This is the pilot episode of what I hope to be a regular podcast in which I learn/teach/share key concepts from my doctoral studies in the Communication, Media, and Learning Technologies Design Program at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Please let me know what you think!

Transcript:

[Card shuffling sound /] [Ding /]

Hi there, you’ve found Learning Media Flashcards, episode 1. For announcements or if you’re new to the show, stick around for the credits.

Right now we’re studying Brian Winston’s chapter “How are media born?” from Questioning the Media: A Critical Introduction. You can find a free version of the chapter at bit.ly/lmfwinston.

Today’s flashcard is … [Ding /] technological determinism.

Technological determinism is a perspective in media theory that views the technology itself as the primary agent of change in the development of new media.

So Winston notes that technological determinist accounts tend to treat every new development as the necessary and maybe sufficient condition for all subsequent change. When you tell the story this way there’s a sense of inevitability. You get phrases like [quote] “The technology was therefore awaiting its moment,” as if silent movies somehow had an inborn desire to have sound added to them and that it was only a matter of time until some rich white guy figured out how to make it happen. That doesn’t actually seem to be how the story actually unfolded.

Technological determinists are also more likely to believe that particular media [quote] “govern the content of communication.” So technology doesn’t just determine what new forms of media will come next…it determines what we’re likely to say with the media we already have.

Winston acknowledges that a weak form of this claim is certainly true—different media communicate different messages in different ways. That’s fair enough. But Winston believes many thinkers take this too far, for instance when Marshall McLuhan seems to claim that the printing press is singlehandedly responsible for “nationalism, industrialism AND mass markets” to name but a few of the pillars of modernity as we know it.

You know who else is a technological determinist? Your obnoxious colleague at happy hour who assures you that Twitter is single-handedly undermining our civic discourse.

You’re probably wondering what alternative Winston proposes. If technology doesn’t determine the development of media and what we say with them, what does? For that, you’ll have to wait for episode 2. [music]

You’ve been listening to Learning Media Flashcards. I’m Kyle Oliver, a graduate student at Teachers College Columbia University trying to podcast my way through a doctorate in educational communication. I hope these audio flashcards are useful for anyone who wants to learn more about media and technology.

Please remember I’m new to this material and sharing it with others to learn it better myself. So I welcome your feedback on Twitter @kmoliver or in the comments at flashcards.kyleoliver.net. I hope to double back to certain topics and to host periodic longer conversations to draw big ideas together.

Special thanks to the Episcopal Church Foundation, Ioana Literat, and Little Glass Men, whose song “Kelp Grooves” serves as our theme music and is published under a Creative Commons Attribution License at freemusicarchive.org. Learn more about this license and other copyright alternatives at creativecommons.org.

Thanks for listening. Back in a flash. [/music]