ABSTRACT
Chapter Three focuses on theories of technology and examines how ideas of technology are intertwined with both culture and ideology. Communications technology undoubtedly has an enormous effect on how culture is transmitted, but because it is an omnipresent element of our everyday lives, we barely notice its influence on our behaviour. It is merely part of our behaviour that increasingly mediates our experience and communication. After attempting to explicate some understanding of technology we then move to looking at the use of technology in communication. In history, we perceive human tools to have followed a trajectory from ‘less complex’ to ‘more complex,’ which reinforces an idea of a linear progression of human civilization. This idea of progression is strongly persuasive despite evidence to the contrary. The impact of our imagining of what technology is and the effects it has appears closely tied to a normative idea of progress while concealing the basic means of representation humans utilise to engage with each other and world. Chapter Three explores this idea of progress after navigating what it means to engage with the world and how we conceive of ourselves as being-in-the-world. The chapter concludes that the importance of faithful representations of our engagement with the world is readily understood but due to the frenetic manipulation of images facilitated by technological capabilities the faithful representations are concealed or drowned out leading to an aimless grasping for stability in meaning.
