THE AMBIVALENCE DEEPENS
THE AMBIVALENCE DEEPENS
From the nineteenth century onward, the relationship between progress, technology, and the individual has become increasingly problematic. Despite the speed of technological innovation in the twentieth century, western society is still in love with the idea of now-ness; our vocabulary is fairly littered with terms such as breakthrough, groundbreaking, and cutting edge. As a society, we still treat the new as a break from the past; we still equate it with progress, and we still act as though
18 Evelyn Ellerman
progress will bring us a better world. We feel both a fi nancial and moral impera- tive to embrace the new. But we are also haunted by the effects of the technology on the individual and society as a whole. We feel it divorces us from nature, that it prevents us from knowing ourselves, that it controls our lives.
In The Spirit of the Web: The Age of Information from Telegraph to Internet, Wade Rowland (1997) writes that the more complex society becomes, the more neces- sary it is to develop methods of maintaining control. Communication and broadcast technologies are designed to do just that: they control people within a context of compliance. In all technologies of mass communication except the telephone, the Internet, and some forms of radio, the communication is organized in one direction, with only the illusion of contribution and control by the audience.
Franklin agrees that technology in general and communication technologies in particular are not neutral, but catalysts for control. She claims that technology is usually introduced to the general public in two stages. In the fi rst stage, the technol- ogy is an option for the wealthy, the specialist, or the enthusiast. It often appears to
be liberating; its promoters claim that it will free users in some way or make their jobs/lives easier. There is frequently an attempt to make the technology appear “user-friendly” in order to calm fear of the new. User communities such as clubs and specialist magazines are established. In this early phase, the users who have cho- sen the technology feel a strong degree of control. Franklin uses the introduction of a range of technologies as examples of this process: the automobile, TV dinners, the sewing machine, baby formula, and the computer.
The next phase in the introduction of new technologies is the introduc- tion of infrastructure. As the new technology becomes more broadly accepted, its use becomes more necessary, if not mandatory. She points to the develop- ment of the sewing machine. In 1861, the sewing machine was advertised as a great liberator for women. No longer would they have to ruin their eyes hand- sewing their family’s clothing. Once employers realized the speed at which these new machines could accomplish the task, a factory system was organized, operating a sewing machine became a requirement for the seamstress, and the slavelike conditions of the garment trade were the result. In the second stage, people become “captive supporters of both the technology and the infrastruc- tures” (p. 97). The infrastructures themselves, she writes, are developed so that the technologies are easier to use and so that people will “develop a dependency on them” (p. 102). Freeways are an example of infrastructures that support a dependency on the automobile.
Franklin and Rowland remind us that the introduction of communication technologies has followed the general technological pattern outlined previously. From the telegraph to the radio to the Internet and CD-ROM, most communica- tion technologies were developed fi rst for military and then for commercial use. In most cases, governments have enabled, constructed, or maintained the distribution networks for these technologies in concert with a commercial monopoly (or at
1 The Internet in Context
least a very restricted competitive fi eld). They are therefore deeply implicated in the effects those technologies have on society, even though they may take pains to assume a neutral, or regulatory, distance from the technologies.