...Technology and Social Change TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL CHANGE Introduction Social change is any change that occurs in nature, social institutions, behavior and relations of people (Mutekwe, 2012). Social change is also change in the organization of the society and particularly in the practices and beliefs of people. All societies go through change, whether significant or subtle. For example, public opinion on abortion, smoking, divorce and homosexuality have changed in the last fifty years. Macro scale changes affect primary social institutions like family, politics and religion. Micro-scale changes, on the other hand, shape people’s attitudes, values, and beliefs. Sources of change include the media, environmental pressures, dramatic events and technological innovations. Technology, on the other hand, is an object, a method, or an invention that alters the social environment of people and extends their natural abilities (Rosa, Yee, Sweeney, & Dator, 2013). Technology and social change are inseparable. As mentioned above, technology is one of the major factors that create changes in the society. Technology improves on some aspects of human qualities. Hence, a significant tool for social change. For example, the wheel enables human beings to go to places where their feet would never reach. Positive impact of technology on society Technology has resulted in many positive impacts on the society. Computers, for example, have brought enormous changes in medicine, the workplace...
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...Technology change the world In China, we have a saying that “Science and technology is the first productive force”. Technology affects people’s daily life, with the innovation of technology, the world developed rapidly in recent centuries. Image that if our forefathers do not create new technology, how our life will be today; we will not have lots kind of food like today; we will not have vehicles such as car, train, aircraft, and we will not have so many high buildings to live. In this class, we learnt a lot of historical events before 1500 AD. In ancient time, there is no advanced technology in the world; our ancestors can merely use their hands to change the nature. Gradually, they find some regularity in the world, such as round objects can move much easier than other shape; then they use their intelligence create lots of new technologies, and innovate the technologies as needed. In this paper, I will talk about five great inventions which affect the world significantly; they are wheel, water wheel, compass, paper, and plow. The invention of the wheel is one of the most important inventions in the ancient time. Without the wheel, the world would not develop so fast. According to the existing data, the wheel is invented by the Mesopotamian in about 2500 BC ("The invention of," 2010). The development of wheel has 6 stages, starting from rolling cylinder, moving to two wheels connect with axles by spokes (Bellis, 2012). At the beginning, people realized that round objects...
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...Today, the world is moving in lighting fast pace in terms of research and technology, but it does make sense to those who can afford its benefits and accessibility. Though, we are building satellites and nuclear reactors, but are these really helping the common middle man? Yes, television broadcast and weather forecasting or determining atmospheric characteristics by remote sensing makes it more relevant and indirect. I know it’s not an individualistic approach but a nation’s approach towards building a sustainable future, but again how is the future sustainable, if the basic necessities of human life is not fulfilled? From Cloud Computing to Solar Technology to Quantum supercomputers to Nanotechnology to Robotics, this century will be identified as the global technological age sooner or later. There are few initiatives which I would like to mention in eradicating the social causes and making the world a better society to live in. Apple Inc. is building an application which is digitizing the textbook content and converting into e-books making it more convenient for the students to access it. It will be a revolution in terms of Education and a mentioned dream of Steve Jobs in Walter Issacsons’ book. As per an article from BBC News, “More than 600 million people worldwide have some sort of access to the internet, but that still leaves about 5.5 billion people who do not use the net and who have no access. Most of these people live outside the developed Western countries...
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...Technology simply refers to a scientific knowledge to solve practical problems. Technology is a very wide concept which is developing day by day and making the life simpler and easier. Today technology has become very advanced. Technology in other words can be described as a collection of scientific techniques. Technology solves the real world wide problems in an easier and efficient manner. Technology in the form of machines has solved many problems and also has saved lot of time and energy. Technology has now steadily occupied its place. The invention of technology made life simpler and easier. Because of the technology many scientific machines or scientific tools were developed which are helpful to the individuals and there are so many tools which are useful in our day to day life. Technological development includes from communication through letters to Email; which indeed saves lot of time. Technology has occupied in the areas like information technology, medical technology, communication technology and scientific technology. Now-a-days technology has proved that we can't imagine life with out it. The technological development of computers, television, cellular phones, internet and transport system has made life easier and simpler and also time saving. Information technology has grown very much with the invention of computers. Information technology is nothing but designing and developing of a computer based information. Now-a-days communication technology has grown very...
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...Technology and Social Change Page 1 Leslie Chappell SOC/100 University of Phoenix 03/28/2016 Technology and Social Change Page 2 Americans are faced with increasing change of technology in everyday life. Most of the time, the change happens, and we don't realize how it affects our lives. I remember talking to my grandparents about their younger years; it made me realize how technology changes from generation to generation. Technology is scientific knowledge and the making of tools to solve problems. The technological advances are vehicles, airplanes, radio, TV, cell phones, and computers. The 20th century has changed how people meet, interact, learn, work, and do business. This type of knowledge doubles every several years. Sociologists are concerned how these technological societies will adapt to the social changes that technology continues to bring. Social change is alteration over time in behavior patterns and cultural values. Sociologists acknowledge the role that social movements play in members to bring about social change. There are ways to understand the nature of long-term social change; it includes looking for patterns and causes which led sociologists to understand the evolutionary, functionalist, and conflict theories of change. According to The Pew Internet and American Life Project, 45% of American adults own a smartphone which is a 10% increase since May 2011. But smartphones are more popular with the young adults and...
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...Paulla Fowler Message to Prepare for Future Challenges March 11, 2012 MBA 6006 Nayar at HCL Technologies prides himself and his office on being transparent. They encourage their employees to be responsible for their actions: Through the value portal where employees and customers collaborate together to develop new innovations. With the improved use the of Blue Print portal for the main managers peer-to-peer reviews to create new innovations. To the various forms of internal and external messaging used on a local bases to improve overall employee passion and customer satisfaction. In 2006 the CEO had recast the role of his office and transferred the responsibility for change on to his employees for many initiatives. One example is that of the value portal. The company wanted to change the relationship with their customer by enabling them to be more responsible for their partnership with the company. Nayar wanted his customers to be actively involved while also challenging his employees to go beyond their defined roles and responsibility. He accomplished this by creating a portal that could be used between customers and employees. This portal the “Value Portal” allowed customers to evaluate and rate the new ideas that HCLT employees generated. The portal was very successful and hundreds of HCLT customers join and thousands of ideas were generated with a potential savings of hundreds of millions of dollars(Nayar, V. 2010) . With this success Nayar felt his employees...
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...In “10 Ways Technology Will Change The World By 2025” by Rebecca Borison, the author argues that scientist Thomas Reuters believes that by the year 2025 technology in the world will change in a big way. According to the article by identifying problematic DNA, scientists will be able to produce actual technology to fight the biological decline of one's mental capacity. By 2025, methods for harvesting, storing, and converting solar energy will be advanced enough to make it the primary source of energy on our planet. New technology will be able to store energy and serve as electrodes to deliver this hyper connectivity. Biodegradable packing will be the norm. The article also mentions packaging will be made of cellulose materials that are plastic...
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...From Technology and Social Change, 1987, edited by H. Russell Bernard and Pertti J. Pelto. 2nd ed.Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press. Pp. 359–368. TECHNOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY Conclusion H. Russell Bernard and Pertti J. Pelto In putting together this collection of papers we have become aware of two things. First, each of the cases is historically unique and interesting – they can all stand on their own without need for further interpretation. Second, these cases contain important clues and guidelines which point to a more general theory of technology and sociocultural change. They do not go far enough to allow us to frame up such a theory, but they provide the inductive impetus for relating these examples to the wider system of theory building in anthropology. In the first edition of this book we were not yet ready to elaborate even the outlines of such a theory, but the ensuing 15 years have given us plenty of new materials, as well as general growth in various aspects of theoretical social science. We can now offer a theoretical synthesis, and show how this synthesis can lead directly to the testing of specific hypotheses. That technology is a key element in all human affairs, and especially in sociocultural change, has long been central to anthropological thinking (Barnett, 1953; Foster, 1973; Steward, 1956; White, 1959). Yet, after several collections of case materials on social change (Spicer, 1952; Paul, 1955; Niehoff, 1966; and the...
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...The major rise of the Internet and the World Wide Web has directly impacted these technological advances. The development of microprocessors has also been a large factor. The growth of low-cost but high-powered computing has boosted the amount of information that can be processed by firms and individuals. Advances in telecommunication technology are a direct result of the microprocessor. Massive amounts of data and information are encoded, transmitted and decoded by microprocessors powering the telecommunications technology. Microprocessors have consistently dropped in prices as their processing power increases. This phenomenon between the relationships of cost versus power of microprocessors is known as Moore’s law. As Moore’s Law continues, the cost of global communications falls drastically. The lowered cost of communications and the ability for buyers and sellers to find each other online reduces the barriers such as location, time zones and scale. This allows businesses and individuals to have a global presence and control and coordinate their globally dispersed production systems. Major innovations have occurred in transpiration technology as well as telecommunications. Innovations such as commercial jet aircraft, containerization and super-freighters have shrunk the cost of transportation and the time to deliver product. Commercial jet aircraft has reduced the amount of time spent traveling to distant locations. Containerization revolutionized the transport business by...
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...Changes in Technology Daniel Todd BIS220 February 19, 2014 Bertram Ian Lee Changes in Technology In this time of vast improvements in information technology issues have presented themselves that many times need to be taken care of on a legislative level. This legislation is often done to protect consumers or those that could be unknowingly harmed by the abuse of new technologies. The Children’s Internet Protection Act of 1999 and the No Electronic Theft Act of 1997 are two forms of legislation that have been enacted in the last 20 years that are aimed to protect individuals from potential abuse on the internet. The Children’s Internet Protection Act of 1999 (CIPA) was developed in response to concerns about children accessing harmful or obscene internet content such as pornography and other obscene content. (Federal Communications Commission, n.d.) In the mid and late 1990’s the adoption of the internet was moving along an alarming pace. Many children, however, still relied on their school for access to the internet as. As allowed by the Schools and Libraries Program, certain education and library establishments are permitted to get internet access and very discounted rates in order to make it affordable for these establishments. This program, usually known as “E-Rate”, helps many low budget rural and urban community schools afford internet access for their students. (U.S. Department of Education, 2013) What CIPA did was require these schools and libraries to...
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...Contract No.: ED-01-CO-0039 (0004) MPR Reference No.: 8936-600 The Effectiveness Of Educational Technology: Issues and Recommendations for the National Study Draft May 9, 2003 Roberto Agodini Mark Dynarski Margaret Honey, Education Development Center Douglas Levin, American Institutes for Research | | | |Submitted to: |Submitted by: | | | | |Institute of Education Sciences |Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. | |U.S. Department of Education |P.O. Box 2393 | |80 F Street NW |Princeton, NJ 08543-2393 | |Washington, DC 20208 ...
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...computing power would double every two years; this 40 year old prediction is colloquially referred to as “Moore’s Law” and has yet to be disproven. With the raw computing power at their disposal effectively doubling every year, hardware and software makers are free to make some interesting contributions to the paperless office. An additional benefit of this technology explosion is a reduction in costs: the more time spent producing these technologies, the more efficiency that can be realized, hence the cost is driven down. Two technologies stand out as being the most influential on the paperless office: storage and optical character recognition (OCR). OCR has improved vastly over the last decade, approaching the point where it is a viable business technology. Storage technology is obviously crucial to the paperless office – after all, every document has to be stored somewhere whether in a file cabinet or a CD-ROM. Here, too, Moore’s law is at work, doubling the amount of storage in the same physical space roughly every two years. A key stumbling block for the truly paperless office has yet to be fully overcome: technology is not infallible. Even the most well-designed computer system will occasionally experience service outages. Paper, on the other hand, is concrete. Paper does not require electricity and is easily shared or copied. There is also a psychological advantage to paper, in that it is a physical object that can’t just “disappear into cyberspace”. Electronic documents...
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...Technology and Social Change Technology is defined as the use of science in industry, engineering, etc., to invent useful things or to solve problems (Technology, 2016). Social change happens when there is a change in society. It seems that there everyone including small children have either a computer or a cell phone and access to the internet. The advancements in technology have paved the way to social changes throughout the United States. Where would we be without cell phones, internet, the automobile, or electricity? Social changes happened with the implementation of this technology advancements. In the last 20 years there have been many technological changes. Personal computers are faster and more compact. Cell phones give their user Internet access just about anywhere you can access the cellular network. As a nation we have become almost chained to our cell phones and computers. A relatively new form of social media, crowdsourcing is when a services are needed and the ideas or information is spread to a large group of people. For instance, Kickstarter is a web-based company that helps to raise large amounts of money in a short period of time. Another use of the Internet and crowdsourcing happened in January 2010 when an earthquake devastated Haiti. Relief groups were able to take advantage of crowdsourcing efforts to get the medical aid, food, shelter, and rescue help that was needed (Introduction to Sociology, 2015, p. 493). Without the advancements that have been...
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...Technology and Social Change Veronica Garcia February 22,2016 SOC/100 Lynn Ma Technology and Social Change Technology is the scientific knowledge of making tools in order t solve problems that are very specific. Automobiles, airplanes, cell phones, computers and the radio are examples of technological advances. These advancements have helped revolutionize the way people interact, meet, and conduct business. The increase of technology provides an influx of storage and retrieval, and in return it opens up the channels for knowledge and information. This then leads to better technological advances. All these changes then create concern as to how society will learn to deal with the advancements in technology. Computer technology allows the offices to connect electronically via a phone, a computer and a fax machine. The internet is what allows millions of people to interact and socialize with each other. Technology has also had many breakthroughs in medicine. Although many breakthroughs are considered controversial, most breakthroughs have helped more in medicine than hurt any. Technology has been applied in the advancement of sex preselection, surrogate parenthood, and genetic engineering. These advancements have raised concern in politics, it has questioned the ethical value of such technology and has questioned the morality of these breakthroughs. The impact that technology has had on society is overwhelming. The use of a cell phone, a personal computer...
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...Technology and Social Change SOC 100 One of our best well-known scientists, Albert Einstein, quoted “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology have exceeded our humanity” that was credited in a 1995 movie called “Powder”. It is no secret that the advancement of technology is drastically increasing in a rate where it is almost impossible to keep up with. Many individuals believe that it is slowly taking our attention away to what is really valuable in our lives, while others strongly considering that it will bring us together and provide cost-effective solutions to our everyday life and industry field. Social change refers to a modification or adjustment in the social order of the society (Schaeffer 2015, p.392). This can be influenced by any traumatic event that took place, culture of the society and even the geographical location. Technology alone does not cause social change, but it is highly characterized related in different aspect of society across the world. It is inevitable to escape from social change because the society is continuously advancing in order to extend human capabilities by the use of different tools, equipment, and innovative software. The Pace of Technology, magazine article by Ron Johnston, states “Much of innovation is stimulated by the identification of new needs, which drives a search for new or existing technologies that can be adapted to meet that need.” Computer technology became one of the top essential needs following the cellular...
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