Technological determinism was first coined by Thorstein Veblen, and his theory around technological determinism is that technology defines a society’s nature, thus technology is a major influencer of society’s culture, and it can determine history. Langdon Winner describes the theory in a similar way with his two hypotheses. The first being that technology is a fundamental influencer on society and the way in which it exists, and the second being that changes in technology lead to changes in society. Ultimately, technology influences the choices that a person in a particular society makes, and the knowledge of that society. These changes often correlate with a change in technology.

In a 2012 article, Veblen explains that technology has biases "if you throw a stone, thus turning it into a technology, it will have a bias which does not change according to the user’s intentions". In a sense, the bias of a technology is what a technology facilitates. This does not necessarily mean that technology is inherently bad, and as Marshall McLuhan said in his 1964 article The Medium Is The Message, “The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used which determines their value”. Seemingly, intention plays a large role both from a technology designer’s perspective and a user’s perspective. In AI Jazeera English’s 2019 stream talk, Priyamvada Gopal said something interesting about colonialism and intentions:

Just because certain things got left behind and then got used by the legatees of colonialism, doesn’t mean that they were done with the benefit of colonial subjects in mind. We have a tendency to take something that happened and make it positive, but that doesn’t mean that it was put there with a positive intention.

Techno-colonialism is an ongoing colonisation of the digital space. Techno-colonialism is a term coined by Randy Bush in 2015 and it describes “the exploitation of poorer cultures by richer ones through technology. In particular, this was focused on Internet technology, though it may apply more widely. Like ice cream, techno-colonialism comes in many flavors.”

Typically, during colonial rule, the colonial power controls the knowledge system of the society. This often meant the “intentional divestment of indigenous populations of power of participation” (Collier in Bristow, 2016). In techno-colonialism, this is primarily seen through the digital divide. The digital divide is “a social issues referring to the differing amount of information between those who have access to the internet, and those who do not” (Victoria, 2020). This divide became particularly prominent during the information age in which information and communication technologies became the basis for economic and social connectivity. Bristow, in her 2016 paper, makes an interesting point about how the knowledge system of technology might be controlled through the need to know the correct code or verbalisations:

Pfaffenberger proposes that technology should be seen in a system of related social behaviours that, like cultures, are passed through the knowledge system… knowledge and knowhow of technology requires a codification or verbalisation in order to be effectively transmitted.

There are many other factors to consider when speaking about why a less technologically advanced country may struggle to become more advanced and produce their own technologies. For example, affordability, accessibility and software biases. People in poorer countries often cannot afford to buy the technology they need in order to be connected to the internet, and sometimes, even if the people can afford to buy the technology, the country’s infrastructure is inadequate and cannot provide stable or strong internet connection. This is a disadvantage when in the information age because many things are facilitated through the internet such as meetings, job applications, social networking and much more. To add to the disadvantages poorer countries face, technology designers may often design without considering the accessibility of their product, and this typically increases the digital divide. This includes design choices in which the designer assumes there will be internet connection or electricity to charge a device frequently.