Technology as Tool: Cultural/Values Issues

Purpose: To raise awareness of cultural and values issues in relation to technology.

References: 47, 49, 58

1. Does the technology-mediated activity consider values by:
   1. explicitly declaring its value premises and its relation to the social context,
   2. demonstrating consistency within the knowledge base of the technology, justifying ends and means
   3. helping learners analyse the relationship between the values and knowledge of the technology and the consciousness of the learner?
   
   
2. In what ways is the tool at the same time both enabling and limiting?
   1. Does it empower the subject in the transformation process with the historically collected experience and skill crystallised into it?
   2. Does it also restrict the interaction to be from the perspective of that particular tool or instrument only, with other potential features of an object remaining invisible to the user?
   
   
3. In the transmission of cultural knowledge how do tools and culturally developed ways of using tools:
   1. shape the external activity of individuals?
   2. through the process of internalization influence the nature of mental processes (internal activity)?
   
   
4. How do computer tools influence the mental processes:
   1. via transmission of operational aspects of human interaction with the world?
   2. via shaping the goals and values of the people who use the tools (even if they are unaware of the process)?