Mac201 Tech Lect 2009 10 Sem1

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Youtube

Technology mediates boundaries between public and private sphere TV brought distant events into the home Social media changed how we communicate?

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1. Technology drives human development

2. Reliance upon technology

3. Technology as revolutionary

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Technology has become a ‘powerful material and symbolic force’ (Mackay, 1997: 263)

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Technology assumed to have a determining affect on society (see McLuhan, ‘the medium is the message/mass age).

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‘My fear is that these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment’ Neuroscientist Professor Susan Greenfield talking about

social media 2009 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ Listen to her: Guardian Tech Weekly

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‘The effects of a technology … are not determined by its production, its physical form or its capability. Rather than being built into the technology, these depend on how they are consumed, and this consumption takes place in contextin context’ Mackay, 1997: 263

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% of people in daily activity

Average mins per person per day

‘‘the most single influential theory of the the most single influential theory of the relationship between technology and society’ relationship between technology and society’ SStone agetone age Iron ageIron age Steam ageSteam age Information ageInformation age

Mackenzie & Wajcman, 1985/1999: 4Mackenzie & Wajcman, 1985/1999: 4

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Technologies become enshrined in cultural associations

Video games and gender?

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Technologies become enshrined in cultural associations

Computing and social status?

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Technologies become enshrined in cultural associations

Technology as democratising?

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Empirical studies needed

See this week’s case studies folder on SunSpace

Computing (Lally)

Social networking (boyd, Livingstone)

Video games (Ashton, Thornham, Royse et al)

Television (Evans)

iPod (Bull)

http://www.participations.org

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The PR campaign for launch evoked the hype (technological determinism?)

Success of the technology can be measured by sales?

Does each sale equate a satisfied customer?

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Short-term market growth

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Source: Foresman, 2009, asrstechnica

Short-term market growth

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Source: Foresman, 2009, asrstechnica

Grant and Tybout (2008) suggest pre-release hype makes people much more careful about what they buy

The element of surprise spurs impulse consumption

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Shirky (2008)

social media technology rewriting ‘top down’ models of communication

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Facebook vs HSBC

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The technology of social media was used to leverage collective power against HSBC

Facebook/technology as a powerful material and symbolic force (Mackay, 1997), but still dependent on human agency.

Technology as democratising?

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Charles Arthur, 2008, ‘Why Apple's secretive approach is so effective’, The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/feb/21/apple.marketingandpr

George E. Belch and Michael A. Belch, 2001, Advertising and Promotion, McGraw-Hill/Irwin

Bill Gates, 1995, The Road Ahead, London: Viking

Susan Grant and Alice Tybout, 2008, ‘The Effect of Temporal Frame on Information Considered in New Product Evaluation: The Role of Uncertainty’, Journal Of Consumer Research

Nada Kakabadse, 2007, ‘The rise of technology addiction’, Click, BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/6411495.stm

Philip Kitchen, 1997, Public Relations, Principles and Practice, International Thomson Business Press

Donald Mackenzie and Judy Wajcman (eds.), 1984/1999, The Social Shaping of Technology, Buckingham: Open University Press

Hugh Mackay (ed), 1997, Consumption and Everyday Life, Open University Press

Clay Shirky, 2008, Here Comes Everyone: The Power of Organizing without Organizations, Allen Lane

Frank Webster, 1996, ‘The Information Age: what’s the big idea’, Renewal, vol 4 no 1.

UK Statistics Authority, 2006, ‘Time use survey 2005’, http://www.statistics.gov.uk/articles/nojournal/time_use_2005.pdf

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Putting product before people is a mistake

Technology thought of as a ‘magic bullet’

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