Tech determinism is the idea that a society’s technology determines the development of its social systems & cultural values.

According to this theory, accelerated globalisation is inevitable because of the accessibility to and ubiquitousness of technology - innovation in tech is the dominant driver of social change.

Marx supported this: he believed that 1) tech is the primary influence on human social relations [& organisational structure], and 2) social and cultural relations revolve around the technological/economic base of society. That is, he believed that tech shapes structure of social relations.

This was in the 1800s - today we're in 2020*. If technological determinism was true in the 1800s, based on the law of accelerating returns, it must be exponentially true-er now.

Is tech determinism true though?

Yes - at least to a degree. That the development of new technology influences the structure of society (and has for the last 200+ years) seems like a fair assumption.

But interestingly, today this seems to be true at the level of the individual as well: we’re experiencing a shift to a form of technological determinism where technology disproportionally affects an individual’s relational identity & individual self-concept.

1800s - Enabling tech didn’t exist for a singular person's identity or experience to be uniquely shaped by a customised technological experience; no existence or conception of a digital identity.

Today - Digital identity is abstract, but can be tied to our social media accounts. It’s limited to text, pictures, videos of how we represent ourselves online. We have different apps to showcase various aspects of who we are (IG is reserved for curated aesthetics, appearances, and social signaling; twitter for building a portfolio of takes and high-frequency commentary, and LinkedIn for verifying the legitimacy of professional experiences), the composite of which make up our digital identity; an identity whose value is governed by arbitrary quantitative social appraisals (likes, comments, and engagement metrics).

What’s different from 1800 is that we’ve solved for accessibility, so technology has impacts at the level of an individual, in addition to the broader structure of society. 200 years ago, tech had the power to impact populations and guide cultural values. Then, computers got faster, smaller, and closer in proximi...

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