ABSTRACT
The debate about technology in film and media studies, as in other disciplines, oscillates between techno-determinism and social constructivism. For techno-determinists, technology and its development drive the history of media, while for social constructivists, technology can only be understood by way of the social forces and dynamics that produce and shape them. This contribution argues that these alternatives should be understood as two facets of what we might call Plato’s uncertainty principle. Plato’s allegory of the cave illustrates, among other things, a basic indeterminacy in our understanding of technology. You can either focus on the (social) meaning of technology, or on its structure, but the two aspects seem to be mutually exclusive. This contribution argues that a theory of cinema as technology needs to come to terms with this problem.
