CS213 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Raymond Williams, Technological Determinism, Hidden Curriculum
Topics: Culture, Technology, Progress
How do we understand culture and technology?
Culture
● Way of life
● Beliefs
● Anthropological
● Practices
● “Best of the best” mentality (Arnold) - high culture and popular culture - used to have
more strength, but we still make discriminations based on culture
Raymond Williams
● Culture as a whole way of life
● Structure of feeling
○ “As firm and definite as structure suggests, yet it operates in the most delicate
and least tangible part of our activities”
● Culture as a sphere of human activity
○ Dominant values but also residual ones
○ Constant interplay between tradition and selection
● Culture is therefore dynamic rather than static; heterogeneous rather than homogeneous
● Hegemony: leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over
other
● Culture as ordinary - lived in every day
● Presents two camps who lay claim to culture but he claims we will not find culture in
either locale
○ The tea shop with strict formalities and pretenses to gentility
○ Local drinking hole where time and money are wasted and arts are frowned upon
as not for the likes of us but for the toffs
○ Two sides of same coin
○ Culture for williams operates in two ways
■ Culture as tradition - we inherit from those who came before us
■ Culture as selection - taken from tradition, tried out, mulled over, and
recreated so as to produce new forms and practices
○ Culture is embedded in the practices and materials of everyday life
Culture and technology are always connected (tech developed in culture, used in culture, etc)
→ culture being changed by technology
→ but technology also changed by culture
→ dynamic flux of culture extends to technology
Technological Culture
● Points to idea that technology is part of culture and vice versa
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Document Summary
Best of the best mentality (arnold) - high culture and popular culture - used to have more strength, but we still make discriminations based on culture. Culture as a whole way of life. As firm and definite as structure suggests, yet it operates in the most delicate and least tangible part of our activities . Culture as a sphere of human activity. Culture is therefore dynamic rather than static; heterogeneous rather than homogeneous. Hegemony: leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over other. Culture as ordinary - lived in every day. Presents two camps who lay claim to culture but he claims we will not find culture in either locale. The tea shop with strict formalities and pretenses to gentility. Local drinking hole where time and money are wasted and arts are frowned upon as not for the likes of us but for the toffs. Culture for williams operates in two ways.
