There is no neutral?

“Gear Stick” by Hannah Gilbert (CC-BY-2.0)

I wanted to respond to something Ioannis said during Tuesday’s tutorial about the web being “neutral” and “mirroring” traits seen outside of digital environments. I was reminded of Kranzberg’s (1986, p. 545) statement that technology is “neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.” In other words, the web does not make people behave in a particular way, but people and the web mutually shape each other. The other point I would make is that this mutual shaping is different for different people in different circumstances, which means that it is problematic to assume any kind of standard effect of any given technology. In any case, people use the same technology in quite different ways – think about the difference between how you use email, WhatsApp, Twitter, or whatever, and how others use it.

So, for me, people develop ways of using the web that are not simple reflections of their offline character. At some point, I will probably write about the problems of simple distinctions between digital and non-digital spaces, but for now I will leave it there. Comments welcome.

Kranzberg, M. (1986). Technology and history: “Kranzberg’s laws.” Technology and Culture, 27(3), 544–560. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3105385.