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.