Technological determinism is a reductionist theory that assumes technical developments are the key – practically, the only relevant – driver of history and social change.
This is best exemplified in the universe of Star Trek. If we could only invent the replicator – a machine that reconstitutes matter and produces everything that is needed out of pure energy (food, medicaments, spare parts) – all our (social) troubles could be avoided.
Current techno-optimistic visions follow the same logic. Take crypto currency. If we could just create a technology that guarantees no contract will be broken, we have solved the problem of trust. The problem is not solved, only disposed of.
An adequate technological topology will not necessarily produce desired social outcomes.
If industrial revolution culminated with mass production of death (that was the Holocaust), what ends await us at the pinnacle of its digital counterpart? The ubiquity of various monitoring mechanisms pervading all spheres of (digitally mediated) life serves as a signpost. Humans turn into data-subjects, identifiable bodies processed on demand. AI guided drones identify human targets and assassinate them on site. This is reality and a developmental direction.
This trajectory is not inevitable. Future cannot be predicted (+ Jameson:
The function of sci-fi fiction is not to give us the images of the future (…) but rather to defamiliarize and restructure our experience of our own present”).
References: Jameson, Frederic. Archaeologies of the Future. Verso