Technology that recreated the world

I don't like to see myself as a technological determinist, but there are times when technology really impacted the world. As a refreshing of my memory, I want to list some that really changed the social, political, economic, and cultural life in the world. These are brief, one or two sentences that would require long papers to give justice to each technology, but this is a blog. C'mon, contrary to Walter Ong's ideas of the characteristics of oral and literal culture, this is one place where I can be additive rather than subordinate in writing

Clock: Measuring time that led to standardization. The act of dividing up something into equal units allowed for scientific revolutions, and rational mathematical equations. The world became completely driven by the clock, as labour, mealtimes, and even qualitative times.

Writing: Perhaps the technology that is taken for granted, although the great scholars such as Marshall Mcluhan and Plato had pessimistic and even nostalgic views regarding writing. They both saw the negative consequences of writing. Not only did it allow for preservation of information, but bureaucracy, standardization, rationality, individualization, commodification, rhetoric and persuasion, rational thinking and self- reflection, democracy, capitalism, internet, everything else. There's so much to say about writing.

On a side note, Plato saw writing leading to democracy, which he did not want, because he thought of the disastarous consequences once democracy was established. We can sort of see this now. Seriosuly, some opinions are really stupid. And democracy never works anways.


Roads: Allowed for messengers to carry messages, which led to the mail post system, which led to earlier forms of telegraph, then the telegraph, and so on.

Railways: It allowed for unity of a nation, not just transporting goods. The mere act of transporting goods allowed for a centre and a peripheral, as they became dependent on each other. The railway was certainly space-binding (to get into the context of Harold Innis), as it allowed greater economic life which (dare I say) dictated political and cultural life.



Electricity: Medium is certainly the fricking message with electricity. The definition of shopping, sports games, clubs, parties, dinner times, etc, were cocmpletely revolutionzed due to electricity. Oh of course, all the other wonderful stuff electricity has allowed us to do.

Radio: The first medium that allowed for mass broadcasting, which also allowed for advertising to a wide audience. I forget all the details, but it all started in a garage.

Internet: The first medium that challenged the idea of broadcasting, where a horizontal level of social networking and communication was allowed to take place, and it was no longer the few that were feeding information to the many. Advertising, blogging, chatting, dating, gaming, economics, businesses, and (in my opinion) most importantly, the merging of the oral and literal aspects of human beings... and everything else was shifted to the internet in some form. And to think, the internet was first invented for military purposes...

Issues arose as well. Copyright laws, ideas of privacy, ideas of conservation of information, dissemination of mis or disinformation, etc...

What next? Are we continuing to move into a progressive, innovative pattern in which we cannot help but endulge? Is this really good? Was the the invention of the televission really a positive thing? (NO! I have reasons, but now is not the time). Why are we always striving for 'better' and more technological inventions, when these technological trajectories can lead to terrible consequences from which we may not be able to pull out?

Although, I reallly really really like the internet.