Human intentions and media effects

Abstract

"Computers, Culture, and Educational Futures" demonstrates the advantages of looking at technology from an uncommitted point of view. Sullivan discusses computer technology as an outsider--one with relatively little direct experience with computers who is drawn to and interested in them, but is as yet uninitiated into their peculiar reality. This perspective--recognizing the inevitability of growth rather than advocating any particular determinant of that growth--enables Sullivan to give us a relatively bias-free perception of how computers work in this society. In the Weizenbaum tradition (1976), Sullivan stresses the need for us to examine our assumptions about power, control, and values in relation to technological development. Sullivan's essential concern is embedded in his own "critical-dialectical" approach. Rather than recommending that we accept and promote the new technology, or that we reject it outright, Sullivan maintains that we should examine its elements objectively. He would have us adopt a stance that is critical, ifi that we should accept responsibility for understanding and predicting consequences, and dialectical, in that we should consider both the positive and negative effects of technology on society. No matter how committed we may be to the use of technology in education, SulIivan's is an appropriate approach for each of us. The importance of his position is its freedom from ideological bias and its commitment to intellectual honesty and responsibility. These are qualities infrequently examined explicitly, especially in regard to technology, which is usually assumed to exist in a value-free context. Sullivan also demonstrates the advantages of perceiving technology from a multidisciplinary perspective. Drawing on history, politics, religion, and psychology, he raises issues that reflect, ultimately, on human responsibility for the consequences of technolo~cal growth. His religious imagery is especially illuminating in this respect, for it defines so fully the power that technology wields through its function in society today. He describes the computer variously--as a "mania" and "obsession," as promising "educational miracles," as a "sacred calf" (in the context of Exodus, as we move toward "the promised land of communications") and even as "deus ex machina." In our society, he notes, technology has in effect supplanted religion, letters, and knowledge as the keeper of the faith, displacing the traditional wisdom and values of preindustrial societies. In these "modern times" it is the computer, not human energy or imagination, that is " the focal point of great cultural expectations" (p. 17). In an age when scientific progress is held to be above any other kind of development, how are we to place limits on that progress, morally, politically, socially? For an answer we must look to the relationship of man to machine in the context of our technological society. What Sullivan describes is a classic conflict, the force of technology against the power of human interaction, a deified utility and ingenuity opposing a declining morality and integrity. Technology, as machine, is "sexless," without