PrepTest 143, Section 2, Question 7
Having spent several decades trying to eliminate the(433 more words not shown)
In using the phrase "technological(14 more words not shown)
- Atechnology is exchanged(7 more words not shown)
- Bthe technologies used(11 more words not shown)
- Ccultures generally evolve(8 more words not shown)
- Da culture's ethical(7 more words not shown)
- Ecultures are shaped(8 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
Read the phrase in its sentence. Ginsburg calls it technological determinism to argue that using a video camera makes a person unwittingly Western. The technology is supposed to determine something fundamental about the user's culture.
What we’re looking for
Our prediction should therefore run from technology to cultural outlook. We are not explaining why cameras spread or claiming that people will become increasingly dependent on them. We are explaining the effect attributed to using them.
Working the answers
- A
This makes the exchange or spread of technology predestined. The disputed idea concerns what the technology does to people after they use it, not whether its distribution was bound to happen.
- B
The relevant users are indigenous people recording their own culture. This shifts to anthropologists' equipment and how it affects their views of the people they study. That is a different relationship.
- C
Greater dependence on technology is not the same as adopting Western cultural conventions. The sentence concerns changes in cultural identity, not how much technology a society comes to need.
- D
This turns the direction around. It says existing values determine how people respond to technology. The position being criticized says the technology shapes their cultural outlook: using the camera makes them Western.
- ECorrect
This states the broader idea illustrated by Weiner's position. A society's technology is said to shape its culture in fundamental ways. In this particular dispute, the alleged result is the replacement of indigenous conventions with a Western outlook.
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