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How Social Engineering Drives Technology

palladiummag.com · 2,884 words · saved by 1 readers

Common wisdom holds that technology disrupts society. That is, a technology is invented, and then a natural and inexorable process of spontaneous order changes society to use that technology. But the reality is that society is itself an engineered system that changes more by deliberate planning than the common wisdom is willing to admit. If anything, it is society that disrupts technology. From the design bureau’s office politics, to the organization of industry, to consumer behavior, to national security, social technologies enable and regulate what technology we use and how we use it. Without socialization, most of us wouldn’t know how to use any particular technology, or even what it was made for. Technology only reproduces itself through instruction or imitation—and only when embedded in the larger social organism that puts it to use. Every device not only has a manual but a social context. It is then social rather than material facts that drive or hinder the development and adopti

SpaceX/Kennedy Space Center, Merritt Island, United States Common wisdom holds that technology disrupts society. That is, a technology is invented, and then a natural and inexorable process of spontaneous order changes society to use that technology. But the reality is that society is itself an engineered system that changes more by deliberate planning than the common wisdom is willing to admit. If anything, it is society that disrupts technology. From the design bureau’s office politics, to the organization of industry, to consumer behavior, to national security, social technologies enable an

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