Technological determinism is the theory that states the social and cultural value of a society is the product of its technology. Technology, whether it is in the form of a wheel or in the form of highly advanced software, has an enormous impact in our life. But while it is easy to think of technology as following a natural progression that affects our society, there are numerous sociological factors that, in turn, affect the development of technology as well.
Technological determinism can be divided into two parts. The first part states that technological development takes place outside the society and follows its own course. For example, the development of more powerful microprocessors in the computing industry is described as following Moore’s law, which states that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles every two years. Oftentimes, technological progression is described as a process of standalone inventions that build
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In fact, entire ages in our history (bronze age, iron age, etc.) have been named based on what kind of tools were available in that era (Wyatt, 2008). One of the example that illustrates this is White’s essay on the stirrup and how that contributed to feudalism among the Franks (White, 1962). Her argument is that the introduction of the stirrup introduced heavy armed cavalry which led to the rise of knights and feudalism. While this argument seems to hold on surface examination, stirrup did not revolutionize warfare as much as White claims (Sawyer, 1963). Similarly, Anglo-Saxons had feudalism even though stirrups were only introduced to their society after the Norman invasion (Wajcman, 1999). So, it can be argued that the role played by stirrup for the rise of feudalism is minimal compared to all the sociological factors like the power vacuum that arose after the fall of the Western Roman Empire (Nelson,