KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY AND THE CULTURE OF TECHNOLOGY

One of the biggest challenges within the knowledge society is understanding culture and how it sustains itself (or fails to) amidst rapid technological growth, globalization, and the reorganization of work and life. Part of the challenge lies in appreciating how technological culture has a broad reaching impact with a plethora of consequences within the knowledge society that influences human life, organizations, and global development. A small but growing body of scholarship developed over the last fifty years has helped highlight some of the ways in which technology has a transforming influence on human culture and society and visa versa (Castell 2000; Elzinga, 1998; Haraway, 1991; Jenkins, 2006; McLuhan, 1962, 1964; Real, 1975; Turkle, 1995; Williams, 1975).

The importance of culture and technology was first recognized by Marshall McLuhan, who was responsible for popularizing the study of technology in Communications by drawing attention to the influence of modern communication technology on the human senses and understanding. McLuhan's (1962) The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, attempts to show how communication technology influences the cognitive organization of sensory experiences, which in turn, alters the social world," [I]f a new technology extends one or more of our senses outside us into the social world, then new ratios among all of our senses will occur in that particular culture." McLuhan's (1964), Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964) was a pioneering study of technology in the media which argued that the media, rather than the content, should be the main focus of study (the medium is the message). By drawing attention to the importance of studying the relation between media technology, the senses, and culture, McLuhan raised public awareness of the close connection and dependency humans have with technology and how this alters culture by changing how individuals interact with one another within society. This work also nurtured in a media ecology trend in the 1970s with a focus on technology mediation effects and the powerful role media technology plays in regulating meaning in life and society (Real, 1975, Williams, 1975).