Shaping of technology

The notion of the 'social shaping' of technology emerges from Vannevar Bush and Nathaniel Hawthorne, where the prominent comparison is based on the different conceptions - whether information technology can be seen as the main force which shapes society or whether society and social values shape the way in which information technology affects our lives - can information technology be considered as revolutionary or evolutionary?

1945 Vannevar Bush published the oft cited article "As we may think" in The Atlantic Monthly. It was a piece that discussed the direction of technology in the aftermath of the Second World War. Bush was scientific adviser to President Roosevelt and to Harry Truman at the time he published the article, holding the title Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. In his position Bush had privileged knowledge of an array of technologic developments, including the atomic bomb. His personal and professional interest was focused on harnessing technology in support of human services, and in capturing knowledge in a recorded and distributable format. Regardless of the fact that Bush was fixated on analogue technologies such as micro reprography (the digital computer had only recently been invented when he penned his text), his dream included the concept of a memex, or memory extender, likely stimulated by Orwell's notion of the Giant Brain from the science fiction realm.

What Bush did not contemplate was the evolution of digital resources such as blogs and the diversity of formats used in recording that knowledge. The digital age has provided us with easier means of gathering, storing, and creating information. Nor did he grasp the notion of ownership of information, as covered by various national copyright laws. By identifying the challenges of Bush in a contemporary mode, we become better prepared for our future in terms of providing information services to end users in an increasingly distributed environment.
I’d say that a blog is the name of a format for information and opinion that is roughly analogous to Vannevar Bush’s idea. He states that we process information in a more heuristic fashion, not the procedural fashion used by most technologies of the current day. He goes on to discuss what one can arguably call "hyperlinking" and even uses the words "web of trails" that we are now so familiar with in our web-based environments (Bush). Blogs do not tell you whether the content is pedestrian or inflammatory, impressionistic or deeply researched. A person can write whatever they want on a blog and there really are no regulations on what they write and whether it is fact or fiction.
I see the similarities between Hawthorne’s wood stove and the internet. The wood stove brought families together to huddle around the source of heat that was keeping them warm. The internet and blogging does something similar. They bring people together who would probably not meet, but have something in common and would like to share their ideas or learn more about a certain subject. People gather on blogs to compare and contrast their ideas in order to better understand what they want to know.
Sure sometimes a blog becomes associated with a particular style of writing, an example: tabloid blogs. But that doesn’t mean that every publication in the tabloid shape is the same as The National Enquirer. The New York Times Book Review, for example, is a tabloid, and its stock in trade is far from headless bodies in topless bars.
What’s much more important to me, however, is what blogs do that our traditional forms don’t. First of all, blogs are part of a conversation and can be about anything we have our mind wrapped around at the time. We link liberally to others, even our direct competitors, reader’s comments, and so do sources and participants.


Bush, V. (1945), "As we may think", The Atlantic Monthly, July.

First Internet Experiences

Probably just like everyone else, my first encounters with the internet were brought on by Oregon Trail, although I really don’t remember much about the game. I do remember the whole class, including myself, being so happy when the teacher announced we were going to play it that day. It was like an extra period of recess because we weren’t cooped up in the room listening to the teacher.

The thing that I used the most on the internet during middle school would have to be AOL and AOL Instant Messenger. AOL had e-mail, games, news, chat rooms, movies, and other things that were very useful. It was like the Swiss Army Knife of the internet. You really didn’t need to go anywhere else on the internet, because everything you needed was right there. The only thing I really didn’t like about AOL was the voice that was say “welcome” or “you’ve got mail.” I found that incredibly irritating because every time you signed on, you were going to have a new e-mail, it was inevitable. AOL also had a feature called AOL Instant Messenger. My AOL Instant Messenger was pretty much on all day long. Everyone and their mothers had screen names. Mostly I went online to talk to my friends about the happenings of the day or say something to someone that I probably couldn’t or wouldn’t have said in person. I remember my parents would get mad because I would be online till very late at night, but that’s what everyone did.

Another big thing that I used on the internet like everybody else was Napster. I thought it was the coolest thing ever created. All the music I wanted was on this one site. Although with dial-up internet it took about two hours to download one song, it was well worth it because it was free. I didn’t have to go spend my money or get my mom to buy me a cd that was label as explicit; I could download whatever I wanted. My computer was full of songs. Some songs I just heard once on the radio and would go home and download it and then realize that I really didn’t like the song.

Another thing I used the internet for was checking statistics of sporting events. My friends and I were big into fantasy football, even at a young age. We would draft our teams, but there was no way of getting all of the stats from the games to compile the scores and see who won. Every Tuesday after all the games were done, I would go onto ESPN.com and gather all of the stats and calculate the points for every player. It wasn’t fun, but it was made a lot easier by ESPN.com, because before I would have to search in the newspaper for every individual players stats. Shortly thereafter, ESPN.com became my favorite site to go to and still to this day, I look at it at least twice a day.