We tend to think of our gadgets, you know, our
software. They're just tools, right? Yeah, like
a hammer or a spreadsheet. Just there to help
us do something. Neutral things. Means to an
end. That's the usual take. That's the common
assumption, definitely. Just a blank slate for
whatever we want to do with it. What if the tools
themselves aren't actually neutral? What if they
sort of... nudge things, shape outcomes in ways
we don't always expect. That's what we're really
digging into today. We've got some fascinating
stuff from academic work, a book too, that really
pushes back on this whole technology is neutral
idea. Hopefully by the end, you'll maybe see
technology and its effects a bit differently.
I mean, think about it. Have you ever started
using some new app or device and then noticed
weird unexpected changes happening? That's a
great question to kick things off because for
a long time there was this dominant view, especially
from what you might call information theorists.
Their whole thing was basically technology is
neutral. It's just a conduit. It carries information
from point A to point B cleanly, no interference.
Like a pipe carrying water. The pipe itself doesn't
change the water. Exactly that kind of idea.
Think fiber optics. It's the data that matters,
not the cable, right? That was the thinking.
Okay, so that's one perspective, the neutral
carrier. But then You mentioned another group,
media theorists. How do they see it? Ah, well,
they have a very different take, much more active.
They argue technology isn't just a passive pipe.
It does something. It does something. It actively
shapes our society, our culture. The very design,
the nature of a specific technology can influence
how we think, how we talk to each other, even
what we value. So the medium itself changes things,
not just the message it carries. That's the core
idea, yes. The medium is part of the message,
in a way. It's not neutral at all. Okay, this
is where it starts getting really interesting,
I think. Because it's not just about, you know,
huge, obvious changes. No, exactly. It's the
subtle stuff, too. Andrew Fiedberg, who's studied
technology deeply, he really highlights this.
What's his angle? He points out that designing
any technology means making choices. Right from
the start. Choice is like... how it works, what
features it has. Precisely. What gets included,
what gets left out, who gets to decide. And these
choices, Feenberg says, they're not neutral.
They often carry a political weight. They influence
who benefits, who might be disadvantaged. Wow,
okay. So the very act of building the tool embeds
certain... Preferences, biases almost. That's
a really important insight, yes. And Feenberg
also talks about ambivalence. Ambivalence, how
does that fit? Well, he suggests that most technologies
aren't like destined for one single outcome.
They're flexible. They allow for a whole range
of social uses, different effects, depending
on how people actually adopt them and weave them
into their lives. So one piece of tech can be
used in lots of different ways. That's the core
of ambivalence. Think about a smartphone. Right.
It can be for work emails, for calling your family,
for doom -scrolling social media, for learning
a language. All of the above. The tech itself
doesn't force one use. But, I guess the design
might make some uses easier than others? That's
the critical point. Even with that flexibility,
the initial design choices can really steer things.
They can make certain uses feel more natural
or become more common. Okay, got it. Now, thinking
about this non -neutrality... Our sources mentioned
education specifically. How does this play out
there? Yeah, that's interesting. Furr, Ragsdale,
and Horton looked at this. They observed that
educators sometimes, maybe often, fall back into
that information theorist view. Meaning they
see tech as just a delivery system. Kind of.
They might assume that, say, giving students
material on a tablet is basically the same as
giving them a printed handout. The container
changes, but the information's the same, right?
So neutral delivery. But it's not the same experience,
is it? Reading on a screen versus a physical
book feels different. Interacting is different.
Absolutely. The medium shapes the learning experience
in subtle ways. And beyond that, educators usually
have certain expectations about how some new
classroom tech will improve things or change
how they teach. Let me guess. Those expectations
don't always match reality. Pretty often, no.
History is kind of littered with examples of
educational tech projects, rich with ICT, that
just had unforeseen results. Wildly different
sometimes. So unpredictability is a big part
of this non -neutrality, then? A huge part. And
what Fur, Ragsdale, and Horton really stress
is that we need to actively look for these unplanned
side effects, the good ones and the bad ones,
because sometimes those are the most important
outcomes, more significant than what was originally
intended. Be aware of the unexpected, that makes
sense. Which kind of leads perfectly into this
idea of revenge effects, Edward Tenor's concept.
Yes, Tenor's revenge effects, it's a great term.
It describes situations where a technology, maybe
when it's widely adopted or implemented in a
certain way, ends up producing outcomes that
are the opposite of the intended goals. Opposite,
like making the problem worse. Sometimes, yeah.
It can actually exacerbate the very problem it
was supposed to solve. The core insight is our
clever solutions can backfire, sometimes spectacularly.
OK, give us the classic example. I think I know
this one. It has to be the paperless office,
right? Knew it. Computers were meant to get rid
of paper. Supposedly. But what actually happened
in many places, paper consumption went up. Dramatically.
Why though? That seems so counterintuitive. Well,
suddenly printing was super easy. Drafting and
redrafting became effortless. Everyone could
create and share documents instantly. Result,
more printing, not less. Ha! Okay, that's a perfect
revenge effect. The tool meant to reduce something
actually increased it. And Tinder found other
examples, too. He pointed out this weird correlation
sometimes where introducing computers meant to
boost efficiency actually coincided with a drop
in overall productivity. Really? How? Well, think
about the time spent managing the tech itself.
Software updates, troubleshooting, learning complex
systems, getting distracted. It adds up. So the
key point is more tech efficiency doesn't automatically
mean more human productivity. The tech isn't
neutral. It can actively bite back. And you mentioned
this gets even trickier when we mix technology
with, like, laws and social systems. Exactly.
When you layer technology onto existing social
structures, laws, regulations, especially when
you're trying to achieve specific political goals
with that tech, the potential for these unintended
contrary outcomes, these revenge effects, just
gets amplified. Okay, but... We should probably
clarify something. Some of the sources also say
that, in a basic sense, technologies can be seen
as neutral. How does that square with everything
else? Yeah, that's a really important nuance.
It sounds contradictory, but it's not really.
At its core functional level, a technology often
doesn't inherently prefer one outcome. What do
you mean? Like, take an internet protocol, TCPIP.
It just moves data packets. Yeah. Doesn't care
if those packets are, you know, a scientific
breakthrough or online hate speech. In that purely
functional sense, it's just doing its job. Ambivalent,
neutral operationally. Okay, so the basic mechanics
might be neutral, but we aren't neutral about
how it's used. Is that it? That's exactly it.
We humans bring the preferences. We care about
the consequences. We might decide, okay, this
neutral protocol is being used for something
harmful. We need to intervene. We might censor
certain things or promote others. We evaluate
the impact. We make choices. The human element
is where the non -neutrality really comes in
strongly regarding outcomes. So the unpredictability
we talked about, it comes from this mix. The
tech is flexible, maybe operationally neutral,
but humans use it in ways we can't always predict,
leading to outcomes we didn't foresee. That's
a big part of it, yeah. Our own inability to
anticipate every possible interaction, every
clever or unexpected use that people will come
up with when a technology gets out into the messy
real world. That, combined with the tech's inherent
possibilities, that's where the surprises happen.
And this connects to something called emergent
properties. Sounds a bit technical. It does,
but the idea is actually pretty straightforward
and relevant here. These non -neutral effects,
these surprises, are often examples of emergence
in complex systems. It just means that the system
as a whole, technology plus society plus users,
produces outcomes that you couldn't have predicted
just by looking at the separate parts. The whole
is different from the sum of its parts. and sometimes
surprisingly so. Like baking a cake. You can't
predict the taste just from the flour and eggs
alone. That's a perfect analogy. Exactly. The
final result has properties the ingredients didn't
have individually. So can you give us a real
-world tech example of emergence? Oh, the Minitel
system in France is a classic. Remember that.
Oh, vaguely. Wasn't it like an early online thing?
Yeah, it was launched primarily as an electronic
phone directory. That was the government's plan.
Look up numbers online instead of a big book.
OK, straightforward enough. But then they added
a text -based chat feature, almost as an afterthought,
some say. And suddenly, usage exploded, but not
for finding phone numbers. For what, then? For
chatting, social interaction, Gossip, finding
dates, the misogyny rose, the pink messages,
they called it. That became its dominant use.
Totally emergent, completely unforeseen by the
designers. Wow. So the intended information tool
became a social network, basically. Pretty much.
The key insight is how technologies can just
take off in directions nobody planned, driven
by how people actually want to use them. That's
fascinating. And there was another example, something
about... Barbed wire. Yeah, sounds unlikely,
right? But James Gleick writes about this. Barbed
wire. Designed for one thing. Keep cattle fenced
in. Purely agricultural tech. Right. Obvious
purpose. But out in the rural American West,
where farms were miles apart, people got inventive.
They realized they could string extra wires along
these existing barbed wire fences. No way. Yes.
And use them to create makeshift telephone networks.
connecting neighbors miles apart using fence
posts and wire meant for cows. That's incredible.
Another completely unexpected social use emerging
from a totally unrelated technology. Exactly.
It just highlights how resourceful people are,
adapting tools for communication, for social
connection, even when that wasn't the plan at
all. So looking at Minitel and the barbed wire
phones, what's the common link? Both seem to
be about tech intended for information or utility
getting grabbed for social stuff. That's a really
sharp observation, yes. It seems like there's
this powerful underlying human need for connection
that often finds ways to express itself through
whatever new technology becomes available, sometimes
completely overshadowing the original official
purpose. The social needs can really drive tech
adoption and evolution in surprising ways. Absolutely,
which brings us back to that point about technology
and culture being intertwined. It's not a one
-way street, as the media theorists emphasize.
Right. Tech influences culture, but culture also
influences tech. Precisely. They're locked in
this constant dance, this reciprocal relationship,
our cultural values, social habits. They shape
the technologies we even think of creating and
how we decide to use them. And then in turn,
those technologies loop back and reshape our
culture, our habits, even how our brains work.
It must be really hard to even see that influence,
especially with technologies that have been around
forever, like print. Oh, definitely. Millenbecker
makes this point really well. If you live in
a society that's been deeply shaped by print
for centuries, like ours, it's almost impossible
to objectively perceive just how profoundly that
specific information technology has molded our
thinking, our education, our entire culture.
It's just the wallpaper. It's invisible because
it's everywhere. Like trying to describe water
to a fish. That's a great way to put it. And
because it's so deeply embedded, researchers
often tend to sort of pull technology out as
a separate thing to study. treat it like an isolated
variable. Instead of seeing it as part of the
whole system. Exactly. Whereas the media theorists
really argue for looking at it all together.
The tech, the culture, the cognition as an integrated
whole. And it sounds like people in fields like
education are starting to realize how important
these media theory ideas are again. It seems
so. There's a growing recognition maybe that
understanding this non -neutrality, understanding
how media shape experience is crucial in our
current tech saturated world, especially for
learning. Yeah, being aware of these non -neutral
effects lets you be more deliberate, more thoughtful
about how you use tech, right? That's the hope.
It allows for a more critical and maybe more
effective approach. Okay, so let's try to wrap
this up. The big takeaway seems clear. Technology
is not just a neutral toolkit. Definitely not.
It actively shapes our choices. It often behaves
unpredictably, and it can lead to these unintended
consequences, these revenge effects, sometimes
the exact opposite of what we wanted. And understanding
this, recognizing this non -neutrality is actually
really valuable for us. Incredibly valuable,
I think. It helps you engage with technology
more thoughtfully, more critically, whether that's
the apps on your phone, the systems you use at
work, or the big societal debates about technology's
role. Being aware of the potential surprises,
the embedded choices. It lets you be maybe a
bit more proactive. Yes, proactive rather than
just reactive. You can ask better questions.
You can look for those subtle influences. The
key thing is just approaching tech with that
critical awareness, questioning its effects.
So here's something for you, the listener, to
think about. Consider a technology you use every
single day. Your phone, your car, social media,
whatever. What unintended side effects or maybe
unexpected uses have you noticed? What does that
tell you about how that technology is really
operating in your life and maybe in society more
broadly? Definitely some food for thought there.