The 18th century to the present has experienced drastic change to economical productivity as a result of Industrial Revolution. This somewhat gives the public an impression that technology has an active role in transforming social change. Agricultural countries like Australia no longer relies on grain exportation, but dominated by service providers spending their time working on how to use technological fads to facilitate their businesses. Apart from our common disgruntles against the notorious Mondays, we are dazzled by the gadgets and entertainment they provides to fill the ‘void’. As what we called time. On one hand, time is almost synonymously to ‘money’ in our society; on the other hand, time is also an enemy we try so hard to ‘kill’. Let alone the irony for a second, technical savvy folks are mostly satisfied with a form of reductive logic which limit our vision to the role of technology and its impact on our society.
The only way out is to follow?
It seems as if all societies are set on the same developmental journey, one which must be follow the route to Post-Industrial Society. Religiously utilising transformative mechanism of economising. Resources are allocated to principles of minimal cost, substitutability, optimisation, and maximisation. A can of locally produced dice tomatoes has raised from 59c to $1.98 since I came out of school but mostly related to the increase of our urban cost of living.
“Dear President, Trust me you wouldn’t want Super-Market to screw the farmers.”
Such blind faith in ‘Productivity’ poses a potential problem to technological innovation: as there are more food coming from fewer farmers and more goods produce by fewer workers, Says Webster.
On the other hand, philosophical critic Raymond Williams believes technology itself does nothing; rather it is how social actors choose to use technology that is crucial. On principle, the internet has the capacity to transforming journalism, academic research, politics and commerce. Nevertheless, we can see such benefit was far to be extracted from its maximum capacity. In other words, the use of technology is the decided by social relationships, e.g. networking between personal hobbies and business interest. However, the way we use technology has not yet proven to have a decisive role on our social relationships.
Freeman says “the internet is neither a determined nor determining technology and its future depends on the result of struggles that take place over both immediate questions e.g. copyright and privacy in cyberspace; and more profound ones concerning the growing market orientation and corporate control of contemporary social life.”
Social power, Interaction and Intention
Williams is particularly interested in the technological decisions about which invention to develop, invest and manufacture. Take the development of television for an example. Instead of seeing television as an isolated invention which has a direct influence on society, the democratic capacity of technologies is in fact, vastly limited by the institutional structure that priorities state or corporate interests.
“The Dreaded Teller-Vision”
Progressive development of technology relies on and reinforces further expansion of trade, through policies predominantly concerned with competition, privacy, massification of entertainment and the role of cities and nation-states. Says Wyatt & Henwood.
It is undeniably correct that high technology becomes virtual weapon for international capitalist enterprises in combat to capture markets and conquer opposition. The intention that structures the way technology applied into our society is much associated with the needs and desires of the most power groups in the society, notably corporation, states, groups or individuals.
“Technology does not determine social change; technology provides instrumentalities and potentialities. The ways that these are used involve social choices.”- Raymond Williams
It’s almost about time for us to pay attention to power conflicts and struggles in the post information society, and the possibilities of intervention and transformation, Says Downey & McGuigan.
The Future of “Axial Principle” in Information Society
Post-industrial society is in fact ‘information society’ characterised by the emergence of professional class of “knowledge worker”, and the way they operate with “intellectual technology” has powerful influence on our society. How do we use technology to transform knowledge and information in the future. According to the “axial principle”, the post-industrial society in the coming future will not be focusing on technology but theoretical scientific knowledge.
“Technology is the driver of history…at once an intention and effect of a particular social order”- Raymond Williams
Entering into the “new” information age, social circumstances surrounding technological development deserves much more attention, such as argument to social movement over trade intensification. Overall, The emergence of a “post-industrial” or “information” society indicates a positive development, accompany by more social planning which dominated by capitalist interests to the welfare system. In the future, the state will be no longer the focus of political struggle, but facing a problem in communal resistance across environmentalization and feminism. The internet and computer-mediated communication offers to transform the fabric of culture to individualised, democratic possibilities for communication and participation. Besides, new communication medium must not limit the capacity of dominant ideology to dominate. The future will be confronting issues such as repressive development of capitalism, the increasing commodification of culture, and growing surveillance and manipulation. -GC
The Visible Plans of The Invisible Hand 