18 The New Ecology
the opposite is true. For them, the notion that technology is the key
driver of transformations of human society and culture are self- evident
truths, whereby as technologies stabilise so they determine users’ behaviours. To give merely one example, though an important one, in
an ambitious post in February 2017, Mark Zuckerberg argued that by
building a global network, by providing the infrastructure that allowed
people to communicate more immediately, Facebook is “bringing us
closer together and building a global community”.
31
Tools for faster –
effectively instantaneous – communication will encourage us to behave
as though we are part of a worldwide community. This approach, in
the form of hard determinism, tends towards what Claude Fischer calls
a “billiard ball” impact analysis of such relations: as a technology is
introduced and adopted, so user behaviour ricochets away in a clearly
defined response.
32
Fischer is right to draw attention to critics of such
hard determinism, who point out that the assumption that technology
is somehow “outside” society and thus able to have a clean and obvious
impact upon that society is a flawed one. Nor is this something necessarily new. Merrit Roe Smith argues that the belief in technological
determinism dates back to the industrial revolution at least, an assumption whose European roots grew more deeply in America so that by the
early twentieth century, advertisers and industrialists “quickly mastered
the idea of the technological fix”
33
The folly of Zuckerberg’s particular
technological fix in the light of the presidential election of 2016 will be
the subject of a later chapter, but it is also worth commenting on that
he suffers from this misconception of technology as separate to society,
to history, as something outside which operates on culture and human
behaviour, the billiard ball which can ricochet us into the right pocket if
only we can control the levers of that technology. As Nicholas Carr correctly observes, Zuckerberg can only entertain the notion of a planetary
community because he fundamentally misunderstands what community
means, that communities nearly always comprise groups of individuals who have found a way to get along despite sometimes fundamental
differences of opinion and belief, or which, as in the case of religious
communities, may be oppositional to the communities in which they
find themselves.
34
In order for his technological fix around community
to have the remotest chance of working, Zuckerberg must reduce it – as
indeed many theorists of online communities have since the 1990s – to
being synonymous with communication. If community equals communication, then enhancing communication will ricochet into a superior
community and Zuckerberg’s ideal is perhaps best referred to as the field
of dreams model: build it and he will come.
35
Such comments are not intended necessarily to fixate upon Zuckerberg alone: it is a common mindset among the masters of the new digital
universe, and Martin Bauer observes that the digital economy relies on
a “hall of heroes” whereby the “fables” of billionaire philanthropists
the opposite is true. For them, the notion that technology is the key
driver of transformations of human society and culture are self- evident
truths, whereby as technologies stabilise so they determine users’ behaviours. To give merely one example, though an important one, in
an ambitious post in February 2017, Mark Zuckerberg argued that by
building a global network, by providing the infrastructure that allowed
people to communicate more immediately, Facebook is “bringing us
closer together and building a global community”.
31
Tools for faster –
effectively instantaneous – communication will encourage us to behave
as though we are part of a worldwide community. This approach, in
the form of hard determinism, tends towards what Claude Fischer calls
a “billiard ball” impact analysis of such relations: as a technology is
introduced and adopted, so user behaviour ricochets away in a clearly
defined response.
32
Fischer is right to draw attention to critics of such
hard determinism, who point out that the assumption that technology
is somehow “outside” society and thus able to have a clean and obvious
impact upon that society is a flawed one. Nor is this something necessarily new. Merrit Roe Smith argues that the belief in technological
determinism dates back to the industrial revolution at least, an assumption whose European roots grew more deeply in America so that by the
early twentieth century, advertisers and industrialists “quickly mastered
the idea of the technological fix”
33
The folly of Zuckerberg’s particular
technological fix in the light of the presidential election of 2016 will be
the subject of a later chapter, but it is also worth commenting on that
he suffers from this misconception of technology as separate to society,
to history, as something outside which operates on culture and human
behaviour, the billiard ball which can ricochet us into the right pocket if
only we can control the levers of that technology. As Nicholas Carr correctly observes, Zuckerberg can only entertain the notion of a planetary
community because he fundamentally misunderstands what community
means, that communities nearly always comprise groups of individuals who have found a way to get along despite sometimes fundamental
differences of opinion and belief, or which, as in the case of religious
communities, may be oppositional to the communities in which they
find themselves.
34
In order for his technological fix around community
to have the remotest chance of working, Zuckerberg must reduce it – as
indeed many theorists of online communities have since the 1990s – to
being synonymous with communication. If community equals communication, then enhancing communication will ricochet into a superior
community and Zuckerberg’s ideal is perhaps best referred to as the field
of dreams model: build it and he will come.
35
Such comments are not intended necessarily to fixate upon Zuckerberg alone: it is a common mindset among the masters of the new digital
universe, and Martin Bauer observes that the digital economy relies on
a “hall of heroes” whereby the “fables” of billionaire philanthropists