In the chapter titled "New Media as Cultural Technologies" of Terry Flew's book, technology becomes cultural technology when aspects of culture are introducedand it is used as a social tool.
"Technologies are not merely aids to human activity but also powerful forces acting to reshape that activity and its meaning"
"Technologies are the tools of artifacts, used by humans to transform fnature, enable social interaction or extend human capacities"
We use technology as an extension of our own cultural pursuits.
Eg the way we use a mobile phone. As technology, it is just what it is, and it becomes a cultural technology through the way we use it --> texting our friends
Therefore, according to Terry Flew in his chapter, technology becomes cultural technology when humans use it as a social tool. Technology becomes cultural technology when individuals make use of it to extend their social pursuits networking with other like-minded people.
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Hi Courtney,
I think you sum up the difference between technology and cultural technology really well. It is important to recognise this difference when studying the creative industries as so much of what we do as students is making use of technology in a cultural way. Especially when we use our computers to create blogs like these!
The next step is to identify why we choose to use technology as a basis for so many of our cultural endeavours and how it effects the worth of the information, art or music (+ many others) in terms of cultural capital. Venturelli states that “wealth-creation in an economy of ideas is... dependent on the capacity...to continually create content, or new forms of widely distributed expression” (qtd in Hartley, 2005, p. 396). New technologies allow this to happen at a much greater rate than in previous eras, and so there is competition over cultural capital between countries, companies and individuals. If there was no cultural capital to gain by distributing one’s work (potentially) all over the world, then I wonder if technology would be used for cultural undertakings?
Of course I don’t think you could ever stop using technology for social and cultural endeavours, as it is so much a part of our society now.
(Does the telephone count as a cultural technology if you are talking about the culture you live in?)
Reference:
Hartley, J. 2005. "Creative Industries", Blackwell: Australia
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