Technology Designed to Meet a Demand

What comes first, the technology or the hoax? Michael Caulfield examines a hoax involving people living on the surface of the moon in the 19th century. He makes the case that this event was not created to promote newspapers, but vice versa. Newspapers and mass print was designed to promote such events:

In other words, you can think of the hoax as meeting a demand technology creates. The hoax is hyperreal, the realer-than-real event custom-built for the technology it will inhabit. It doesn’t subvert the technology as much as exploit it to its full potential. The hoax, not reality, shows the underlying logic of the platform, and lays it bare.
The hoax is the unbridled platform made manifest.Whether we realize it or not, that’s where  we are with social media at this moment. The proliferation of hoaxes have repeatedly shown the moral bankruptcy of our current platforms, and just as early hoaxes of the 1800s started a conversation that would lead to modern journalistic ethics, we are beginning to have that discussion now about our online presses and virtual barking newsboys. And just like then, the question is not primarily about hoaxes, but about what we should be able to expect, in terms of ethics, from the people running and developing our information platforms. source

This relates to the idea that [[technology is never neutral]].


This makes me wonder what the purpose of technology, such as NAPLAN and Google Docs is fufilling?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *