#3577 Created Updated 11/21/2015
Abstract: “Technological Determinism” is described in historical analysis as a force that acts on the course of history. It is also reflected within a long-standing millennialist religious ideology, and it is an active component of contemporary high-tech business practice and rhetoric. The theory of technological determinism relies on technology as the driver of development of social structures and cultural values. The term as used in historical analysis can seem to lend agency to technology itself as a driver of, or as sets of conditions on, collective human behavior. Historians see patterns in the trends of history that are influenced by the development and spread of technology, forces that seem as potentially potent as many of the other “determinisms” that haunt analysis of history (behavioral, biological, compatibilistic, environmental, fatalistic, dialectical idealistic, dialectical materialistic, logical, linguistic, memorial, physical, psychological, religious, spatiotemporal, etc.).
note 20151121 historian's view is distorted by their vision. becasue they look across time, they see (infer, assume, mistake) patterns for meaning. the patterns are not the meaning; the patterns are the effect of the meaning.
The term as used in discussions of millennialism illuminates the resurrectional Christian practitioners of the “useful arts” who believe technology is the path to the second coming of Christ. The term and concept, as employed by contemporary high-tech businesses, sell a bright, improving future achieved through technological improvement and expansion.
