IB Philosophy 9.1.2 Impact of Technology on Individuals and Societies Key Definitions

Actor-Network Theory, developed by Bruno Latour, argues that both humans and non-human artefacts function as "actants" that participate equally in networks of action, dissolving the traditional boundary between persons and tools. Agency is distributed across the entire network rather than residing solely in human intentions.

a condition in which a person is estranged from the products of their own activity and from their own human capacities. In Fanon's application, alienation names the psychic and social condition of the colonized person who is estranged from their own body, culture, and selfhood by the imposed meanings of the colonial racial order, a condition that can only be overcome through the transformation of the social structures that produced it.

Luciano Floridi's concept of the infosphere refers to the total informational environment in which humans now live, where the boundary between online and offline, human and artificial, has become so blurred that we are not merely users of information technologies but informational organisms embedded within them.

multiple meanings of technology, social groups, design trajectory shaped by use. A key concept within the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) framework developed by Bijker and Pinch, interpretive flexibility holds that the same technological artefact can be understood and used in fundamentally different ways by different social groups. These competing interpretations are not merely downstream responses to a fixed object but actively shape the design trajectory and ultimate form of the technology itself.

Social constructivism of technology is the thesis that technological development is shaped by social, political, and cultural forces rather than following a purely internal logic. Technology and society co-construct each other rather than one determining the other.

systematic pursuit of maximum efficiency, total social phenomenon, autonomous logic. Jacques Ellul used this term not to mean technology in general but the all-pervasive orientation of modern society toward optimising every domain of life, from politics and education to personal relationships. Unlike individual tools, technique operates as an autonomous force that imposes its own logic on human activity rather than serving human purposes.

Technological determinism is the view that technology drives social change independently of human choice, reducing culture, politics, and values to effects of technological development. Ortega resists this position by insisting that technology's effects depend on the character of the people who use it.