Social Shaping of Technology (SST)

Social shaping of technology theory (SST) as defined by Mackenzie and Wajcman (1999), and Baym (2015), explores how human create technologies, such as games, to serve, support, and enhance their own political, social, economic, and communicative power. These technologies, shaped with these very human motivations in mind, privilege some publics and, exclude and subjugate others. Wajcman (2002) suggests that “technological change is itself shaped by the social circumstances within which it takes place” (p. 351).

Human creators, and the affinity groups that support these creators, make technologies based on their own intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. The creators seek power, control, fame, and fortune through the creation of new technologies. Their creations, in turn, shape both their creators and the publics that use these technologies.

Which came first: the chicken or the egg, or, in this case, the creator or the creation? In fact, it is a kind of mutual shaping that occurs in the creative process. It is a entire culture that makes the engineer (or game designer) who then creates the human network that then creates the technological invention.

Baym (2015) argues, through the prism of social shaping of technology theory (SST), that how technologies impact us depends on race, gender, socioeconomic status, digital literacy, one’s…