technology as agent?

I wanted to write briefly about Coleman's review on Ethnographic Approaches to Digital Media.  Approaching this section of the class on the anthropology of digital technology, I really had the thought, "What's the big deal?" I basically have thought of the internet, gaming, email, blogging, etc. as avenues of social reproduction, more of a means of sharing culture, less of  autonomous cultural agents in themselves.  Coleman really complicates my previous ideas.

She breaks down recent ethnographies of digital media into three categories:  cultural politics, vernacular cultures, and what she calls "prosaics" of digital media, which refers to how digital media shapes various cultural practices like economic exchange, markets and religious worship.  In these various categories, she cites specific examples of technology shaping or facilitating cultural changes:  In cultural politics, for example diaspora, how immigrants negotiate aspects of identity as mediated by the connectivity to relatives allowed through technology.  In vernaculars, for example, with wikipedia and other open source communities, decentralized networks and loosely affiliated groups suddenly are possible and occurring where prior to the internet, these kinds of groups were not even considered as ways people might affiliate.  In prosaics, one study is mentioned, for example, in which "computer screens bring into being an entire world for finance traders" p(495).  Reflecting on these examples alongside numerous others in the review, I can see how I may need to pay closer attention to the new culture emerging autonomously from various technologies.

Having argued in the past the creative and shaping functions of language, I have to check myself--would asking if technology simply reproduces culture be similar to asking if language is a vehicle for expressing culture rather than a shaper of culture?  So... maybe technology can shape culture too.  Thinking of second life, as an example, I have not been 100% convinced that it is more than a place to re-enact cultural processes or fantasies, but then I think of people making an income off of selling virtual cosmetics... should be an interesting class discussion.