Communication technologies: between determinisim and dazzle

Abstract

This paper is an approach to a broader research that seeks to understand the role increasingly predominant technologies of communication. While discussion on the role of technology is not necessarily new, currently its presence is critical in everyday life. In appearance, social life seems to be determined technologically: Machines and communication devices are ubiquitous in interactions, in language, in the forms of communication, social representations. However, the question is not exhausted by this diagnosis: Among those who have been inclined to accept the existence of a technological determinism, there are positive and negative views. There is also a “third position” that Raymond Williams called symptomatic technology, and can be understood as a logical feedback between subject and technology mediated applications. Moreover, the overwhelming presence of communication technologies in almost all spheres of daily life, and forces us to think that the term “information technology and communication” is not enough. The term “entertainment” is imposed, with enormous force to the current understanding of the phenomenon. In the presence of these technologies (to the ones should be added techniques, languages, social imaginary that arise from them), the subjects are almost no escape because of the imperatives of use. Communication technologies have emerged as necessity, have produced subjects and dependent groups and, above all, produce a glare that makes it impossible to maintain any sphere of life outside them. This work aims to be a gateway to a much deeper discussion: the historical and social analysis of the representations of time around communication technologies.