The building process of a technology system involves more than a mechanical combination of technical components. It follows particular organizing ideas and principles—the organizing ideology—of technology. This organizing ideology guides firms in their use of technology and in its manufacturing and marketing. Since the 1970s, telecommunications firms have conducted a great number of technical and commercial interactive TV trials. Interactive TV was believed to be a revolutionary new medium. Contrary to such rhetoric, the organizing ideology of interactive TV varied little from that of traditional TV. It was effectively a return to the concept of the conventional model of TV mass media. This mass media ideology was then inscribed onto the interactive TV system, actually determining its design, how it was built, and its strategies of technical deployment. This conceptual and institutional inertia was a main factor in the development of biases in the technological, institutional, and cultural structure of interactive TV.
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