Social Shaping is defined as, the consequences of technologies that arise from  a mix of “affordances” – the capabilities configurations of technological qualities enable- and the unexpected  an emergent ways that people make use of those affordances.

http://https://youtu.be/rBCKRM2Y764

I don’t think we can talk about the social shaping of technology without asking, how or whom the internet was created by. My media focuses on that, the fact that the internet was created by a network of people who were not aware of what they were really creating. There were no patents made for the internet. There was no way of knowing that it would have such a high impact on a person’s life. For example, in healthcare a few years ago, we had to wait until we received a phone call to know if all of our labs were correct. Now all that information is available to us with a touch of keyboard, or smartphone. Furthermore, as Maym quotes Douglas in the text “‘Machines’ do not make history themselves. But some type of machines help make different histories and different kinds ofpeople than others” (pg51). The internet viewed as a machine has helped to create careers that were un-imagined in 1969 when people first started to talk about the new innovation. To put it into perspective, I would not be writing on this computer and uploading my work for the class from my tablet if it wasn’t for this invention. Though the internet was viewed as a taboo when it was first introduced as a form of communication, now-a-days it is difficult to function in our daily lives without it. Even if you just have a flip phone and can only make calls and send text messages, that was actually how the internet was first viewed, as a way to create a database to archive information. So even in it’s simplest form it is a very ingenious way of storing data, which in essence is also communication because that same data will be reviewed at a later time and tell a story all on it’s own.

Polemic: the art or practice of using language to defend or harshly criticize something or someone (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/polemic) 

• Do you find yourself lacking logic while arguing with people online or in person?                                           
• Do you get upset easily during these arguments and start to yell?
• Did you realize after the argument that your responses were not actual responses to what the person was saying but what you wanted to hear?

Then you could be a polemic during an argument. Kevin Bolk is the illustrator of the cartoon above. He uses the dialogue between these two characters to explain a polemic argument. One of the characters is a straw man. The significance of this character is that he ( the straw man) is demonstrating the type of person who uses the straw man fallacy. The straw man fallacy is a type of informal argument where the person who is the straw man argues their opponents views without actually responding to the issue at hand. The straw man just focuses on what he feels will give him the winning results in the argument without actually solving the problem.

The young boy starts off the cartoon with his thoughts on gender politics. He is giving his views without attacking and using logic. Before the boy could finish his thought the straw man cuts him off saying “hey! Why do you hate equality so much!?”. Nothing that the boy said had any indication that he hated equality. However, the straw man takes what the boy said and distorts his words into an argument he is willing to fight. Notice the straw man’s posture in the second drawing of the cartoon, he is yelling. When a person is yelling during an argument it indicates that they are emotionally invested. They utilize the tactic of yelling in their effort to overpower the other person’s logical argument. Thus, they yell louder to make their point seem significant so that they in the end win the argument with just rhetoric.

The formal fallacy relating to “gender politics” in the first scene of the cartoon is not even acknowledged in the second scene by the straw man. The boy reacts to the straw man’s yelling by saying “oh no I mustn’t argue with the straw man” and he has a point. No matter how sound, logical, rooted in facts an argument may be that is of no concern to the straw man. This can actually make the straw man more defensive, because he or she might feel that they are losing the argument and will just use informal fallacies and yelling to get their point across. In the third scene the straw man even lists the different components that make up a polemic argument and ends it with “or are you just repeating terms you read on the internet?” which is what a straw man does so he is just talking about himself in this case. The boy responds that he just wanted to sound clever, which is also what a straw man wants to do. A straw man wants to sound clever by using terms or ideas that he or she has done little to no research on and having an argument using informal fallacies by misrepresenting the actual argument so that he or she can win.

          The consequences that digital media has had on its users and the large presence that is has in today’s society can be traced back to a few theories of the source of its impact. The social shaping of technology is the middle ground found between technological determinism, in which the technology itself is the cause, and social constructivism, in which the people are the cause.

Definition: The social shaping of technology is a mix of the capabilities that new technologies enable, and the unpredictable ways that people will make use of them.

          An excellent example of the social shaping of technology can be illustrated by the unexpected success and popularity that social media platforms and their creators have experienced in recent day. So-called influencers from various social media platforms have achieved celebrity status by simply sharing their lives and passion with the world. Nowadays, anyone has access to a world audience with just a cellphone or laptop. Of course, these devices were not created with the intention of allowing people to make a living from using these products. From a technological determinism standpoint, YouTube was created to be an online video-sharing website, with occasional viewers watching the limited content that was available at the time. Cellphones were made to make phone calls, and computers were created to calculate complex calculations faster than it ever was possible before. Now, you can find a video about just about anything on this one website! From a social constructivist standpoint, the consumers were able to shape this platform into a place in which creators could make a career out of their uploads and have consistent viewers, as long as they created content. This is an amazing thing considering the fact that the creators of YouTube, as well as YouTubers themselves would have never been able to predict this outcome from something as simple as recording a video on an iPhone; something that most people can do. Although not every person that has uploaded a video to YouTube has been able to make a career out of it, some people really stood out and were able to succeed.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOtQ5ItDTTw]

(2:38-3:40)

          Casey Neistat is an award-winning filmmaker and popular YouTuber, whose daily uploads average at least a million views per video. A majority of his videos are vlogs, which are video diaries of what he does in a day. He also creates public service announcements in the form of creative and typically humorous short movies. His unique filming style and his daily spontaneous adventures are what sets him apart from millions of other people who create content. In this clip, Neistat discusses the positive effects that digital media has had on people’s’ lives, but he also acknowledges the uncertainty of the future for people in the social media field. He expresses the idea that ten years ago, modern-day YouTube creators could not even attempt to fathom the way that this website would develop and ultimately become their way of life. With the social shaping of technology, there really is no way of telling how these social media platforms will evolve and how the people will use them in the future. Back when YouTube started in 2005, nobody could have predicted its outcome as an entire job industry. With a combination of more advanced technology to come as well as the forever-developing innovation of the people, who knows what is to come in the digital media world! Only time will tell.