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The Relationship between the Technological Change and the Cultural Change

Introduction

Culture, as we all know, is a product of human society and it saves itself from changing and being transmitted from one generation to another. Therefore, culture predates technological change in the process of human socialization. Culture has been universal of human experience and is both stable and ever changing. Culture can be classified as the non-material part of the human socialization that influences people’s way of life. According to sociologist, human beings have passed through the pre-modern, modern and the post-modern phases of cultural interaction. Examples of pre-modern phases include the hunting and the gathering societies. Therefore, culture can be traced to the time man existed. Furthermore, there are many ways of defining culture but according the dictionary definition; it comprises social forms, cultural beliefs and material traits of social, racial or religious groups. Therefore, culture is important to the human race since it determines the patterns of human interaction, their beliefs. In fact, culture allows for more face-to face interaction between people and enhances close social relationships (Hutchby, and Ellis 30).

On the other hand, technology change, especially the influence of social media, has been the influence of today’s modern culture. Unlike in the past where people had to meet physically and discuss their concerns at a given time, technology has provided means to communicate at any given time. Culture allowed people of different races and character traits to interact with one another and develop rapport. In the modern society, however, technology has created relationships that are based specifically based on mutual understanding and shared common interests. For example, people who use the internet communicate with others across the globe; they form special groups addressing their main interests such as relationships. For instance, dating websites allow people only to address their emotional affairs and the kind of interaction that is developed from such social sites is based only on intimate relationships. The media technology can be traced to the 18^thCentury unlike the culture which has influenced human beings since the start of human socialization. The public spheres have been changing from gathering at meeting in public places, to meeting online through social forums and other media platforms. A readMediated Society, the prospects of media technology identified by looking at how it has impacted what we see as normal and changed the society’s values. In today’s world, it is easy to access technology and know what is happening in the world. People can know what is happening in the world by use of smartphones and computers regardless of time and their location. Moreover, technology is affecting people’s values and norms by influencing their behavior. For instance, technology has contributed to a greater extent the freedom of expression. As a result, people are living in a liberal society in which, there is no standard norms for defining what is acceptable and what is unacceptable. Even though technology has been providing people with the feeling of connectedness, many questions have been asked as to whether the ease of connection holds any significant impact on culture. From the discussion above, it can be seen that technology has outweighed culture in terms of human interaction; however, technology has caused some number of problems compared to it benefits. The paper will examine similarities and the differences between technological change and cultural change, and provide some solutions to the problems arising from the media culture. There is a need to determine how technology is influencing human interaction and develop a human interaction goal driven approach, which will balance the potential consequences that the technology is conveying to people’s lives.

Similarities and the Differences between Cultural Change and Technological Change

As such, technological change and cultural change shares some similarities in the way they influence, or they have influenced human interaction. Both technological and cultural change can be used in strengthening peer relationships and in providing a sense of group identity. Same way the culture strengthens group identities by allowing people of the same age-sets to interact with one another through physical activities such as sports, media provides an integrated social setting with friends of different ways. Similarly, media technology provides themes for conversation between the young people. For instance, media-related toys are part of the cultural environment for the children in the modern society. When children get older, they engage in discussion with other children of the same age about the media content. For example, children tend to comment upon television programs and films that they have seen (Hutchby, and Ellis 39).

Another similarity between the technological change and the cultural change is that they both determine people’s role identities. Culture is one of the contributing factors to the role identity. As mentioned, before, culture comprises values, beliefs and practices of a particular group. As a result, culture influences how people talk, how they dress, and what is the acceptable behavior. As children grow up, they start to absorb these belief, practices and values and use them in their daily activities. Therefore, people have different role identities according their exposure to different cultures. Since cultural change is also dynamic process, the social and the cultural forces continue to shape our sense of identities by influencing the way we make judgments about ourselves and others. Similarly, media content is important in the roles played by the peers. The technological change has brought a new platform on which people can expand their social networks through tapes, CDs internet social networks such as Facebook and twitter. There are people whose role identities have been determined by the role models which are shown of social media. For instance, the role identities of fan cultures (music such as hip hop) are fed by music, magazines, and films and so on. Furthermore, technological change has been used as means of expressing personal identities. For example, at the puberty stage, group identities become very significant. Young teenagers tend to be a ‘part of the gang’, and they use similar media products and adapt the same dressing styles. In short, they copy the identities of the role models of their tastes from the social sites (Hutchby, and Ellis 45).

Technological change may have positive effects on human interaction by enabling them to have shared experiences. However, the media culture can also cause some negative effects to the human interaction and experiences. Some of these negative effects can be considered some of the differences between the cultural change and the technological change. For example, culture change leads to active learning whereby individual concentrate on activities that can improve their social experience. For example, in the modern society, people have been engaging in sports activities which are from different cultures; as a result, this has led to increased social interaction. On the other hand, the information and the communication technology (ICT) may be influencing some social structures such as the individual’s consciousness. For example, college students are using computers connected to the internet to engage in numb-minding activities instead of focusing on productive learning. Internet provides a platform on which delve in chartrooms, SMS messaging services and game cheats. As a result, technological change seem to reduce mental plasticity of the individual using the social media to interact and, leading to reduced active learning (Hutchby, and Ellis 50).

Another effect that media culture has affected the way we communicate is its influence on the consciousness. Unlike cultural change that enhances mental development, there are claims that those who spend much of their time in social sites and other simulated environments may be experiencing ‘multiple personae’. Multiple personae is a form of fragmented self or a range of possible selves which are assumed to be appropriate by the individual that are exploring the virtuous world. The problem of technological change is that it can make the users to experience a series of disconnected character traits, instead of experiencing something that should be basically grounded in shared life experiences. However, more studies on effects of technology are yet to prove whether the internet can cause negative social developments.

Instead, the new era of technology has increased the speed at which information can be transferred from one point to another. In addition, technological change seem to improve and critical thinking and problem solving among the ‘digital natives’. In comparison to culture change, information technology has made it easier to gather information and analyze it, especially from the internet. Cultural change is a slow process where learning of a new behavior takes time. In media culture, however, some children have been able to develop enhanced creativity, critical thinking, flexible responses and corporation within a short period. For example, it is common to find school going children being able to watch soaps, listen to music, hold telephone conversations at the same time and still finish their homework successfully. The media technology is being as the most influence tool of human behavior. The information technology management gurus predict that being networked will be a key to success in the cognitive development of the kids, and that they should be encouraged to engage more in networking though the social media. Some critiques have argued that it is difficult to determine whether a new form of culture predates the development of technology, or the success of one of them outweighs the other. Some theorist have argued that technological change and cultural change can affect the way we communicate in different ways, and that how they both influence the human social life relies simply on the consumer revolution, that is, how different people adapt to the changing cultures and technologies.

Despite such claims, the social construction of technology (also known as SCOT), which is a theory within the disciplines of science and technologies, has distinguished technological change from cultural change. Social constructivists argue that technology doe not influence the human action; instead, the human actions determine the technology. Since human actions are a product of the culture in which they live; therefore, culture also ha a direct influence on the technology. They argue that how technology is used in human interactions cannot be understood without knowing how technology is embebbed in the cultural and social context. SCOT draws these inferences from technological determinism, also called as technological constructivism. In the school of constructivists, they hold that those who seek to understand why technology is accepted by some and rejected by others; they should look from the cultural context. According to SCOT, if technology is considered to be successful in influencing how we communicate and people say that it is “the best”, the researchers must investigate the criterion that has been used to define it that way. The criterion that is used depends on the different cultural groups and the stakeholders defining it. In other words, they must find out how its success in human interaction is measured, by examining how it is perceived in the cultural context (Fuchs 113).

The relationship between culture and technology can be understood from the perspective of technological imperative. In response to that perspective, culture is viewed to be forming the background for the development of technology. The focus on technological change is that it is a material artifact of the cultural change. As such, technological development leads to certain infrastructure, technical and policy conditions that leads to new products. Therefore, culture comes into play only as the context of the technology decisions, and not as the measure of the technology itself (Fuchs 120).

Another perspective that is used to understand the difference between the technological change and the cultural change is the “starting point” in relation to the historical evolution. As a result, cultural change precedes technological change in relation to the historical evolution of cultures and cultural frameworks. Culture is not taken to be a series of responses to technology; instead, it is considered to be an essential mediator to the universal, mechanical, and artificial realm of technology. According to a cultural critique of technology, technology is considered to be the non-material elements that should be evaluated and utilized in ways that fits the society or culture. Therefore, technology is a product of culture and is a non-material element that has to be modified under cultural frameworks in order to satisfy people’s needs (Fuchs 125).

Conclusion

Technology and cultural change share some similarities and some differences. Despite these difference and similarities, there are several core concepts that both the technology and culture share in common. For instance, both the technology and culture have interpretative flexibility. It means that different groups have different interpretations for how technology and culture affects their social interaction. Culture and technology changes are characterized by problems and conflicts. Different interpretations result in conflicts among different social groups. Constant communication by use of technology is changing how people think and how they communicate with one another. For instance, technology has enabled people to get attention, always to be heard and never to feel that they are alone. However, connecting electronically has been seen to contribute to isolation. People who are engaging in sending text messages, Facebook updates, twitters and many other forms of social media, often do not get time to listen or think. Understanding how media influences what we see as normal can help in understanding how it affects of cultural values. Nevertheless, the ease of communicating through the internet has a direct influence on culture both locally and globally since more people are choosing to communicate online instead of meeting face-to-face.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Hutchby, Ian and Jo Moran-Ellis. Children, Technology and Culture: The Impacts of

Technologies in Children’s Everyday Lives. Burlington: Routledge, 2013. Print.

Fuchs, Christian. Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies. New York, NY:

Taylor & Francis, 2011. Print.