ABSTRACT
In this chapter we argue for the idea that networked computer technology effectuates a real and delimiting form of determinism. That is to say, intensive and extensive computer networks that pervade our lives shape and ‘determine’ those lives in ways that would not occur either at all, or to the extent that they do, in the absence of computers in such networked abundance. We are at the beginning of this process, but the digital ‘category error’ that we made in the post-war period, and implemented under the market guise of ‘efficiency’ in the 1970s, has blinded us to the negative effect of the digital upon the analogue. This has made any serious scholarship on the subject of techno logical determinism easy to dismiss as the stuff of sci-fi movies or books. We don’t argue that an army of HAL-type computers is emerging to outsmart and enslave us. Nor do we suggest that analogue is ‘good’ and digital is ‘bad’ in any comprehensive and prescriptive sense. We do argue that computers change fundamentally the human-technology relationship. We have always been dependent upon technology for our survival, but the relationship was one where humans had an active role. With computers the dependency has increased, but our function is no longer so active; it is more passive – and where computers lead (and they do lead in highly specific directions), we tend to follow.
