The instrumental conception of technology is Mary Tiles' and Hans Oberdiek's description of the theory that technological artefacts are value neutral. They attribute this belief to optimists, for whom technical instruments belong to the “the factual realm” and only acquire a positive or negative value through their development and use by humans “for good or evil”.
This belief was encapsulated in David Sarnoff's statement made in an acceptance speech for his honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame:
- "We are too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the sins of those who wield them. The products of modern science are not themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value".
According to Lelia Green, the notion technology is neutral assumes technological advances occur “in a vacuum”, the result of individual bursts of inspiration, or ‘Eureka’ moments, as the popular mythology of technology suggests.
It also assumes technological development is inevitable, she adds, and for a technology to be neutral, it must be on a fixed “trajectory” following an “internal logic”.
Read more about Instrumental Conception Of Technology: Example: Personal Computing, Criticism
Famous quotes containing the words instrumental, conception and/or technology:
“I guard this box, as I would the instrumental parts of my religion, to help my mind on to something better.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“If the Nazis have really been guilty of the unspeakable crimes circumstantially imputed to them, then—let us make no mistake—pacifism is faced with a situation with which it cannot cope. The conventional pacifist conception of a reasonable or generous peace is irrelevant to this reality.”
—John Middleton Murry (1889–1957)
“Radio put technology into storytelling and made it sick. TV killed it. Then you were locked into somebody else’s sighting of that story. You no longer had the benefit of making that picture for yourself, using your imagination. Storytelling brings back that humanness that we have lost with TV. You talk to children and they don’t hear you. They are television addicts. Mamas bring them home from the hospital and drag them up in front of the set and the great stare-out begins.”
—Jackie Torrence (b. 1944)