What is ‘technological determinism’? Does it help or hinder our understanding of contemporary mass media? A theme that appears over and over in discussions about technology is whether or not technology is the cause of major social, cultural, political, and economic changes in modern society. Of course, we can find many, many examples of technologies associated with enormous social changes. The automobile, for example, is often spoke of as "causing" a whole array of social …showed first 75 words of 2492 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2492 total…Flichy, P. ‘The Construction of New Digital Media’, New Media and Society, Vol.1, No.1, April 1999. Mackay, Hugh. (1997) Consumption and Everyday Life. London: Sage. Marx, L. & Smith, M. (1995) Does Technology Drive History? The dilemma of Technological Determination. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. McLuhan, M. (1994) Understanding Media. London: Routledge. McQuail, Denis. (2000) Mass Communication Theory. London: Sage. Smith, Greg M., ed. (1999) On a Silver Platter: CD-ROMs and the Promises of a New Technology. New York: New York University Press.