What is the relationship between technology and culture? Plato and Aristotle saw this relation in a class framework–technology, especially technological work used for gain or profit, was not as noble as the higher arts like music, poetry or philosophy. Their view was echoed by the Romans and hard-wired into higher education in medieval systems of the arts; the “liberal arts” do not mean “arts of the left wing” or “arts engaged in by adherents of classical economic theories” but rather “the arts of the free man [as opposed to servants or slaves, who do the nasty mechanical stuff]”.
This division has been problematic since at least the Industrial Revolution, but with the coming of the Information Revolution–or the Digital Revolution, or whatever the world of the smart phone and algorithms should be called–that analysis has finally become a real obstacle to understanding. Technology is driving culture. Culture is shaping technology. Frameworks from before the chip aren’t working for us.
The pieces collected in this blog represent attempts to understand this new world of ours and how it came to be.
The Language of Code 