Technology as a social system

Mainstream sociological theories of technology tend to equate technology to the objects that humans use in solving practical problems. This society | technology distinction is a macroscopic extension of the anthropocentric distinction human | nonhuman. This paper attempts to go beyond essentialist humanism in developing a conceptual outline for a sociology of technology. The basic proposition of this paper is that technology is a functional subsystem of modern society observing the world of tools, techniques and applications and operating under the code of state-of-the-art | obsolete with a function of stimulating innovation. Technological communication – the logos about the techne - uses a temporal distinction. Distinguishing and indicating an object as state-of-the-art indicates its currency and creates expectations (thus structures) of future obsolescence, making obsoletization inevitable and thus exhibiting technology’s modernity. Viewing technology as an operationally closed system transforms the problem of technological determinism into a problem of resonance of other systems to technology and the problem of social construction of technology into a problem of the resonance of technology to the other functional social subsystems. Elite formation is also reformulated as a problem of the structured concentration of communicative potential in social systems. In the system of technology, elite formation is operationalized through the distinction between the processes of innovation and diffusion, the former's reproduction being concentrative and the latter being distributive. While the paper uses Niklas Luhmann's systems theory as its backbone, it breaks with Luhmann in his conception of technology as being in the environment of society and argues that Luhmann's position stems from his failure to distinguish technologies from the social system of technology.