Marx's Response to Katherine's Research Topic

In Marx's article, "Does Improved Technology Mean Progress?, he discusses the shift in beliefs from the view that technology and technological improvements are a sound judge of American progress to the more recent skeptical standpoint that presents a more negative "view of technological innovation as an index of social progress" (65). Shifts have also occurred from an Enlightenment belief that science and technology worked towards the goals of liberation from political oppression, towards a technocratic stance that that "science-based technologies are in themselves a sufficient and reliable basis for progress" (76).

My research topics both have to do with forms of technology and their affects on society. One looks at the effects of violent TV and videogames on children's levels of aggression, and the other examines how drastically methods of communication have changed with the introduction of the Internet and cell phones, and how they've made relationships much less personable. Marx would definitely argue that all of these forms of technology-TV, Internet, video games, cell phones-may not necessarily be marked as positive changes in society. Yes, each of these innovations has its upsides to the advancement of society, but each can also have detrimental effects. Although I haven't picked which topic I would like to study, with either one I plan to examine those negative effects of either aggression or less personable relationships. Mark would see this as a quality argument, since his entire piece discusses why Americans have made the shift from Enlightenment to technocratic and how.  At a certain point of technological advancement Americans began to examine the motives behind these innovations, and realized that they can't always be used as an index of progress in our world. Mark states, "only by questioning the assumption that innovation necessarily represents progress can we begin to judge its worth" (77). Although innovations that have enhanced media and communication are extremely impressive and can be valuable, their possible negative affects on society are what I plan to explore through my research paper.