal values, which Dyer sets as disparate instigators for change are often inseparable when looking at effects. Does the value make the technology or the technology make the value? Both! The recipe required both for the change to occur. To take Dyer’s example—cars in America vs. individualism as a American value—the individualism might have existed prior to the cars, but you didn’t see the wide-scale change until the cars were mixed in. Oh, and the interstate system.
Chris, thanks for the great pushback on this chapter.
I think I’d basically be in total agreement with you on the relationship between determinism and values and ends. I like to call it “Tendency Theory” which is basically what you describe with cell phones. Once enough people choose to use a technology, the values of the society change and that pushes a person to do something (pick up the phone) although it never forces them to.
With cars, I tried to show how the reception of a technology is different based on the preexisting values of that society. Americans were already individualist so the car reinforced that, whereas Europeans liked to stay in their cities so they didn’t take to cars as quickly.
So yes, I’d propose some kind of middle road that takes both societal transformation and personal choice seriously.
John – yeah, I’ll admit that the European cars example as a pretty good one (I hadn’t run into it before).
I think my point on the societal vs personal is that this isn’t exactly the actual boxing match in question. In any given situation, and person can make a choice against the status quo, etc. (heck, I know people that won’t get on planes!). I think personal choice isn’t in jeopardy or even in focus with technological determinism. Isn’t it more the idea that, among the things that have the ability to move great societies over time–philosophy, war, art, nature–that human technological advance is one of the most striking and undeniable forces for change.