Technology in Society

These readings by Bush, Englebart, McLuhan, and Williams all have a central theme of technology being a forefront of society, as in it is society that transforms technology.
In a much older context, Bush explains different technologies and even offers a futuristic view of how computers came into being as databases for records. It was fascinating to read this 1945 article about the pending future of computing. His view coincides with Williams in that much of Bush’s foreshadowing is connected in some way to Williams’ article. The “needs” of both Bush and Williams are very different, but also very similar in that they are looking at technology through the lens of society and how it affects the final product of technologies. This is showing that culture creates the technology, in that the need for simpler ways to carry out meaningless tasks can be simplified with technology.
Williams declares that needs create technology. His quote “Some people spoke the new machines as gadgets, but they were always much more than this. They were the applied technology of a set of emphases and responses within the determining limits and pressures of industrial capitalist society,” rang true to me because the radio, television, etc. was not invented as just “gadgets”; they are carefully thought about inventions that help society with a certain need.
McLuhan explains that the “medium is the message”. McLuhan states, “This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium-that is, of any extension of ourselves- result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.” (McLuhan) The author explains and reiterates the central themes to which all the authors allude to in that technologies didn’t introduce certain aspects of life, but it did accelerate it. Mediums are accelerated through human involvement. It is the society that determines what technology they will “pick up” through their cultural principles.
Englebart explains that augmenting human intellect is to make it thinking much speedier. This greatly mirrors all of the other authors, in that society creates technology for it’s own good use. He uses Bush as an example of how to augment human intellect and how it can help the everyday human.
The theme that binds these authors is that technology is used to make the human race much more effective in doing tasks. Even though they may word this very differently, they are trying to emphasize the role of technology in society and how it has come about as a need first, then went on to evolve into other facets of life.