Technology and change

Making sense of what we have, were we come from, who we are, and where we are going to is a dilemma difficult to untangle. Some will claim it was solved long ago through creationist ideas, but others will argue in favor of a scientific view, one that takes evolution as the bases for development, where things are the result of long processes of acculturation and accommodation. This idea has also been applied by G. Basalla (1988) to technological development in society.

Basalla presents a scientific or evolutionary perspective, inspired by Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859). He goes on to introduce the evolutionary viewpoints presented in the work of William F. Ogburn, S. C. Gilfillan, Augustus Henry Pitt-Rivers, Samuel Bulter, and Abbott P. Usher. These authors agree in presenting the development of technology as the “result from the cumulative synthesis of a series of minor [inventions]” (p. 25). But Usher’s viewpoint differ from the others because he also believes in creativity, or the ‘inventor’s act of insight’. This is the ability of the inventor to “solve a problem” by “a mental act that is not predetermined” (p. 23).

Basalla also examines the importance of technology in society and history. He paraphrases José Ortega y Gasset definition of “technology as the production of superfluous”, (p. 13, 208). For Ortega y Gasset technology is not a necessity, it is the cultivation of a process that induces humans to live a life of comfort.

In this sense I wonder how many gadgets we have today that have become a necessity, but that we could really live without. Would you be able to make a list of at least 10 objects you can live without? How long can this list get? How long did it take you to complete it?

Besides, who has the time to contemplate and think about new improvements to technological devises? Could this be another source of social and economical differences? Which in turn, makes me think about the ‘idea of progress’. Is our society more progressive than others just because we use more technological devises? Or are we less capable of freedom because of our dependence on so many technological devises?

Basalla then presents V. Gordon Childe’s viewpoints on cross-cultural comparisons. He poses the question of fair comparisons between cultures, when their needs and customs may vary enormously (p. 212).

Innovation and social change

Was it a dream or a nightmare? Was it positive or negative? How do we take change in our lives, in our society? How does new technologies impact our society and relates to change? In this second article, B. C. Bruce examines the idea of technology and social change. He presents “six major ways that change occurs when innovations are introduced into [a] social system” (p. 11). These are:

• innovation-focused discourse – highlights improvement in conditions. “technology is described in terms of what it can do…” (p. 12)
  
• social system-focused discourse – “looks at actual use”, considers ethical and ideological issues (p. 13)
  
• integrating analysis of change – studies the mediation between new artifacts and the potential user, so that integration can be made possible (p. 16)
  
• rethinking the realization process – innovations as tools that are incorporated into an ongoing process of change, that come from the idealization of the inventor, and could be interpreted and used in very different ways as initially intended (remember the bottle and the bush men)
  
• innovations development – this can take different path depending on the complexity of the society were they are presented to. Changes can be looked upon as consonant (society is ready for change and embraces it), dissonant (Yir Yoront and the steel axe), resistance (implies there are conflicts in the implementation or use of the new device), redesign (users re-create the innovation)
  
• implications – innovations as transactions in where the culture accepts or refutes the new technology presented to it
  

References:

Basalla, G. (1988). The Evolution of Technology. MA: Cambridge University Press. (1-26, 207-217)

Bruce, B. C. (1993). Innovation and social change. In B. C. Bruce, J. K. Peyton and T. Batson (eds.), Network-based Classrooms, 9-32. MA: Cambridge University Press.

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E-mail: mortizro@ufl.edu