Content area
Full text
Culture and Technology
Andrew Murphie and John Potts
Palgrave Macmillan
Basingstoke and New York, NY
2003
ISBN 0 333 92927 6
L47.50
229 pp.
Keywords Information society, Culture, Technological change
Review DOI10.1108/00220410310485749
This book, by two Australian academics, is in essence an extensive review of writings on the relationship of culture and technology. Murphie and Potts "do not provide a dominant 'line' to explain the cultural impact of technology. Rather, [they] discuss a wide range of theoretical perspectives Their book is an excellent introduction to the subject as discussed by many of the numerous writers who have contributed to it. Some 240 references are cited.
The impact of technology on culture is so pervasive - indeed, all-invasive -- that we are apt not to notice it. Both "culture" and "technology" are impossible to pin down either in precise meaning or at a particular point, because they are dynamic. The terms are relatively recent in their present senses: technology used to mean "the study of the arts", and culture "cultivation". The authors approve of Eno's very basic and broad definition of "culture" as "everything we do not have to do" (e.g. "we have to eat, but we do not have to have cuisines").
As the Introduction and chapter 1, "Theoretical frameworks" say, technology has always had an impact on culture: as the various media for communication have changed, so has the matter communicated. Obvious examples are the invention of printing and of computers. Some, notably Marshall McLuhan, have argued that "the medium is the matter". His and Baudrillard's technological determinism is balanced by the "cultural materialism" of Raymond Williams and others, who see culture as largely determining technology (the invention of printing in China had little effect because the culture was not able or willing to accept it). There are various positions in between. As the authors say, there are plenty of examples of a new technology having major effects on culture (e.g. mobile phones), and also many where long-term cultural change has led to the development of a new technology. It is not a question of either technology or culture having an overriding influence on the other; they continually interact.
Chapter 2 deals with the influence of technology on the visual arts. Of more direct...