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Technology Shaped By and Shaping Society (Print This) | |
A technologically literate person recognizes that technology influences changes in society and has done so throughout history. In fact, many historical eras are identified by their dominant technology: Stone Age, Iron Age, Bronze Age, Industrial Age, Information Age. Technology-driven changes have been particularly evident in the past century. Automobiles have created a more mobile, spread-out society; aircraft and improved communications have led to a "smaller" world and, eventually, globalization; contraception has revolutionized sexual mores; and improved sanitation, agriculture, and medicine have extended life expectancy. A technologically literate person recognizes the rate of technology in these changes and accepts the reality that the future will be different from the present largely because of technologies now coming into existence, from Internet-based activities to genetic engineering and cloning.
The technologically literate person also recognizes that society shapes technology as much as technology shapes society. There is nothing inevitable about the changes influenced by technology--they are the result of human decisions and not of impersonal historical forces. New technologies must meet the requirements of consumers, business people, bankers, judges, environmentalists, politicians, and government bureaucrats. An electric car that no one buys might just as well never have been developed. A genetically engineered crop that is banned by the government is of little more use than the weeds in the fields. In short, many factors shape technology, and human beings, acting alone or in groups, determine the direction of technological development.
Review other characteristics of a technologically literate person.
Designing Engineers by Louis L. Bucciarelli. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994
Beyond Engineering: How Society Shapes Technology by Robert Pool. Oxford University Press, 1999
Society for the History of Technology
Resources and Links
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