in contrast to the tools and techniques orientation the modern perspective favors. the symbolic study of technology emphasizes. not what technology produces. but how technology itself is produced by social construction and enactment. From this perspective technology is both an outcome of social processes and a process of ongoing learning and design activity. It often relies upon the historical or ethnographic study of technology under construction and technology-in-use.
Because technological design builds behavioral demands directly into production systems, managers and designers can magnify their control over workers through the production technologies they choose. For this reason many critical postmodernists believe technologies impose discipline on those who use them by providing the means to monitor and control behavior. Concerns about privacy and security create images of the evil purposes to which technology can be put. but technology also unleashes powerful forces to combat these negative effects. For example. social media enables people to organize. lobby, and take collective action based on their own interests rather than the interests of those who claim authority over them. The futuristic thinking of other postmodernists sees technology fusing with organization to produce 'cyborganizations.’
Each of these ideas will be examined as we follow the development of the concept of technology within each of the three perspectives. starting with the modern.