A warning from the 90s on technology, capitalism, and progress

I have been working on a paper about Geographic Information Systems and archaeology, and specifically on the way in which changes in the political-economy of late 20th century capitalism have impacted the development of modeling procedures and usage variation in GIS.  I was reading a book entitled Ground Truth: The Social Implications of Geographic Information Systems edited by John Pickles (Guilford Press, New York 1995).  As I read these paragraphs, I was struck by how they seemed to speak directly to "the new media revolution", the expansion of the internet, and the pitfalls of seeing all technological change as unblemished "progress".  I quote it here for your consideration:

But, like all highways, the information highway requires points of access, capital investment, navigation skills, and spatial and cultural proximity for effective use. Like the automobile highway, the information highway fosters new rounds of creative destruction and differentiates among users and between users and non-users. It brings regions of difference under a common logic and technology, and through differential access and use exacerbates old and creates new patterns of social and economic differentiation. While for some, information means the provision of alternatives and the satisfaction of choice (even if a “choice” signifies a socially constructed yet now naturalized whim of the wealthy consumer), for others this post-industrialism (and its attendant postmodern cultural forms) must still be seen in the context of a political economy of graft, monopolism, and uneven development.

Such processes of territorial colonization, globalization, and production of new scales of action contrast sharply with a techno-cultural ideology of enhanced autonomy and self-actualization, and severely complicates the assessment of the relationship between technological innovation and social change. Not only do data technologies treat all data and information within a universal logic and calculus, and not only do imaging technologies reach without break across socially and historically differentiated territories, but the tools themselves permit types of surveillant intervention that restructure everyday life itself. For some, this is a matter of market logic in which waves of competitive, leading-edge technologies are sufficient in themselves to drive the process of economic and social restructuring; the adoption of the technology by others is a sufficient (and necessary) reason for its adoption by us. Thus, the dynamics of development and adoption are legitimized by an ideology of “progress” and an un-problematized belief in the importance of technical “advances” across such fields as science, medicine, administration, and logistics. New data handling and imagine capabilities are, in this way, full naturalized as the next logical and necessary step in the advance of science and society, and the stimulus to new ways in which individuals and groups can overcome the barriers of distance and enhance their abilities to exercise control over society, space, and the earth.

But where technology is not seen as a social relation, it is fetishized and aestheticized, the contingent nature of technical outcomes is overlooked, and the struggles waged over the choice and application of any particular technology are ignored.

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