Notice Board

The Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series will present "Is Beth Preston a Technological Determinist?  Innovation and Material Culture" by Hector MacIntyre (Research Services, U of L) on Thursday, November 26th at 12:15 p.m. in D-631.  Everyone is welcome.

I recount Beth Preston’s sociogeneric approach to the study of material cultural   propagation.  Drawing on her pluralism   about function, she argues that proper functional use patterns explain the   reproduction of these items, but that this has the consequence that individuals themselves can be seen as products of technology – a consequence I argue commits her to technological determinism.  Preston pre-empts a criticism of this nature through her theory of innovation, which draws on deviant system-functional uses that upset standard use patterns.  Individuals can deviate in small ways that add up to large changes.  I challenge this account of innovation by attacking the notion of improvisation she develops in support of it.  It is more accurate to depict these deviant uses as fairly random utilizations of item affordances rather than even the minutely novel shifts and incremental departures Preston posits.