Society and technology have a very curious and intimate relationship.
Does society shape the evolution of technology?
Or does technological evolution pave a path that society follows?
Do we drive technology or does it change us?
While there are strong points for both, what are your views on this discussion?
Re: Social construction of technology vs technological shaping of society
I’ll make this more interesting;
My MIL thinks technology is what drives social behaviour change but I think it is us as humans that control the growth and development of technology.
Should I poison her tea as punishment or do you think she may be right?
Re: Social construction of technology vs technological shaping of society
Long time ago need to run govt. use to drive advance technology.
And every day needs drove little innovative utilities.
Now technology OR more accurately technology companies shape our “needs”
So far the mightiest nation is on its knee in-front of tech companies.
With next up coming giant countries from Asia, following exact same model we don’t have any end in sight.
With every MBA being born we are a step closer to our extinction.
You MIL is smart woman(stop drinking tea when she makes it).
Re: Social construction of technology vs technological shaping of society
^ last sentence too funny!
Re: Social construction of technology vs technological shaping of society
I actually agree with you Monk.
But I know a lot of people that would disagree. I was having a discussion with my friends about this last night and many of them seem to support the contrary.
It is foolish to deny that in the last decade or so, communications and handheld technology have been the ones that have taken the greatest leaps forward and have impacted more people around the world than any other field.. This has come as a result of us humans having a need (or a desire, perhaps?) to be able to communicate with one other in a manner that makes the distance between seem completely negligible. This has come as a human need, not a morphing of society to bend to the latest technologies. Also, we have continuously been aiming to get more and more within less and less. And we’ve been getting pretty darn good at it.
Of course this is just ONE division of technological advancement.
Re: Social construction of technology vs technological shaping of society
both. One argument is that social media debate. Take facebook for example. Or even twitter. Or youtube. How many artists were founded on youtube?? Important information is relayed to us via Twitter facebook and msn (the latter is somewhat obsolete now) and at a faster pace than any other communication outlet which we then act upon. You could argue that shaped our behaviour. We take pictures of ourselves and as sad as it seems some people subconciously or not think “will it look good on twitter or facebook??” so it shapes our behaviour in that regard. The other side of the arguement is that we drive technology. This argument is a little more easier to follow. Its all about demand. Things like microsoft office or Ipad come out because there is a demand for it within the workplace or just for casual fun. So in that sense we drive technology. Just my 2 cents
Re: Social construction of technology vs technological shaping of society
hmm you have a point.
But what if the content transferred between ppl is about the medium it self most of the time.
Or about the life E style. Both those things are manufactured.
I personally with out knowing tune out, when i read “cell phone models” , apps or celeb name in a text.
Re: Social construction of technology vs technological shaping of society
In a way you are right.
But here is another way of looking at it.
Most of cutting edge technology is developed by military funding. Its not innovations but developments.
Once military is tired of using it a find more exotic tech, those decade old tech go to private sector. Or should should I say
leach sector.
Leach sector hires few MBAs who make those technology your need.
One obvious example is technology used in cell phones. Till couple decade ago it was classified.
Nothing complicated just doing processing with mathematics rather then electronics components(called digital signal processing).
Now you are using same technology in your cell, in your graphic software, in your voice program.
So ask your self how much life is better with all that, or how much are you missing because of that.
Re: Social construction of technology vs technological shaping of society
Hard to criticize this aspect of tech development as I understand it,
“if you stop reading novels as Twitter is more compelling, it’s not correct to say that Twitter made you do that.”
Re: Social construction of technology vs technological shaping of society
It’s a bit of both. We develop technology to solve a particular problem but off shoots of that tech can result in other innovations that in turn, shape how society functions. Much of the modern computer age is rooted in the space program from the 60’s. No company will invest hundreds of millions into researching technology that may pay dividends in 10 years, it is usually government that makes this investment. In fact, Nash Equilibrium dictates that it is in companies’ interest to only innovate a little bit; sinking money into long term pay offs results in a short term gain that your competitors will quickly overcome, but you will be left with the massive bill for ground breaking.
Another interesting idea, the name of which I can’t remember at the moment, is that of the next step of technology being inevitable or natural. Throughout history you will find several technologies that were developed independently by different people. It’s a remarkable idea to think that something like the smartphone was the natural step forward (in terms of tech). Does this idea support tech influencing us? Or is that us shaping technology?
Re: Social construction of technology vs technological shaping of society
Good topic. This isn’t something I particularly hold close to my heart but I do feel strongly about it and is in fact a point I’ve raised many times in the past.
**1) Does society shape the evolution of technology?
**There wouldn’t be any technology without society, so that answers that unless I misunderstood. Perhaps I’m not following your intended context on “society”.
**2) Or does technological evolution pave a path that society follows?
**Both. Ultimately, there’s no true AI in existence. We create machines that are only capable of obeying algorithms that we program in. They only understand what we tell them, incapable of attaining new knowledge and calculating it. They only understand “yes” or “no”, I or 0. That’s what separates actual intelligence from artificial. So we create our own society but as a result, we also suffer the consequences of relying on technology so heavily.
3) Do we drive technology or does it change us?
Again, both. First, we drive it, then, we allow it to change us. For example, most children born within the past 2 generations have a common trend to be far less socially inept than those of us born in the 80s and before. I’m not including everyone, but when we were younger, we had to actually go out, ride our bikes or Power Wheels our friends’ or family’s houses, ring their door bells and actually speak with them face to face. All our social interaction was done entirely in person. No text messages, no Myspace or Facebook or social networking sites (closest thing we had was a chat client called miiRC), no Skype or mobile phone video conferencing, etc. It’s not that we didn’t have technology, we did, but it wasn’t as available to the public as it is today, let alone differences in ease of use being a huge factor as well.