Module 3 ENLS 115 Theorizing CMC

2020
THEORIZING CMC:
Technology and Social Interaction
Edgielson D. Nueva
Instructor, ENLS 115
2020
• Review the major pattern
of technological
development
• Examine dominant myths
about technology and
social change
• Describe and critique the
notion of technological
determinism
• Consider the alternative
‘social constructivist’ and
‘realist’ perspectives
Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva

2
ENLS 115: Computer Mediated Communication
2020
Whether it’s radios, televisions or computers, much of what is

written about communication technologies has to do with people’s
underlying beliefs about the nature of the relationship between
human beings and their machines. 3
In fact, CMC concerns itself with a range of different 2020
ways of thinking about this relationship by asking
questions like:
• How do people interact with, and in the presence of, technology?

• How do people incorporate technology into their social
interactions?
• How do people interact through, or by means of, technology?
• How do people represent and talk about technology?

4
How do people appropriate technologies to suit 2020
their everyday communication needs?

Master of Science in Human-Computer
Interaction (HCIM) program
Prepares students to create
innovative technologies that Through an interdisciplinary
transform the way people connect curriculum – with perspectives from
to information. Students learn to information studies, computer science,
design, evaluate, and implement
engineering, design, education,
new information technologies and
psychology, and the social sciences –
interfaces that are usable and
students are uniquely prepared to
appealing.
leverage information technology for
positive social impact, develop
interfaces for users of all ages and
abilities, and understand modern
ENLS 115: Computer Mediated Communication design methodology. 5
2020
• Good reason for studying
CMC is that we can learn
more about the nature of
human communication when
we look to see how it is
affected by technologies.
• We can also learn more
about communication
technologies when we
observe the ways they
transform – and are
transformed by – human
social interaction.
6
2020
A new communications technology has been developed that allows

people to communicate almost instantly across great distances, in
effect, shrinking the world faster and further than ever before.
7
Telegraph, or as British writer
2020
Tom Standage (1999) refers it:

Victorian Internet
It is a worldwide communications
network whose cables span Secret codes have been devised
continents and oceans, it has
by some users, and cracked by
revolutionized business practice,
given rise to new forms of crime, others. Governments and
and inundated its users with a regulators have tried and failed to
deluge of information. Romances control the new medium.
have blossomed over the wires. Meanwhile, out on the wires, a
technological subculture with its
own customs and vocabulary is
Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva establishing itself.
8
As Standage goes on to
2020
say, at a time when there

were no planes, no
televisions, no spacecraft,
no mobile phones, the
telegraph was a new
communication
technology which
‘ushered in the greatest
revolution in
communications since the
development of the
printing press’.

9
2020
In point of fact, humans have been creating

ways to transmit, store and manipulate
information and messages for centuries – if not
millennia. However, in thinking again about the
technologies in your own home, think now
about the kinds of changes which each one has
provoked. How has each piece of technology
helped or hindered our lives? More specifically,
what kind of impact has it had on our social
lives?

10
Such as the Washing Machine… 2020

11
Some commentators have suggested that: 2020
More than any other single factor (i.e. social, political or

economic), the development and popularization of the
washing machine in the 1950s were responsible for the
empowerment of women in Western societies.
The washing machine, so the argument goes, meant that
women were finally liberated from one of the most time-
consuming of household chores and therefore free to
pursue work outside the home as never before.

12
According to Ursula Franklin (1990), 2020
all technologies (and not just

communication technologies) appear
to develop in two distinct stages:
STAGE 1 To begin with, the new STAGE 2 After a while, however, the
technology is an option for only the technology becomes more widely accepted
wealthy, the specialist or the and easier to use. The once new and
enthusiast. It presents itself as a exciting technology then starts to become
whole new way of liberating users a necessary part of our lives rather than
and of offering them even greater being an exclusive choice – we are almost
control over their lives. Most forced to use it and people even start to
household appliances like radios, depend on it. You just have to think of cars,
televisions and, of course, washing automated bank machines and telephones
machines all started out like that. to realize how dependent people can
become on technologies. For most of us,
it’s hard to imagine a time when we
weren’t able to draw money from our bank
ENLS 115: Computer Mediated Communication account whenever we liked. 13
2020
For some writers, it is this kind of invisibility that is

the sign of a mature technology: the fact that we no
longer find a technology remarkable or realize just
how dependent on it we really are. This is why people
sometimes talk about an invisible technology.
Here’s how Tom Standage puts it: ‘If you look at the
telephone we don’t really have either enthusiasm or
skepticism for it now, it’s just become invisible and
that is the sign of a mature technology: you don’t
notice it’s there any more.’

14
2020
Person of the Year 1982:

The Home Computer
Although they see dangers of
unemployment and dehumanization,
nearly 80 percent of Americans In a larger perspective, the entire world will
expect that home computers will be never be the same. Prophets of high
as commonplace as television sets technology believe the computer is so cheap
or dishwashers – solid majorities and so powerful that it could enable
feel that the computer revolution underdeveloped nations to bypass the whole
will raise living standards and industrial revolution. One commentator, who
improve the quality of children’s believes the computer’s teaching capability
education. can conquer the Third World’s illiteracy,
says: ‘It’s the source of new life that has
been delivered to us.’
15
The Radio 2020
Jane Gackenbach and Evelyn

Ellerman (1998):
Presented the more detailed case
study of the radio as an excellent Of course, in many parts of the world
example of this pattern of
technological change and there’s little doubt that computers too
development, whereby the radio have long since become a mature
moved from being a specialized technology and it’s hard to imagine that
military tool, to being part of a back in 1982 Time magazine famously
subculture of enthusiasts, to being voted the personal computer ‘Person of
taken up for commercial,
educational and purposes. the Year’ because it was such a novel,
remarkable phenomenon.

16
2020
The end of the world as we know it?

You think that machine is your friend, but it’s not.
17
2020
Frank:
This dialogue is taken from the
opening sequence of the 1998
Kathleen: movie You’ve Got Mail. Have a
Frank:
look at the exchange between
the characters Frank (a
journalist, played by Greg
Kinnear) and Kathleen (a
Kathleen: bookstore owner, played by
Frank: Meg Ryan).

18
The dialogue is a good example of another striking 2020
aspect of the development of technology. With each new

technology, there’s almost always an associated period
of social and cultural reorganization and reflection – and
sometimes even anxiety and conflict. Almost always
there is also a lot of talk as journalists, scholars,
politicians and ordinary folk try to make sense of what
they know and hear about these new technological
developments.

19
2020
In fact, more often than not, what tends to happen is

that public and scholarly opinion about the cultural
and social impact of new technologies is initially
polarized into extreme positions.
On the one hand, there are those who create a lot of
hype about the wonderful, unique advantages of the
technology; on the other hand, there are those who
appear more hysterical about the terrible effects
they foresee.

20
The Utopian and Dystopian Positions 2020
as termed by John Kling (1996):

These are visions people tend to have regarding the effects of computerization on
human interaction and social life.
The utopian vision emphasizes the

life-enhancing, exciting The anti-utopian (or dystopian) vision
possibilities of computing concerns itself with people’s
technology with claims for global enslavement to digital technology, their
connectivity, democratization, and growing dependency, as well as the
the opening of the frontiers of relentless, unstoppable growth of
human experience and technology which brings with it
relationship. information overload and the
breakdown of social structures and
values.
21
Jody Berland (2000) refers the 2020
internet and the web a similar way

to ‘cyberutopianism’:
It describes what she see as the
overly optimistic belief often held People who adopt this position – and
in society that technology Berland suggests that much of Western
necessarily means progress and, society does – also assume that
progress is always a good thing, which
therefore, what is new is always
explains why so many people rush out
good and always better than what to buy the latest version of everything.
went before. Sometimes people forget that the new
product may not be better but that we
are told it is in order to satisfy the
Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva interests of hard-core commerce.
22
In Sherry Turkle’s (1990) ‘life on the 2020
screen’, introduces the notion of

the ‘subjective computer’:
What she means by this is that In psychology, therapists sometimes
people tend to project on to ask people to imagine what they see
computers and digital technology when looking at an image. The idea
their own individual fears and behind this is that the things people say
aspirations. As such, the they see reveal important clues to the
computer and the internet end up therapist about how the person is
being treated like a Rorschach feeling and what’s really on their mind.
inkblot. And so, in much the same way, how
people talk about technology often says
more about them than it does about the
Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva technology itself.
23
2020
In Daniel Chandler’s essay Imagining

futures, dramatizing fears (1998):
Shows how our relationship with technological

innovation is also a common theme in books and films –
evidence again of how much we love to tell stories about
the relationship between our technological creations
and our lives.

24
2020
There’s one key concept which offers a really useful

framework for understanding the relationship between
technology and human communication: technological
determinism. 25
According to Daniel Chandler’s (1995) essay, 2020
Technological Determinism is…

Assumption that technologies are the primary cause of:
• major social and historical changes at the macrosocial level of
societal structures and processes;
• subtle but profound social and psychological influences at the
microsocial level of the regular use of particular kinds of tools
Therefore technological determinism sees technology as the big
‘mover and shaker’ behind major social transformations at the level
of institutions, social interaction and individual cognition (i.e. ways of
perceiving and thinking about the world).

26
Core Assumptions of Technological 2020
Determinism Chandler (1995):

• REDUCTIONISTIC. Technological
determinism reduces the • NEUTRALIZING. Technological
relationship between technology determinism represents technology
and culture to one of as neutral or value-free and
straightforward cause and effect. therefore absolved of
• MONISTIC. Rather than being ‘responsibility’.
multi-causal, technological • TECHNOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE.
determinism oversimplifies an Technological determinism
otherwise complex relationship to presents technological ‘progress’
the effects of a single factor. as unstoppable, inevitable, and
irreversible.
27
Putting things into perspective: 2020
‘shaping and being shaped’

In particular, social constructivism turns
technological determinism on its head by
arguing that technology is instead entirely British sociologist Ian Hutchby (2001)
subordinate to the way it is used in calls technological ‘affordances’ – the
particular socio-historical, culturally
specific contexts. advantages and disadvantages which
Technologies certainly don’t just fall out arise from the distinctive, material
of the sky. Seldom do they just pop into properties of any particular
inventors’ heads. Nor do users always
use technologies in the ways which their technology. In other words, there are
developers intended them to be used. In simply some things you can or can’t
fact, there is a constant struggle between
invention and appropriation, that is, what do with a communication technology.
technology is designed to do and what
people actually do with it.

28
2020
Rob Kling (1996)

advocates a position which he
calls social realism. What this
means is that we need to
understand the relationship
between technology, culture
and social interaction as
more of a two-way street. It’s
also vital that we back up our
claims with evidence and that
we don’t forget other
important influences such as
economics and politics.

29
2020
In proposing that we are therefore shaped by technology but also
shape it ourselves, Thomas Hughes (1994) also suggests that the
relationship will itself change as the technology matures: in the early
stages it seems that users have a stronger influence but as the
technology becomes more and more pervasive (and invisible) its
influences may get stronger and more subtle.
It is important therefore to think in terms not only of the impact of

computers on communication but also of the impact of
communication on computers. Just as the users of communication
technologies are not completely passive, nor are the uses of different
communication technologies totally unlimited. Technologies will
enable some uses but restrict others, and will therefore predispose
people to use them in certain ways.

30
2020
• https://ischool.umd.edu/acad
emics/master-of-science-
in-human-computer-
interaction
• https://www.cbc.ca/radio/un
dertheinfluence/summer-
series-the-most-
interesting-adman-in-the-
world-the-story-of-albert-
lasker-1.4120833
• https://olddesignshop.com/2
013/08/vintage-washing-
machine-clip-art/
31

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2020

Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva

Whether it’s radios, televisions or computers, much of what is

• How do people interact with, and in the presence of, technology?

Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva

their everyday communication needs?

A new communications technology has been developed that allows

Tom Standage (1999) refers it:

say, at a time when there

Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva

In point of fact, humans have been creating

Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva

Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva

More than any other single factor (i.e. social, political or

Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva

all technologies (and not just

For some writers, it is this kind of invisibility that is

Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva

Person of the Year 1982:

Jane Gackenbach and Evelyn

Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva

The end of the world as we know it?

Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva

aspect of the development of technology. With each new

Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva

In fact, more often than not, what tends to happen is

Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva

as termed by John Kling (1996):

The utopian vision emphasizes the

internet and the web a similar way

screen’, introduces the notion of

In Daniel Chandler’s essay Imagining

Shows how our relationship with technological

Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva

There’s one key concept which offers a really useful

Technological Determinism is…

Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva

Determinism Chandler (1995):

‘shaping and being shaped’

Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva

Rob Kling (1996)

Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva

It is important therefore to think in terms not only of the impact of

Mr. Edgielson D. Nueva

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