Chris Anderson’s recent piece in Wired online inspired a completely unsurprising reaction among the technoscenti online, but also more references to work in Technology and Culture than we see in a typical week.

Anderson’s piece, which more or less departs from the observation that the browser-based Web is accounting for less and less Internet traffic in a world full of smart phones, e-readers, and other gadgets, produced a nice headline (“The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet”) and a maybe slightly frantic thesis. The Atlantic‘s Alexis Madrigal took issue with Anderson’s general view that technologies “want” things”:

Later, Anderson writes, “This is the natural path of industrialization: invention, propagation, adoption, control.”

I wonder how many historians of technology would agree with him. It sure seems suspiciously like a “tidy timeline of progress,” tinged with a little libertarian cynicism. I don’t think that scholars represented in journals like Technology and Culture and by [David] Edgerton, [Carroll] Pursell, David Nye, Thomas Hughes, and Erick Schatzberg would agree that these things happen “every time.” Too much scholarship has shown that technologies and systems are (messily) shaped by social movements and events and governments, political ideas and freak accidents. The kind of logic that says, “This was all inevitable,” is impossible with that data in your hands.

Meanwhile, NYT’s Steve Lohr commented that, if you strip away the hyperbole

what remains is mainly commentary on the impact of the accelerated pace of change and accumulated innovations in the Internet-era media and communications environment. A result has been a proliferation of digital media forms and fast-shifting patterns of media consumption.

So the evolutionary engine runs faster than ever before, opening the door to new and often unforeseen possibilities.

As Lohr notes, “Life in the media and communications terrarium, it seems, is getting increasingly perilous.” A little perspective never hurts.

Posted August 29th, 2010 by Joe Schultz
Filed under: Internet | media | Systems