How does the social shaping perspective help us to understand the Essay

How does the social shaping perspective help us to understand the social and organizational implications of technological change - Essay Example The paper tells that the thesis that each technology is working if its creator had made successful preparations in already arranged social and political context, is defended from two perspectives. On the one hand, the analysis shows that the role of advertising, political conditions, and gender relations is crucial in the given and other cases of technological development. On another hand, the role of certain choices made by agents of technological change emerges in any case of the struggle for becoming a popular technology. Thus, the presented critics of technological determinism prove the necessity to investigate social and organizational circumstances of any technology entering the market both in retrospective and in the contemporary world. At the very beginning of his analysis, Cowen discusses the role of technology in changing of families in general and women’s position in particular. In fact, he states that technological revolution in the household had already happened a nd changed our daily lives â€Å"in somewhat unexpected ways†. In this context, he draws his core argument from the insufficiency of standard view on Industrial revolution. To put it in author’s words, â€Å"it will be necessary to know more than we presently do about the impact of industrialization on families of similar classes and geographical locations†. After defining this, he presents an analysis of several basic shifts in American society caused by Industrial revolution. Firstly, completely electrified apartments replaced popular gas usage. Consequently, physical (or hand) power became outdated. Supporting the key ideas of technological determinism, in his another work Cowen recognizes technological inappropriateness as the core reason of long entering of electronic devices in the daily consumption market. Then, the appearance of new household utilities had modified the life of ordinary Americans.