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Introduction The Dialectic of Technological Determinism Is Resistance Futile? Why do we think what we think about computers? A computer is just a tool. Or, more specifically, a medium—a means of processing and communicating information. It lets us do so with incredible speed and efficiency, but in principle, the hardware is as open-ended as a blank piece of paper. Just as the tiny wood fibers of a sheet of paper can absorb ink into any pattern a user might create, the binary circuits of a computer can store any input. But we rarely think of a computer as a “blank slate,” and for good reasons . The writer beginning a manuscript with pencil and paper sees only the blank page, two-dimensional and practically weightless. As I sit here at my computer, on the other hand, the means of production making my intellectual work possible are almost overwhelming: a keyboard clacks at every stroke, a mouse sits off to the side, a heavy monitor takes up much of the desk, and the big, rectangular processor makes whirring, chugging noises (and on rare, unpleasant occasions, suddenly stops working altogether ). My entire office is oriented around the demands of my computer: the keyboard sits on a pull-out shelf to be at the ergonomically correct height for my hands (I have carpal tunnel syndrome), the monitor is positioned to avoid glare from any window, and behind my desk, nests of wires snake from monitor to processor to printer to speakers to modem to phone line to power supply to . . . Of course, the seeming transparency of the act of writing with pencil and paper hides its own complex social processes. The chair and desk had to be built, shipped, and bought. That thin strip of paper began long ago as a tree, before being whittled down, processed, packaged, and sold. As design historian Henry Petroski has shown, even our current pencil is the result of centuries of technological refinement.1 1 And I’ve only been talking about the physical technology. Even more significant is the rich cultural matrix in which any medium is embedded. Learning to use a computer may seem like a daunting task for many; but to use a pen and paper, you need to have learned how to read and write, a far more complex—and still far from universal—skill. In short, it takes a lot of work to produce any “blank slate,” and no two media get there the same way. The difference with computers is that the social processes creating that slate are still visible. Americans don’t take computers for granted yet. This difficulty with computers creates inequity—what’s known as “the digital divide.”2 Some people can comfortably use computers, many others can’t. Since this uneven distribution of technological expertise corresponds so closely to disparate levels of education, wealth, and social status , the importance of computers in contemporary life in many ways reinforces unequal social relations. Well-off kids from the suburbs grow up around computers; poor children are less likely to get that level of exposure . Boys are more likely than girls to be encouraged to explore computing . But the fact that computers aren’t taken for granted yet also offers an opportunity. Users of almost any communications technology are typically alienated from that technology in contemporary society. We read our books, watch TV, talk on the telephone, with very little awareness of how these processes work, or how they might function differently. Science studies theorists such as Bruno Latour, Wiebe Bijker, and Trevor Pinch refer to this as the “black box effect,” through which the choices and conflicts that produce a technological object are hidden in a walledoff machine whose operations are simply taken for granted.3 While most users are alienated from computers, too, the difference is that they know they’re alienated. The very clunkiness of computers creates a level of selfconsciousness about the computing process; there’s no way to pretend it all simply happens “naturally.” Once the use of a technology becomes “natural,” the battle to shape the uses and meanings of that technology is to a large degree finished. Specific systems of practices have become essentialized, so that historically contingent processes are now seen as inherent to the medium. Take the example of television. We all think we know what “television” is. But that’s not what TV had to be. As scholars such as Raymond...

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