Ideas and interpretations: Is man a tool-using animal?

Chandler, D. (2002). Technological determinism. Web essay, Media and Communications Studies, University of Aberystwyth. Download as PDF.

Key points:

Technology led theory:

The two main categories are:

• Technology PUSH
• Demand PULL

Technological determinism:

Technology is the basis of society in the past, present and future and considers cause and effect relationship

Benjamin Franklin apparently first coined the phrase that 'man is a tool-using animal'. 
It was such a long time ago that Franklin had stated this, but when you think even today most of us are tool-using creatures? Some of us get involved in making them too. But most of the time we use what has been made by others. Such a great saying!

Thomas Carlyle echoed this in 1841, adding that 'without tools he is nothing; with them he is all'

How can you prove this to be wrong, imagine you without your phone for a day! How lost are you. It is like you are being put into a dark whole cut off from the whole world. But with a set of tools what is the thing that we can not do....?


Leslie White's statement place everything into context, when he declared  'We may view a cultural system as a series of three horizontal strata: the technological layer on the bottom, the philosophical on the top, the sociological stratum in between...

These readings are really good they are thought provoking....