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Relationship Between Technology and Social Change

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Published: Mar 20, 2024

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Impact on communication and relationships, education and workforce development, social and cultural norms, economic systems and globalization.

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Reimagining Tomorrow: the Intersection of Technology and Social Change

This essay explores the intricate relationship between technological advancement and societal transformation throughout history. It highlights the pivotal role of technology in shaping our collective destiny, from the invention of the printing press to the modern digital era. Emphasizing the importance of ethical considerations and inclusivity, the essay discusses strategies to bridge the digital divide and harness technology for positive change. It also into the transformative impact of technology on healthcare, education, and economic systems, while urging vigilance against potential ethical and social pitfalls. Ultimately, the essay advocates for a future where technology serves as a catalyst for progress, empowering individuals and fostering a more inclusive society.

How it works

In the vast mosaic of human advancement, the intricate interplay between technological innovation and societal metamorphosis emerges as a profound force sculpting our shared destiny. From the seismic impact of the Gutenberg printing press during the Renaissance to the digital renaissance of our modern age, history stands witness to the profound influence of ingenuity on the trajectory of civilization. Today, as we navigate the labyrinthine currents of an ever-evolving world, we find ourselves at a pivotal crossroads where the convergence of technology and societal dynamics holds the key to reshaping the future.

At the core of this redefinition lies a fundamental shift in perspective—an acknowledgment that technology transcends its role as a mere tool to become a potent catalyst for driving positive change. Whether it’s unlocking the potential of artificial intelligence to combat environmental challenges or leveraging blockchain technology to foster financial inclusivity, the spectrum of possibilities stretches infinitely. However, navigating this landscape necessitates a nuanced approach that prioritizes ethics, equity, and inclusivity.

Chief among our imperatives is the urgent need to bridge the digital chasm—a chasm that not only widens existing disparities but also obstructs progress on multiple fronts. Tackling this divide requires more than just expanding technological access; it demands a comprehensive strategy encompassing grassroots initiatives, digital literacy drives, and fair allocation of resources. By empowering marginalized communities and amplifying their voices in the technological dialogue, we pave the way for a more inclusive digital society.

Moreover, the transformative power of technology extends beyond connectivity to domains such as healthcare and education. Innovations like telemedicine, wearable health tech, and AI-driven diagnostics are reshaping healthcare delivery, rendering it more accessible and personalized. Similarly, in the sphere of education, the emergence of online learning platforms and adaptive technologies holds promise in democratizing access to knowledge and skills, leveling the educational playing field for individuals of all backgrounds.

Nevertheless, as we embark on this odyssey of technological progress, it is imperative to remain vigilant against the ethical and social ramifications that accompany advancement. Issues such as algorithmic bias, breaches of data privacy, and violations of digital rights underscore the necessity for robust safeguards and regulatory frameworks. By advocating for principles of transparency, accountability, and user empowerment, we can ensure that technology remains a force for good, serving the collective welfare of humanity.

Furthermore, as automation reshapes the landscape of employment and labor, we are confronted with the imperative to reimagine our economic paradigms. Initiatives such as universal basic income, reskilling programs, and inclusive innovation policies can help mitigate the adverse effects of automation and foster a more equitable distribution of opportunities and resources.

In the epic saga of human progress, the intersection of technology and social transformation has perennially served as a crucible for change. As we stand on the precipice of a new epoch, the decisions we make today will sculpt the contours of tomorrow. Let us seize this moment to chart a trajectory towards a future where technology acts as a catalyst for progress, empowering individuals, fortifying communities, and advancing the cause of justice and equality. Together, let us embark on a voyage of collective imagination and innovation, forging a path towards a radiant and more inclusive dawn.

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Social Interaction Vs Electronic Media Use

Karunaratne, Indika & Atukorale, Ajantha & Perera, Hemamali. (2011). Surveillance of human- computer interactions: A way forward to detection of users' Psychological Distress. 2011 IEEE Colloquium on Humanities, Science and Engineering, CHUSER 2011. 10.1109/CHUSER.2011.6163779.

June 9, 2023 / 0 comments / Reading Time: ~ 12 minutes

The Digital Revolution: How Technology is Changing the Way We Communicate and Interact

This article examines the impact of technology on human interaction and explores the ever-evolving landscape of communication. With the rapid advancement of technology, the methods and modes of communication have undergone a significant transformation. This article investigates both the positive and negative implications of this digitalization. Technological innovations, such as smartphones, social media, and instant messaging apps, have provided unprecedented accessibility and convenience, allowing people to connect effortlessly across distances. However, concerns have arisen regarding the quality and authenticity of these interactions. The article explores the benefits of technology, including improved connectivity, enhanced information sharing, and expanded opportunities for collaboration. It also discusses potential negative effects including a decline in in-person interactions, a loss of empathy, and an increase in online anxiety. This article tries to expand our comprehension of the changing nature of communication in the digital age by exposing the many ways that technology has an impact on interpersonal interactions. It emphasizes the necessity of intentional and thoughtful communication techniques to preserve meaningful connections in a society that is becoming more and more reliant on technology.

Introduction:

Technology has significantly transformed our modes of communication and interaction, revolutionizing the way we connect with one another over the past few decades. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has acted as a catalyst, expediting this transformative process, and necessitating our exclusive reliance on digital tools for socializing, working, and learning. Platforms like social media and video conferencing have emerged in recent years, expanding our options for virtual communication. The impact of these changes on our lives cannot be ignored. In this article, we will delve into the ways in which technology has altered our communication and interaction patterns and explore the consequences of these changes for our relationships, mental well-being, and society.

To gain a deeper understanding of this topic, I have conducted interviews and surveys, allowing us to gather firsthand insights from individuals of various backgrounds. Additionally, we will compare this firsthand information with the perspectives shared by experts in the field. By drawing on both personal experiences and expert opinions, we seek to provide a comprehensive analysis of how technology influences our interpersonal connections. Through this research, we hope to get a deeper comprehension of the complex interactions between technology and people, enabling us to move mindfully and purposefully through the rapidly changing digital environment.

The Evolution of Communication: From Face-to-Face to Digital Connections:

In the realm of communication, we have various mediums at our disposal, such as face-to-face interactions, telephone conversations, and internet-based communication. According to Nancy Baym, an expert in the field of technology and human connections, face-to-face communication is often regarded as the most personal and intimate, while the phone provides a more personal touch than the internet. She explains this in her book Personal Connections in the Digital Age by stating, “Face-to-face is much more personal; phone is personal as well, but not as intimate as face-to-face… Internet would definitely be the least personal, followed by the phone (which at least has the vocal satisfaction) and the most personal would be face-to-face” (Baym 2015). These distinctions suggest that different communication mediums are perceived to have varying levels of effectiveness in conveying emotion and building relationships. This distinction raises thought-provoking questions about the impact of technology on our ability to forge meaningful connections. While the internet offers unparalleled convenience and connectivity, it is essential to recognize its limitations in reproducing the depth of personal interaction found in face-to-face encounters. These limitations may be attributed to the absence of nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice, which are vital elements in understanding and interpreting emotions accurately.

Traditionally, face-to-face interactions held a prominent role as the primary means of communication, facilitating personal and intimate connections. However, the rise of technology has brought about significant changes, making communication more convenient but potentially less personal. The rise of phones, instant messaging, and social media platforms has revolutionized how we connect with others. While these digital tools offer instant connectivity and enable us to bridge geographical distances, they introduce a layer of blockage that may impact the depth and quality of our interactions. It is worth noting that different communication mediums have their strengths and limitations. Phone conversations, for instance, retain a certain level of personal connection through vocal interactions, allowing for the conveyance of emotions and tones that text-based communication may lack. However, even with this advantage, phone conversations still fall short of the depth and richness found in face-to-face interactions, as they lack visual cues and physical presence.

Internet-based communication, on the other hand, is considered the least personal medium. Online interactions often rely on text-based exchanges, which may not fully capture the nuances of expression, tone, and body language. While the internet offers the ability to connect with a vast network of individuals and share information on a global scale, it may not facilitate the same depth and authenticity that in-person or phone conversations can provide. As a result, establishing meaningful connections and building genuine relationships in an online setting can be challenging. Research and observations support these ideas. Figure 1. titled “Social Interaction after Electronic Media Use,” shows the potential impact of electronic media on social interaction (source: ResearchGate). This research highlights the need to carefully consider the effects of technology on our interpersonal connections. While technology offers convenience and connectivity, it is essential to strike a balance, ensuring that we do not sacrifice the benefits of face-to-face interactions for the sake of digital convenience.

Figure 1: Increased reliance on electronic media has led to a noticeable decrease in social interaction.

The Limitations and Effects of Digital Communication

In today’s digital age, the limitations and effects of digital communication are becoming increasingly evident. While the phone and internet offer undeniable benefits such as convenience and the ability to connect with people regardless of geographical distance, they fall short in capturing the depth and richness of a face-to-face conversation. The ability to be in the same physical space as the person we’re communicating with, observing their facial expressions, body language, and truly feeling their presence, is something unique and irreplaceable.

Ulrike Schultze, in her thought-provoking TED Talk titled “How Social Media Shapes Identity,” delves further into the impact of digital communication on our lives by stating, “we construct the technology, but the technology also constructs us. We become what technology allows us to become” (Schultze 2015). This concept highlights how our reliance on digital media for interaction has led to a transformation in how we express ourselves and relate to others.

The influence of social media has been profound in shaping our communication patterns and interpersonal dynamics. Research conducted by Kalpathy Subramanian (2017) examined the influence of social media on interpersonal communication, highlighting the changes it brings to the way we interact and express ourselves (Subramanian 2017). The study found that online communication often involves the use of abbreviations, emoticons, and hashtags, which have become embedded in our online discourse. These digital communication shortcuts prioritize speed and efficiency, but they also contribute to a shift away from the physical action of face-to-face conversation, where nonverbal cues and deeper emotional connections can be fostered.

Additionally, the study emphasizes the impact of social media on self-presentation and identity construction. With the rise of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, individuals have a platform to curate and present themselves to the world. This online self-presentation can influence how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us, potentially shaping our identities in the process. The study further suggests that the emphasis on self-presentation and the pressure to maintain a certain image on social media can lead to increased stress and anxiety among users.

Interviews:

I conducted interviews with individuals from different age groups to gain diverse perspectives on how technology and social media have transformed the way we connect with others. By exploring the experiences of a 21-year-old student and an individual in their 40s, we can better understand the evolving dynamics of interpersonal communication in the digital age. These interviews shed light on the prevalence of digital communication among younger generations, their preference for convenience, and the concerns raised by individuals from older age groups regarding the potential loss of deeper emotional connections.

When I asked the 21-year-old classmate about how technology has changed the way they interact with people in person, they expressed, “To be honest, I spend more time texting, messaging, or posting on social media than actually talking face-to-face with others. It’s just so much more convenient.” This response highlights the prevalence of digital communication among younger generations and their preference for convenience over traditional face-to-face interactions. It suggests that technology has significantly transformed the way young people engage with others, with a greater reliance on virtual interactions rather than in-person conversations. Additionally, the mention of convenience as a driving factor raises questions about the potential trade-offs in terms of depth and quality of interpersonal connections.

To gain insight from an individual in their 40s, I conducted another interview. When asked about their experiences with technology and social media, they shared valuable perspectives. They mentioned that while they appreciate the convenience and accessibility offered by technology, they also expressed concerns about its impact on interpersonal connections. They emphasized the importance of face-to-face interactions in building genuine relationships and expressed reservations about the potential loss of deeper emotional connections in digital communication. Additionally, they discussed the challenges of adapting to rapid technological advancements and the potential generational divide in communication preferences.

Comparing the responses from both interviews, it is evident that there are generational differences in the perception and use of technology for communication. While the 21-year-old classmate emphasized convenience as a primary factor in favor of digital communication, the individual in their 40s highlighted the importance of face-to-face interactions and expressed concerns about the potential loss of meaningful connections in the digital realm. This comparison raises questions about the potential impact of technology on the depth and quality of interpersonal relationships across different age groups. It also invites further exploration into how societal norms and technological advancements shape individuals’ preferences and experiences.

Overall, the interviews revealed a shift towards digital communication among both younger and older individuals, with varying perspectives. While convenience and connectivity are valued, concerns were raised regarding the potential drawbacks, including the pressure to maintain an idealized online presence and the potential loss of genuine connections. It is evident that technology and social media have transformed the way we communicate and interact with others, but the interviews also highlighted the importance of maintaining a balance and recognizing the value of face-to-face interactions in fostering meaningful relationships.

I have recently conducted a survey with my classmates to gather insights on how technology and social media have influenced communication and interaction among students in their daily lives. Although the number of responses is relatively small, the collected data allows us to gain a glimpse into individual experiences and perspectives on this matter.

One of the questions asked in the survey was how often students rely on digital communication methods, such as texting, messaging, or social media, in comparison to engaging in face-to-face conversations. The responses indicated a clear trend towards increased reliance on digital communication, with 85% of participants stating that they frequently use digital platforms as their primary means of communication. This suggests a significant shift away from traditional face-to-face interactions, highlighting the pervasive influence of technology in shaping our communication habits.

Furthermore, the survey explored changes in the quality of interactions and relationships due to the increased use of technology and social media. Interestingly, 63% of respondents reported that they had noticed a decrease in the depth and intimacy of their connections since incorporating more digital communication into their lives. Many participants expressed concerns about the difficulty of conveying emotions effectively through digital channels and the lack of non-verbal cues that are present in face-to-face interactions. It is important to note that while the survey results provide valuable insights into individual experiences, they are not representative of the entire student population. The small sample size limits the generalizability of the findings. However, the data collected does shed light on the potential impact of technology and social media on communication and interaction patterns among students.

Expanding on the topic, I found an insightful figure from Business Insider that sheds light on how people utilize their smartphones (Business Insider). Figure 2. illustrates the average smartphone owner’s daily time spent on various activities. Notably, communication activities such as texting, talking, and social networking account for a significant portion, comprising 59% of phone usage. This data reinforces the impact of digital communication on our daily lives, indicating the substantial role it plays in shaping our interactions with others. Upon comparing this research with the data, I have gathered, a clear trend emerges, highlighting that an increasing number of individuals primarily utilize their smartphones for communication and interaction purposes.

Figure 2: The breakdown of daily smartphone usage among average users clearly demonstrates that the phone is primarily used for interactions.

The Digital Make Over:

In today’s digital age, the impact of technology on communication and interaction is evident, particularly in educational settings. As a college student, I have witnessed the transformation firsthand, especially with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The convenience of online submissions for assignments has led to a growing trend of students opting to skip physical classes, relying on the ability to submit their work remotely. Unfortunately, this shift has resulted in a decline in face-to-face interactions and communication among classmates and instructors.

The decrease in physical attendance raises concerns about the potential consequences for both learning and social connections within the academic community. Classroom discussions, collaborative projects, and networking opportunities are often fostered through in-person interactions. By limiting these experiences, students may miss out on valuable learning moments, diverse perspectives, and the chance to establish meaningful connections with their peers and instructors.

Simon Lindgren, in his thought-provoking Ted Talk , “Media Are Not Social, but People Are,” delves deeper into the effects of technology and social media on our interactions. Lindgren highlights a significant point by suggesting that while technology may have the potential to make us better individuals, we must also recognize its potential pitfalls. Social media, for instance, can create filter bubbles that limit our exposure to diverse viewpoints, making us less in touch with reality and more narrow-minded. This cautionary reminder emphasizes the need to approach social media thoughtfully, seeking out diverse perspectives and avoiding the pitfalls of echo chambers. Furthermore, it is crucial to strike a balance between utilizing technology for educational purposes and embracing the benefits of in-person interactions. While technology undoubtedly facilitates certain aspects of education, such as online learning platforms and digital resources, we must not overlook the importance of face-to-face communication. In-person interactions allow for nuanced non-verbal cues, deeper emotional connections, and real-time engagement that contribute to a more comprehensive learning experience.

A study conducted by Times Higher Education delved into this topic, providing valuable insights. Figure 3. from the study illustrates a significant drop in attendance levels after the pandemic’s onset. Undeniably, technology played a crucial role in facilitating the transition to online learning. However, it is important to acknowledge that this shift has also led to a decline in face-to-face interactions, which have long been regarded as essential for effective communication and relationship-building. While technology continues to evolve and reshape the educational landscape, it is imperative that we remain mindful of its impact on communication and interaction. Striking a balance between digital tools and in-person engagement can help ensure that we leverage the benefits of technology while preserving the richness of face-to-face interactions. By doing so, we can foster a holistic educational experience that encompasses the best of both worlds and cultivates meaningful connections among students, instructors, and the academic community.

University class attendance plummets post-Covid | Times Higher Education (THE)

Figure 3: This graph offers convincing proof that the COVID-19 pandemic and the extensive use of online submission techniques are to blame for the sharp reduction in in-person student attendance.

When asked about the impact of online submissions for assignments on physical attendance in classes, the survey revealed mixed responses. While 73% of participants admitted that the convenience of online submissions has led them to skip classes occasionally, 27% emphasized the importance of in-person attendance for better learning outcomes and social interactions. This finding suggests that while technology offers convenience, it also poses challenges in maintaining regular face-to-face interactions, potentially hindering educational and social development, and especially damaging the way we communicate and interact with one another. Students are doing this from a young age, and it comes into huge effect once they are trying to enter the work force and interact with others. When examining the survey data alongside the findings from Times Higher Education, striking similarities become apparent regarding how students approach attending classes in person with the overall conclusion being a massive decrease in students attending class which hinders the chance for real life interaction and communication. the convenience and instant gratification provided by technology can create a sense of detachment and impatience in interpersonal interactions. Online platforms allow for quick and immediate responses, and individuals can easily disconnect or switch between conversations. This can result in a lack of attentiveness and reduced focus on the person with whom one is communicating, leading to a superficial engagement that may hinder the establishment of genuine connections.

Conclusion:

Ultimately, the digital revolution has profoundly transformed the way we communicate and interact with one another. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this transformation, leading to increased reliance on digital tools for socializing, working, and learning. While technology offers convenience and connectivity, it also introduces limitations and potential drawbacks. The shift towards digital communication raises concerns about the depth and quality of our connections, as well as the potential loss of face-to-face interactions. However, it is essential to strike a balance between digital and in-person engagement, recognizing the unique value of physical presence, non-verbal cues, and deeper emotional connections that face-to-face interactions provide. By navigating the digital landscape with mindfulness and intentionality, we can harness the transformative power of technology while preserving and nurturing the essential elements of human connection.

Moving forward, it is crucial to consider the impact of technology on our relationships, mental well-being, and society. As technology continues to evolve, we must be cautious of its potential pitfalls, such as the emphasis on self-presentation, the potential for increased stress and anxiety, and the risk of forgetting how to interact in person. Striking a balance between digital and face-to-face interactions can help ensure that technology enhances, rather than replaces, genuine human connections. By prioritizing meaningful engagement, valuing personal interactions, and leveraging the benefits of technology without compromising the depth and quality of our relationships, we can navigate the digital revolution in a way that enriches our lives and fosters authentic connections.

References:

Ballve, M. (2013, June 5). How much time do we really spend on our smartphones every day? Business Insider. Retrieved April 27, 2023. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-time-do-we-spend-on-smartphones-2013-6

Baym, N. (2015). Personal Connections in the Digital Age (2nd ed.). Polity.

Karunaratne, Indika & Atukorale, Ajantha & Perera, Hemamali. (2011). Surveillance of human- computer interactions: A way forward to detection of users’ Psychological Distress. 2011 IEEE Colloquium on Humanities, Science and Engineering, CHUSER 2011. 10.1109/CHUSER.2011.6163779. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Social-interaction-vs-electronic-media-use-Hours-per-day-of-face-to-face-social_fig1_254056654

Lindgren, S. (2015, May 20). Media are not social, but people are | Simon Lindgren | TEDxUmeå . YouTube. Retrieved April 27, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ5S7VIWE6k

Ross, J., McKie, A., Havergal, C., Lem, P., & Basken, P. (2022, October 24). Class attendance plummets post-Covid . Times Higher Education (THE). Retrieved April 27, 2023, from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/class-attendance-plummets-post-covid

Schultze, U. (2015, April 23). How social media shapes identity | Ulrike Schultze | TEDxSMU . YouTube. Retrieved April 27, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSpyZor-Byk

Subramanian, Dr. K .R. “Influence of Social Media in Interpersonal Communication – Researchgate.” ResearchGate.Net , www.researchgate.net/profile/Kalpathy-Subramanian/publication/319422885_Influence_of_Social_Media_in_Interpersonal_Communication/links/59a96d950f7e9b2790120fea/Influence-of-Social-Media-in-Interpersonal-Communication.pdf. Accessed 12 May 2023 .

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essay about digital technology and social change

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Published: June 9, 2023

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The wonderful world of fungi, openmind books, scientific anniversaries, simultaneous translation technology – ever closer to reality, featured author, latest book, the impact of the internet on society: a global perspective, introduction.

The Internet is the decisive technology of the Information Age, as the electrical engine was the vector of technological transformation of the Industrial Age. This global network of computer networks, largely based nowadays on platforms of wireless communication, provides ubiquitous capacity of multimodal, interactive communication in chosen time, transcending space. The Internet is not really a new technology: its ancestor, the Arpanet, was first deployed in 1969 (Abbate 1999). But it was in the 1990s when it was privatized and released from the control of the U.S. Department of Commerce that it diffused around the world at extraordinary speed: in 1996 the first survey of Internet users counted about 40 million; in 2013 they are over 2.5 billion, with China accounting for the largest number of Internet users. Furthermore, for some time the spread of the Internet was limited by the difficulty to lay out land-based telecommunications infrastructure in the emerging countries. This has changed with the explosion of wireless communication in the early twenty-first century. Indeed, in 1991, there were about 16 million subscribers of wireless devices in the world, in 2013 they are close to 7 billion (in a planet of 7.7 billion human beings). Counting on the family and village uses of mobile phones, and taking into consideration the limited use of these devices among children under five years of age, we can say that humankind is now almost entirely connected, albeit with great levels of inequality in the bandwidth as well as in the efficiency and price of the service.

At the heart of these communication networks the Internet ensures the production, distribution, and use of digitized information in all formats. According to the study published by Martin Hilbert in Science (Hilbert and López 2011), 95 percent of all information existing in the planet is digitized and most of it is accessible on the Internet and other computer networks.

The speed and scope of the transformation of our communication environment by Internet and wireless communication has triggered all kind of utopian and dystopian perceptions around the world.

As in all moments of major technological change, people, companies, and institutions feel the depth of the change, but they are often overwhelmed by it, out of sheer ignorance of its effects.

The media aggravate the distorted perception by dwelling into scary reports on the basis of anecdotal observation and biased commentary. If there is a topic in which social sciences, in their diversity, should contribute to the full understanding of the world in which we live, it is precisely the area that has come to be named in academia as Internet Studies. Because, in fact, academic research knows a great deal on the interaction between Internet and society, on the basis of methodologically rigorous empirical research conducted in a plurality of cultural and institutional contexts. Any process of major technological change generates its own mythology. In part because it comes into practice before scientists can assess its effects and implications, so there is always a gap between social change and its understanding. For instance, media often report that intense use of the Internet increases the risk of alienation, isolation, depression, and withdrawal from society. In fact, available evidence shows that there is either no relationship or a positive cumulative relationship between the Internet use and the intensity of sociability. We observe that, overall, the more sociable people are, the more they use the Internet. And the more they use the Internet, the more they increase their sociability online and offline, their civic engagement, and the intensity of family and friendship relationships, in all cultures—with the exception of a couple of early studies of the Internet in the 1990s, corrected by their authors later (Castells 2001; Castells et al. 2007; Rainie and Wellman 2012; Center for the Digital Future 2012 et al.).

Thus, the purpose of this chapter will be to summarize some of the key research findings on the social effects of the Internet relying on the evidence provided by some of the major institutions specialized in the social study of the Internet. More specifically, I will be using the data from the world at large: the World Internet Survey conducted by the Center for the Digital Future, University of Southern California; the reports of the British Computer Society (BCS), using data from the World Values Survey of the University of Michigan; the Nielsen reports for a variety of countries; and the annual reports from the International Telecommunications Union. For data on the United States, I have used the Pew American Life and Internet Project of the Pew Institute. For the United Kingdom, the Oxford Internet Survey from the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, as well as the Virtual Society Project from the Economic and Social Science Research Council. For Spain, the Project Internet Catalonia of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC); the various reports on the information society from Telefónica; and from the Orange Foundation. For Portugal, the Observatório de Sociedade da Informação e do Conhecimento (OSIC) in Lisbon. I would like to emphasize that most of the data in these reports converge toward similar trends. Thus I have selected for my analysis the findings that complement and reinforce each other, offering a consistent picture of the human experience on the Internet in spite of the human diversity.

Given the aim of this publication to reach a broad audience, I will not present in this text the data supporting the analysis presented here. Instead, I am referring the interested reader to the web sources of the research organizations mentioned above, as well as to selected bibliographic references discussing the empirical foundation of the social trends reported here.

Technologies of Freedom, the Network Society, and the Culture of Autonomy

In order to fully understand the effects of the Internet on society, we should remember that technology is material culture. It is produced in a social process in a given institutional environment on the basis of the ideas, values, interests, and knowledge of their producers, both their early producers and their subsequent producers. In this process we must include the users of the technology, who appropriate and adapt the technology rather than adopting it, and by so doing they modify it and produce it in an endless process of interaction between technological production and social use. So, to assess the relevance of Internet in society we must recall the specific characteristics of Internet as a technology. Then we must place it in the context of the transformation of the overall social structure, as well as in relationship to the culture characteristic of this social structure. Indeed, we live in a new social structure, the global network society, characterized by the rise of a new culture, the culture of autonomy.

Internet is a technology of freedom, in the terms coined by Ithiel de Sola Pool in 1973, coming from a libertarian culture, paradoxically financed by the Pentagon for the benefit of scientists, engineers, and their students, with no direct military application in mind (Castells 2001). The expansion of the Internet from the mid-1990s onward resulted from the combination of three main factors:

The technological discovery of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee and his willingness to distribute the source code to improve it by the open-source contribution of a global community of users, in continuity with the openness of the TCP/IP Internet protocols. The web keeps running under the same principle of open source. And two-thirds of web servers are operated by Apache, an open-source server program.
Institutional change in the management of the Internet, keeping it under the loose management of the global Internet community, privatizing it, and allowing both commercial uses and cooperative uses.
Major changes in social structure, culture, and social behavior: networking as a prevalent organizational form; individuation as the main orientation of social behavior; and the culture of autonomy as the culture of the network society.

I will elaborate on these major trends.

Our society is a network society; that is, a society constructed around personal and organizational networks powered by digital networks and communicated by the Internet. And because networks are global and know no boundaries, the network society is a global network society. This historically specific social structure resulted from the interaction between the emerging technological paradigm based on the digital revolution and some major sociocultural changes. A primary dimension of these changes is what has been labeled the rise of the Me-centered society, or, in sociological terms, the process of individuation, the decline of community understood in terms of space, work, family, and ascription in general. This is not the end of community, and not the end of place-based interaction, but there is a shift toward the reconstruction of social relationships, including strong cultural and personal ties that could be considered a form of community, on the basis of individual interests, values, and projects.

The process of individuation is not just a matter of cultural evolution, it is materially produced by the new forms of organizing economic activities, and social and political life, as I analyzed in my trilogy on the Information Age (Castells 1996–2003). It is based on the transformation of space (metropolitan life), work and economic activity (rise of the networked enterprise and networked work processes), culture and communication (shift from mass communication based on mass media to mass self-communication based on the Internet); on the crisis of the patriarchal family, with increasing autonomy of its individual members; the substitution of media politics for mass party politics; and globalization as the selective networking of places and processes throughout the planet.

But individuation does not mean isolation, or even less the end of community. Sociability is reconstructed as networked individualism and community through a quest for like-minded individuals in a process that combines online interaction with offline interaction, cyberspace and the local space. Individuation is the key process in constituting subjects (individual or collective), networking is the organizational form constructed by these subjects; this is the network society, and the form of sociability is what Rainie and Wellman (2012) conceptualized as networked individualism. Network technologies are of course the medium for this new social structure and this new culture (Papacharissi 2010).

As stated above, academic research has established that the Internet does not isolate people, nor does it reduce their sociability; it actually increases sociability, as shown by myself in my studies in Catalonia (Castells 2007), Rainie and Wellman in the United States (2012), Cardoso in Portugal (2010), and the World Internet Survey for the world at large (Center for the Digital Future 2012 et al.). Furthermore, a major study by Michael Willmott for the British Computer Society (Trajectory Partnership 2010) has shown a positive correlation, for individuals and for countries, between the frequency and intensity of the use of the Internet and the psychological indicators of personal happiness. He used global data for 35,000 people obtained from the World Wide Survey of the University of Michigan from 2005 to 2007. Controlling for other factors, the study showed that Internet use empowers people by increasing their feelings of security, personal freedom, and influence, all feelings that have a positive effect on happiness and personal well-being. The effect is particularly positive for people with lower income and who are less qualified, for people in the developing world, and for women. Age does not affect the positive relationship; it is significant for all ages. Why women? Because they are at the center of the network of their families, Internet helps them to organize their lives. Also, it helps them to overcome their isolation, particularly in patriarchal societies. The Internet also contributes to the rise of the culture of autonomy.

The key for the process of individuation is the construction of autonomy by social actors, who become subjects in the process. They do so by defining their specific projects in interaction with, but not submission to, the institutions of society. This is the case for a minority of individuals, but because of their capacity to lead and mobilize they introduce a new culture in every domain of social life: in work (entrepreneurship), in the media (the active audience), in the Internet (the creative user), in the market (the informed and proactive consumer), in education (students as informed critical thinkers, making possible the new frontier of e-learning and m-learning pedagogy), in health (the patient-centered health management system) in e-government (the informed, participatory citizen), in social movements (cultural change from the grassroots, as in feminism or environmentalism), and in politics (the independent-minded citizen able to participate in self-generated political networks).

There is increasing evidence of the direct relationship between the Internet and the rise of social autonomy. From 2002 to 2007 I directed in Catalonia one of the largest studies ever conducted in Europe on the Internet and society, based on 55,000 interviews, one-third of them face to face (IN3 2002–07). As part of this study, my collaborators and I compared the behavior of Internet users to non-Internet users in a sample of 3,000 people, representative of the population of Catalonia. Because in 2003 only about 40 percent of people were Internet users we could really compare the differences in social behavior for users and non-users, something that nowadays would be more difficult given the 79 percent penetration rate of the Internet in Catalonia. Although the data are relatively old, the findings are not, as more recent studies in other countries (particularly in Portugal) appear to confirm the observed trends. We constructed scales of autonomy in different dimensions. Only between 10 and 20 percent of the population, depending on dimensions, were in the high level of autonomy. But we focused on this active segment of the population to explore the role of the Internet in the construction of autonomy. Using factor analysis we identified six major types of autonomy based on projects of individuals according to their practices:

a) professional development b) communicative autonomy c) entrepreneurship d) autonomy of the body e) sociopolitical participation f) personal, individual autonomy

These six types of autonomous practices were statistically independent among themselves. But each one of them correlated positively with Internet use in statistically significant terms, in a self-reinforcing loop (time sequence): the more one person was autonomous, the more she/he used the web, and the more she/he used the web, the more autonomous she/he became (Castells et al. 2007). This is a major empirical finding. Because if the dominant cultural trend in our society is the search for autonomy, and if the Internet powers this search, then we are moving toward a society of assertive individuals and cultural freedom, regardless of the barriers of rigid social organizations inherited from the Industrial Age. From this Internet-based culture of autonomy have emerged a new kind of sociability, networked sociability, and a new kind of sociopolitical practice, networked social movements and networked democracy. I will now turn to the analysis of these two fundamental trends at the source of current processes of social change worldwide.

The Rise of Social Network Sites on the Internet

Since 2002 (creation of Friendster, prior to Facebook) a new socio-technical revolution has taken place on the Internet: the rise of social network sites where now all human activities are present, from personal interaction to business, to work, to culture, to communication, to social movements, and to politics.

Social Network Sites are web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.

(Boyd and Ellison 2007, 2)

Social networking uses, in time globally spent, surpassed e-mail in November 2007. It surpassed e-mail in number of users in July 2009. In terms of users it reached 1 billion by September 2010, with Facebook accounting for about half of it. In 2013 it has almost doubled, particularly because of increasing use in China, India, and Latin America. There is indeed a great diversity of social networking sites (SNS) by countries and cultures. Facebook, started for Harvard-only members in 2004, is present in most of the world, but QQ, Cyworld, and Baidu dominate in China; Orkut in Brazil; Mixi in Japan; etc. In terms of demographics, age is the main differential factor in the use of SNS, with a drop of frequency of use after 50 years of age, and particularly 65. But this is not just a teenager’s activity. The main Facebook U.S. category is in the age group 35–44, whose frequency of use of the site is higher than for younger people. Nearly 60 percent of adults in the U.S. have at least one SNS profile, 30 percent two, and 15 percent three or more. Females are as present as males, except when in a society there is a general gender gap. We observe no differences in education and class, but there is some class specialization of SNS, such as Myspace being lower than FB; LinkedIn is for professionals.

Thus, the most important activity on the Internet at this point in time goes through social networking, and SNS have become the chosen platforms for all kind of activities, not just personal friendships or chatting, but for marketing, e-commerce, education, cultural creativity, media and entertainment distribution, health applications, and sociopolitical activism. This is a significant trend for society at large. Let me explore the meaning of this trend on the basis of the still scant evidence.

Social networking sites are constructed by users themselves building on specific criteria of grouping. There is entrepreneurship in the process of creating sites, then people choose according to their interests and projects. Networks are tailored by people themselves with different levels of profiling and privacy. The key to success is not anonymity, but on the contrary, self-presentation of a real person connecting to real people (in some cases people are excluded from the SNS when they fake their identity). So, it is a self-constructed society by networking connecting to other networks. But this is not a virtual society. There is a close connection between virtual networks and networks in life at large. This is a hybrid world, a real world, not a virtual world or a segregated world.

People build networks to be with others, and to be with others they want to be with on the basis of criteria that include those people who they already know (a selected sub-segment). Most users go on the site every day. It is permanent connectivity. If we needed an answer to what happened to sociability in the Internet world, here it is:

There is a dramatic increase in sociability, but a different kind of sociability, facilitated and dynamized by permanent connectivity and social networking on the web.

Based on the time when Facebook was still releasing data (this time is now gone) we know that in 2009 users spent 500 billion minutes per month. This is not just about friendship or interpersonal communication. People do things together, share, act, exactly as in society, although the personal dimension is always there. Thus, in the U.S. 38 percent of adults share content, 21 percent remix, 14 percent blog, and this is growing exponentially, with development of technology, software, and SNS entrepreneurial initiatives. On Facebook, in 2009 the average user was connected to 60 pages, groups, and events, people interacted per month to 160 million objects (pages, groups, events), the average user created 70 pieces of content per month, and there were 25 billion pieces of content shared per month (web links, news stories, blogs posts, notes, photos). SNS are living spaces connecting all dimensions of people’s experience. This transforms culture because people share experience with a low emotional cost, while saving energy and effort. They transcend time and space, yet they produce content, set up links, and connect practices. It is a constantly networked world in every dimension of human experience. They co-evolve in permanent, multiple interaction. But they choose the terms of their co-evolution.

Thus, people live their physical lives but increasingly connect on multiple dimensions in SNS.

Paradoxically, the virtual life is more social than the physical life, now individualized by the organization of work and urban living.

But people do not live a virtual reality, indeed it is a real virtuality, since social practices, sharing, mixing, and living in society is facilitated in the virtuality, in what I called time ago the “space of flows” (Castells 1996).

Because people are increasingly at ease in the multi-textuality and multidimensionality of the web, marketers, work organizations, service agencies, government, and civil society are migrating massively to the Internet, less and less setting up alternative sites, more and more being present in the networks that people construct by themselves and for themselves, with the help of Internet social networking entrepreneurs, some of whom become billionaires in the process, actually selling freedom and the possibility of the autonomous construction of lives. This is the liberating potential of the Internet made material practice by these social networking sites. The largest of these social networking sites are usually bounded social spaces managed by a company. However, if the company tries to impede free communication it may lose many of its users, because the entry barriers in this industry are very low. A couple of technologically savvy youngsters with little capital can set up a site on the Internet and attract escapees from a more restricted Internet space, as happened to AOL and other networking sites of the first generation, and as could happen to Facebook or any other SNS if they are tempted to tinker with the rules of openness (Facebook tried to make users pay and retracted within days). So, SNS are often a business, but they are in the business of selling freedom, free expression, chosen sociability. When they tinker with this promise they risk their hollowing by net citizens migrating with their friends to more friendly virtual lands.

Perhaps the most telling expression of this new freedom is the transformation of sociopolitical practices on the Internet.

Communication Power: Mass-Self Communication and the Transformation of Politics

Power and counterpower, the foundational relationships of society, are constructed in the human mind, through the construction of meaning and the processing of information according to certain sets of values and interests (Castells 2009).

Ideological apparatuses and the mass media have been key tools of mediating communication and asserting power, and still are. But the rise of a new culture, the culture of autonomy, has found in Internet and mobile communication networks a major medium of mass self-communication and self-organization.

The key source for the social production of meaning is the process of socialized communication. I define communication as the process of sharing meaning through the exchange of information. Socialized communication is the one that exists in the public realm, that has the potential of reaching society at large. Therefore, the battle over the human mind is largely played out in the process of socialized communication. And this is particularly so in the network society, the social structure of the Information Age, which is characterized by the pervasiveness of communication networks in a multimodal hypertext.

The ongoing transformation of communication technology in the digital age extends the reach of communication media to all domains of social life in a network that is at the same time global and local, generic and customized, in an ever-changing pattern.

As a result, power relations, that is the relations that constitute the foundation of all societies, as well as the processes challenging institutionalized power relations, are increasingly shaped and decided in the communication field. Meaningful, conscious communication is what makes humans human. Thus, any major transformation in the technology and organization of communication is of utmost relevance for social change. Over the last four decades the advent of the Internet and of wireless communication has shifted the communication process in society at large from mass communication to mass self-communication. This is from a message sent from one to many with little interactivity to a system based on messages from many to many, multimodal, in chosen time, and with interactivity, so that senders are receivers and receivers are senders. And both have access to a multimodal hypertext in the web that constitutes the endlessly changing backbone of communication processes.

The transformation of communication from mass communication to mass self-communication has contributed decisively to alter the process of social change. As power relationships have always been based on the control of communication and information that feed the neural networks constitutive of the human mind, the rise of horizontal networks of communication has created a new landscape of social and political change by the process of disintermediation of the government and corporate controls over communication. This is the power of the network, as social actors build their own networks on the basis of their projects, values, and interests. The outcome of these processes is open ended and dependent on specific contexts. Freedom, in this case freedom of communicate, does not say anything on the uses of freedom in society. This is to be established by scholarly research. But we need to start from this major historical phenomenon: the building of a global communication network based on the Internet, a technology that embodies the culture of freedom that was at its source.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century there have been multiple social movements around the world that have used the Internet as their space of formation and permanent connectivity, among the movements and with society at large. These networked social movements, formed in the social networking sites on the Internet, have mobilized in the urban space and in the institutional space, inducing new forms of social movements that are the main actors of social change in the network society. Networked social movements have been particularly active since 2010, and especially in the Arab revolutions against dictatorships; in Europe and the U.S. as forms of protest against the management of the financial crisis; in Brazil; in Turkey; in Mexico; and in highly diverse institutional contexts and economic conditions. It is precisely the similarity of the movements in extremely different contexts that allows the formulation of the hypothesis that this is the pattern of social movements characteristic of the global network society. In all cases we observe the capacity of these movements for self-organization, without a central leadership, on the basis of a spontaneous emotional movement. In all cases there is a connection between Internet-based communication, mobile networks, and the mass media in different forms, feeding into each other and amplifying the movement locally and globally.

These movements take place in the context of exploitation and oppression, social tensions and social struggles; but struggles that were not able to successfully challenge the state in other instances of revolt are now powered by the tools of mass self-communication. It is not the technology that induces the movements, but without the technology (Internet and wireless communication) social movements would not take the present form of being a challenge to state power. The fact is that technology is material culture (ideas brought into the design) and the Internet materialized the culture of freedom that, as it has been documented, emerged on American campuses in the 1960s. This culture-made technology is at the source of the new wave of social movements that exemplify the depth of the global impact of the Internet in all spheres of social organization, affecting particularly power relationships, the foundation of the institutions of society. (See case studies and an analytical perspective on the interaction between Internet and networked social movements in Castells 2012.)

The Internet, as all technologies, does not produce effects by itself. Yet, it has specific effects in altering the capacity of the communication system to be organized around flows that are interactive, multimodal, asynchronous or synchronous, global or local, and from many to many, from people to people, from people to objects, and from objects to objects, increasingly relying on the semantic web. How these characteristics affect specific systems of social relationships has to be established by research, and this is what I tried to present in this text. What is clear is that without the Internet we would not have seen the large-scale development of networking as the fundamental mechanism of social structuring and social change in every domain of social life. The Internet, the World Wide Web, and a variety of networks increasingly based on wireless platforms constitute the technological infrastructure of the network society, as the electrical grid and the electrical engine were the support system for the form of social organization that we conceptualized as the industrial society. Thus, as a social construction, this technological system is open ended, as the network society is an open-ended form of social organization that conveys the best and the worse in humankind. Yet, the global network society is our society, and the understanding of its logic on the basis of the interaction between culture, organization, and technology in the formation and development of social and technological networks is a key field of research in the twenty-first century.

We can only make progress in our understanding through the cumulative effort of scholarly research. Only then we will be able to cut through the myths surrounding the key technology of our time. A digital communication technology that is already a second skin for young people, yet it continues to feed the fears and the fantasies of those who are still in charge of a society that they barely understand.

These references are in fact sources of more detailed references specific to each one of the topics analyzed in this text.

Abbate, Janet. A Social History of the Internet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.

Boyd, Danah M., and Nicole B. Ellison. “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13, no. 1 (2007).

Cardoso, Gustavo, Angus Cheong, and Jeffrey Cole (eds). World Wide Internet: Changing Societies, Economies and Cultures. Macau: University of Macau Press, 2009.

Castells, Manuel. The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture. 3 vols. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996–2003.

———. The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

———. Communication Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

———. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2012.

Castells, Manuel, Imma Tubella, Teresa Sancho, and Meritxell Roca.

La transición a la sociedad red. Barcelona: Ariel, 2007.

Hilbert, Martin, and Priscilla López. “The World’s Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information.” Science 332, no. 6025 (April 1, 2011): pp. 60–65.

Papacharissi, Zizi, ed. The Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Networking Sites. Routledge, 2010.

Rainie. Lee, and Barry Wellman. Networked: The New Social Operating System. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012.

Trajectory Partnership (Michael Willmott and Paul Flatters). The Information Dividend: Why IT Makes You “Happier.” Swindon: British Informatics Society Limited, 2010. http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/info-dividend-full-report.pdf

Selected Web References. Used as sources for analysis in the chapter

Agência para a Sociedade do Conhecimento. “Observatório de Sociedade da Informação e do Conhecimento (OSIC).” http://www.umic.pt/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3026&Itemid=167

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT. “Features, Press and Policy.” http://www.bcs.org/category/7307

Center for the Digital Future. The World Internet Project International Report. 4th ed. Los Angeles: USC Annenberg School, Center for the Digital Future, 2012. http://www.worldinternetproject.net/_files/_Published/_oldis/770_2012wip_report4th_ed.pdf

ESRC (Economic & Social Research Council). “Papers and Reports.” Virtual Society. http://virtualsociety.sbs.ox.ac.uk/reports.htm

Fundación Orange. “Análisis y Prospectiva: Informe eEspaña.” Fundación Orange. http://fundacionorange.es/fundacionorange/analisisprospectiva.html

Fundación Telefónica. “Informes SI.” Fundación Telefónica. http://sociedadinformacion.fundacion.telefonica.com/DYC/SHI/InformesSI/seccion=1190&idioma=es_ES.do

IN3 (Internet Interdisciplinary Institute). UOC. “Project Internet Catalonia (PIC): An Overview.” Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, 2002–07. http://www.uoc.edu/in3/pic/eng/

International Telecommunication Union. “Annual Reports.” http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/sfo/annual_reports/index.html

Nielsen Company. “Reports.” 2013. http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/reports/2013.html?tag=Category:Media+ and+Entertainment

Oxford Internet Surveys. “Publications.” http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/oxis/publications

Pew Internet & American Life Project. “Social Networking.” Pew Internet. http://www.pewinternet.org/Topics/Activities-and-Pursuits/Social-Networking.aspx?typeFilter=5

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Promises and Pitfalls of Technology

Politics and privacy, private-sector influence and big tech, state competition and conflict, author biography, how is technology changing the world, and how should the world change technology.

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Josephine Wolff; How Is Technology Changing the World, and How Should the World Change Technology?. Global Perspectives 1 February 2021; 2 (1): 27353. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gp.2021.27353

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Technologies are becoming increasingly complicated and increasingly interconnected. Cars, airplanes, medical devices, financial transactions, and electricity systems all rely on more computer software than they ever have before, making them seem both harder to understand and, in some cases, harder to control. Government and corporate surveillance of individuals and information processing relies largely on digital technologies and artificial intelligence, and therefore involves less human-to-human contact than ever before and more opportunities for biases to be embedded and codified in our technological systems in ways we may not even be able to identify or recognize. Bioengineering advances are opening up new terrain for challenging philosophical, political, and economic questions regarding human-natural relations. Additionally, the management of these large and small devices and systems is increasingly done through the cloud, so that control over them is both very remote and removed from direct human or social control. The study of how to make technologies like artificial intelligence or the Internet of Things “explainable” has become its own area of research because it is so difficult to understand how they work or what is at fault when something goes wrong (Gunning and Aha 2019) .

This growing complexity makes it more difficult than ever—and more imperative than ever—for scholars to probe how technological advancements are altering life around the world in both positive and negative ways and what social, political, and legal tools are needed to help shape the development and design of technology in beneficial directions. This can seem like an impossible task in light of the rapid pace of technological change and the sense that its continued advancement is inevitable, but many countries around the world are only just beginning to take significant steps toward regulating computer technologies and are still in the process of radically rethinking the rules governing global data flows and exchange of technology across borders.

These are exciting times not just for technological development but also for technology policy—our technologies may be more advanced and complicated than ever but so, too, are our understandings of how they can best be leveraged, protected, and even constrained. The structures of technological systems as determined largely by government and institutional policies and those structures have tremendous implications for social organization and agency, ranging from open source, open systems that are highly distributed and decentralized, to those that are tightly controlled and closed, structured according to stricter and more hierarchical models. And just as our understanding of the governance of technology is developing in new and interesting ways, so, too, is our understanding of the social, cultural, environmental, and political dimensions of emerging technologies. We are realizing both the challenges and the importance of mapping out the full range of ways that technology is changing our society, what we want those changes to look like, and what tools we have to try to influence and guide those shifts.

Technology can be a source of tremendous optimism. It can help overcome some of the greatest challenges our society faces, including climate change, famine, and disease. For those who believe in the power of innovation and the promise of creative destruction to advance economic development and lead to better quality of life, technology is a vital economic driver (Schumpeter 1942) . But it can also be a tool of tremendous fear and oppression, embedding biases in automated decision-making processes and information-processing algorithms, exacerbating economic and social inequalities within and between countries to a staggering degree, or creating new weapons and avenues for attack unlike any we have had to face in the past. Scholars have even contended that the emergence of the term technology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries marked a shift from viewing individual pieces of machinery as a means to achieving political and social progress to the more dangerous, or hazardous, view that larger-scale, more complex technological systems were a semiautonomous form of progress in and of themselves (Marx 2010) . More recently, technologists have sharply criticized what they view as a wave of new Luddites, people intent on slowing the development of technology and turning back the clock on innovation as a means of mitigating the societal impacts of technological change (Marlowe 1970) .

At the heart of fights over new technologies and their resulting global changes are often two conflicting visions of technology: a fundamentally optimistic one that believes humans use it as a tool to achieve greater goals, and a fundamentally pessimistic one that holds that technological systems have reached a point beyond our control. Technology philosophers have argued that neither of these views is wholly accurate and that a purely optimistic or pessimistic view of technology is insufficient to capture the nuances and complexity of our relationship to technology (Oberdiek and Tiles 1995) . Understanding technology and how we can make better decisions about designing, deploying, and refining it requires capturing that nuance and complexity through in-depth analysis of the impacts of different technological advancements and the ways they have played out in all their complicated and controversial messiness across the world.

These impacts are often unpredictable as technologies are adopted in new contexts and come to be used in ways that sometimes diverge significantly from the use cases envisioned by their designers. The internet, designed to help transmit information between computer networks, became a crucial vehicle for commerce, introducing unexpected avenues for crime and financial fraud. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, designed to connect friends and families through sharing photographs and life updates, became focal points of election controversies and political influence. Cryptocurrencies, originally intended as a means of decentralized digital cash, have become a significant environmental hazard as more and more computing resources are devoted to mining these forms of virtual money. One of the crucial challenges in this area is therefore recognizing, documenting, and even anticipating some of these unexpected consequences and providing mechanisms to technologists for how to think through the impacts of their work, as well as possible other paths to different outcomes (Verbeek 2006) . And just as technological innovations can cause unexpected harm, they can also bring about extraordinary benefits—new vaccines and medicines to address global pandemics and save thousands of lives, new sources of energy that can drastically reduce emissions and help combat climate change, new modes of education that can reach people who would otherwise have no access to schooling. Regulating technology therefore requires a careful balance of mitigating risks without overly restricting potentially beneficial innovations.

Nations around the world have taken very different approaches to governing emerging technologies and have adopted a range of different technologies themselves in pursuit of more modern governance structures and processes (Braman 2009) . In Europe, the precautionary principle has guided much more anticipatory regulation aimed at addressing the risks presented by technologies even before they are fully realized. For instance, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation focuses on the responsibilities of data controllers and processors to provide individuals with access to their data and information about how that data is being used not just as a means of addressing existing security and privacy threats, such as data breaches, but also to protect against future developments and uses of that data for artificial intelligence and automated decision-making purposes. In Germany, Technische Überwachungsvereine, or TÜVs, perform regular tests and inspections of technological systems to assess and minimize risks over time, as the tech landscape evolves. In the United States, by contrast, there is much greater reliance on litigation and liability regimes to address safety and security failings after-the-fact. These different approaches reflect not just the different legal and regulatory mechanisms and philosophies of different nations but also the different ways those nations prioritize rapid development of the technology industry versus safety, security, and individual control. Typically, governance innovations move much more slowly than technological innovations, and regulations can lag years, or even decades, behind the technologies they aim to govern.

In addition to this varied set of national regulatory approaches, a variety of international and nongovernmental organizations also contribute to the process of developing standards, rules, and norms for new technologies, including the International Organization for Standardization and the International Telecommunication Union. These multilateral and NGO actors play an especially important role in trying to define appropriate boundaries for the use of new technologies by governments as instruments of control for the state.

At the same time that policymakers are under scrutiny both for their decisions about how to regulate technology as well as their decisions about how and when to adopt technologies like facial recognition themselves, technology firms and designers have also come under increasing criticism. Growing recognition that the design of technologies can have far-reaching social and political implications means that there is more pressure on technologists to take into consideration the consequences of their decisions early on in the design process (Vincenti 1993; Winner 1980) . The question of how technologists should incorporate these social dimensions into their design and development processes is an old one, and debate on these issues dates back to the 1970s, but it remains an urgent and often overlooked part of the puzzle because so many of the supposedly systematic mechanisms for assessing the impacts of new technologies in both the private and public sectors are primarily bureaucratic, symbolic processes rather than carrying any real weight or influence.

Technologists are often ill-equipped or unwilling to respond to the sorts of social problems that their creations have—often unwittingly—exacerbated, and instead point to governments and lawmakers to address those problems (Zuckerberg 2019) . But governments often have few incentives to engage in this area. This is because setting clear standards and rules for an ever-evolving technological landscape can be extremely challenging, because enforcement of those rules can be a significant undertaking requiring considerable expertise, and because the tech sector is a major source of jobs and revenue for many countries that may fear losing those benefits if they constrain companies too much. This indicates not just a need for clearer incentives and better policies for both private- and public-sector entities but also a need for new mechanisms whereby the technology development and design process can be influenced and assessed by people with a wider range of experiences and expertise. If we want technologies to be designed with an eye to their impacts, who is responsible for predicting, measuring, and mitigating those impacts throughout the design process? Involving policymakers in that process in a more meaningful way will also require training them to have the analytic and technical capacity to more fully engage with technologists and understand more fully the implications of their decisions.

At the same time that tech companies seem unwilling or unable to rein in their creations, many also fear they wield too much power, in some cases all but replacing governments and international organizations in their ability to make decisions that affect millions of people worldwide and control access to information, platforms, and audiences (Kilovaty 2020) . Regulators around the world have begun considering whether some of these companies have become so powerful that they violate the tenets of antitrust laws, but it can be difficult for governments to identify exactly what those violations are, especially in the context of an industry where the largest players often provide their customers with free services. And the platforms and services developed by tech companies are often wielded most powerfully and dangerously not directly by their private-sector creators and operators but instead by states themselves for widespread misinformation campaigns that serve political purposes (Nye 2018) .

Since the largest private entities in the tech sector operate in many countries, they are often better poised to implement global changes to the technological ecosystem than individual states or regulatory bodies, creating new challenges to existing governance structures and hierarchies. Just as it can be challenging to provide oversight for government use of technologies, so, too, oversight of the biggest tech companies, which have more resources, reach, and power than many nations, can prove to be a daunting task. The rise of network forms of organization and the growing gig economy have added to these challenges, making it even harder for regulators to fully address the breadth of these companies’ operations (Powell 1990) . The private-public partnerships that have emerged around energy, transportation, medical, and cyber technologies further complicate this picture, blurring the line between the public and private sectors and raising critical questions about the role of each in providing critical infrastructure, health care, and security. How can and should private tech companies operating in these different sectors be governed, and what types of influence do they exert over regulators? How feasible are different policy proposals aimed at technological innovation, and what potential unintended consequences might they have?

Conflict between countries has also spilled over significantly into the private sector in recent years, most notably in the case of tensions between the United States and China over which technologies developed in each country will be permitted by the other and which will be purchased by other customers, outside those two countries. Countries competing to develop the best technology is not a new phenomenon, but the current conflicts have major international ramifications and will influence the infrastructure that is installed and used around the world for years to come. Untangling the different factors that feed into these tussles as well as whom they benefit and whom they leave at a disadvantage is crucial for understanding how governments can most effectively foster technological innovation and invention domestically as well as the global consequences of those efforts. As much of the world is forced to choose between buying technology from the United States or from China, how should we understand the long-term impacts of those choices and the options available to people in countries without robust domestic tech industries? Does the global spread of technologies help fuel further innovation in countries with smaller tech markets, or does it reinforce the dominance of the states that are already most prominent in this sector? How can research universities maintain global collaborations and research communities in light of these national competitions, and what role does government research and development spending play in fostering innovation within its own borders and worldwide? How should intellectual property protections evolve to meet the demands of the technology industry, and how can those protections be enforced globally?

These conflicts between countries sometimes appear to challenge the feasibility of truly global technologies and networks that operate across all countries through standardized protocols and design features. Organizations like the International Organization for Standardization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and many others have tried to harmonize these policies and protocols across different countries for years, but have met with limited success when it comes to resolving the issues of greatest tension and disagreement among nations. For technology to operate in a global environment, there is a need for a much greater degree of coordination among countries and the development of common standards and norms, but governments continue to struggle to agree not just on those norms themselves but even the appropriate venue and processes for developing them. Without greater global cooperation, is it possible to maintain a global network like the internet or to promote the spread of new technologies around the world to address challenges of sustainability? What might help incentivize that cooperation moving forward, and what could new structures and process for governance of global technologies look like? Why has the tech industry’s self-regulation culture persisted? Do the same traditional drivers for public policy, such as politics of harmonization and path dependency in policy-making, still sufficiently explain policy outcomes in this space? As new technologies and their applications spread across the globe in uneven ways, how and when do they create forces of change from unexpected places?

These are some of the questions that we hope to address in the Technology and Global Change section through articles that tackle new dimensions of the global landscape of designing, developing, deploying, and assessing new technologies to address major challenges the world faces. Understanding these processes requires synthesizing knowledge from a range of different fields, including sociology, political science, economics, and history, as well as technical fields such as engineering, climate science, and computer science. A crucial part of understanding how technology has created global change and, in turn, how global changes have influenced the development of new technologies is understanding the technologies themselves in all their richness and complexity—how they work, the limits of what they can do, what they were designed to do, how they are actually used. Just as technologies themselves are becoming more complicated, so are their embeddings and relationships to the larger social, political, and legal contexts in which they exist. Scholars across all disciplines are encouraged to join us in untangling those complexities.

Josephine Wolff is an associate professor of cybersecurity policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Her book You’ll See This Message When It Is Too Late: The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches was published by MIT Press in 2018.

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Digital technology and social change: the digital transformation of society from a historical perspective

Affiliation.

1 Department of Communication, Chair DE Computational Social Science, DataLab; GG Computer Science, University of California, Davis, California, US.
PMID: 32699519
PMCID: PMC7366943
DOI: 10.31887/DCNS.2020.22.2/mhilbert

Abstract in English, Spanish, French

Digital technology, including its omnipresent connectedness and its powerful artificial intelligence, is the most recent long wave of humanity's socioeconomic evolution. The first technological revolutions go all the way back to the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages, when the transformation of material was the driving force in the Schumpeterian process of creative destruction. A second metaparadigm of societal modernization was dedicated to the transformation of energy (aka the "industrial revolutions"), including water, steam, electric, and combustion power. The current metaparadigm focuses on the transformation of information. Less than 1% of the world's technologically stored information was in digital format in the late 1980s, surpassing more than 99% by 2012. Every 2.5 to 3 years, humanity is able to store more information than since the beginning of civilization. The current age focuses on algorithms that automate the conversion of data into actionable knowledge. This article reviews the underlying theoretical framework and some accompanying data from the perspective of innovation theory. .

La tecnología digital, que incluye una altísima conectividad y una poderosa inteligencia artificial, constituye el desarrollo más reciente y significativo en la evolución socioeconómica de la humanidad. Las primeras revoluciones tecnológicas se remontan a las Edades de Piedra, Bronce y Hierro, cuando la transformación del material fue la fuerza impulsora en el proceso Schumpeteriano de destrucción creativa. Un segundo metaparadigma de modernización social fue el que ocurrió con la transformación de la energía (también conocida como "revoluciones industriales"), incluyendo el agua, el vapor, la electricidad y la energía de combustión. El metaparadigma actual se centra en la transformación de la información. A fines de la década de 1980, menos del 1% de la información almacenada tecnológicamente en el mundo estaba en formato digital y ha llegado a más del 99% en 2012. Cada 2,5 a 3 años, la humanidad puede almacenar más información que desde el comienzo de la civilización. La era actual se centra en algoritmos que automatizan la conversión de datos en conocimiento procesable. Desde la perspectiva de la teoría de la innovación, este artículo revisa el marco teórico subyacente y algunos datos inherentes a él.

La technologie numérique, sa connectivité omniprésente et la puissance de l’intelligence artificielle font vivre à l’humanité sa phase d’évolution la plus longue sur un plan socio-économique. Les premières révolutions technologiques remontent à l'âge de pierre, du bronze et du fer, lorsque la transformation de la matière était le moteur du processus schumpétérien de destruction créatrice. La transformation de l'énergie qu’elle soit hydraulique, à vapeur, électrique ou par combustion (aussi appelée "révolutions industrielles") est à l’origine d’un deuxième méta-modèle de modernisation sociétale basée sur le changement technologique. La transformation de l'information est au centre du méta-modèle actuel. Moins de 1 % de l’information était stockée en format numérique à la fin des années 80, contre plus de 99 % en 2012Tous les 2,5 à 3 ans, l’humanité est capable d’archiver plus d’informations que celles créées depuis le début des civilisations. Nous sommes maintenant entrés dans l'ère des algorithmes qui automatisent la conversion des données en connaissances exploitables. Dans cet article, nous nous plaçons du point de vue de l’innovation pour analyser le cadre théorique de cette transformation et certaines données qui y sont inhérentes.

Keywords: artificial intelligence; creative destruction; digital age; digital revolution; information; information overload; information society; innovation; technology.

Publication types

Historical Article
Artificial Intelligence / history*
Artificial Intelligence / trends
Digital Technology / history*
Digital Technology / trends
History, 20th Century
History, 21st Century
Inventions / history*
Inventions / trends
Social Change*

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Dialogues Clin Neurosci
v.22(2); 2020 Jun

Language: English | Spanish | French

Digital technology and social change: the digital transformation of society from a historical perspective 

La tecnología digital y el cambio social: la transformación digital de la sociedad desde una perspectiva histórica, point de vue historique sur la transformation sociale de la société par la technologie numérique, martin hilbert.

Department of Communication, Chair DE Computational Social Science, DataLab; GG Computer Science, University of California, Davis, California, US

Digital technology, including its omnipresent connectedness and its powerful artificial intelligence, is the most recent long wave of humanity’s socioeconomic evolution. The first technological revolutions go all the way back to the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages, when the transformation of material was the driving force in the Schumpeterian process of creative destruction. A second metaparadigm of societal modernization was dedicated to the transformation of energy (aka the “industrial revolutions”), including water, steam, electric, and combustion power. The current metaparadigm focuses on the transformation of information. Less than 1% of the world's technologically stored information was in digital format in the late 1980s, surpassing more than 99% by 2012. Every 2.5 to 3 years, humanity is able to store more information than since the beginning of civilization. The current age focuses on algorithms that automate the conversion of data into actionable knowledge. This article reviews the underlying theoretical framework and some accompanying data from the perspective of innovation theory. 

New digital wine into the old wineskins ofinnovation theory 

The discussion of digital technology and social change is part of the broader literature of innovation theory. 1 Innovation theory is most commonly based on Schumpeter’s notion of socioeconomic evolution through technological change. 2 , 3 The reputed “prophet of innovation” himself gave it an illustrative name: “creative destruction.” 4 Creative destruction works on different levels, reaching from product cycles, over fashion and investment- lifecycles (including so-called Kitchin and Juglar cycles), to so-called business cycles. The result is “an indefinite number of wavelike fluctuations which will roll on simultaneously and interfere with one another in the process… of different span and intensity… superimposed on each other.” 2 High-level business cycles (also known as great surges or long waves) are emergent phenomena linked to technological paradigms 5 , 6 that modernize the modus operandi of society as a whole, including its economic, social, cultural, and political organization. 7 , 8  

Schumpeter extended, theorized, and generalized 9 the work of the Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratieff, who had already identified two cycles of expansion, stagnation, and recession. 10 He identified the key carrier technology of his first industrial revolution (1770-1850) as water-powered mechanization (including mills and irrigation systems, see Figure 1 ). The following long wave (1850-1900) was enabled by steam-powered technology (including trains and industrial machinery). Kondratieff speculated that around 1900 a new cycle had started, which Schumpeter later called the “Third Kondratieff.” 2 It was characterized by the electrification of social and productive organization, including manufacturing (1900-1940). Schumpeterian economists later added the long wave of motorization (1940-1970s), and the age of information and telecommunications thereafter. 8 , 11  

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Note that this specific scheme of historical classification promoted foremost by industrial economists could be complemented with other perspectives, including historical advances in medicine, 12 military technology, 13 institution or cultural evolution, 14 , 15 or the very nature of communication itself. 16 Independently of the detail of what technology transforms society exactly when, it is common practice in innovation theory to name long-term paradigms of human history after the dominating technological toolset. This practice is borrowed from historians, who commonly subdivide archaeological periodization of early civilizations into the descending sequence of the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age ( Figure 1 ). The general notion is that “civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.” 17 In order to trigger a great surge in form of a long wave, the automation needs to be driven by a so-called general purpose technology. 18 Those fulfill “the following conditions: (i) clearly perceived low-and descending- relative cost; (ii) unlimited supply for all practical purposes; (iii) potential all-pervasiveness; (iv) a capacity to reduce the costs of capital, labor and products as well as to change them qualitatively.” 19  

The fact that the consecutive long waves have tended to become shorter over the course of history (note that the Stone Age lasted 2 000 000, and the Bronze Age 2000 years) is due to the combinatorial logic of technological innovation 20 (Schumpeter defined innovation as “carrying out New Combinations”). 2 An accumulatively larger repertoire of possibilities leads to exponential progress. 21 - 23  

The creative process of societal modernization is at the same time also destructive, and inseparably intertwined with financial bubbles, recession, and social crisis.  

Each technological revolution, originally received as a bright new set of opportunities, is soon recognized as a threat to the established way of doing things in firms, institutions, and society at large. The new techno-economic paradigm gradually takes shape as a different “common sense” for effective action in any area of endeavor. But while competitive forces, profit seeking, and survival pressures help diffuse the changes in the economy, the wider social and institutional spheres — where change is also needed — are held back by strong inertia stemming from routine, ideology, and vested interests. It is this difference in rhythm of change, between the techno-economic and the socio-institutional spheres, that would explain the turbulent period. 11  

In short, the initial euphoria about the (often economic) opportunities is in every cycle followed by a subsequent sobering discovery of the (often societal) downsides. It is well known that the industrial revolutions have contributed much wealth, but also much inequality and many economic problems. The same is true for the current period of digital technology and social change. 

The diffusion of the digital paradigm 

The most recent period of this ancient and incessant logic of societal transformation was given many names between the 1970s and the year 2000, among them (in chronological order) post-industrial society, 24 information economy, 25 information society, 26 fifth Kondratieff, 19 information technology revolution, 27 digital age, 28 and information age. 29 While only time will provide the required empirical evidence to set any categorization of this current period on a solid footing, recent developments have suggested that we are living through different long waves within the continuously evolving information age. Starting with Shannon’s conceptualization of “digital” in 1948 in the area of telecommunication (aka the “bit”), 30 the Kuhnian process of scientific puzzle solving 31 started by focusing on the problem of communication. The search for Shannon’s limit of utmost communication capacity kept engineers busy for almost half a century, but was eventually solved in the early 1990s (for all practical purposes). 32 Since then, broadband communication has been sending entropic information through radio waves and fiberoptic cables at the speed of light, which seems to be a fundamental limit to the speed of information transmission in our universe. 

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As always in technological paradigms, the process of successful technological innovation was closely followed by a process of technological diffusion. 33 , 34 The world was swamped with internet connections and mobile phones in record time. 35 The result was the resolution of space-time constraints in global communication 29 and the accumulation of vast amounts of stored data, which has more recently been termed “big data.” 36 We estimate the beginning of the “digital age” to be in 2002, when the world was first able to store more digital than analog information in its technological tools ( Figure 2 ). 37 In the late 1980s, still less than 1% was in digital format, whereas in 2012, 99% of the world’s stored information was digital. 38 During these decades, the world’s technological capacity to communicate and store information has grown 25% to 35% per year (doubling every 2.5-3 years — see logarithmic left-hand side axis in Figure 2 ). 38 - 40  

As always, the diffusion of a new paradigm is never instantaneous, but takes place over social networks over time, which inevitably creates a divide between the haves and have nots. 34 Figure 2 also shows that the resulting digital divide has increasingly been closed internationally. Non-high-income countries provided 16% of the installed bandwidth capacity in the late 1980s but hosted more bandwidth than high-income countries after 2015 (led by China). It is good news that the divide among countries has become smaller. At the same time, within countries and among people worldwide, independent from their nationality, bandwidth capacity continues to correlate strongly with income. 41 , 42 Since income inequality is notoriously persistent, it is expected that the digital bandwidth divide has become a systematic and permanent characteristic of modern societies, especially as its focus migrates from minimum connectivity to bandwidth.  

The digital growth of information and communication led to the often-lamented information overload for humans, whose mental capacities get crunched in the ambitions of the information economy. 43 , 44 At the same time, it led to the much-celebrated “unreasonable effectiveness of data” 45 in discovering actionable knowledge through artificially intelligent machines. The world’s computational capacity has grown three times faster than our information storage and communication capacity (some 80% per year 37 , 39 ), which enabled us to analyze the provided data in an automated fashion. For many practitioners, artificial intelligence (AI) has become synonymous with data-driven machine learning, including the neural networks of deep learning architectures. 46  

Advancements in the field of AI have been dazzling. AI has not only superseded humans in many intellectual tasks, like several kinds of cancer diagnosis 47 and speech recognition (reducing AI’s word-error rate from 26% to 4% just between 2012 and 2016), 48 but has also become an indispensable pillar of the most crucial building blocks of society. By now, most humans not only trust AI blindly with their lives on a daily basis through anti-lock braking systems in cars (ABS) and autopilots in planes, but also with the filtering of their cultural, economic, social, and political opinions. 49 The electric grid is in the hands of AI 50 ; three out of four transactions on the US stock markets are executed by it 51 ; and one in three marriages in America begins online. 52 If we were to study any other species that has outsourced almost all of its energy distribution decisions, three-quarters of its resource distribution decisions, and an average one-third of its procreation decision to some kind of intelligent and proactive system, it is unlikely that we would treat them as two distinct and independent systems. We would look at it as one inseparable and organically interwoven socio-technological system. From a historical perspective of social change, the merger between biological and AI has already crossed beyond any point of return, at least from the social science perspective of society as a whole. Currently, the downsides of this merger are starting to become obvious, including the loss of privacy, political polarization, psychological manipulation, addictive use, social anxiety and distraction, misinformation, and mass narcissism. 53 , 54  

Amid the third metaparadigm 

Summing up, we can distinguish three different long-term metaparadigms, each with different long waves ( Figure 1 ). The first focused on the transformation of material, including stone, bronze, and iron. The second, often referred to as industrial revolutions, was dedicated to the transformation of energy, including water, steam, electric, and combustion power. Finally, the most recent metaparadigm aims at transforming information. It started out with the proliferation of communication and stored data and has now entered the age of algorithms, which aims at creating automated processes to convert the existing information into actionable knowledge. 

Acknowledgments

The author did not receive external funding for this work and does not have any conflict of interests

Digital Technology and Sociality Essay

Introduction, significant changes in understanding sociality, negative aspects of digitisation in the social sphere, weak impacts of digitisation on sociality, reference list.

The consideration of the problems of social structure is possible in various aspects: healthcare, education, and other institutions. Changes in one or several areas invariably entail not only cultural changes but also social transformations, which are manifested in shifts in values, new channels of communication, and updated ways of interpersonal interaction. The process of digitization is no exception since the cultural characteristics of the development of various social groups depend not only on existing trends in interaction but also on communication routes. A number of opportunities emerge due to digital innovations that simplify any form of contact and bring both sides of the communication process closer. At the same time, these activities are accompanied by the degradation of traditional verbal interaction and the transformation of classical practices of interpersonal links. Based on the digitization trend, the influence of technological progress will be considered in the context of impacts on the human understanding of sociality and its manifestations.

Any technology arising in society, on the one hand, satisfies a specific social need, and on the other hand, changes the nature of people’s interaction. According to Ometov et al . (2016), all modern and innovative devices designed to support remote communication among people simplify the establishment of social contacts among individuals, groups, and organizations. Through various channels, people receive information about events and can interact without feeling the need to be at close range. This nature of human relationships that have developed over the past few decades has changed the traditional concept of sociality and reorganized the principles of human interaction.

Despite the fact that not all communication channels provide feedback with the interlocutor and act as a means of mass communication, the ability to influence one or a group of people remotely is common today. This opportunity is perceived as a norm and a natural phenomenon. According to Pantano and Gandini (2017), in the understanding of most people, a chance to be in touch with friends or relatives is not perceived as a destructive mechanism and is assessed as an ordinary process. In other words, for a modern person, spending time in social networks is not a process that contradicts the norms of interpersonal interaction and is considered a distorted form of communication. As a result, under the influence of progress, the digitization trend does not create significant inconvenience and, conversely, stimulates the maintenance of contacts in conditions in which traditional communication is impossible.

The concept of sociality has transformed significantly, and many phenomena that were previously impossible in the communication system due to people’s remoteness are natural in a modern social environment. For instance, Ometov et al . (2016) cite an example of collaborative online movements and note that this trend has become widespread under the influence of social media as a key tool for human interaction. Humanity has learned to use the achievements of technological progress in full to maintain communication at a distance, and this phenomenon has a number of valuable implications. The simplification of digital interaction, which Coates (2017) mentions in the context of the exchange of text and video files, is a logical consequence. Due to the continued development of this industry, people have obtained an opportunity to remain close and, at the same time, express personal ideas freely since virtual space is characterized by less formal interaction principles. Therefore, accessibility and convenience are the important elements of modern communication in the digital environment, and such a change in the concept of sociality is a natural and positive outcome.

Despite the availability of digital communication, the very concept of sociality has gradually transformed under the influence of modern interaction channels, and some negative implications are the result of these changes. For instance, according to Chambers (2017), a sense of personal responsibility, or individual awareness, has been distorted due to the freedom that the digital environment provides. The almost complete lack of control over the expression of opinions in the virtual space leads to such negative consequences as bullying, online fraud, and other dangerous phenomena. In addition, as Chambers (2017) notes, some universal values have lost their original meaning and ceased to exist. Since socialization is a process of personality formation, the right to accept or deny individual trends and movements is an integral choice that a person accepts for oneself. However, digitization has changed many attitudes, in particular, the intimacy of personal life and the impartiality of opinions. In particular, as Coates (2017) argues, political decisions are often influenced by opinions from the virtual space, which, nevertheless, are not always associated with justice and objectivity. Therefore, the complete freedom of communication in the digital age carries some ambiguous implications.

While taking into account the updated mode of communication in the context of digitization, one can note that, despite the emergence of new tools for interaction, the very concept of sociality has not changed significantly. A person, as before, needs interaction, and modern instruments are mechanisms that simplify but do not transform the nature of communication. Monti and Aglioti (2018) state that interaction evokes social emotions, and in any environment, whether virtual or real communication, interlocutors have a common goal – to satisfy the need for information exchange. Chambers (2017) partially confirms this assumption with the example of Facebook, the global social media. The author notes that incentives for communication within this network are strengthened due to the current trend, but the general motives remain the same (Chambers, 2017). Thus, digital technologies affect the nature of sociality, but human needs are not affected crucially.

A similar position can also be presented on the basis of communication needs that people seek to satisfy. Pantano and Gandini (2017) remark that the trust that an individual has in relation to one’s interlocutor in digital interaction is not different from that in a personal conversation. In other words, social contacts with a stranger are perceived equally in social media and in real life. When communicating with friends and relatives, people are more liberated, which is also logical and natural. Therefore, regardless of the purpose of communication, a person demonstrates similar behavioural patterns both in a digital and real environment, which indicates a weak effect of modern technologies on sociality.

The human understanding of sociality, which is viewed from the standpoint of the influence of modern digital technologies, can be evaluated from two perspectives. The emergence of virtual platforms for interaction has expanded the possibilities for the exchange of information and simplified social contacts. In addition, some negative aspects of such communication manifest themselves today, which indicates the impact of innovation on interpersonal relationships. However, in the general context, a person’s need for interaction has not changed, and the main motives of communication have not been transformed substantially. From this perspective, technology does not have a crucial impact on the concept of sociality and does not change the general principles of social contacts.

Chambers, D. (2017) ‘Networked intimacy: algorithmic friendship and scalable sociality’, European Journal of Communication , 32(1), pp. 26-36.

Coates, J. (2017) ‘So ‘hot’ right now reflections on virality and sociality from transnational digital China’, Digital Culture & Society , 3(2), pp. 77-98.

Monti, A. and Aglioti, S. M. (2018) ‘Flesh and bone digital sociality: on how humans may go virtual’, British Journal of Psychology , 109(3), pp. 418-420.

Ometov, A. et al . (2016) ‘Toward trusted, social-aware D2D connectivity: bridging across the technology and sociality realms’, IEEE Wireless Communications , 23(4), pp. 103-111.

Pantano, E. and Gandini, A. (2017) ‘Exploring the forms of sociality mediated by innovative technologies in retail settings’, Computers in Human Behavior , 77, pp. 367-373.

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Example Of Essay On Technology And Social Change

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Technology , Sociology , Society , World , Development , Communication , Environment , Innovation

Words: 1100

Published: 11/28/2021

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Introduction

Technology has been advancing at breakneck pace over the past few decades, and its impact on society has been marked and noticeable. There is almost no segment of society that has not been impacted and changed as a result of new technological innovations that have been introduced to the global community. Even regions of the world that were once left out of the industrial revolution are beginning to embrace new technology and the results on the citizenry have been pronounced. Social change is a reference made to the noticeable movement away from traditional behavior patterns within any given culture as the result of some new phenomenon that has been introduced. For this paper, the focus will be on the way that technology has changed society by looking at the impact of personal computers and the Internet, examining the three major sociological perspectives, and looking at its influence on the overall social epidemiology, health, and the environment.

The Impact of the Personal Computer, Cellular Phones, and the Internet

It is no secret that the society of a few generations ago was much more relational and personal than the modern era. Before the personal computer, for example, the main method of communication out of face-to-face conversation took place via the landline telephone. Once an individual was outside the area of the phone, he or she was simply unreachable. The commute to work used to be viewed by busy professionals as the one place of solitude in an otherwise hectic day, as literally nobody could contact you in the car. The relatively recent inventions of the computer, cellular phones, and the Internet, however, have dramatically rewritten the rules for communication. It is now possible for someone to be accessible 24 hours a day nearly anywhere they may be on the planet (Kallinikos, et al, 2013). The means by which such communication takes place has also changed in recent years as well. Gone are the days when the majority of communication took place via voice, either in person or via the telephone. Now, much communication is in instant messaging or email form. One can communicate with hundreds, indeed thousands, of people instantly with the touch of a button on the computer or cellular phone. In this way, society has changed from a largely 8-5 operation into one that never closes for business. Some would argue that these innovations are slowly moving society away from interpersonal communication in a harmful manner, but the jury is likely still out on that one.

Sociological Perspectives and the Equilibrium Model

Karl Marx is largely attributed with developing the conflict perspective, which is meant to reflect the perceived reality that every society on earth goes through a series of stages related to their economic development. As its names implies, there is often a conflict that results in each society between the haves and have nots that is almost certainly impacted by the current technological revolution long since underway. Since technology has began to expand at a rapid rate, the divide the wealthy of the world and those less fortunate has actually increased as well. While technology can be seen to have made the lives of many people better, more efficient, and more prosperous, the reality is that social change in this area has really been slow in coming. If anything, technology has resulted in the ability of outsourcing to become commonplace, meaning that some of the traditionally higher paying jobs in industrialized countries have been eliminated in deference to lower priced labor in other regions of the world. In addition, technology has contributed to social change in other ways as well, and this is reflective of the conflict theory. As technology advances, there is the inevitable need for fewer workers (Hansen, Postmes, Tovote, & Box, 2014). This means that the capitalists among societies elite continue to get rich, while effectively eliminating much of their labor associated expenses. This has resulted in the potential for mass unemployment or underemployment in the future, which is troubling to many. This would indicate that not all technological advances are positive for society.

Social Epidemiology, Health, and the Environment

Finally, it should be noted that technology is having a marked impact on social epidemiology, health, and the environment. Much of this change appears to be positive. Technological advances are leading to new vaccines, cures for diseases, and leading to better operating procedures within the world’s healthcare system. These are just a few of the health related benefits made possible by technology. The medical community is simply able to do much more today than at any other point in the history of human civilization. The relationship between social change and social epidemiology has been vastly improved as well at the hands of technology. Life expectancy in nearly every region of the world continues to grow, while infant mortality rates are on the decrease. This is the direct result of more advanced medical care in place throughout the global community today that is directly related to technological innovation on a grand scale. With the rapid expansion of technology has also come a population explosion. The world continue to expand its population at an unprecedented rate, and the toll that this is taking on the environment has been a major cause of concern for many. Technology, however, is making a positive impact in this area by making possible renewable sources of energy, enhanced measure to minimize pollution, and much more (Schroeder & Ling, 2014). In essence, many of the harmful agents that use to destroy the environment are no longer being used today thanks to technological advances.

In summary, technology has promoted in social change in numerous ways. While some of the advances being made have resulted in a dramatic shift in the way members of the global community communicate with one another, the innovation that has resulted has spurred human civilization toward bigger and better things. This should only continue as society continues to advance and progress an ever-increasing speed.

Hansen, N., Postmes, T., Tovote, K. A., & Bos, A. (2014). How modernization instigates social change: Laptop usage as a driver of cultural value change and gender equality in a developing country. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 45(8), 1229-1248. Kallinikos, J., Hasselbladh, H., Marton, A., Handelshögskolan vid Örebro Universitet, & Örebro universitet. (2013). Governing social practice: Technology and institutional change. Theory and Society, 42(4), 395-421. doi:10.1007/s11186-013-9195-y Schroeder, R., & Ling, R. (2014). Durkheim and weber on the social implications of new information and communication technologies. New Media & Society, 16(5), 789-805.

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Technology and Social Change

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Technology is described as the use of scientific expertise and information to create tools that help with a variety of challenges. Televisions, cell phones, and autos are examples of such devices. Another definition of technology is the cultural knowledge that describes the various ways in which the environment may be helpful in gratifying human needs and desires. On the other hand, social change describes the changes that take place in society as a result of social movements as well as outside forces. In other words, it has to do with how significantly society's behavioural patterns have changed. In the modern world, technology has effectively changed the way people interact, meet, travel as well as do business. In fact, people are always being faced with various technological changes (Social Change Peer-Review Journals, 2015). With such transformations, many people don’t even realize the social progress that is occurring in their lives. The advancement of the technical know-how has vehemently affected the social values in today`s society. The paper explores the impact of personal computers, the internet as well as cellular phones in the modern society. The article will also explore the equilibrium model in the sociological perspectives as well emerging trends in the forms of technology. https://www.salesforce.com/video/1074486/

The Impact of Cellular Phones, Personal Computers as well as the Internet on Society

The different advancements in technologies have significantly affected our community in a variety of ways. However, the greatest impact in our society today has been made by the manufacturer of cell phones, personal computers as well as the internet. The development of mobile phones has made the convenience of the internet more readily accessible. However, the aspects have impacted the society both in negative and in positive ways. The development has made it possible for people to communicate with friends and relatives within a matter of seconds from all over the world. The increased internet communication has however affected our communication skills. The aspect is because people have reduced the point of communicating face to face with their friends. The result of all this has been the effect of many people using slang languages evens the informal environment. The aspect is due to the fact that there are no regulations on the language to be used in internet communications (Loucks, 2010).

Retrieved from: https://www.google.com/search?q=Technology+and+Social+Change&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjsu_6s8anWAhVMJMAKHRiaA7gQ_AUICigB&biw=1152&bih=758#imgrc=f1VpBQojEWgMGM:

The convenience of the web connections has also enabled people to access various services from the comfort of their homes. The aspect means that people can easily use the internet to obtain items they need to use. For instance, people can shop from various online vendors as they are sited back at their homes. Also, different learning institutions have started offering online classes such that people can educate themselves without necessarily going to a physical school. However, the development has created a generation that is internet dependent. In most cases, teenagers nowadays can`t fathom a day spent without the web. The aspect is due to the fact that most of these young people use the internet to communicate with their loved ones, watch movies as well as follow various issues that are affecting the society. In fact, studies indicate that the use of the internet have been addictive to many young people such that they spent a lot of time on the web rather than doing other things (Deleo, 2008).. The accessibility has also affected the research process in most fields. The aspect is due to the fact that there are a lot of documents that are uploaded on the internet with irrelevant as well as fraud information. In such a situation doing a genuine research becomes compromised as most of this information doesn’t have sources.

Three Major Perspectives

As the technical know-how develops, as a society, we need to maintain our status quo and in the same time adapt to the new technologies. Talcott is the leading proponent that made an equilibrium that can help the society to keep a balance between adapting to the new technologies as well as maintaining the status quo. The equilibrium model requires that, when a transformation occurs in the society, the change must be adjusted appropriately such that the stability of the society is well maintained. Most functionalist, however, focus on different aspects that support the status quo in the society. Functionalists argue emphasis on the point of being stable when one is faced by a differing perspective that focuses on changes that contradict with the cultural background of the society. The aspect brings about the concept in the cultural lag. Cultural lag refers to the difference in the rate of change between two parts in culture. In our case, the advancement in technology is the new material that requires the society to adjust.

One of the best examples that align with functionalist concepts is the digital surveillance. The aspect allows those with high powers to spy those with little power. In the long run- the advancement in technology leads to the violation of the rights as well as the privacy of those who are less fortunate in the society. Interaction with the maladjustment of the potential damage leads to more of cultural lag. Another prime example is the aspect of companies searching the profiles of the possible employees in the various social media platforms. In most cases, those with high power can examine their potential candidates well, and the aspect disadvantages the people who are low in the society. The concept brings up the issue of a digital divide. The divide refers to the gap between the demographics with the access to the new technology. Most functionalist doesn’t view the digital divide as a big issue as long as they maintain their status quo. However, a person having a conflict with the advancement in technology argues that the digital divide continues with the friction amongst more than one resource. The aspect means that the interaction with the digital divide makes it harder for the victims to interact with other people who are in digital classes. Therefore to maintain a balance, the society should strive to adapt to the new advancement in technology as well as work hard to sustain the stability of the community (Warf, 2012)

Social Epidemiology, Health Environment, and Technology

The modern society could not have advanced as it now is it not for the development of technology. The aspect has opened various possibilities for environmental as well as health issues. Regarding social epidemiology, technology has granted us the ability to avoid various diseases as well as circumvent early deaths. It has paved the way for the society to identify the different causes of epidemics successfully. Technology has also influenced the health issues in various ways. Diseases can now be easily be diagnosed and their possible cures generated with ease. The advancement in technology has also facilitated the communication between medical providers such that they can consult each other for the sake of a patient. Environment-wise technology has affected the allowance of large-scaled groups to comprehend the society that surrounds them. The eased communication has enabled the organization to keep track of the recent changes that are occurring around the globe. For instance, if an earthquake takes place in any part of the world, with the advanced communication channels, the news is spread to the entire globe (Mooney, Knox, & Schacht, 2007)

Emerging Trend

Duty VUE HD 1920 is one of the forms of video that is trending in the current society. The body cam can provide both negative and positive feedback about both the citizens and the officers in charge. Regarding the agent, the video form can prove the action it took especially if they are necessary and lawful. The aspect can as well incriminate and back-fire the officer. For instance, the web-cam can reveal improper harassment of citizens by officers. Before, most officers had an upper-hand when telling a scene of an event. Their ranks made them appear as if they are more reputable than the citizens. However, with the introduction of the video cum, the officers need to give accurate descriptions everything is caught up by the camera (Emerging technology, 2015).

Retrieved from: https://www.rearviewsafety.com/heavy-duty-2-channel-dash-camera-by-blackvue-dr650gw-2ch-truck.html.

Technology has influenced the society in various ways. The biggest impact has been via the invention of the internet which has paved the way for the introduction of personal computers as well as cell phones. The advancement has significantly affected the way people communicate with each other. How people do their shopping have also changed because of the eased communication aspects. With the advancement in technology, the society has adapted to new lifestyles that suit the changes. The internet enables people to stay connected all over the world, and they can as well share information when needed. Although there have been a lot of benefits that are as a result of the advancement of technical know-how, there are also harms that have accompanied this growth. For instance, those in power have been manipulating those without to the extent of compromising their privacy.

Deleo, J. (2008, October 13). How Tech Has Changed Our Lives. PC Magazine. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2332339,00.asp

Emerging technology. (2015, Feb.). Law Enforcement Product News, 26, 26. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1688616173?accountid=458

Loucks, D. (2010, Mar. 25). Danica Loucks Sociology 022 – In the Facebook Age – Spring 2010 – Dhiraj Murthy. Retrieved July 11, 2015, from http://learn.bowdoin.edu/courses/soc022-danica-loucks/2010/03/views-of-the-digital-divide/

Mooney, Knox, & Schacht. (2007). The Three Main Sociological Perspectives. Retrieved July 11, 2015, from https://laulima.hawaii.edu/access/content/user/kfrench/sociology/the three main sociological perspectives.pdf

Social Change Peer-Review Journals. (2015). Retrieved July 10, 2015, from http://www.omicsonline.org/social-change-peer-review-journals.php

Warf, B. (2012). Contemporary Digital Divides In The United States.Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie Tijdschr Econ Soc Geogr, 1-17. Retrieved July 12, 2015, from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9663.2012.00720.x/

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How Pew Research Center will report on generations moving forward

Journalists, researchers and the public often look at society through the lens of generation, using terms like Millennial or Gen Z to describe groups of similarly aged people. This approach can help readers see themselves in the data and assess where we are and where we’re headed as a country.

Pew Research Center has been at the forefront of generational research over the years, telling the story of Millennials as they came of age politically and as they moved more firmly into adult life . In recent years, we’ve also been eager to learn about Gen Z as the leading edge of this generation moves into adulthood.

But generational research has become a crowded arena. The field has been flooded with content that’s often sold as research but is more like clickbait or marketing mythology. There’s also been a growing chorus of criticism about generational research and generational labels in particular.

Recently, as we were preparing to embark on a major research project related to Gen Z, we decided to take a step back and consider how we can study generations in a way that aligns with our values of accuracy, rigor and providing a foundation of facts that enriches the public dialogue.

A typical generation spans 15 to 18 years. As many critics of generational research point out, there is great diversity of thought, experience and behavior within generations.

We set out on a yearlong process of assessing the landscape of generational research. We spoke with experts from outside Pew Research Center, including those who have been publicly critical of our generational analysis, to get their take on the pros and cons of this type of work. We invested in methodological testing to determine whether we could compare findings from our earlier telephone surveys to the online ones we’re conducting now. And we experimented with higher-level statistical analyses that would allow us to isolate the effect of generation.

What emerged from this process was a set of clear guidelines that will help frame our approach going forward. Many of these are principles we’ve always adhered to , but others will require us to change the way we’ve been doing things in recent years.

Here’s a short overview of how we’ll approach generational research in the future:

We’ll only do generational analysis when we have historical data that allows us to compare generations at similar stages of life. When comparing generations, it’s crucial to control for age. In other words, researchers need to look at each generation or age cohort at a similar point in the life cycle. (“Age cohort” is a fancy way of referring to a group of people who were born around the same time.)

When doing this kind of research, the question isn’t whether young adults today are different from middle-aged or older adults today. The question is whether young adults today are different from young adults at some specific point in the past.

To answer this question, it’s necessary to have data that’s been collected over a considerable amount of time – think decades. Standard surveys don’t allow for this type of analysis. We can look at differences across age groups, but we can’t compare age groups over time.

Another complication is that the surveys we conducted 20 or 30 years ago aren’t usually comparable enough to the surveys we’re doing today. Our earlier surveys were done over the phone, and we’ve since transitioned to our nationally representative online survey panel , the American Trends Panel . Our internal testing showed that on many topics, respondents answer questions differently depending on the way they’re being interviewed. So we can’t use most of our surveys from the late 1980s and early 2000s to compare Gen Z with Millennials and Gen Xers at a similar stage of life.

This means that most generational analysis we do will use datasets that have employed similar methodologies over a long period of time, such as surveys from the U.S. Census Bureau. A good example is our 2020 report on Millennial families , which used census data going back to the late 1960s. The report showed that Millennials are marrying and forming families at a much different pace than the generations that came before them.

Even when we have historical data, we will attempt to control for other factors beyond age in making generational comparisons. If we accept that there are real differences across generations, we’re basically saying that people who were born around the same time share certain attitudes or beliefs – and that their views have been influenced by external forces that uniquely shaped them during their formative years. Those forces may have been social changes, economic circumstances, technological advances or political movements.

When we see that younger adults have different views than their older counterparts, it may be driven by their demographic traits rather than the fact that they belong to a particular generation.

The tricky part is isolating those forces from events or circumstances that have affected all age groups, not just one generation. These are often called “period effects.” An example of a period effect is the Watergate scandal, which drove down trust in government among all age groups. Differences in trust across age groups in the wake of Watergate shouldn’t be attributed to the outsize impact that event had on one age group or another, because the change occurred across the board.

Changing demographics also may play a role in patterns that might at first seem like generational differences. We know that the United States has become more racially and ethnically diverse in recent decades, and that race and ethnicity are linked with certain key social and political views. When we see that younger adults have different views than their older counterparts, it may be driven by their demographic traits rather than the fact that they belong to a particular generation.

Controlling for these factors can involve complicated statistical analysis that helps determine whether the differences we see across age groups are indeed due to generation or not. This additional step adds rigor to the process. Unfortunately, it’s often absent from current discussions about Gen Z, Millennials and other generations.

When we can’t do generational analysis, we still see value in looking at differences by age and will do so where it makes sense. Age is one of the most common predictors of differences in attitudes and behaviors. And even if age gaps aren’t rooted in generational differences, they can still be illuminating. They help us understand how people across the age spectrum are responding to key trends, technological breakthroughs and historical events.

Each stage of life comes with a unique set of experiences. Young adults are often at the leading edge of changing attitudes on emerging social trends. Take views on same-sex marriage , for example, or attitudes about gender identity .

Many middle-aged adults, in turn, face the challenge of raising children while also providing care and support to their aging parents. And older adults have their own obstacles and opportunities. All of these stories – rooted in the life cycle, not in generations – are important and compelling, and we can tell them by analyzing our surveys at any given point in time.

When we do have the data to study groups of similarly aged people over time, we won’t always default to using the standard generational definitions and labels. While generational labels are simple and catchy, there are other ways to analyze age cohorts. For example, some observers have suggested grouping people by the decade in which they were born. This would create narrower cohorts in which the members may share more in common. People could also be grouped relative to their age during key historical events (such as the Great Recession or the COVID-19 pandemic) or technological innovations (like the invention of the iPhone).

By choosing not to use the standard generational labels when they’re not appropriate, we can avoid reinforcing harmful stereotypes or oversimplifying people’s complex lived experiences.

Existing generational definitions also may be too broad and arbitrary to capture differences that exist among narrower cohorts. A typical generation spans 15 to 18 years. As many critics of generational research point out, there is great diversity of thought, experience and behavior within generations. The key is to pick a lens that’s most appropriate for the research question that’s being studied. If we’re looking at political views and how they’ve shifted over time, for example, we might group people together according to the first presidential election in which they were eligible to vote.

With these considerations in mind, our audiences should not expect to see a lot of new research coming out of Pew Research Center that uses the generational lens. We’ll only talk about generations when it adds value, advances important national debates and highlights meaningful societal trends.

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Influences of Modern Technology on the Children Development Essay
Part 8
Q1 (a) digital technology essay
Technology and social change Mid-term assignment- Mekael Murray

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DTSC: 1.2 What's the role of tech in social change?
Digital Transformation: Building the Resiliency that Today’s Business Demands
DTSC: 1.3 What is Digital Technology?
The Digital Economy and the New Social Contract
DTSC: 2.4 What is Digitalization & Algorithmification?
DTSC: 6.5 Digital Traits of scalable Storage

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Full article: Digital technology and social change: the digital
New digital wine into the old wineskins ofinnovation theory The discussion of digital technology and social change is part of the broader literature of innovation theory. Citation 1 Innovation theory is most commonly based on Schumpeter's notion of socioeconomic evolution through technological change.
Relationship Between Technology and Social Change
Conclusion. In conclusion, the relationship between technology and social change is multifaceted, encompassing various dimensions of human interaction, cultural development, and economic progress. While technology has undeniably shaped society in profound ways, its impact has been characterized by both positive advancements and challenges.
Reimagining Tomorrow: The Intersection of Technology and Social Change
Emphasizing the importance of ethical considerations and inclusivity, the essay discusses strategies to bridge the digital divide and harness technology for positive change. It also into the transformative impact of technology on healthcare, education, and economic systems, while urging vigilance against potential ethical and social pitfalls.
Digital technology and social change: the digital transformation of
The discussion of digital technology and social change is part of the broader literature of innovation theory. 1 Inno ‑ vation theory is most commonly based on Schumpeter's
The Digital Revolution: How Technology is Changing the Way We
While technology offers convenience and connectivity, it is essential to strike a balance, ensuring that we do not sacrifice the benefits of face-to-face interactions for the sake of digital convenience. Figure 1: Increased reliance on electronic media has led to a noticeable decrease in social interaction.
Technology, entrepreneurship, innovation and social change in digital
1. Introduction. Digitalization is the core of today's new technology. Artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IOT), big data blockchain, and digital multiple transformation have all been identified as important phenomena in innovation, entrepreneurship, and management research (Ahlstrom et al., 2020; Nambisan et al., 2019; Si et al., 2022).
The Impact of the Internet on Society: A Global Perspective
Article from the book Change: 19 Key Essays on How the Internet Is Changing Our Lives. ... so there is always a gap between social change and its understanding. ... The ongoing transformation of communication technology in the digital age extends the reach of communication media to all domains of social life in a network that is at the same ...
Digital technology and social change: the digital transformation of
The underlying theoretical framework and some accompanying data are reviewed from the perspective of innovation theory and the current age focuses on algorithms that automate the conversion of data into actionable knowledge. Digital technology, including its omnipresent connectedness and its powerful artificial intelligence, is the most recent long wave of humanity's socioeconomic evolution.
Techno‐social Life: The Internet, Digital Technology, and Social
This essay explores what it means to be socially connected in a techno-social world. It describes how a "triple revolution" in social connectedness has been catalyzed by the ever-increasing use of the Internet, mobile communication, and social media networking (Rainie and Wellman 2012).
How Is Technology Changing the World, and How Should the World Change
This growing complexity makes it more difficult than ever—and more imperative than ever—for scholars to probe how technological advancements are altering life around the world in both positive and negative ways and what social, political, and legal tools are needed to help shape the development and design of technology in beneficial directions.
Digital technology and social change: the digital transformation of
Digital technology, including its omnipresent connectedness and its powerful artificial intelligence, is the most recent long wave of humanity's socioeconomic evolution. The first technological revolutions go all the way back to the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages, when the transformation of material was the driving force in the Schumpeterian ...
Technology and Social Change
Industrialization broke up the feudal society and gave birth to a new economic operating model called capitalism, of which power and wealth were monopolized by capitalists. In modern society,the impact of technology on social change is becoming more and more direct and significant. Represented by computers,the third technological revolution has ...
Digital technology and social change: the digital transformation of
The discussion of digital technology and social change is part of the broader literature of innovation theory. 1 Innovation theory is most commonly based on Schumpeter's notion of socioeconomic evolution through technological change. 2,3 The reputed "prophet of innovation" himself gave it an illustrative name: ...
Digital Technology and Sociality
Chambers (2017) partially confirms this assumption with the example of Facebook, the global social media. The author notes that incentives for communication within this network are strengthened due to the current trend, but the general motives remain the same (Chambers, 2017). Thus, digital technologies affect the nature of sociality, but human ...
Digital Transformation: An Overview of the Current State of the Art of
Disruptive changes, understood as changes in a company and its operating environment caused by digitalization, possibly leading to the current business becoming obsolete (Parviainen et al., 2017), trigger DT in different environments due to rapid or disruptive innovations in digital technologies.These changes create high levels of uncertainty, and industries and companies try to adapt to these ...
Part 8
The internet and telecommunication industry in the 1990s changed the way we connect and exchange information. Digital technology impacted people in many ways. By the way people live, work, learn, and socialize. Digital technology comprises of electronic tools, devices and systems that generate, store and process data.
Technology and Social Change Essay
Technology and Social Change Technology refers to the application of science for the purpose of accomplishing various tasks in daily life. It is a field that extends the abilities of humans and makes them a significant part of the technological system. The efficient application of technology results in various benefits for humans, while its ...
How to Use Technology to Promote Social Change
You can coordinate and execute major fundraising efforts entirely online. Numerous sites can make the process of fundraising easier and the collection of money simpler. Additionally, crowdfunding allows you to raise specific amounts of money for particular needs. If done well, these efforts can be promoted entirely through social media.
Technology And Social Change Essay Examples
Finally, it should be noted that technology is having a marked impact on social epidemiology, health, and the environment. Much of this change appears to be positive. Technological advances are leading to new vaccines, cures for diseases, and leading to better operating procedures within the world's healthcare system.
essay about digital technology and social change
We use cookies to enhance our website for you. Proceed if you agree to this policy or learn more about it. Essay Database > Essay Examples > Essays Topics > Essay on Technology; E
Technology and Social Change
On the other hand, social change describes the changes that take place in society as a result of social movements as well as outside forces. In other words, it has to do with how significantly society's behavioural patterns have changed. In the modern world, technology has effectively changed the way people interact, meet, travel as well as do ...
How Pew Research Center will report on generations moving forward
How Pew Research Center will report on generations moving forward. Journalists, researchers and the public often look at society through the lens of generation, using terms like Millennial or Gen Z to describe groups of similarly aged people. This approach can help readers see themselves in the data and assess where we are and where we're ...
Module 5
MODULE 5: Digital Technology and Social Change. ASSESSMENT: Essay: Read the statement/s carefully. Answer the given statement/s concisely. Discuss how digital technology change society in the area of: a. Business. Digital technology empowers small business owners to set up online shops and websites at a low cost that instantaneously lowered the ...

Relationship Between Technology and Social Change

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Digital technology and social change: the digital transformation of society from a historical perspective 

New digital wine into the old wineskins ofinnovation theory 

The diffusion of the digital paradigm 

Amid the third metaparadigm 