Are technologies neutral tools, whose value for good or ill depends entirely on their users? Strong arguments exist that some technologies are inherently biased toward particular interest groups or social outcomes.
Commentary on technology as a social force typically falls within a spectrum defined by two opposing views. The first, known as "technological determinism," holds that technology can force changes in social organization. The second pole, known as "social determinism," argues that technologies are simply tools. Just as a knife can be used either for cooking or for killing, so too can any technology be used either for good or for ill.
Many experts hold, wisely, to a middle ground. Deliberate decision-making by individuals and groups does affect how new technologies are used. Yet the constraints or "affordances"39 that a given technology provides also shape social and individual choices, sometimes in important and lasting ways. Political agendas can influence the design of new technologies, with a view to creating conditions favorable to particular groups or ideologies.40 Numerous activities throughout human history — some profoundly valuable and others simply evil41 — would have not been possible without particular ICTs.
Our conclusion: new technologies strongly influence future possibilities. We think the evidence is clear that widespread adoption of new technologies can produce important, unanticipated social effects.42 An obvious example is the automobile's impact on the structure of American cities during the twentieth century.
Suburbanization, "white flight," inner-city decline, and urban air pollution may be largely attributed to the availability of low-cost, fast personal transportation.43 Similar effects can be attributed to large-scale use of ICTs. Many have argued, for example, that the inherently visual and "sound-bite" structure of the television medium leads to a dumbed-down, less autonomous populace, more easily manipulated by the corporate packaging of information and less capable of meaningful political participation.44 The research reviewed earlier in this document suggests several mechanisms behind this phenomenon.
Like laws, technologies can function as significant constraints on behavior. They determine what people can and cannot do. This might be stated even more strongly in the case of infrastructural technologies, such as automobiles, television, and the World Wide Web. The endurance and pervasiveness of technology-based infrastructures gives them more the character of national constitutions, which shape other institutions and can be changed only with great difficulty.
If this image is correct, it militates for extremely careful consideration of possible long-term effects before any new technology becomes so widespread that its influence is irreversible. Recent efforts to grapple with the "Y2K bug" demonstrate how the incremental adoption of technologies can eventually result in the existence of a widespread infrastructure that we take almost completely for granted until it breaks down or threatens to break down.45
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