During the past decades, the social ramifications of technology have been questioned and discussed in many countries. While the technological advancements have been beneficial to the welfare of the people, the negative effects can be harmful to individuals and groups. Hence, global cooperation is important to spread and maintain new technologies across the globe.
The relationship between technology and society can be defined as symbiotic or co-dependent. This is generally understood as a mutual reliance or co-producing, whereby the technological developments are used to solve societal problems and vice versa.
Technology is a complex thing that requires nuanced and in-depth analysis to understand it. In the past, there were two major traditions of humanities philosophers of technology. The first group represented a positive view of technology. During the first half of the Industrial Revolution, a positive attitude towards the development of new technologies was prevalent.
During the late nineteenth century, however, a critical attitude predominated. Those representative of this school of thought had almost no first-hand knowledge of engineering practice. Instead, they were trained in the humanities. This attitude portrayed technology as a purely technical rationality that was devoid of value. They also tended to adopt a language of means and ends. This is often reflected in the way they use the word “technology.”
During the early twentieth century, the emergence of the modern automobile and the telephone led to a more comprehensive view of technology. Aside from reducing physical barriers to communication, the technology developed by the printer and the wheel enabled humans to travel at a distance.
The role of technology continues to evolve in our contemporary societies. Newer technologies are increasingly used by employees to perform their tasks more efficiently. They are also used in areas like health care, where they can provide greater monitoring capabilities. These technologies have also created opportunities for clean energy investment. In addition, a number of technologies are now being used to create new flavours for food.
Today, new technologies are used to monitor locations, time, and transit of different objects. These technologies are incorporated into GPS devices. GPS also serves as a real-time direction system. Similarly, the use of biometric data has become common in smartwatches and other devices.
The impact of technology on the natural environment has been criticized since the 1970s. Although governments struggle to find ways to encourage global cooperation, the use of new technologies has contributed to the well-being of the world’s people. Nevertheless, new technologies have had profound societal impacts, and are now being criticized for harming the environment.
The early twentieth-century utopian literature, such as Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, contain criticisms of new technologies. These works suggest that the future can be a dystopian one.
The relationship between technology and society stretches back to the dawn of humankind. Throughout history, the development of new technologies has been criticized for its negative effects on the environment, and has caused great disruption to social hierarchies. These societal impacts remain an urgent part of the technological puzzle.