Television: Technology and Cultural Form

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its future prospects, remains remarkably prescient.
Williams wrote in a critical way about Marshall McLuhan's writings on technology and society. This is the background to the chapter in Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974) called "The Technology and the Society." Right out of the gate, Williams opposes McLuhan‘s view that technology shapes society. Williams begins by the statement “television has altered our world”. He classifies two main categories: the first is technological determinism and the second is symptomatic technology. The technological determinist school suggests that technology is a central/internal process of research and development, “which then sets the conditions for social change and progress." It was the invention of the technology that caused the social change. The second group, the symptomatic technology camp, believes that media are used by an order of society to manipulate others. It was instigated by someone or some group with a particular ...

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the breakup of small farming communities as citizens abandoned farm life to work in factories. Thus, the industrial revolution marks the beginning of the mobile family, not only going toward industrial jobs but also having more recreation time to explore and take interest in places and events around them. Williams refers to this as mobile privatization. These social conditions induced the development of broadcasting and the development of an affordable domestic receiver. Broadcasting was a social product of the tendency towards mobility on one hand and self-contained family unit on the other. Radio and television were systems primarily devised for transmission and reception. Williams ...

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