RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY

Relationship between Technology and Society



Relationship between Technology and Society

Introduction

Popularization of the word technology in the early nine-teenth century indicated that an organized body of knowledge was developing about how to produce various useful material objects. The word came to be employed in a way that suggested an awareness that technological change could be directed to specific ends and that the conscious of technology could be a means of shaping the future direction of society. Thus was inaugurated the explicit relationship between technology and society, a relationship that had previously been implicit. This paper discusses the relationship between technology and society in a concise and comprehensive way.

Relationship between Technology and Society

The technology of a society encompasses the tools its members use and the procedures involved in inventing, producing, maintaining, and using them. Some observers define the term more broadly to include all practices employed in a rational way to achieve specific ends even if materials tools are not directly involved. Popular discussions of technology focus largely on recent and anticipated advances in, and problems related to, weaponry, medicine, computing, communication, transportation, spaceflight, and agricultural and industrial production. However, old and simple tools such as toothpicks, flyswatters, hammers, and baskets are also part of technology, and they do not necessarily disappear as newer and more complicated forms of technology arise.

A major technological item requires an infrastructure, or supporting system. Thus, the automobile as a major element in a society's transportation calls for paved roads, service and repair stations, spare parts, trained drivers, automobile mechanics, traffic laws and authorities to enforce them, and arrangements for manufacturing or importing autos. an inadequate supporting system may inhibit adoption of certain technologies. On the other hand, when the drive to adopt a particular technological item is strong enough, social pressures may be generated to develop the necessary supporting system, which, in turn, may involve major social changes.

Technological determinism, illustrated by the works of Leslie White (1949) and Jacques Ellul (1964), conceives of the technology-society relationship as primarily unidirectional, with technology developing autonomously and shaping the course of development of society, but without having its own developmental direction strongly shaped by society in turn.

In support of technological determinism one might cite numerous instances in which a seemingly minor technological development has had drastic social consequences. Adoption of the stirrup, which enabled warriors on horseback to brace themselves while charging, helped to make possible the fighting style characteristic of medieval knights and the feudal social system centering on knighthood (White 1946). A transition from dry rice cultivation (on hillside land that had to be abandoned after a few years because the soil became depleted) to wet rice cultivation (on low-lying land that could be cultivated year after year without interruption) caused the Tanala tribe of Madagascar to abandon a nomadic life-style and adopt a settled way of life, with consequent changes in diverse institutions (Linton 1957). More recently, the elevator has made possible a life-style centering on skyscrapers, and air conditioning has enormously increased ...