There are a number of theories attempting to address technology

Technology

Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...

, which tend to be associated with the disciplines of science and technology studies

Science and technology studies

Science, technology and society is the study of how social, political, and cultural values affect scientific research and technological innovation, and how these, in turn, affect society, politics and culture...

 (STS) and communication studies

Communication studies

Communication Studies is an academic field that deals with processes of communication, commonly defined as the sharing of symbols over distances in space and time. Hence, communication studies encompasses a wide range of topics and contexts ranging from face-to-face conversation to speeches to mass...

. Most generally, the theories attempt to address the relationship between technology and society

Technology and society

Technology and society or technology and culture refers to cyclical co-dependence, co-influence, co-production of technology and society upon the other . This synergistic relationship occurred from the dawn of humankind, with the invention of simple tools and continues into modern technologies such...

 and prompt questions about agency

Structure and agency

The question over the primacy of either structure or agency in human behavior is a central debate in the social sciences. In this context, "agency" refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. "Structure", by contrast, refers to the recurrent...

, determinism/autonomy

Technological determinism

Technological determinism is a reductionist theory that presumes that a society's technology drives the development of its social structure and cultural values. The term is believed to have been coined by Thorstein Veblen , an American sociologist...

, and teleonomy

Teleonomy

Teleonomy is the quality of apparent purposefulness and of goal-directedness of structures and functions in living organisms that derive from their evolutionary history, adaptation for reproductive success, or generally, due to the operation of a program....

.

If forced, one might categorize them into social and group theories. Additionally, one might distinguish between descriptive and critical theories. Descriptive theories attempt to address the definition and substance of technology, the ways it has emerged, changed and its relation to the human/social sphere. More substantively it addresses the extent of which technology is autonomous and how much force it has in determining human practice or social structure. Critical theories of technology often take a descriptive theory as their basis and articulate concerns, examining what way the relationship can be changed. The authors mentioned in this article are those that have some concern with technology or media, though they often borrow from one another and of course build upon seminal theorists that preceded them.

Descriptive approaches

• Actor-network theory
  Actor-network theory
  Actor–network theory, often abbreviated as ANT, is a distinctive approach to social theory and research which originated in the field of science studies...
  
   (ANT) - posits a heterogeneous network of humans and non-humans as equal interrelated actors. It strives for impartiality in the description of human and nonhuman actors and the reintegration of the natural and social worlds. For example, Latour (1992) argues that instead of worrying whether we are anthropomorphizing technology, we should embrace it as inherently anthropomorphic: technology is made by humans, substitutes for the actions of humans, and shapes human action. What is important is the chain and gradients of actors' actions and competences, and the degree to which we choose to have figurative representations. Key concepts include the inscription of beliefs, practices, relations into technology, which is then said to embody them. Key authors include Latour
  Bruno Latour
  Bruno Latour is a French sociologist of science and anthropologist and an influential theorist in the field of Science and Technology Studies...
  
   (1997) and Callon (1999).

• Social construction of technology
  Social construction of technology
  Social construction of technology is a theory within the field of Science and Technology Studies. Advocates of SCOT -- that is, social constructivists -- argue that technology does not determine human action, but that rather, human action shapes technology...
  
   (SCOT) - argues that technology does not determine human action, but that human action shapes technology. Key concepts include:
  • interpretive flexibility: "Technological artifacts are culturally constructed and interpreted ... By this we mean not only that there is flexibility in how people think of or interpret artifacts but also that there is flexibility in how artifacts are designed."
  • relevant social group: shares a particular set of meanings about an artifact
  • closure and stabilization: when the relevant social group has reached a consensus
  • wider context: "the sociocultural and political situation of a social group shapes its norms and values, which in turn influence the meaning given to an artifact"

Key authors include Pinch and Bijker (1992) and Kline.

• Structuration theory - defines structures as rules and resources organized as properties of social systems. The theory employs a recursive notion of actions constrained and enabled by structures which are produced and reproduced by that action. Consequently, in this theory technology is not rendered as an artifact, but instead examines how people, as they interact with a technology in their ongoing practices, enact structures which shape their emergent and situated use of that technology. Key authors include DeSantis and Poole (1990), and Orlikowski (1992).

• Systems theory
  Systems theory
  Systems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research...
  
   - considers the historical development of technology and media with an emphasis on inertia and heterogeneity, stressing the connections between the artifact being built and the social, economic, political and cultural factors surrounding it. Key concepts include reverse salient
  Reverse salient
  The reverse salient refers to a backward bulge in the advancing line of a military front. The term has been commonly used to analyze military campaigns in the First World War, such as in the Battle of Verdun, where opposing military forces created uneven sections in respective battle lines...
  
  s when elements of a system lag in development with respect to others, differentiation, operational closure, and autopoietic autonomy. Key authors include Thomas P. Hughes
  Thomas P. Hughes
  Thomas Parke Hughes is an American Historian of Technology. He is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and is a visiting professor at MIT and Stanford.He received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1953....
  
   (1992) and Luhmann
  Niklas Luhmann
  Niklas Luhmann was a German sociologist, and a prominent thinker in sociological systems theory.-Biography:...
  
   (2000).

• Activity theory
  Activity theory
  Activity theory is a psychological meta-theory, paradigm, or theoretical framework, with its roots in Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky's cultural-historical psychology. Its founders were Alexei N...
  
  

Critical theories

• Values in Design - asks how do we ensure a place for values (alongside technical standards such as speed, efficiency, and reliability) as criteria by which we judge the quality and acceptability of information systems and new media. How do values such as privacy, autonomy, democracy, and social justice become integral to conception, design, and development, not merely retrofitted after completion? Key thinkers include Nissenbaum (2001).

Other stances

Additionally, many authors have posed technology so as to critique and or emphasize aspects of technology as addressed by the mainline theories. For example, Steve Woolgar

Steve Woolgar

Stephen Woolgar is a British sociologist. He has worked closely with Bruno Latour, with whom he co-authored Laboratory Life: the Social Construction of Scientific Facts ....

 (1991) considers technology as text in order to critique the sociology of scientific knowledge

Sociology of scientific knowledge

The sociology of scientific knowledge ' is the study of science as a social activity, especially dealing "with the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity."...

 as applied to technology and to distinguish between three responses to that notion: the instrumental response (interpretive flexibility), the interpretivist response (environmental/organizational influences), the reflexive response (a double hermeneutic). Pfaffenberger (1992) treats technology as drama to argue that a recursive structuring of technological artifacts and their social structure discursively regulate the technological construction of political power. A technological drama is a discourse of technological "statements" and "counterstatements" within the processes of technological regularization, adjustment, and reconstitution.

An important philosophical approach to technology has been taken by Bernard Stiegler

Bernard Stiegler

Bernard Stiegler is a French philosopher at Goldsmiths, University of London and at the Université de Technologie de Compiègne. In addition, he is Director of the , founder in 2005 of the political and cultural group, , and founder in 2010 of the philosophy school,...

, whose work has been influenced by other philosophers and historians of technology including Gilbert Simondon

Gilbert Simondon

Gilbert Simondon was a French philosopher best known for his theory of individuation, a major source of inspiration for Gilles Deleuze and Bernard Stiegler.- Career :...

 and André Leroi-Gourhan

André Leroi-Gourhan

André Leroi-Gourhan was a French archaeologist, paleontologist, paleoanthropologist, and anthropologist with an interest in technology and aesthetics and a penchant for philosophical reflection.- Biography :...

.

Group theories

There are also a number of technology related theories that address how (media) technology affects group processes. Broadly, these theories are concerned with the social effects of communication media. Some (e.g., media richness) are concerned with questions of media choice (i.e., when to use what medium effectively). Other theories (social presence, SIDE, media naturalness) are concerned with the consequences of those media choices (i.e., what are the social effects of using particular communication media).

• Social presence theory
  Social presence theory
  Social presence theory was developed by John Short, Ederyn Williams, and Bruce Christie at a time when computer-mediated communication as we know it today was yet to be conceptualized, let alone implemented through computers connected via the Internet. In spite of that, the theory has influenced...
  
   (Short, et al., 1976) is a seminal theory of the social effects of communication technology. Its main concern is with telephony and telephone conferencing (the research was sponsored by the British Post Office, now British Telecom). It argues that the social impact of a communication medium depend on the social presence it allows communicators to have. Social presence is defined as a property of the medium itself: the degree of acoustic, visual, and physical contact that it allows. The theory assumes that more contact will increase the key components of "presence": greater intimacy, immediacy, warmth and inter-personal rapport. As a consequence of social presence, social influence is expected to increase. In the case of communication technology, the assumption is that more text-based forms of interaction (e-mail, instant messaging) are less social, and therefore less conducive to social influence.

• Media richness theory
  Media Richness Theory
  Media richness theory, sometimes referred to as information richness theory, is a framework to describe a communications medium by its ability to reproduce the information sent over it. It was developed by Richard L. Daft and Robert H. Lengel. For example, a phone call will not be able to reproduce...
  
   (Daft & Lengel, 1986) shares some characteristics with social presence theory. It posits that the amount of information communicated differs with respect to a medium's richness. The theory assumes that resolving ambiguity and reducing uncertainty are the main goals of communication. Because communication media differ in the rate of understanding they can achieve in a specific time (with "rich" media carrying more information), they are not all capable of resolving uncertainty and ambiguity well. The more restricted the medium's capacity, the less uncertainty and equivocality it is able to manage. It follows that the richness of the media should be matched to the task so as to prevent over simplification or complication.

• Media naturalness theory
  Media naturalness theory
  Media naturalness theory was developed by Ned Kock. This theory is sometimes referred to as the psychobiological model, or compensatory adaptation theory...
  
   (Kock, 2001; 2004) builds on human evolution ideas and has been proposed as an alternative to media richness theory. Media naturalness theory argues that since our Stone Age hominid ancestors have communicated primarily face-to-face, evolutionary pressures have led to the development of a brain that is consequently designed for that form of communication. Other forms of communication are too recent and unlikely to have posed evolutionary pressures that could have shaped our brain in their direction. Using communication media that suppress key elements found in face-to-face communication, as many electronic communication media do, thus ends up posing cognitive obstacles to communication. This is particularly the case in the context of complex tasks (e.g., business process redesign, new product development, online learning), because such tasks seem to require more intense communication over extended periods of time than simple tasks.

• Media synchronicity theory (MST, Dennis & Valacich, 1999]) redirects richness theory towards the synchronicity of the communication.

• The Social Identity model of Deindividuation Effects (SIDE) (Postmes, Spears and Lea 1999; Reicher, Spears and Postmes, 1995; Spears & Lea, 1994) was developed as a response to the idea that anonymity and reduced presence made communication technology socially impoverished (or "deindividuated"). It provided an alternative explanation for these "deindividuation
  Deindividuation
  Deindividuation is a concept in social psychology regarding the loosening of social norms in groups. Sociologists also study the phenomenon of deindividuation, but the level of analysis is somewhat different. For the social psychologist, the level of analysis is the individual in the context of a...
  
   effects" based on theories of social identity (e.g., Turner et al., 1987). The SIDE model distinguishes cognitive and strategic effects of a communication technology. Cognitive effects occur when communication technologies make "salient" particular aspects of personal or social identity. For example, certain technologies such as email may disguise characteristics of the sender that individually differentiate them (i.e., that convey aspects of their personal identity) and as a result more attention may be given to their social identity. The strategic effects are due to the possibilities, afforded by communication technology, to selectively communicate or enact particular aspects of identity, and disguise others. SIDE therefore sees the social and the technological as mutually determining, and the behavior associated with particular communication forms as the product or interaction of the two.

• Time, interaction, and performance (TIP; McGrath, 1991) theory describes work groups as time-based, multi-modal, and multi-functional social systems. Groups interact in one of the modes of inception, problem solving, conflict resolution, and execution. The three functions of a group are production (towards a goal), support (affective) and well-being (norms and roles).

Analytic theories

Finally, there are theories of technology which are not defined or claimed by a proponent, but are used by authors in describing existing literature, in contrast to their own or as a review of the field.

For example, Markus and Robey (1988) propose a general technology theory consisting of the causal structures of agency (technological, organizational, imperative, emergent), its structure (variance, process), and the level (micro, macro) of analysis.

Orlikowski (1992) notes that previous conceptualizations of technology typically differ over scope (is technology more than hardware?) and role (is it an external objective force, the interpreted human action, or an impact moderated by humans?) and identifies three models:

1. technological imperative: focuses on organizational characteristics which can be measured and permits some level of contingency
2. strategic choice: focuses on how technology is influenced by the context and strategies of decision-makers and users
3. technology as a trigger of structural change: views technology as a social object

DeSanctis and Poole (1994) similarly write of three views of technology's effects:

1. decision-making: the view of engineers associated with positivist, rational, systems rationalization, and deterministic approaches
2. institutional school: technology is an opportunity for change, focuses on social evolution, social construction of meaning, interaction and historical processes, interpretive flexibility, and an interplay between technology and power
3. an integrated perspective (social technology): soft-line determinism, with joint social and technological optimization, structural symbolic interaction theory

Bimber (1998) addresses the determinacy of technology effects by distinguishing between the:

1. normative: an autonomous approach where technology is an important influence on history only where societies attached cultural and political meaning to it (e.g., the industrialization of society)
2. nomological: a naturalistic approach wherein an inevitable technological order arises based on laws of nature (e.g., steam mill had to follow the hand mill).
3. unintended consequence
   Unintended consequence
   In the social sciences, unintended consequences are outcomes that are not the outcomes intended by a purposeful action. The concept has long existed but was named and popularised in the 20th century by American sociologist Robert K. Merton...
   
   s: a fuzzy approach that is demonstrative that technology is contingent (e.g., a car is faster than a horse, but unbeknownst to its original creators become a significant source of pollution)