It might be that I just finished reading a book by Kauffman on evolutionary systems... I'm in this frame of mind to think of technology through the lens of his concept of the "adjacent possible", in that new technologies bring more potentialities into the realm of possibility. Kinda like Checkov's gun, the mere presence of a gun brings shooting someone into the realm of possibility in a way that simply isn't possible in their absence. The fact that phones exist and one is on my desk means that the next few hours of my life could potentially be spent mindlessly scrolling reddit, and design elements like the endless scroll make that potentiality all the more potent (I just started on 'Stolen Focus'). I like this potentiating/systemic view of the impacts of technology better than what you introduce as the "social determination" view here. It strikes me as the sociological versus psychological narrative of technology. Sure we have choice, but our choices are shaped and potentiated by enabling/inhibiting objects and the environment within which we make them.
It might be that I just finished reading a book by Kauffman on evolutionary systems... I'm in this frame of mind to think of technology through the lens of his concept of the "adjacent possible", in that new technologies bring more potentialities into the realm of possibility. Kinda like Checkov's gun, the mere presence of a gun brings shooting someone into the realm of possibility in a way that simply isn't possible in their absence. The fact that phones exist and one is on my desk means that the next few hours of my life could potentially be spent mindlessly scrolling reddit, and design elements like the endless scroll make that potentiality all the more potent (I just started on 'Stolen Focus'). I like this potentiating/systemic view of the impacts of technology better than what you introduce as the "social determination" view here. It strikes me as the sociological versus psychological narrative of technology. Sure we have choice, but our choices are shaped and potentiated by enabling/inhibiting objects and the environment within which we make them.
You bring up quite a bit that I'll be pulling the thread on in the next and final piece!