Lecture: Technological Determinism: Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in a sociology class. Professor: We've been talking about social change, what drives it, how it comes about. And now, I'd like to talk about a theory that proposes that technology, the technological advances can cause social change. It's a theory that's been widely debated. It's called technological determinism. Proponents of technological determinism believe that technology causes social change, independent of other societal influences, like culture, economics, political events. And that the development of new technology, which could be anything from the alphabet to the Internet, drive the evolution of our society and help shape who we are. Now, you know that societal change does occur as a result of new technologies. Take the printing press, soon after it's invention in Germany in the mid-15th century, literacy rate rose, the notion of authorship became more important. And in Europe, local languages became standardized, as they became the language of publication. But I must point out that something is caused by a technology are not immediately apparent. Some theories claim that the invention of the printing press led to the subsequent scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries because of the increased communication between scientists. And of course, we generally think of these changes positive and something good. But that's not really the point. Technological determinism doesn't address whether a particular technology or the change caused by that technology is positive or negative. It simply maintains that once the technology is available, change is inevitable, regardless of other societal influences. In fact, technological determinism purport that not only is change inevitable, but the society cannot resist the changes. They ... were unable to do anything to prevent them. But opponents of technological determinism look at the source of change. They feel that a technological innovation doesn't just come out of nowhere until society, what you have to have first, is a society that somehow ready for a technological innovation, not just technologically ready, but a logically or culturally ready. The opponents argue that the technologies themselves are the products of their society, not independent of them. And we can find examples in the visual arts to support the proposing point of view. The ancient Greeks understood the techniques of perspective. They knew how to make a painting look three dimensional, because you could say they have the technology. But they didn't employ the technique because in Greek culture at the time was wrong to ... huh ... a viewer into thinking that a painting was real. Opponents of technological determinism would say that before the ancient group to start using the technique – perspective, something in Greek society had to change. And let's look at the invention of photography. Learning of the chemical and mechanical elements involved in photography existed before the first photographs were taken in the nineteenth century, in fact, different inventors in different parts of Europe has made similar discoveries that contributed to the invention of photography. But some art historians have claimed that painting trend in the west before the 19th century, actually delayed the beginning of photography. Before the advent of photography, who just usually painted grand things, like a battle or a scene from mythology. But in the 19th century, you begin to have this movement not exactly towards realism, because people had been realistic for some time. It was more a movement toward thinking realistic scenes that were natural, not rigidly composed. Artist now want to capture spontaneous moment for everyday life. Take a look at this painting. It's by a 19th century France impressionist. In English, it's called Ball at the Moulin de la Galette. Notice how spontaneous this scene is. It's a picture of a moment in these people's lives, not unlike a photograph you might see in a family photo album. So opponents of technological determinism would say that photography, at least photography as an art form, means about in part, because the society was ready to embrace as art the everyday object that the camera can capture. Now, I'm not saying that the technological determinism are wrong. They're right that new technologies bring about social changes. It's just that this other group, sensiblely, I think ...