[lbo-talk] Buckets of urine

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

Dwayne:
> The Vietnamese who used creative mis-directs were hacking the understood
> behaviors of the American 'people detection' system.  Because they used
> a low tech approach it's possible to miss the larger point in
> celebration of the victory of "simple" over "complex".  It was their
> technical savvy that enabled them to successfully create this hack.

Good point.  Clearly, technologies can be used in very different ways to
different effects.  It is not low-tech vs. high-tech, but alternatives uses
of technologies be it low or high.

Years ago, Elihu Katz and Jay Blumler introduced the concept of "uses and
gratifications" to researching impacts of technologies (in their case ,
radio and tv) which they saw as an alternative to a certain kind of
determinism (i.e. the view in which uses are pre-determined by technological
properties).  Their argument was that every technology has multiple uses
that are defined by social context, and these different uses produce
different outcomes. Unfortunately, their ideas never overcame the more
popular notion of technological determinism i.e technology having
pre-determined  effects, either good (e.g computers enhancing productivity
and creativity) or bad (e.g. media teaching violence and causing decay of
"moral values").

 Wojtek