Technology and the Construction of Knowledge

I have just returned from a trip to Jordan. I have been traveling internationally for more than 50 years. For many of those years I owned a pretty good camera and took slides of the places I visited. I would have them developed on my return, and project them on a screen. I tried to photograph the places and things I thought most worthy of memorializing -- the most beautiful, impressive or historic.

These days I travel with a laptop, a digital camera, and image editing software. I download images from the camera to the computer, and edit them with the software, then send selected ones by email to my wife and son and selected friends. I even post some on my blogs. Now I try to photograph things that will convey to that audience the things I am seeing and doing -- things that might interest them. Since I still try to see things in my travels that are beautiful, impressive or historic, some of the images are comparable to those I took in the past. My recent images of Petra were perhaps similar in spirit to those I photographed of Machu Picchu or the Tag Mahal in the past. But I will also take images from my hotel window or of typical street scenes, or of desert landscape that help me communicate the everyday experiences I am having on my trips.

Street scene, Madaba, Jordan

The point is that the change in technology changes my conception of image making with a camera. The image is an embodiment of knowledge, but it is knowledge construed differently according to the technology available and thus the purpose to which the image is applied. The image above, taken on my trip, has still another construction.

Information and Communication Technology and the Social Construction of Knowledge

I am impressed by the idea that the ways in which we construe our observations are deeply influenced by the people with whom we interact, and indeed by our society and culture. Others have suggested that we construe technology socially. A famous example is the bicycle. Once the bicycle was seen as a sporting device for fit and athletic young men, and the makers devised machines that were difficult to master but exciting. The bicycles used by huge numbers of commuters in China have little relation to those early machines. The exquisite machines used by professionals in the Tour de France have little relation to either, since they are construed in terms of the competitive goals of the racing teams.

But the point I am making in this posting is that our use of information and communications technology -- cameras, computers, software, email -- also changes the way we construe knowledge. The technology affects what information we record and transmit, why we do so, and what we make of it.