Just a cog in the machine?

This paper attempts to demonstrate that the philosophy of technology grounded in the humanities has relevance for practising technologists. Technologists occupy a problematic role in the philosophy of technology. On the one hand their privileged position vis-a-vis technology appears to offer them a powerful role in shaping the development of technology. On the other, the philosophical discourse (and indeed the wider discourse of the humanities) often limits them to being mere cogs in a broader sociotechnical machinery. The extent to which technology is deterministic has been a recurrent question in the philosophy of technology, with responses including substantivism, instrumentalism, developmentalism and critical theory. In this paper we consider how differing philosophical views with respect to the question of technological determinism may give rise to different understandings of the role of the technologist, and outline some possible implications for technologists.