Technological Determinism

In Chapter Two of Baym's "Personal Connections in the Digital Age," she talks mainly about the technological theory called technological determinism. This is the idea that technology enters society as an active force of change and we cannot resist it. Through this theory, technology changes us. 

Baym goes over the idea that technology has the ultimate power to change who we are as humans and our society as a whole. She references the idea that technology is making us stupid. This, however, is nothing new. Socrates claimed that introducing the alphabet would make society stupid. In a way, he was right. Since the alphabet has come into play, humans no longer buy into things unless they are written down. Spoken word has lost credibility and our memories have even faded since we no longer rely on them to remember the things we can write down instead. In much the same way, Nick Carr believes that Google has made him stupid. Now that he has the power to look something up and find the result immediately, his attention span has gotten noticeably worse. He claims that he has a hard time reading for long periods of time before he must change what he is doing in the fear of getting bored. 

I do not think that the problem is about technology changing us; I believe it is about how much we rely on the new technology. I believe that humans can resist a new form of technology by not immediately shifting their total reliance to it. This is evident in the alphabet example. If society accepted the new technology of the alphabet and used it in moderation, the technology would not have altered society so much. Instead, society took the alphabet and put all reliance on it. This reliance is what changed society. The same goes for Nick Carr and most of the world that have access to the internet. If our smart phones and the internet were used in moderation, our society might still be able to read for long periods of time or hold an argument without looking up the answer. Society cannot resist the temptation of technology, but worst of all; we cannot resist the temptation of reliance.