Who is driving whom?

It's easy to look at how technology is seemingly driving (ha, I get the pun now with the cars... yeah) the development of our culture and society.  I spend a lot of time (a lot more than I should) on social media and I definitely have seen a particular culture arise from our increased connectivity and people's desire to share personal and significant events with many, many others (a majority whom they are not very close to).  To some extent this can be very disturbing, as referenced by all the post-apocalyptic movies that have been produced where technology has totally overrun humanity.  However, I'm not sure that is how things are going turn out.  Furthermore, I'm not entirely convinced that technology is the driving force behind the change in our culture.

Humans have this nagging tendency to want to believe that the way that things are going to turn out is completely out of our control.  We seem to want to pass on the ownership of actions, and ultimately our destiny to other things - misfortune, luck, karma - anything to be able to say, "you know, there wasn't really anything I could do about it."  It seems like a silly concept, given that we try to control so many factors in life, but for as long as our history has been recorded, humans have pointed to the sky and asserted that "there is something else at work here."  While I believe in a God and other doctrines pertaining to deity, I also believe that we have a lot more control over things than we think we have.  We are not objects to be acted upon, but agents to act (sound familiar?).

That being said, I can see similar patterns in technological determinism.  Where people assert that our culture has been shaped by the technology that we have adapted, it seems that just as likely, we have adapted technology to match changes that we, ourselves, have facilitated.  It is we who are in the driver's seat, and technology is there to make the ride a little (or in some cases, a lot) better.  I agree it has increased the rate of speed at which we can share ideas and produce goods and services, but I don't believe that it's the driving force behind cultural change.  We've shaped technology to meet our insatiable wants and needs.  Furthermore, it seems that technology has been developed to get us closer to what we think we want.  To make things easier and more convenient.

So, no, I don't really buy into the idea of technological determinism.  I think we should take both ownership and responsibility for the change we introduce and cultivate in our culture.  Technology will always be present, but first and probably forevermore it will be an extension and fulfillment of what we want as humans.