Technology and the Evolution of Society
Technology is advancing day to day following the scientist efforts and innovation skills globally. The theory of technological evolution has been clearly discussed by the various scientist who showed their interest in formulation of evolution perspectives like Gerhard Lenski, Leslie White and Alvin Toffler whom into details dug the evolution of technology since back in the early years of mankind evolution.
Gerhard Lenski's Perspective
According to Gerhard Lensky`s perspective, he based his studies on the societal survival in line with the technology. Leslie too was concerned with the cultural changes that triggered technology while Alvin based his findings on the economic changes that facilitated technology in the early days of mankind evolution.
Evolution of Technology and its Impact
From these perspectives, the evolution of technology is widely discussed stating on how it was impacted man`s day to day activities and showing how the theories differ from each scientist perspective.
Technological Evolution and its Influence on Society
Technology advances daily from one field to another. Technological evolution can be traced back in the early centuries when man was still evolving where and were in the attempt of discovering new techniques of survival and relation to each other. The evolution perspectives are brought out by the three scientists who research broadly on how technology came to exist and impacts imposed on the technology by mankind economically, socially and culturally.
Evolution of Technology from the Perspectives of Gerhard Lenski, Leslie White and Alvin Toffler
Scientist like Gerhard Lensky, Leslie White and Alvin Toffler came up with the different perspectives of evolution of technology back in the early days on how technology evolved from those days up to the 21st century where technology is more advanced and applied in various fields like in industrial productions, communications, and research and also in leadership.
Gerhard Lenski's Perspective
Gerhard based his research on society survival in accordance with technology. Survival mechanism of the members of the society led to the evolution of technology since in cases where the society were hunters, pastoralist or practiced agricultural for their survival, they were to find an alternative way to increase their production for instance in farming and thus led to the evolution of technology.
Leslie White's Perspective
Leslie White, on the other hand, focused on the cultural impacts on the technology. These were some of the socio-cultural activities practiced by the mankind in the old days which gradually changed with time leading to the evolution of technology, for instance in the production of energy and power in performing more beneficial activities to the society and to an individual.
Alvin Toffler's Perspective
Alvin`s perspective was in line with the economic advances in the early days which influenced the evolution of the technology. Economic advances in different fields such as industries, agriculture, exchange of goods and marking strategies resulted in greater achievement in the evolution of technology.
Societal Survival and its Role in Technological Evolution
Societal survival thus in accordance with Gerhard`s perspective on the evolution of technology such as hunters, pastoralists, industrialization, and farming by various societies contributed to the evolution of technology. In hunting communities, hunters had to use a unique technique in order to catch the prey, such improvements included modification of sharp objects like spears, trapping the animals which in the modern world has contributed to the use of traps in trapping rodents like the mouse catcher. (Quinn, 2017). Such survival technique has led to the better technology in control of pest and rodents in most of the agricultural stores and in big plantations where rodents are likely to destroy the farm produce while in the farm.
Pastoralists also had their ways of controlling parasites and diseases in the field where they look after their cattle, for instance, they were able to manual kill the parasites like ticks or dust them using ashes from burnt firewood. These survival techniques have led to the improved methods of controlling parasites by use of refined technology of using sprays instead of manual dusting.
Agricultural communities on the other end also had to design methods they would use in controlling the pest and diseases which in most cases destroyed their crops. They had to rotate their crops seasonally, fence their farms to keep big animals from eating up their crops and intercrop. This idea of fencing and intercropping has been modernized through technology by using an electric fence to keep away predators from destroying crops.
Ancient industries were involved in carvings and melting of metallic objects thus transforming them into a more useful product. These survival techniques placed the society at the top of competing groups since they improve their modelling skills. It forms a base for technology evolution since much and more refined metallic products are being produced under new technology like in rolling mill companies where the whole process is about melting of the used metallic objects.
The Cultural Changes Impacting Technological Evolution
Leslie White`s perspective on cultural changes on the evolution of technology is validated in situations of production of energy and power for transportation and running machines in manufacturing firms. In early days, they used coal to provide energy in mining sites where high volts of power were needed to run the mining machines. In gold mining sites, a lot of energy was required to propel the mining machine since gold require high volts of power to extract it from its natural source into more refined products.
There was also wastage of energy as a lot of coal were used to provide energy in which good percentage of energy was going to waste due lack of proper way of conserving the energy. Better and efficient conservation of energy has been developed and power can be successfully stored to avoid wastage. This cultural change led to the production of electricity and diesel driven machines thus being evolution base of technology. (Hancock, 2017).
The Economic Changes and the Evolution of Technology
Economic changes like industrialization in the field of agriculture according to Alvin`s perspective is an evolution base for technology development. (Campbell, 2017). In agriculture, marketing strategies used in early days like walking door to door hawking the products created platform for technology to evolve therefore resulting to the advertisement of the products through social media services and billboards rather than hawking door to door, hence can be considered an evolution base for advertisement strategies technologically.
In ancient transport industries, they used locomotives which were very slow and was not reliable by the market users in transporting their perishable goods to the market as such trains could not access most of the market areas. High speed and faster mode of transport have been technologically invented like air transport, better and modernized road connecting all regions in the world. This has been possible following the ideas borrowed from ancient industries on transport hence its considered determinant of the evolution of technology.
Conclusion
The three perspectives from mentioned scientist based on the social survival, economic changes and cultural changes have contributed to the evolution of technology since they provide the basic idea on what should be modified technologically for better outcomes by the modern scientist and innovators who are concerned with improvement and modifications of technology globally.
The similarity in the perspectives can be highlighted from the fact that both perspectives revolve around human relations to the environment in their day to day activities from different fields like economic, cultural and survival skills, thus humans can be considered a function of technological evolution.
Perspective theories differ in the field of interest as each scientist just perfected his area of interest, for instance, Gerhard focussed on the survival adaptabilities of the society while Leslie based his argument on the cultural changes whereas Alvin was concerned with the economic changes of the society.
Gerhard Lensky perspective is considered the best perspective on technological evolution as survival adaptabilities of the society will determine the next course of action to be taken by the society in order to fit in the competitive environment, therefore, such adaptabilities forms the base for technological evolution.
References
Campbell, B. (2017). Human evolution: an introduction to man's adaptations. Routledge.
Hancock, P. A. (2017). Mind, machine and morality: Toward a philosophy of human-
technology symbiosis. CRC Press.
Quinn, R. (2017). Guns, Germs " Steel: The Fate of Human Societies. Macat Library.
