Reflection on the Relationship Between Societies and Technologies: The “Global Networked Heterogeneous Co-Construction”

The short history
of the philosophy of technology has witnessed different and sometimes contradictory views about the relationship between society and modern technology, from the approaches that believe in technological determinism to those which believe in the deep influence of society on technology
[5]
. One famous example of technological determinism has emerged from autonomist approaches toward technology. In this approach, the development of modern technology is based on a special kind of internal logic and cannot be controlled by any element other than modern technology itself, such as human society. The autonomous approach, as seen in the works of the French thinker Ellul
[8]
, therefore gives no role to human society and to elements such as politics, the economy, social groups interests, and so on. As Brey
[1]
claims, the emergence of “science and technology studies (STS),” which occurred in the 1980s, challenged all these deterministic approaches.