Connected Learning: Getting Beyond Technological Determinism:

This is dig­i­tal dual­ism, but it’s also deter­min­ism at work. It hears all this enthu­si­asm about con­nec­tion as about the social net­work­ing plat­forms them­selves – “yay blog!’ or “yay Twitter!” – and not about the con­nec­tions and actions and forms of iden­tity that those net­worked envi­ron­ments make possible.

Determinism reduces con­ver­sa­tion about social net­works to a con­ver­sa­tion about plat­forms and tech, not about peo­ple and the ways in which they inter­sect with those plat­forms and tech to cre­ate new pos­si­bil­i­ties. It effec­tively mutes those lat­ter parts of the con­ver­sa­tion; refuses them admit­tance. It insists that a con­ver­sa­tion about tech­nolo­gies’ effects is a con­ver­sa­tion about the tech­nolo­gies themselves.

Really inter­est­ing points about how we con­verse about tech­nolo­gies and their effects.