I have just finished reading Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur, which, together with Paulina Borsook’s Cyberselfish, provides quite a good antidote to the overexcitement of The Long Tail, Wikinomics and a whole range publications about Web 2.0 that marvel in the ‘democratisation’ capacity of technology. Even if Keen’s and Borsook’s books are seen as dystopian (and in my opinion they are not), I think that through their popularity these critical analyses of current online culture are very valuable in encouraging reflection on how technology influences society.
The need for a critical reflection on technology and society stems from the fact that most of society seems to accept the ‘common-sense’ perspective that technology is a human activity which is neutral and ‘value-free’ (values here in the meaning of guiding principles in life) – that it can be used for good ends or bad ones, but by itself it does not encapsulate any values internally.
In contrast, I personally prefer Andrew Feenberg’s analysis in Questioning Technology and Transforming Technology where he suggests that a more complete attitude towards technology must accept that technology encapsulates certain values and that these values should be taken into account when we evaluate the impact of new technologies on our life.
In Feenberg’s terms, we should not separate means from ends and should understand how certain cultural values influence technological projects and end up integrated in them. For example, Wikipedia’s decision to ‘level the playing field’ so experts do not have any more authority in editing content than other contributors should be seen as a an important value judgment, suggesting that expertise is not important or significant or that experts cannot be trusted. Such a point of view does have an impact on a tool that it widely used and therefore influences society.
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