Technology and Society

Digital technology is increasingly integral to many areas of daily life, and affects how we think about them. Most of us will have an adequate and simple understanding of what technology is, but even its definition has become complicated. It can be regarded as:

· A tool or instrument

· An extension of human faculties

· A means of social control/determination

· A source of alienation

There are various 'theories of technology', offering apparently definitive arguments about what technology is and how it affects us. The real issues are considerably less esoteric.

Education

New technology is rightly regarded as fundamental to business growth and success. While the 'dot com bubble' has undoubtedly burst, Internet presence, networking and multimedia remain crucial factors for many kinds of enterprise. The present government wants the UK to be a leading country for Internet technology and this applies to the education sector. Internet Technology and E Commerce courses are starting to appear and in September 2001 a new Internet Research Faculty commenced work at Oxford University. Computer and Internet literacy are an increasing part of daily school life, and Internet resources are becoming more substantial and influential.

The BBC site is developing what could become a kind of digital curriculum, with schools material covering the different Key Stages. The BBC WebWise training is widely used as an introduction to the Internet, both online and with assistance in libraries and schools around the country. New initiatives are appearing as a resource and virtual community for teachers inspired by the Internet as a learning aid, and many schools now have their own web sites, sometimes displaying pupils' work.

There are two related issues for ICT in education. The first is the money to pay for the equipment and reliable Internet access; the second is the training that teachers receive. There are various initiatives around the country designed to remedy the problem of limited access, in the following areas for example:

· Brampton Bierlow, near Rotherham

· Whitebirk estate in Blackburn

· Beswick/Clayton in Manchester

· Carpenter's Estate, Newham · Framlington, near Ipswich

· Alston in Cumbria

· Kensington in Liverpool

These parts of the country are receiving subsidised or free ICT equipment and training.As the benefits of digital technology become embedded in daily life, people without the financial means to access it will be increasingly disadvantaged. This is even more true on an international scale, with less wealthy countries.

About two years ago, Tony Blair was criticised for an initiative supplying online computers to an African community. His critics complained that the money would have been better spent supplying them with basic provisions; his retort was that access to technology would be profoundly enabling.

In the UK, young children grow up with the new technology and have a familiarity and competence with it that adults often struggle to achieve. Teachers are sometimes in the position where their level of skill is about the same as that of a 12 year old. The programme funded by the New Opportunities Fund and administered by the Teacher Training Agency targets the country's 400,000 teachers. To date, only about half have enrolled. ICT knowledge amongst teachers is a national problem.

Art

Digital art is now a recognised cultural form. It ranges from computer generated print work to video installations, like the work of Bill Viola. It provokes questions about what art is and how we are to evaluate it. This controversy parallels the debate about photography, earlier last century. Some people believed that the new chemical alchemy presaged the end of painting; other people maintained that it was an inferior practise that could not be called art. The controversy has continued since then. However, photography is now an established art form; the seminal work of people like Ansel Adams, Cartier-Bresson, Robert Mapplethorpe and Robert Doisneau is well known, and venues exist like The Photographer's Gallery in London.

As Walter Benjamin questioned in The Role of Art in the Mechanical Age of Reproduction, what value does a photograph have when an infinite number of prints can be produced from the same negative? The argument extends to digital technique where a print, screen saver, video projection etc. is an expression of underlying code, easily repeated and distributed. Critical works are starting to appear questioning what role photography now has, when chemistry is being superseded by code and pixels (Photography After Photography 1996, Amelunxen, Iglhaut, Rotzer; G&B Arts, Munich; The Photographic image In Digital Culture 1995 Lister, M ed. Routledge, London)).

The aesthetic of photography is different from that of painting, intrinsically related to time and, where people are the subject, the mysterious, interior lives of other people. In that respect it cannot be compared to painting - although historically it was influenced by it. Thus, the earliest photographs imitated paintings and were regarded as valuable because of their representational accuracy. Digital art takes the process a stage further from the sensuous fluidity of paint, itself traditionally derived from natural products. It has to be judged on its own terms - but is located in a continuum of artistic practice, beginning with the earliest cave paintings. With the increasing power and proliferation of digital technology, it is likely to become more pervasive. The BBC site hosts examples of digital art and they ask the question: can digital art be located alongside traditional methods?

Consciousness

It is a remarkable fact that new technology is inspiring renewed interest in human consciousness. The ambiguities of cyberspace and virtual reality underly this: emotionally engaging interaction with no physical correlation, and immersive simulations.

a) Cyberspace

Many people are finding they become emotionally involved with people during Internet chat and Multi-User Domain experiences. Some theorists use this as a starting point to suggest that cyberspace can somehow reconfigure personal identity - most notably, your male or female status. 'Cybersex' is recognised to the extent that academics have study it:

www.socio.demon.co.uk/Cyborgasms.html

www.trudy-barber.co.uk/lecture1.htm

www.socio.demon.co.uk/magazine/1/issue1.html.

With both MUDs and chat, the psychological (and physical) interaction parallels the experience of computer games - and needs to be seen as such.

b) Virtual reality

VR technology has many practical uses, as with architectural modelling and flight training. When fully immersive (requiring a special room, headsets etc.), it deceives the senses into experiencing an environment that does not exist. Philosophically, this relates to questions about what reality is and how we understand it, or if we can understand it. With both cases, I suggest that the enquiry into consciousness is valid. However it does not follow that because these experiences are so engaging, perhaps we can modify our psycho-biological identity or sense of physical location.

Historically, science fiction has sometimes heralded future fact - like the mobile communicators in Star Trek, equivalent to today's mobile phones. But science cannot modify ontological fact. The problem lies in confusing metaphor for reality. A metaphor is a valid and powerful conceptual device; cyberspace and virtual reality are forms of metaphor.

Finally, according to critic Walter Benjamin, consciousness is not so much a means of making sense of sensory stimulation as a shield against "the excessive energies at work in the world" (On Some Motifs: 157). In mastering these stimuli, which we experience as shocks, consciousness protects us against trauma. If the shield is broken and trauma does occur, we seek to master the stimulus retroactively. This is the reason for dreaming: a process of psychic reconciliation. A similar impulse underlies much artistic practice; the artist seeks to restore his own equilibrium through his work. It is largely unconscious, but experienced as an innate drive or hunger for creative work, regardless of how practical or impractical it may be. We thus have the stereotype (not without basis) for the 'starving artist'.

Benjamin reflected on film technology, which was a new phenomenon in his time. He argued that changes in perception and attention were not the result of film technology but catered for by film. From this analysis, we thus use technology like an artist uses his practice: it helps us to integrate and order our apprehension of modern life, as it becomes faster and more fragmented. Technology is thus an empowering tool which facilitates creative work, if we regard creativity as explorative and innovative reflection or a transcendence of the habitual.

Computers and Creativity

How and to what extent does technology facilitate creativity? In the case of photography, it allowed an entirely new artistic form. To some extent digital technology does the same thing, and we have a new genre of 'digital art'. Computers have entered the lives of creative practitioners in many different ways. We can also ask if technology ever impedes creativity. Software exists to create plot and dialogue for writers, and composition for poets. On the Internet, there are projects where visitors can create their own random art. Interesting as these may be, the work is 'machine' generated and therefore not comparable to human creation. However, it is quite likely that this kind of work could be produced and presented as the unique talent of a particular artist.

The culture of technology further relates to creativity in the choice of platform between the ubiquitous PC and the Mac. When the latter first appeared, its user-friendly graphical interface encouraged artistic and creative work. Since those days, the media and arts industries have mostly used Macs. The early days of the PC involved strictly linear command line control, using MS DOS. This is not conducive to creative, 'right brain' work. Buzan's technique of mind mapping corresponds to the Mac ethos, where ideas are expressed graphically and visually. A linear essay corresponds to the MS DOS methodology. When MS DOS was superseded by Windows (a copy of the Mac interface), the difference between the two platforms became less obvious.

Technically, the Mac system is based on 'surface' use and normally does not allow you access to system file architecture. The rationale is: the user wants to focus on his creative work, not the technical operation of his computer. The Windows operating system was initially an interface over the top of MS DOS (recent versions have broken free from its MS DOS origins). And unlike the Mac OS, with Windows you can access and adjust core-level system files. This is both negative and positive. Negatively, it allows people to access and change their files when they may not fully comprehend what they are doing. Positively, it allows for a more accessible system where, if anything goes wrong, there are likely to be several ways to remedy the problem. For example, if you lose a file and Windows cannot find it, the MS DOS prompt may come in useful. Whether this creates a system that is ultimately less stable is debateable. The 'urban myth' seems to be that the Mac is more stable.

The Mac and the PC represent different historical and ideological positions, expressed in their marketing methods. The Mac supposedly appeals to the creative person who 'thinks different' and is not interested in technical specifications, but design and simplicity. The PC is almost universally used in business and office situations. In Spring 2001 IBM television advertising tried to appeal to the 'creative' market. It featured a young and casually dressed youth describing the IBM product as 'bad' meaning, with ironic contradiction, that it is 'good'. He is accompanied by an older man in a shirt and tie who insists that he cannot describe the product as 'bad'. The message is: the IBM products are fashionable and desirable, used by bohemian people just as much as the business community.

There are legitimate questions about stability, cost and software availability, but the ideological values of the Mac-PC debate are probably more imaginative than real. Creative or business related work can be accomplished in a similar way on either platform; creativity originates from people rather than operating systems. If people find they are more creative using a Mac rather than a PC, that subjective appraisal may be a valid reason for choosing the Mac.

If we accept that considerations of design and ergonomics influence how we feel and perform, then the PC and the Mac have, by implication, two different functional aesthetics. PC manufacturers are now imitating the Mac style, producing more interesting and colourful housings rather than ugly beige boxes. The iMac and G3 inaugurated this development, although even the early Macs were 'design conscious'. Psychologists have found that we tend to develop subjective relationships with our computers, involving affection when they are stable and reliable, and anger when they misbehave. It is likely that the PC and the Mac do have a different functional 'feel', although this would be difficult to quantify or define.