Technological Determinism in Construction of an Online Society

Abstract

Computerized virtual worlds are amalgams of advanced technology and traditional culture, so this chapter considers this relationship through an avatar based on sociologist William F. Ogburn (1886–1959), a leading proponent of Technological Determinism. This school of thought argued that the engine of history is not the decisive action of individual leaders, but the gradual accretion of human knowledge and its practical applications. The avatar enters a fascinating, experimental, and frankly unpopular gameworld named Xsyon, that takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland around Lake Tahoe. The gameplay requires the user to gather material resources, create tools, produce more and more products necessary for life, and gain technical skills, potentially recapitulating Ogburn’s theory through the rebirth of technological civilization. Simulated resource gathering and product manufacture is central to Xsyon, but also significant in many other MMOs described in other chapters. His central model of social change introduced four concepts that interacted with each other as elements within a dynamic system: (1) Invention, (2) Accumulation, (3) Diffusion, and (4) Adjustment. Each technological innovation has its own impact, whether small or large, but as inventions accumulate so does their force impelling society to change. More than that, inventions combine to produce new inventions, in what today we might call a chain reaction or the convergence-divergence process. An invention made in one industry at one location, diffuses both topically and topographically, thereby amplifying both invention and accumulation. Finally, society must adjust, and the results of that adjustment feed back into the three prior processes.