Some Quick-and-Dirty Thoughts on Technological Determinism

Recently, I ended up re-reading James Allen-Robertson’s “Devs and the Culture of Tech”, a five-part deep dive into the sci-fi miniseries Devs, and its critiques of the tech industry on a structural level.

In lieu of anything better to do, I’ve decided to pull out a single concept James has touched on, and give my extended thoughts on it.

So, What is Technological Determinism?

In a basic sense, technological determinism (which I’m calling techno-determinism to be more concise) is a worldview that posits technological development as the primary driving force of humanity, and which treats said development as, heavily paraphrasing James, a product of “rational people pursuing the objectively best outcomes”, if not “a process of uncovering [tech] as prior technological discovery begets the next like some inevitable Civ tech-tree” .

For Silicon Valley, the techno-determinist worldview provided two main advantages.

First, it provided an easy accountability sink for when new technological developments screw over some portion of the public - it wasn’t Silicon Valley’s fault that they fucked taxi drivers over with their ride-sharing apps, it was the taxi companies’ fault for getting in the way of Progress™.

Second, it obscures SV’s role in pushing those developments, and whatever reasons they may have had for said developments - those ride-sharing apps didn’t pop up because Silicon Valley wanted to make more money, they popped up because they were The Future™.

These days, techno-determinism has lost a fair bit of its grip on the general public - and I personally believe the NFT bubble is the major cause.

NFTs Killed Techno-Determinism

If you’ve been on the Internet for any length of time in the past few years, you’ve definitely heard of NFTs. They popped up in 2021, became completely fucking inescapable for roughly a year, then died an embarrassing death in 2022, prompting an outpouring of schadenfreude from the general public.

During their bubble, they were hyped to the stars by Silicon Valley, with claims that they were The Future™, that they were Inevitable™, and that you needed to Get On Board Now™ or be Left Behind™. (Sound familiar?)

As you already know, NFTs did not become The Future™. They failed, in spectacular fashion, receiving widespread mockery and rejection from the public, before getting consigned to the dustbin of history after the market imploded.

In that loud, spectacular failure, NFTs fatally undermined any notion showed the public that resistance against SIlicon Valley was anything but futile, that they didn’t need to take Silicon Valley’s attacks on them lying down, and whatever dystopian dreams the Valley had could be strangled in their crib.

On top of that, seeing SV’s rhetoric collapse so spectacularly with NFTs helped to inoculate the public against Silicon Valley’s techno-determinist rhetoric - after seeing artificially scar

On top of that, the failure of NFTs helped to inoculate the public against Silicon Valley’s techno-determinist rhetoric - after witnessing it spectacularly collapse in the face of reality, the public was well-prepared to see through SV’s attempt to recycle their rhetoric when the AI bubble reared its head.