Determinism, Technological Determinism, and how to determine which Determinism has already chosen you

I never had much of a "spiritual" center, as it were. Which is okay by me.

While I am the social sort who enjoys like-minded people who come from similar situations, I have never found myself wanting for a greater community of believers who share a common understanding in the afterlife. I have never found myself looking for a deity to focus my complaints and desires towards. Never found myself looking for a set of rules and directives by which I should conduct my day-to-day activities that weren't dictated by homo sapien sapiens. 

And without this, my mind was free to explore numerous scientifically based Theories-of-Everything. While placing my focus in this philosophical realm, alongside the intervention of my Chemistry/Biology minded friend Adam, my studies began to surround a concept known as Determinism. This philosophical stance, as summarized by the grand Wiki, is simply:

is a metaphysical philosophical position stating that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given those conditions, nothing else could happen

And that

often is taken to mean simply causal determinism, that is, basing determinism upon the idea of cause-and-effect. It is the concept that events within a given paradigm are bound by causality in such a way that any state (of an object or event) is completely determined by prior states.

Very basically, you could say "everything happens as it has to happen, otherwise it would happen some other way". This doesn't assume predictability - in fact, many overlaying/more specific philosophies (such as Chaos Theory) are deterministic concepts which indicate the near impossibility of predictability.

So, of course, my interest was piqued when I cam across the words Technological Determinism in a course offered through the always-amazing online learning organization Coursera. The concept of Technological Determinism (as provided to me by a cursory read of Daniel Chandler's Technological or Media Determinism) states:

a central controversy concerns how far technology does or does not condition social change. Each commentator emphasizes different facts in technological change.

And is thus part of the philosophical debate regarding determinism. But it seems strange that technological determinists need a specific realm of study. The fundamental crux of the philosophy is that change and existence has been determined through one principal factor, technology. I just have a hard time in my mind rectifying that, as determinists, these philosophers do not acknowledge the other coexisting circumstances that are impacting and influencing each other alongside technology.

This is of course the issue of holism v. reductionism. Daniel Chandler does an excellent job at explaining this and I am thrilled to have come across such a great piece of writing in my eLearning & Digital Cultures class. Very very nice to stumble so heavily upon philosophy in what I thought was going to be a practical application style course.

Yes, this post was mostly babbling, but here is what you can take away from it:

1. Reductionist prinicples can be useful, but Technological Determinism seems to be missing much of the larger point to the general philosophy. Causality requires indications as to what social/technological/biological/everything causes other social/technological/biological/everything changes. It's very hard to indicate that ONE of the MILLIONS of interacting stimuli is the principle driver of existence.
2. Coursera.org is the SHIT! You should go there, now, and sign up for a class (if you're not already in school).
3. I am a lowly atheist destined to burn in hell! Wheeeeeeeeee!!