develop a hypothesis about how changes in technology affect society

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21.10: Social Change, Technology, and Modernization

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Learning Outcomes

• Describe the influence of media and technology on social change and modernization

We know that technology is one of the major factors that leads to social change. Let’s take a deeper look at how technology and the media play a major role in the accelerated rate of globalization, which in turn, affects social change.

Social Movements and Technology

So what is the real impact of this technology on the world? Did Twitter bring down Mubarak in Egypt? Author Malcolm Gladwell (2010) doesn’t think so. In an article in The New Yorker , Gladwell tackles what he considers the myth that social media gets people more engaged. He points out that most of the tweets relating to the Iran protests were in English and sent from Western accounts (instead of people on the ground). Rather than increasing engagement, he contends that social media only increases participation; after all, the cost of participation is so much lower than the cost of engagement. Instead of risking being arrested, shot with rubber bullets, or sprayed with fire hoses, social media activists can click “like” or retweet a message from the comfort and safety of their desk (Gladwell 2010).

There are, though, good cases to be made for the power of social media in propelling social movements. In the article, “Parrhesia and Democracy: Truth-telling, WikiLeaks and the Arab Spring,” Theresa Sauter and Gavin Kendall (2011) described the importance of social media in the Arab Spring uprisings. Parrhesia means “the practice of truth-telling,” which describes the protestors’ use of social media to make up for the lack of coverage and even misrepresentation of events by state-controlled media. The Tunisian blogger Lina Ben Mhenni posted photographs and videos on Facebook and Twitter of events exposing the violence committed by the government. In Egypt, the journalist Asmaa Mahfouz used Facebook to gather large numbers of people in Tahrir Square in the capital city of Cairo. Sauter and Kendall maintain that it was the use of Web 2.0 technologies that allowed activists not only to share events with the world but also to organize the actions.

When the Egyptian government shut down the Internet to stop the use of social media, the group Anonymous, a hacking organization noted for online acts of civil disobedience initiated “Operation Egypt” and sent thousands of faxes to keep the public informed of their government’s activities (CBS Interactive Inc. 2014) as well as attacking the government’s web site (Wagensiel 2011). In its Facebook press release the group stated the following: “Anonymous wants you to offer free access to uncensored media in your entire country. When you ignore this message, not only will we attack your government websites, Anonymous will also make sure that the international media sees the horrid reality you impose upon your people.”

Sociologists have identified high-risk activism, such as the civil rights movement, as a “strong-tie” phenomenon, meaning that people are far more likely to stay engaged and not run home to safety if they have close friends who are also engaged. The people who dropped out of the movement––who went home after the danger got too great––did not display any less ideological commitment. But they lacked the strong-tie connection to other people who were staying. Social media, by its very makeup, is “weak-tie” (McAdam and Paulsen 1993). People follow or friend people they have never met. But while these online acquaintances are a source of information and inspiration, the lack of engaged personal contact limits the level of risk we’ll take on their behalf.

These weak-tie connections can still affect change, especially as online activism becomes the norm. For example, look at this Wikipedia page explaining Hashtag Activism , to learn more about movements that gained popularity through Twitter hashtags.

Use of Technology and Social Media in Society by Individuals

Research conducted in 2018 showed that 95% of Americans own a cell phone, and 77% of Americans own a smartphone. [1] Access to the internet is often within arm’s reach—26% of people surveyed in 2018 said they were online almost constantly, while 43% said they got online several times a day. [2]

While people report that cell phones make it easier to stay in touch, simplify planning and scheduling their daily activities, and increase their productivity, that’s not the only impact of increased cell phone ownership in the United States. Smith also reports that “roughly one in five cell owners say that their phone has made it at least somewhat harder to forget about work at home or on the weekends; to give people their undivided attention; or to focus on a single task without being distracted” (Smith 2012).

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Planned Obsolescence: Technology That’s Built to Crash

Chances are your mobile phone company, as well as the makers of your laptop and your household appliances, are all counting on their products to fail. Not too quickly, of course, or consumers wouldn’t stand for it—but frequently enough that you might find that it costs far more to fix a device than to replace it with a newer model. Or you find the phone company e-mails you saying that you’re eligible for a free new phone, because yours is a whopping two years old. And appliance repair people say that while they might be fixing some machines that are twenty years old, they generally aren’t fixing those that are seven years old; newer models are built to be thrown out. This strategy is called planned obsolescence , and it is the business practice of planning for a product to be obsolete or unusable from the time it is created.

To some extent, planned obsolescence is a natural extension of new and emerging technologies. After all, who is going to cling to an enormous and slow desktop computer from 2000 when a few hundred dollars can buy one that is significantly faster and better? But the practice is not always so benign. The classic example of planned obsolescence is the nylon stocking. Women’s stockings—once an everyday staple of women’s lives––get “runs” or “ladders” after only a few wearings. This requires the stockings to be discarded and new ones purchased. Not surprisingly, the garment industry did not invest heavily in finding a rip-proof fabric; it was in manufacturers’ best interest that their product be regularly replaced.

Those who use Microsoft Windows might feel that like the women who purchased endless pairs of stockings, they are victims of planned obsolescence. Every time Windows releases a new operating system, there are typically not many innovations in it that consumers feel they must have. However, the software programs are upwardly compatible only. This means that while the new versions can read older files, the old version cannot read the newer ones. In short order, those who have not upgraded right away find themselves unable to open files sent by colleagues or friends, and they usually wind up upgrading as well.

Ultimately, whether you are getting rid of your old product because you are being offered a shiny new free one (like the latest smartphone model), or because it costs more to fix than to replace (like the iPod model), or because not doing so leaves you out of the loop (like the Windows model), the result is the same. It might just make you nostalgic for your old Sony Discman and simple DVD player.

With so many people using social media both in the United States and abroad, it is no surprise that social media is a powerful force for social change. Spreading democracy, as evidenced in the Arab Spring example, is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to using social media to incite change. For example, McKenna Pope, a thirteen-year-old girl, used the Internet to successfully petition Hasbro to fight gender stereotypes by creating a gender-neutral Easy-Bake Oven instead of using only the traditional pink color (Kumar 2014).

Product Advertising

Companies use advertising to sell to us, but the way they reach us is changing. Naomi Klein identified the destructive impact of corporate branding her 1999 text, No Logo , an anti-globalization treatise that focused on sweatshops, corporate power, and anti-consumerist social movements. In the post-millennial society, synergistic advertising practices ensure you are receiving the same message from a variety of sources and on a variety of platforms. For example, you may see billboards for Miller beer on your way to a stadium, sit down to watch a game preceded by a Miller commercial on the big screen, and watch a halftime ad in which people are shown holding up the trademark bottles. Chances are you can guess which brand of beer is for sale at the concession stand.

Advertising has changed, as technology and media have allowed consumers to bypass traditional advertising venues. From the invention of the remote control, which allows us to skip television advertising without leaving our seats, to recording devices that let us watch programs but skip the ads, conventional television advertising is on the wane. And print media is no different. Advertising revenue in newspapers and on television fell significantly in 2009, which shows that companies need new ways of getting their messages to consumers.

One model companies are considering to address this advertising downturn uses the same philosophy as celebrity endorsements, just on a different scale. Companies are hiring college students to be their on-campus representatives, and they are looking for popular students engaged in high-profile activities like sports, fraternities, and music. The marketing team is betting that if we buy perfume because Beyoncé tells us to, we’ll also choose our cell phone or smoothie brand if a popular student encourages that choice. According to an article in the New York Times , fall semester 2011 saw an estimated 10,000 U.S. college students working on campus as brand ambassadors for products from Red Bull energy drinks to Hewlett-Packard computers (Singer 2011). As the companies figure it, college students will trust one source of information above all: other students.

Technological Concerns

With all of the new media (social networking sites, blogs, podcasts, wikis, and virtual worlds, etc.) available to us, there are also some new concerns regarding privacy, security, equality, and polarization. Additionally, there is no guarantee that the information offered by new media is accurate. In fact, the immediacy of new media coupled with the lack of oversight means we must be more careful than ever to ensure our news is coming from accurate sources.

Online Privacy and Security

As we increase our footprints on the web by going online more often to connect socially, share material, conduct business, and store information, we also increase our vulnerability to those with criminal intent. The Pew Research Center recently published a report that indicated the number of Internet users who express concern over the extent of personal information about them available online jumped 17 percent between 2009 and 2013. In that same survey, 12 percent of respondents indicated they had been harassed online, and 11 percent indicated that personal information, such as their Social Security number, had been stolen (Rainie, Kiesler, Kang, and Madden 2013).

Online privacy and security is a key organizational concern as well. Recent large-scale data breaches at retailers such as Target, financial powerhouses such as JP Morgan, the government health insurance site Healthcare.gov, and cell phone providers such as Verizon, exposed millions of people to the threat of identity theft when hackers got access to personal information by compromising website security.

For example, in late August 2014, hackers breached the iCloud data storage site and promptly leaked wave after wave of nude photos from the private accounts of actors such as Jennifer Lawrence and Kirsten Dunst (Lewis 2014). While large-scale data breaches that affect corporations and celebrities are more likely to make the news, individuals may put their personal information at risk simply by clicking a suspect link in an official sounding e-mail.

How can individuals protect their data? Numerous facts sheets available through the government, nonprofits, and the private sector outline common safety measures, including the following: become familiar with privacy rights; read privacy policies when making a purchase (rather than simply clicking “accept”); give out only the minimum information requested by any source; ask why information is being collected, how it is going to be used, and who will have access it; and monitor your credit history for red flags that indicate your identity has been compromised.

Net Neutrality

The issue of net neutrality , the principle that all Internet data should be treated equally by Internet service providers, is part of the national debate about Internet access and the digital divide. On one side of this debate is the belief that those who provide Internet service, like those who provide electricity and water, should be treated as common carriers, legally prohibited from discriminating based on the customer or nature of the goods. Supporters of net neutrality suggest that without such legal protections, the Internet could be divided into “fast” and “slow” lanes. A conflict perspective theorist might suggest that this discrimination would allow bigger corporations, such as Amazon, to pay Internet providers a premium for faster service, which could lead to gaining an advantage that would drive small, local competitors out of business.

The other side of the debate holds the belief that designating Internet service providers as common carriers would constitute an unreasonable regulatory burden and limit the ability of telecommunication companies to operate profitably. A functional perspective theorist might point out that, without profits, companies would not invest in making improvements to their Internet service or expanding those services to underserved areas. The final decision rests with the Federal Communications Commission and the federal government, which must decide how to fairly regulate broadband providers without dividing the Internet into haves and have-nots.

Violence in Media and Video Games: Does It Matter?

A glance through popular video game and movie titles geared toward children and teens shows the vast spectrum of violence that is displayed, condoned, and acted out.

As a way to guide parents in their programming choices, the motion picture industry put a rating system in place in the 1960s. But new media—video games in particular—proved to be uncharted territory. In 1994, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ERSB) set a ratings system for games that addressed issues of violence, sexuality, drug use, and the like. California took it a step further by making it illegal to sell video games to underage buyers. The case led to a heated debate about personal freedoms and child protection, and in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the California law, stating it violated freedom of speech (ProCon 2012).

Children’s play has often involved games of aggression—from cowboys and Indians, to cops and robbers, to fake sword fights. Many articles report on the controversy surrounding the suggested link between violent video games and violent behavior. Is the link real? Psychologists Anderson and Bushman (2001) reviewed forty-plus years of research on the subject and, in 2003, determined that there are causal linkages between violent video game use and aggression. They found that children who had just played a violent video game demonstrated an immediate increase in hostile or aggressive thoughts, an increase in aggressive emotions, and physiological arousal that increased the chances of acting out aggressive behavior (Anderson 2003).

Ultimately, repeated exposure to this kind of violence leads to increased expectations that violence is a solution, increased violent behavioral scripts, and an increased cognitive accessibility to violent behavior (Anderson 2003). In short, people who play a lot of these games find it easier to imagine and access violent solutions than nonviolent ones, and they are less socialized to see violence as a negative. While these facts do not mean there is no role for video games, it should give players pause. In 2013, The American Psychological Association began an expansive meta-analysis of peer-reviewed research analyzing the effect of media violence. Results are expected in 2014.

Homogenization and Fragmentation

Despite the variety of media at hand, the mainstream news and entertainment you enjoy are increasingly homogenized. Research by McManus (1995) suggests that different news outlets all tell the same stories, using the same sources, resulting in the same message, presented with only slight variations. So whether you are reading the New York Times or the CNN’s web site, the coverage of national events like a major court case or political issue will likely be the same.

Simultaneously with this homogenization among the major news outlets, the opposite process is occurring in the newer media streams. With so many choices, people increasingly customize their news experience, minimizing their opportunity to encounter information that does not jive with their worldview (Prior 2005). For instance, those who are staunchly Republican can avoid centrist or liberal-leaning cable news shows and web sites that would show Democrats in a favorable light. They know to seek out Fox News over MSNBC, just as Democrats know to do the opposite. Further, people who want to avoid politics completely can choose to visit web sites that deal only with entertainment or that will keep them up to date on sports scores. They have an easy way to avoid information they do not wish to hear.

Further Research

• To learn more about new media, visit newmedia.org .
• To understand how independent media coverage differs from major corporate affiliated news outlets, review material from the Democracy Now! website.
• Watch this RSA Animate video “The Internet in Society: Empowering or Censoring Citizens?” to learn more about the power of the internet and its role in global politics.

An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: http://pb.libretexts.org/its/?p=608

Modernization

Modernization describes the processes that increase the amount of specialization and differentiation of structure in societies resulting in the move from an undeveloped society to a developed, technologically driven society (Irwin 1975). By this definition, the level of modernity within a society is judged by the sophistication of its technology, particularly as it relates to infrastructure, industry, and the like. However, it is important to note the inherent ethnocentric bias of such assessment. Why do we assume that those living in semi-peripheral and peripheral nations would find it so wonderful to become more like the core nations? Is modernization always positive?

One contradiction of all kinds of technology is that they often promise time-saving benefits, but somehow fail to deliver. How many times have you ground your teeth in frustration at an Internet site that refused to load or at a dropped call on your cell phone? Despite time-saving devices such as dishwashers, washing machines, and, now, remote control vacuum cleaners, the average amount of time spent on housework is the same today as it was fifty years ago. And the dubious benefits of 24/7 e-mail and immediate information have simply increased the amount of time employees are expected to be responsive and available. While once businesses had to travel at the speed of the U.S. postal system, sending something off and waiting until it was received before the next stage, today the immediacy of information transfer means there are no such breaks.

Further, the Internet bought us information, but at a cost. The morass of information means that there is as much poor information available as trustworthy sources. There is a delicate line to walk when core nations seek to bring the assumed benefits of modernization to more traditional cultures. For one, there are obvious pro-capitalist biases that go into such attempts, and it is short-sighted for western governments and social scientists to assume all other countries aspire to follow in their footsteps. Additionally, there can be a kind of neo-liberal defense of rural cultures, ignoring the often crushing poverty and diseases that exist in peripheral nations and focusing only on a nostalgic mythology of the happy peasant. It takes a very careful hand to understand both the need for cultural identity and preservation as well as the hopes for future growth.

Think It Over

• Where and how do you get your news? Do you watch network television? Read the newspaper? Go online? How about your parents or grandparents? Do you think it matters where you seek out information? Why, or why not?
• Document your screen time usage for one 24-hour period. Some phones have built in trackers and there are a variety of free apps to track cell phone screen time. Challenge yourself by documenting how many times you touch your phone and/or look at your phone. Does it also serve as your timepiece? Do you “check” your phone just to see what is there? Do you fiddle with your phone (in a pocket or bag) even when you are not actively using it? How often do you check social media? How many different types of alerts do you receive? Share your responses with your classmates. Were you surprised by the results? Did your habits change because you knew they would be tracked?
• If you are up for another challenge, go for a 24-hour period with essential phone use only. Since most of us use our cell phones as our only means of communication, it might be unreasonable to shut your phone down for the day, especially if you have family or work matters that might require your immediate attention. Other than “emergency-type” situations (you could set a special ring tone), try to not touch or look at your phone for 24 hours. Instead of documenting usage, document each time you thought about “checking something” on your phone. Share your responses with your classmates. Were you surprised by the results? Did your habits change because you knew they would be tracked?
• Can you think of people in your own life who support or defy the premise that access to technology leads to greater opportunities? How have you noticed technology use and opportunity to be linked, or does your experience contradict this idea?
• Should the U.S. government be responsible for providing all citizens with access to the Internet? Or is gaining Internet access an individual responsibility?
• How have digital media changed social interactions? Do you believe it has deepened or weakened human connections? Defend your answer.
• Conduct sociological research. Google yourself. How much information about you is available to the public? How many and what types of companies offer private information about you for a fee? Compile the data and statistics you find. Write a paragraph or two about the social issues and behaviors you notice.
• Mobile Fact Sheet (February 2018). Pew Research Center. Retrieved from https://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/mobile/ ↵
• Perrin, Andrew and Jiang JingJing (March 2018). Pew Research Center. About a quarter of U.S. adults say they are ‘almost constantly’ online. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/25/americans-going-online-almost-constantly/ . ↵
• Social Change. Authored by : OpenStax CNX. Located at : https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:vi4eB2eh@5/Social-Change . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]
• Modernization. Provided by : OpenStax College. Located at : https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:vi4eB2eh@9/21-3-Social-Change . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected] .
• Technology Today. Provided by : OpenStax College. Located at : https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:_5jASD-H@12/8-1-Technology-Today . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected] .
• Media and Technology in Society. Provided by : OpenStax College. Located at : https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:_U5AN6pQ@11/8-2-Media-and-Technology-in-Society . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected] .
• RSA ANIMATE: The Internet in Society: Empowering or Censoring Citizens?. Authored by : The RSA. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk8x3V-sUgU . License : All Rights Reserved

How has technology changed - and changed us - in the past 20 years?

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Stay up to date:, technological transformation.

• Since the dotcom bubble burst back in 2000, technology has radically transformed our societies and our daily lives.
• From smartphones to social media and healthcare, here's a brief history of the 21st century's technological revolution.

Just over 20 years ago, the dotcom bubble burst , causing the stocks of many tech firms to tumble. Some companies, like Amazon, quickly recovered their value – but many others were left in ruins. In the two decades since this crash, technology has advanced in many ways.

Many more people are online today than they were at the start of the millennium. Looking at broadband access, in 2000, just half of Americans had broadband access at home. Today, that number sits at more than 90% .

This broadband expansion was certainly not just an American phenomenon. Similar growth can be seen on a global scale; while less than 7% of the world was online in 2000, today over half the global population has access to the internet.

Similar trends can be seen in cellphone use. At the start of the 2000s, there were 740 million cell phone subscriptions worldwide. Two decades later, that number has surpassed 8 billion, meaning there are now more cellphones in the world than people

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At the same time, technology was also becoming more personal and portable. Apple sold its first iPod in 2001, and six years later it introduced the iPhone, which ushered in a new era of personal technology. These changes led to a world in which technology touches nearly everything we do.

Technology has changed major sectors over the past 20 years, including media, climate action and healthcare. The World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers , which just celebrated its 20th anniversary, gives us insight how emerging tech leaders have influenced and responded to these changes.

Media and media consumption

The past 20 years have greatly shaped how and where we consume media. In the early 2000s, many tech firms were still focused on expanding communication for work through advanced bandwidth for video streaming and other media consumption that is common today.

Others followed the path of expanding media options beyond traditional outlets. Early Tech Pioneers such as PlanetOut did this by providing an outlet and alternative media source for LGBTQIA communities as more people got online.

Following on from these first new media options, new communities and alternative media came the massive growth of social media. In 2004 , fewer than 1 million people were on Myspace; Facebook had not even launched. By 2018, Facebook had more 2.26 billion users with other sites also growing to hundreds of millions of users.

While these new online communities and communication channels have offered great spaces for alternative voices, their increased use has also brought issues of increased disinformation and polarization.

Today, many tech start-ups are focused on preserving these online media spaces while also mitigating the disinformation which can come with them. Recently, some Tech Pioneers have also approached this issue, including TruePic – which focuses on photo identification – and Two Hat , which is developing AI-powered content moderation for social media.

Climate change and green tech

Many scientists today are looking to technology to lead us towards a carbon-neutral world. Though renewed attention is being given to climate change today, these efforts to find a solution through technology is not new. In 2001, green tech offered a new investment opportunity for tech investors after the crash, leading to a boom of investing in renewable energy start-ups including Bloom Energy , a Technology Pioneer in 2010.

In the past two decades, tech start-ups have only expanded their climate focus. Many today are focuses on initiatives far beyond clean energy to slow the impact of climate change.

Different start-ups, including Carbon Engineering and Climeworks from this year’s Technology Pioneers, have started to roll out carbon capture technology. These technologies remove CO2 from the air directly, enabling scientists to alleviate some of the damage from fossil fuels which have already been burned.

Another expanding area for young tech firms today is food systems innovation. Many firms, like Aleph Farms and Air Protein, are creating innovative meat and dairy alternatives that are much greener than their traditional counterparts.

Biotech and healthcare

The early 2000s also saw the culmination of a biotech boom that had started in the mid-1990s. Many firms focused on advancing biotechnologies through enhanced tech research.

An early Technology Pioneer, Actelion Pharmaceuticals was one of these companies. Actelion’s tech researched the single layer of cells separating every blood vessel from the blood stream. Like many other biotech firms at the time, their focus was on precise disease and treatment research.

While many tech firms today still focus on disease and treatment research, many others have been focusing on healthcare delivery. Telehealth has been on the rise in recent years , with many young tech expanding virtual healthcare options. New technologies such as virtual visits, chatbots are being used to delivery healthcare to individuals, especially during Covid-19.

Many companies are also focusing their healthcare tech on patients, rather than doctors. For example Ada, a symptom checker app, used to be designed for doctor’s use but has now shifted its language and interface to prioritize giving patients information on their symptoms. Other companies, like 7 cups, are focused are offering mental healthcare support directly to their users without through their app instead of going through existing offices.

The past two decades have seen healthcare tech get much more personal and use tech for care delivery, not just advancing medical research.

The World Economic Forum was the first to draw the world’s attention to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the current period of unprecedented change driven by rapid technological advances. Policies, norms and regulations have not been able to keep up with the pace of innovation, creating a growing need to fill this gap.

The Forum established the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network in 2017 to ensure that new and emerging technologies will help—not harm—humanity in the future. Headquartered in San Francisco, the network launched centres in China, India and Japan in 2018 and is rapidly establishing locally-run Affiliate Centres in many countries around the world.

The global network is working closely with partners from government, business, academia and civil society to co-design and pilot agile frameworks for governing new and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) , autonomous vehicles , blockchain , data policy , digital trade , drones , internet of things (IoT) , precision medicine and environmental innovations .

Learn more about the groundbreaking work that the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network is doing to prepare us for the future.

Want to help us shape the Fourth Industrial Revolution? Contact us to find out how you can become a member or partner.

In the early 2000s, many companies were at the start of their recovery from the bursting dotcom bubble. Since then, we’ve seen a large expansion in the way tech innovators approach areas such as new media, climate change, healthcare delivery and more.

At the same time, we have also seen tech companies rise to the occasion of trying to combat issues which arose from the first group such as internet content moderation, expanding climate change solutions.

The Technology Pioneers' 2020 cohort marks the 20th anniversary of this community - and looking at the latest awardees can give us a snapshot of where the next two decades of tech may be heading.

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World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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A comprehensive study of technological change

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The societal impacts of technological change can be seen in many domains, from messenger RNA vaccines and automation to drones and climate change. The pace of that technological change can affect its impact, and how quickly a technology improves in performance can be an indicator of its future importance. For decision-makers like investors, entrepreneurs, and policymakers, predicting which technologies are fast improving (and which are overhyped) can mean the difference between success and failure.

New research from MIT aims to assist in the prediction of technology performance improvement using U.S. patents as a dataset. The study describes 97 percent of the U.S. patent system as a set of 1,757 discrete technology domains, and quantitatively assesses each domain for its improvement potential.

“The rate of improvement can only be empirically estimated when substantial performance measurements are made over long time periods,” says Anuraag Singh SM ’20, lead author of the paper. “In some large technological fields, including software and clinical medicine, such measures have rarely, if ever, been made.”

A previous MIT study provided empirical measures for 30 technological domains, but the patent sets identified for those technologies cover less than 15 percent of the patents in the U.S. patent system. The major purpose of this new study is to provide predictions of the performance improvement rates for the thousands of domains not accessed by empirical measurement. To accomplish this, the researchers developed a method using a new probability-based algorithm, machine learning, natural language processing, and patent network analytics.

Overlap and centrality

A technology domain, as the researchers define it, consists of sets of artifacts fulfilling a specific function using a specific branch of scientific knowledge. To find the patents that best represent a domain, the team built on previous research conducted by co-author Chris Magee, a professor of the practice of engineering systems within the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS). Magee and his colleagues found that by looking for patent overlap between the U.S. and international patent-classification systems, they could quickly identify patents that best represent a technology. The researchers ultimately created a correspondence of all patents within the U.S. patent system to a set of 1,757 technology domains.

To estimate performance improvement, Singh employed a method refined by co-authors Magee and Giorgio Triulzi, a researcher with the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center (SSRC) within IDSS and an assistant professor at Universidad de los Andes in Colombia. Their method is based on the average “centrality” of patents in the patent citation network. Centrality refers to multiple criteria for determining the ranking or importance of nodes within a network.

“Our method provides predictions of performance improvement rates for nearly all definable technologies for the first time,” says Singh.

Those rates vary — from a low of 2 percent per year for the “Mechanical skin treatment — Hair removal and wrinkles” domain to a high of 216 percent per year for the “Dynamic information exchange and support systems integrating multiple channels” domain. The researchers found that most technologies improve slowly; more than 80 percent of technologies improve at less than 25 percent per year. Notably, the number of patents in a technological area was not a strong indicator of a higher improvement rate.

“Fast-improving domains are concentrated in a few technological areas,” says Magee. “The domains that show improvement rates greater than the predicted rate for integrated chips — 42 percent, from Moore’s law — are predominantly based upon software and algorithms.”

TechNext Inc.

The researchers built an online interactive system where domains corresponding to technology-related keywords can be found along with their improvement rates. Users can input a keyword describing a technology and the system returns a prediction of improvement for the technological domain, an automated measure of the quality of the match between the keyword and the domain, and patent sets so that the reader can judge the semantic quality of the match.

Moving forward, the researchers have founded a new MIT spinoff called TechNext Inc. to further refine this technology and use it to help leaders make better decisions, from budgets to investment priorities to technology policy. Like any inventors, Magee and his colleagues want to protect their intellectual property rights. To that end, they have applied for a patent for their novel system and its unique methodology.

“Technologies that improve faster win the market,” says Singh. “Our search system enables technology managers, investors, policymakers, and entrepreneurs to quickly look up predictions of improvement rates for specific technologies.”

Adds Magee: “Our goal is to bring greater accuracy, precision, and repeatability to the as-yet fuzzy art of technology forecasting.”

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The impact of technology on social change: a sociological perspective

This conceptual paper presents the position that the primary changes in human history are the four social revolutions (domestication, agriculture, industrialization, and information), the change from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft types of societies, capitalism and industrialization, modernization and global stratification. Ethnic conflicts and social movements indicate cutting edges of social change. Sociological approaches such as William Ogburn's theory of social change, which asserts that technology is the basic cause of social change are fully explored and applied in this discourse. A great deal of effort is made in this paper to identify the many and varied existing forms of technology and the effects changed technology has on society and culture. The major characteristic of traditional and modern societies are also brought to the lime light in a bid to show the major cultural changes that have occurred or are occurring in society. It is these socio-cultural changes from traditional to modern types of society that Ferdinand Tonnies (1988) refers to as changes from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft respectively. In discussing how technology changes society, the major thesis is that because technology is the organizing force for social life, when it changes, its effects can be profound. The computer, for example is changing the way people practise medicine, learn, work and how they relate or even think. The information superhighway is likely to perpetuate social inequalities at both national and global levels. The article also avers that besides technology, capitalism and modernization, theories such as the conflict and evolutionary help sociologists to account for the phenomena of social change-a shift in the characteristics of culture and Society. It is important to point out that this paper is embedded in a Western understanding of technologies and its impact on society.

Related Papers

Scholedge International Journal of Business Policy & Governance ISSN 2394-3351

The main objective of the present study is to know the relationship between society and technology, where emphasize have been put on development process under modern science and technology and its perspectives. Technology has completely revolutionized present era in every aspect of life especially dealing with society. Technology has transformed the methods of education, communication, business, art and literature, and has resulted in the enhancement in the core spheres of life, before this blessed gift the knowledge regarding the above mentioned spheres was limited because of the restricted methods and methodologies etc. Due to blessings of science and technology we are now able to check the advancement of every department working around our society with a single click of internet. It is technology which helps us to differentiate about the development process of all sections of society and help us to maintain the development process. Technology has brought our society close to each...

Peter Sasvari

Various models of the information society have been developed so far and they are so different from country to country that it would be rather unwise to look for a single, allencompassing definition. In our time a number of profound socio-economic changes are underway. The application of these theories and schools on ICT is problematic in many respects. First, as we stated above, there is not a single, widely used paradigm which has synthesised the various schools and theories dealing with technology and society. Second, these fragmented approaches do not have a fully-fledged mode of application to the relationship of ICT and (information) society. Third, SCOT, ANT, the evolutionary- or the systems approach to the history of technology when dealing with information society – does not take into account the results of approaches studying the very essence of the information age: information, communication and knowledge. The list of unnoticed or partially incorporated sciences, which focuses on the role of ICT in human information processing and other cognitive activities, is much longer.

Media, Culture and Public Relations

Mario Radovan

This is a revised text of the paper published long ago; the text is reshaped, some things are added and some are left out. The paper puts forward a collection of features of contemporary world and life, and seeks optimal responses to the challenges this world brings about. We speak about noise and about the procedural nature of the life in technological world. We address issues of public discourse, manipulation, surveillance and freedom. Technology gives people great operative power; we question what impact may technology exert on morality and aesthetic experience, on aggressive behaviour and cooperation. The development and use of technology have been directed by socioeconomic system; we examine the issue of the shaping of such system, and point out what leaders and poets of this world should aim at.

Dirceu Silva

The concept of technology as well as itself has evolved continuously over time, such that, nowadays, this concept is still marked by myths and realities. Even the concept of science is frequently misunderstood as technology. In this way, this paper presents different forms of interpretation of the concept of technology in the course of history, as well as the social and cultural aspects associated with it, through an analysis made by means of insights from sociological studies of science and technology and its multiple relations with society. Through the analysis of contents, the paper presents a classification of how technology is interpreted in the social sphere and search channel efforts to show how a broader understanding can contribute to better interpretations of how scientific and technological development influences the environment in which we operate. The text also presents a particular point of view for the interpretation of the concept from the analysis throughout the who...

Antonio López Pelaez

Charalampos Kokkinos

Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, Fourth Edition

Muhammet Ali Köroğlu

There are turning points in human history changed the destiny of humanity: Representing the transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture, Agricultural Revolution or the Neolithic Revolution. French Revolution that took place in 18th century and the Industrial Revolution providing the transition from the agricultural economy to industrial economy. From 19th century, Information Revolution, the whole world has experienced the effects of it in varying degrees. Information Science and technologies have become areas that their communities give the greatest importance for them and they make maximum investments to them in the globalized world conditions. As Daniel Bell describes, Industrial society left its place to Post-industrial society which is an Information society in a sense.

Sudeep Kumar, Ph.D (Delhi University)

Peter Moons

These essays answer the following the questions: Why are some societies and cultures more receptive to technology than others? To what extent is technology a key factor in facilitating societal and behavioral change or subordinate to socio-political, historical, and culturally specific context? How and why has “history” been redefined as the record of socio-economic “progress”?

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Technology over the long run: zoom out to see how dramatically the world can change within a lifetime

It is easy to underestimate how much the world can change within a lifetime. considering how dramatically the world has changed can help us see how different the world could be in a few years or decades..

Technology can change the world in ways that are unimaginable until they happen. Switching on an electric light would have been unimaginable for our medieval ancestors. In their childhood, our grandparents would have struggled to imagine a world connected by smartphones and the Internet.

Similarly, it is hard for us to imagine the arrival of all those technologies that will fundamentally change the world we are used to.

We can remind ourselves that our own future might look very different from the world today by looking back at how rapidly technology has changed our world in the past. That’s what this article is about.

One insight I take away from this long-term perspective is how unusual our time is. Technological change was extremely slow in the past – the technologies that our ancestors got used to in their childhood were still central to their lives in their old age. In stark contrast to those days, we live in a time of extraordinarily fast technological change. For recent generations, it was common for technologies that were unimaginable in their youth to become common later in life.

The long-run perspective on technological change

The big visualization offers a long-term perspective on the history of technology. 1

The timeline begins at the center of the spiral. The first use of stone tools, 3.4 million years ago, marks the beginning of this history of technology. 2 Each turn of the spiral represents 200,000 years of history. It took 2.4 million years – 12 turns of the spiral – for our ancestors to control fire and use it for cooking. 3

To be able to visualize the inventions in the more recent past – the last 12,000 years – I had to unroll the spiral. I needed more space to be able to show when agriculture, writing, and the wheel were invented. During this period, technological change was faster, but it was still relatively slow: several thousand years passed between each of these three inventions.

From 1800 onwards, I stretched out the timeline even further to show the many major inventions that rapidly followed one after the other.

The long-term perspective that this chart provides makes it clear just how unusually fast technological change is in our time.

You can use this visualization to see how technology developed in particular domains. Follow, for example, the history of communication: from writing to paper, to the printing press, to the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, all the way to the Internet and smartphones.

Or follow the rapid development of human flight. In 1903, the Wright brothers took the first flight in human history (they were in the air for less than a minute), and just 66 years later, we landed on the moon. Many people saw both within their lifetimes: the first plane and the moon landing.

This large visualization also highlights the wide range of technology’s impact on our lives. It includes extraordinarily beneficial innovations, such as the vaccine that allowed humanity to eradicate smallpox , and it includes terrible innovations, like the nuclear bombs that endanger the lives of all of us .

What will the next decades bring?

The red timeline reaches up to the present and then continues in green into the future. Many children born today, even without further increases in life expectancy, will live well into the 22nd century.

New vaccines, progress in clean, low-carbon energy, better cancer treatments – a range of future innovations could very much improve our living conditions and the environment around us. But, as I argue in a series of articles , there is one technology that could even more profoundly change our world: artificial intelligence (AI).

One reason why artificial intelligence is such an important innovation is that intelligence is the main driver of innovation itself. This fast-paced technological change could speed up even more if it’s driven not only by humanity’s intelligence but also by artificial intelligence. If this happens, the change currently stretched out over decades might happen within a very brief time span of just a year. Possibly even faster. 4

I think AI technology could have a fundamentally transformative impact on our world. In many ways, it is already changing our world, as I documented in this companion article . As this technology becomes more capable in the years and decades to come, it can give immense power to those who control it (and it poses the risk that it could escape our control entirely).

Such systems might seem hard to imagine today, but AI technology is advancing quickly. Many AI experts believe there is a real chance that human-level artificial intelligence will be developed within the next decades, as I documented in this article .

Technology will continue to change the world – we should all make sure that it changes it for the better

What is familiar to us today – photography, the radio, antibiotics, the Internet, or the International Space Station circling our planet – was unimaginable to our ancestors just a few generations ago. If your great-great-great grandparents could spend a week with you, they would be blown away by your everyday life.

What I take away from this history is that I will likely see technologies in my lifetime that appear unimaginable to me today.

In addition to this trend towards increasingly rapid innovation, there is a second long-run trend. Technology has become increasingly powerful. While our ancestors wielded stone tools, we are building globe-spanning AI systems and technologies that can edit our genes.

Because of the immense power that technology gives those who control it, there is little that is as important as the question of which technologies get developed during our lifetimes. Therefore, I think it is a mistake to leave the question about the future of technology to the technologists. Which technologies are controlled by whom is one of the most important political questions of our time because of the enormous power these technologies convey to those who control them.

We all should strive to gain the knowledge we need to contribute to an intelligent debate about the world we want to live in. To a large part, this means gaining knowledge and wisdom on the question of which technologies we want.

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank my colleagues Hannah Ritchie, Bastian Herre, Natasha Ahuja, Edouard Mathieu, Daniel Bachler, Charlie Giattino, and Pablo Rosado for their helpful comments on drafts of this essay and the visualization. Thanks also to Lizka Vaintrob and Ben Clifford for the conversation that initiated this visualization.

Appendix: About the choice of visualization in this article

The recent speed of technological change makes it difficult to picture the history of technology in one visualization. When you visualize this development on a linear timeline, then most of the timeline is almost empty, while all the action is crammed into the right corner:

In my large visualization here, I tried to avoid this problem and instead show the long history of technology in a way that lets you see when each technological breakthrough happened and how, within the last millennia, there was a continuous acceleration of technological change.

The recent speed of technological change makes it difficult to picture the history of technology in one visualization. In the appendix, I show how this would look if it were linear.

It is, of course, difficult to assess when exactly the first stone tools were used.

The research by McPherron et al. (2010) suggested that it was at least 3.39 million years ago. This is based on two fossilized bones found in Dikika in Ethiopia, which showed “stone-tool cut marks for flesh removal and percussion marks for marrow access”. These marks were interpreted as being caused by meat consumption and provide the first evidence that one of our ancestors, Australopithecus afarensis, used stone tools.

The research by Harmand et al. (2015) provided evidence for stone tool use in today’s Kenya 3.3 million years ago.

References:

McPherron et al. (2010) – Evidence for stone-tool-assisted consumption of animal tissues before 3.39 million years ago at Dikika, Ethiopia . Published in Nature.

Harmand et al. (2015) – 3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya . Published in Nature.

Evidence for controlled fire use approximately 1 million years ago is provided by Berna et al. (2012) Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa , published in PNAS.

The authors write: “The ability to control fire was a crucial turning point in human evolution, but the question of when hominins first developed this ability still remains. Here we show that micromorphological and Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy (mFTIR) analyses of intact sediments at the site of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa, provide unambiguous evidence—in the form of burned bone and ashed plant remains—that burning took place in the cave during the early Acheulean occupation, approximately 1.0 Ma. To the best of our knowledge, this is the earliest secure evidence for burning in an archaeological context.”

This is what authors like Holden Karnofsky called ‘Process for Automating Scientific and Technological Advancement’ or PASTA. Some recent developments go in this direction: DeepMind’s AlphaFold helped to make progress on one of the large problems in biology, and they have also developed an AI system that finds new algorithms that are relevant to building a more powerful AI.

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Social Relations and Technology: Continuity, Context, and Change

Toni c antonucci.

1 Department of Psychology and Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan

Kristine J Ajrouch

3 Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology, Eastern Michigan University

Jasmine A Manalel

2 Department of Psychology, University of Michigan

Social relations, although basic to human nature, health and well-being, have become increasingly complicated as a result of changing population demography and technology. In this essay, we provide a historical overview of social relations, especially as they affect older people. We briefly review the evolution of theory and measurement surrounding social relations as well as early empirical evidence. We consider how social relations have changed over time as well as continuity and change regarding basic characteristics of social relations. Of special interest is the emerging influence of technology on how people maintain contact, especially the changing ways people can use technology to increase, decrease, maintain, or avoid social relations. We consider both negative and positive aspects of these new technologies and their influence on health and well-being. Finally, we conclude that new and emerging technologies hold great promise for the future by overcoming traditional barriers to maintaining social contact, support exchange, and information acquisition. Nevertheless, we caution that these new technologies can have the dehumanizing effect of distance thus creating the potential for insensitivity and increased negativity. In sum, we are cautiously optimistic about the promise of technology to expand, but not replace, traditional forms of social contact.

Translational Significance

Incorporating technology into our study of social relations will be informative for our understanding of how communication modalities influence or are an expression of closeness and/or conflict. Further, technology has important potential for keeping social networks linked and for delivering potential interventions from telehealth to caregiving.

Social relations are a fundamental aspect of human life. This has been advocated early in the history of social science by luminaries such as Cooley (1902) , Durkheim (1915) , and Mead (1913) , and continues to be of significance today as scholars document this point both theoretically and empirically, see Antonucci, Ajrouch, & Birditt (2014) , for a review. Context also matters, in that the ways in which social relations evolve and influence well-being have been shown to vary across time and place ( Ajrouch, Fuller, Akiyama & Antonucci, 2017 ; Fiori, Smith & Antonucci, 2007 ). At the same time, technological developments are fundamentally changing the ways in which we experience social relations, and may impact health and well-being accordingly. In this invited essay, we identify the convoy model as our guiding theoretical framework for understanding continuity and change in social relations. We consider how social relations have changed over time, specifically how technological advances engender new modes of contact for older adults. This is followed by a consideration of challenges facing the study of social relations, with particular attention to the need for theoretical and empirical assessments that take into account newly developing characteristics of our society. These include changes in the demography of the family and changes in migration patterns. We then elaborate on how new of experiencing social relations may have both positive and negative effects, thereby differentially influencing health and well-being. An important challenge to the field of social relations is to consider how to incorporate these developments into current and timely research.

The Convoy Model of Social Relations

The convoy model was developed to specify the scientific study of social relations by detailing the antecedent factors influencing social relations (personal and situational), identifying multiple dimensions of social relations, and illustrating how these factors influence health and well-being ( Antonucci, 2001 ; Kahn & Antonucci, 1980 ). Individual characteristics such as age, gender, race, and religion illustrate the personal characteristics thought to influence social relations, whereas situational characteristics such as roles, norms, organizations, and communities were identified as important external factors influencing social relations. Multiple dimensions of social relations were specified to include convoy structure, support, and satisfaction or relationship quality. The tenets of the convoy model were built on key findings in the literature showing that social relations are an important part of the health and well-being of older people in the United States and around the globe.

Structure refers to characteristics of the people in one’s network such as size, composition, contact frequency, and geographic proximity. Size and composition are important in so far as larger, more diverse networks are associated with positive outcomes. Much evidence has accumulated to indicate that older people enjoy spending leisure time with friends and that these relationships are associated with positive well-being ( Adams & Blieszner, 1989 ; Antonucci & Akiyama, 1995 ). On the other hand, older people also frequently report that they would turn to family, specifically spouse and children when in need. Cantor’s (1979) hierarchy of caregiving clearly designated the order of caregiving preference to be spouse/partner, child, other family, friend\neighbor, and formal caregiver.

A great deal of attention over the last century was given to the “decline of the family” as well as the decreased status of elders in our society. It was argued that older people were increasingly disrespected, alone, and isolated. Yet, classic studies challenged these notions with extensive, empirical investigations. It is now fairly well established, and convoy data continue to empirically support, that older people generally live quite close to and are in regular contact with their children ( Ajrouch et al., 2017 ; Fiori, Antonucci & Akiyama, 2008 ; Shanas et al, 1968 ). Not only do older people receive help, support, and contributions from their children, they also provide these same types of assistance to their children. In fact, older people often provide more than they receive ( Akiyama, Antonucci, & Campbell, 1997 ; Webster et al., 2012 ; Wiemers, Seltzer, Schoen, Hotz & Bianchi, 2016 ). In sum, social support structure includes various elements, all of which are included in the convoy model.

Support refers to the provision and receipt of support, such as aid, affect and affirmation. Lack of social support can have a significant negative impact on health and well-being. One of the most intriguing classic findings is that the single factor most likely to prevent nursing home placement is the report by the older person that they had a confidante, someone with whom they could share their intimate feelings ( Lowenthal & Haven, 1968 ; this finding has been replicated around the world, e.g. in Australia by Giles, Glonek, Luszcz, & Andrews, 2007 ). Social support, and, in particular, protection from isolation and loneliness, are clearly important for the health and well-being of older people. The convoy model recognizes various support types, including instrumental and emotional support, as key predictors of health and well-being.

Satisfaction refers to one’s assessment of one’s social relations, sometimes referred to as adequacy or quality of relationships. It was thought that the existence of a relationship presupposed positive relationship quality and support. These assumptions were increasingly questioned as people began to note that while some families did evidence close, positive relationships, others might better be characterized as negative or ambivalent (both positive and negative) at best. Troll (1971) used the term residential propinquity to note that while many older people wanted to remain close to their family, they actually preferred not to live with them. She suggested that people recognized that it was easier to maintain positive relationships when some distance, privacy, and independence could be maintained. Family relations often include intergenerational relations. Bengtson and his colleagues expanded the family social relations literature by examining intrafamily intergenerational relations and introducing solidarity theory. According to this theory, positive features of adult child–parent ties include contact, emotional bonds, and support exchanges ( Fingerman, Sechrist, & Birditt, 2013 ; Silverstein & Bengtson, 1997 ). In addition, once Bengtson and colleagues expanded this work to investigate the possibility of negativity in intergenerational relations ( Silverstein, Parrott, Angelinni, & Cook, 2000 ), they found that in most families some level of conflict also existed, with younger people reporting more conflict than older people. Bengtson attributed this to differences in intergenerational stake, which referred to the fact that older people were more invested in family links to ensure their legacy, whereas younger people sought to establish independence and create their own legacy ( Bengtson & Kuypers, 1971 ). Empirical evidence has accumulated supporting both these theoretical perspectives ( Suitor, Sechrist, Gilligan, & Pillemer, 2011 ). The convoy model ensures attention to the complexity of relationships quality.

Over the years, evidence has accumulated in support of the convoy model ( Antonucci, 2001 ; Ajrouch et al., 2017 ). Fortunately, the model is designed to incorporate the study of newly emerging developments that might influence social relations. Technological advances, especially with regard to communication technology and social media, offer new ways for enabling older adults to establish social connectedness with family and friends ( Czaja et al., 2017 ; Delello & McWhorter, 2017 ; Leist, 2013 ). Technology can also provide pathways for support in managing health conditions among older adults and those who provide care ( Czaja, 2017 ). Though, as the convoy model posits, use and benefits of technology likely vary according to personal and situational characteristics, and will influence health in unique ways.

Incorporating Technological Developments Into the Study of Social Relations

The nature of social interaction has changed as technological advances have provided new methods of contact. Consider the evolution from in-person contact and letter writing to the telegraph and telephone and, most recently, to ever more individualized and electronic forms of contact such as cell phones, video calls (e.g., Skype, FaceTime), and social media (e.g., Facebook). We know very little about how different forms of communication influence social relations, health, and well-being.

To address the observation that social relations are now experienced in new ways because of technological developments, we recently analyzed a measure of contact frequency that distinguished in-person contact from telephone and electronic contact using the longitudinal Survey of Social Relations ( Antonucci, Birditt & Webster, 2010 ). See Table 1 for a description of participant characteristics. We then examined the degree to which positive and negative relationship quality measured at Time 1, predicted adults’ frequency and use of different forms of communication 10 years later with members of their convoy, namely parents, spouse, child, and friend. We briefly report on our findings in the following paragraphs. For those who might doubt their use, we should note that older adults are increasingly using social media. While over 90% of young people are online and have cell phones, over half of adults age 65 and over are online and 78% own a cell phone ( Anderson, 2015 ; Zickuhr & Madden, 2012 ).

Social Relations Study Wave 3 (Time 2) Sample Descriptives ( N = 557)

Note . Includes nonindependent sample of respondents who completed interviews at both Time 1 and Time 2. M = mean; SD = standard deviation.

Considering different contact modes, as expected, in-person contact was most frequent with spouse (see Table 2 ). Electronic communication was lowest with parents. Interestingly, telephone use was consistent across all relationships.

Descriptive Statistics for Contact Frequency With Network Members via Different Modes a

Note. M = mean; SD = standard deviation.

In many cases, links between relationship quality and contact differed between younger and older adults, depending on the mode of contact. Among older respondents, in-person contact frequency with fathers with whom respondents had a highly negative relationship was much lower than among those with a lower negative relationship quality (see Figure 1 ; all graphs plotted at 1 SD above and below the mean for relationship quality and age). On the other hand, there was little difference among younger respondents’ contact frequency across levels of negative relationship quality with father.

Relationship quality by age interaction effect on in-person contact with father.

There was also an age × relationship quality effect on telephone contact with spouse indicating little difference among younger people, but older people with low spousal positive relationship quality reporting significantly less telephone contact with their spouse than those with a high spousal positive relationship quality ( Figure 2 ). The findings with respect to negative relationship quality were somewhat but not completely parallel. Level of negativity in the relationship did not influence frequency of telephone contact with friends among older people but, interestingly, more negativity in the relationship was associated with more telephone contact with friends among younger people ( Figure 3 ).

Relationship quality by age interaction effect on telephone contact with spouse.

Relationship quality by age interaction effect on telephone contact with friend.

Finally, we examined the use of electronic forms of communication such as video chat, Skype, text, Facebook, and email. There were no effects of positive relationship quality across any of these forms of communication, although older people were less likely to use them than younger people. This age effect was also evident for negative relationship quality. Older people with high negativity in their relationship with their child were significantly less likely to communicate with them electronically than those with low negativity in their child relationship ( Figure 4 ). On the other hand, once again there were no differences in electronic communications among young people regardless of the negativity of their relationship with child.

Relationship quality by age interaction effect on electronic contact with child.

In sum, these findings show how new ways of experiencing social relations vary by age and relationship type. These findings do suggest some age differences but perhaps most importantly highlight the role of relationship quality to mode of communication. New ways of engaging in social relations are not evenly experienced across generations, and hence point to new areas for investigating how social relations influence well-being. Next, we present the ways in which new contact forms via technological developments inform the scientific study of social relations in the context of demographic shifts and health.

Population Demographic Shifts

Many technological advances have occurred within the context of broader demographic changes, including shifts in mortality, fertility, mobility, and marital patterns ( Bianchi, 2014 ). Longer life spans provide older adults with more opportunities to build relationships with younger generations. Increased mobility and migration have led to less geographically proximate family networks, posing potential barriers to support exchanges and contact. Changes in marital patterns have resulted in increasing heterogeneity of family structures. Thus, older adults today are embedded within diverse and complex family structures that shape the type and quality of their social ties. It is important to consider these new aging family forms and functions when evaluating the role of technology in the establishment and maintenance of these social ties, and how the social needs of older adults are being met through technological advances in communication. We next discuss how these demographic shifts influence patterns of intergenerational and romantic relationships, the adaptation of immigrants, and the implications that technology has for these patterns.

Intergenerational Relations

Families are changing such that intergenerational ties, especially those across more than two generations, are becoming increasingly salient ( Antonucci, Jackson, & Biggs, 2007 ; Bengtson, 2001 ; Swartz, 2009 ). Although older adults are less likely to adopt new technologies, they may be motivated to do so by intergenerational ties, e.g., to learn to use a smartphone or social media in order to maintain contact with children and grandchildren. A recent cross-national study demonstrated that countries with a higher prevalence of mobile phone subscriptions also had higher levels of maternal contact by adult children, particularly daughters ( Gubernskaya & Treas, 2016 ).

Technology has the unique potential to influence grandparent–grandchild relationships due to younger generations’ faster adoption of new technologies. Although in-person communication continues to be the most frequent type of contact for grandparents, mobile phones, texting, and email are becoming increasingly popular as a means of staying in touch with grandchildren ( Hurme, Westerback, & Quadrello, 2010 ; Quadrello et al., 2005 ). Given the increased mobility of families and the inverse relationship between geographic proximity and in-person contact, newer communication technologies provide a means by which grandparents can overcome barriers of distance to maintain meaningful ties with younger generations.

Increased levels of intergenerational contact via multiple media platforms, including texting and social networking sites, can have both positive and negative implications for the quality of relationships. Increased contact between older and younger generations could foster feelings of solidarity and closeness, leading to more positive evaluations of the relationship. On the other hand, higher levels of telephone and electronic contact could also promote more negative interactions and exchanges, especially when compared to in-person contact which may mute negativity because of the ability to perceive real-time reactions. Similarly, more technologically proficient individuals may feel frustrated with friends or relatives who struggle to communicate with newer technologies, eroding the quality of their relationship. More research is needed to identify the positive and negative implications of contact via newer technologies for intergenerational relationships, especially given the generational disparities in technology use ( Fingerman & Birditt, 2011 ).

Immigrant Aging

New and varied ways to communicate across geographic distances have created a world of possibilities for immigrants. The advent of communication technologies such as Skype, WhatsApp, Viber, and FaceTime (among others), has made the ability to connect with close others who are geographically distant almost effortless. Moreover, smart phones are revolutionizing communication patterns, no longer restricting the ability to connect by having to be at a particular place. New technologies now facilitate connections between individuals wherever they are instead of individuals in specific locations. For older immigrants, these ways of having social relations may be a double-edged sword, as they facilitate relationships with those left behind, but may also make interactions in the host country more segregated. On the other hand, the Internet may simply serve as a buffer, much as ethnic enclaves do, facilitating adaptation and integration to the host society. We review recent findings in the following paragraphs.

Technology can be an outlet for immigrants who are socially isolated. For instance, among older immigrants from the former Soviet Union to Israel, social media became a resource that both reunited families and old friends living in various parts of the world, as well as helped to create new relationships ( Khvorostianov, Elias, & Nimrod, 2012 ). This way of practicing social relations overcame major problems encountered by elderly immigrants—that of loneliness and social isolation. Khvorostianov and colleagues illustrate that such connections served as a source of joy and empowerment, facilitating transnational connections created through the Internet, ultimately supporting social integration. Similar trends have been identified among older Chinese immigrants living in New Zealand ( Zhang, 2016 ).

For immigrants who leave their homeland at a young age, using information and communication technology (ICT) can, in fact, strengthen adaptation in the host country as one grows older. Hunter (2015) found that migrant workers from Africa living in France opted to remain in the host society after retirement given the ease with which they could connect with family back home as well as remain connected to attachments in France that were reinforced through smart phone technology. Evidence is accumulating to suggest that older immigrants’ social relations facilitated through ICT leads to stronger identities, and empowerment, overall enhancing quality of life. Yet, research of this sort is sparse, and generally occurs with small, nonrepresentative samples. The potential advantages and challenges that arise for immigrants through these new types of social relations is an area in need of further study.

Marital Patterns

A population trend that has widespread implications for how older adults use technology is the heterogeneity of marital statuses, including “gray divorce” (i.e., divorce after the age of 50; Brown & Lin, 2013 ) and never married older adults ( Cooney & Dunne, 2001 ). The misconception that older singles are not interested in finding and maintaining romantic relationships is countered by increasing numbers of later life daters ( Brown & Shinohara, 2013 ). The role that the Internet and social media play in establishing new romantic relationships presents a promising opportunity for research on how older adults use technology.

Although growing numbers of older adults turn to the Internet, including social media and dating websites, to find romantic partners, a surprising lack of attention has been paid regarding older adults’ use of technology to establish romantic connections. Online dating has become a popular means of finding romantic partners for people of all ages, including older adults. Some studies suggest that middle-aged and older adults may, in fact, be more likely than younger adults to use the Internet to meet potential partners ( Stephure, Boon, Mackinnon, & Deveau, 2009 ; Valkenburg & Peter, 2007 ). One advantage of online dating is that individuals’ partner preferences can be tailored and expectations can be explicitly stated. Older adults have been found to capitalize on this feature through the content of their online personal ads ( Alterovitz & Mendelsohn, 2009 ; Davis & Fingerman, 2016 ; Wada, Mortenson, & Hurd Clarke, 2016 ).

In response to older adults’ adoption of the Internet in finding romantic partners, dating websites have made a more concerted effort to target this population. Popular dating websites boast large bases of older subscribers, whereas others are solely dedicated to serving adults aged 50 and older (e.g. OurTime.com ). This is one example of how older adults are not simply consumers of new technology, but also influence the creation of new technology aimed to meet their social needs. Future research should consider the evolving bi-directionality of technology use by older individuals and their resulting influence on the development of new technology. Next, we consider how technology may impact social relations in the context of health.

Social Relations and Health

New technologies have been found to directly influence health due to the possibilities they generate to better connect with others. There is concern that the latest forms of contact and communication threaten community in the U.S. ( Althaus & Tewksbury, 2000 ); yet, it appears that using the Internet is associated with higher levels of perceived support among older adults ( Cody et al., 1999 ) and lower levels of isolation and loneliness ( Cotten, Anderson & McCullough, 2013 ). Further, older adults are often motivated to use new technologies so that they may connect with others ( Sims, Reed, & Carr, 2016 ). In sum, opportunities to enhance social relations through new technologies may initiate new ways to think about how social relations influence health and well-being.

New ways to create and sustain social relations may represent viable alternative sources for developing a sense of community in situations where mobility is limited or restricted. Research indicates that technological developments greatly expand communication options for older adults with mobility limitations, resulting in positive effects for well-being ( Jaeger & Xie, 2009 ; Sims et al., 2016 ). Yet, the effects of communication technology are not necessarily always direct. For instance, Elliot and colleagues (2014) found that ill-health was a considerably weaker predictor of depressive symptoms for high ICT users than for non/limited users, but there was no direct effect of ICT on depressive symptoms. Furthermore, limitations in activities of daily living were a stronger predictor of depressive symptoms for high ICT users. Hence, the benefits of ICT for health are still not clear. Yet, the benefit of ICT-mediated social relations for health and well-being suggests multiple avenues to pursue for social support interventions that may address the challenges that older adults face with the onset of chronic illness. Technological innovations have also spawned various new forms of telehealth communications and treatment as well as social support interventions for their caregivers. We present examples of these potential opportunities next.

Social Support, Intervention, and Technology

Innovative uses of technology have been applied to create social support interventions that maximize good health and well-being. Use of the Internet has opened new avenues for enhancing social support for older adults, especially to address the threat of social isolation and loneliness. One such intervention is the Personal Reminder Information and Social Management (PRISM) system ( Czaja et al., 2017 ). According to Czaja and colleagues, PRISM is a software application designed to support connectivity and resource access among older adults. In a randomized control trial, they showed that access to technology applications, especially email, Internet and games, facilitated social engagement, and provided an effective means of promoting social interactions and connections. Likewise, Delello and McWhorter (2017) showed in a mixed-method study among older adults living in a retirement community that iPads can be used to facilitate closer family relationships and greater overall connection to wider society. Moreover, both studies challenge myths that older adults avoid new technology. Instead, older adults can and will learn new skills to use technology successfully, even if they have never been exposed to it before.

Beyond the issue of social isolation, new communication technology creates unique ways for those with chronic disease to receive support that helps older adults meet the demands of managing illness. One promising mode involves interactive voice response technology (IVR). IVR provides an opportunity to use technology to schedule automated telephone assessment and self-care support calls ( Heisler & Piette, 2005 ). In the case of diabetes, Heilser and Piette used IVR to facilitate connections between peers with the same disease. Findings showed that the technology facilitates an opportunity for reciprocity, where each peer receives and as well as provides support. Moreover, the support experience appears to generate increased self-efficacy, ultimately contributing to better management of diabetes. The IVR technology has also been extended to create the notion of CarePartners as a means to address the health and well-being of informal caregivers ( Piette et al., 2015 ). Piette and colleagues conducted a randomized trial of mobile health support for heart failure patients and their informal caregivers. A CarePartner was identified by measuring the elements of closeness, support type, and quality of key individuals identified by the patient. That person then became the caregiver. The identified caregiver received weekly emails about their loved one’s status and suggestions for how to support self-management. In sum, the provision of informal support was facilitated by IVR and Internet technology. Technological innovations suggest several potential opportunities to leverage the benefits of social support for health and well-being.

Summary and Conclusion

New forms of communication have created unique challenges for understanding relationships. Electronic communication, such as Facebook, instant messaging, Snapchat, Skype, FaceTime, and have all created new opportunities to maintain contacts with close others. Cell phones and email have fundamentally changed how and how often people communicate. The reduced cost of these forms of contact has resulted in almost universal adaptation of some, if not all, of these tools of communication to maintain contact with friends and family. However, we know very little about the effect of these new forms of communication. On the plus side, increased communication can lead to less likelihood of isolation, with easy opportunity to share good news, seek advice about problems, manage health conditions, and generally enjoy exchanges with people we love ( Czaja, 2017 ; Delello & McWhorter, 2017 ; Leist, 2013 ). But is there a minus side? It is also possible that people are losing the art of face-to-face contact, that people are more negative in less personal forms of communication, witness the rise in cyberbullying, because they do not see another’s reactions. Although it is recognized that these public forms of communication can be hurtful, little is currently being done to restrict such negativity. These are challenges that clearly must be addressed. Incorporating new ways of having social relations into theory, recognizing that the use and benefits of technology likely vary according to personal and situational characteristics, and that these new social relations will influence health in unique ways represent important future directions. The convoy model provides a helpful framework for thinking about the ways in which new technologies create new forms of social relations. It is quite clear that the advent and evolution of new communication technologies provide exciting and promising new directions for how we develop, use, and experience social relations.

Conflict of Interest

None reported.

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health 1R01AG045423-01.

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How Technology Makes Us Better Social Beings

Sociologist Keith Hampton believes technology and social networking affect our lives in some very positive ways

Megan Gambino

Senior Editor

About a decade ago, Robert Putnam, a political scientist at Harvard University, wrote a book called Bowling Alone . In it, he explained how Americans were more disconnected from each other than they were in the 1950s. They were less likely to be involved in civic organizations and entertained friends in their homes about half as often as they did just a few decades before.

So what is the harm in fewer neighborhood poker nights? Well, Putnam feared that fewer get-togethers, formal or informal, meant fewer opportunities for people to talk about community issues. More than urban sprawl or the fact that more women were working outside the home, he attributed Americans’ increasingly isolated lifestyle to television. Putnam’s concern, articulated by Richard Flacks in a Los Angeles Times book review, was with “the degree to which we have become passive consumers of virtual life rather than active bonders with others.”

Then, in 2006, sociologists from the University of Arizona and Duke University sent out another distress signal—a study titled “Social Isolation in America.” In comparing the 1985 and 2004 responses to the General Social Survey, used to assess attitudes in the United States, they found that the average American’s support system—or the people he or she discussed important matters with—had shrunk by one-third and consisted primarily of family. This time, the Internet and cellphones were allegedly to blame.

Keith Hampton, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, is starting to poke holes in this theory that technology has weakened our relationships. Partnered with the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, he turned his gaze, most recently, to users of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

“There has been a great deal of speculation about the impact of social networking site use on people’s social lives, and much of it has centered on the possibility that these sites are hurting users’ relationships and pushing them away from participating in the world,” Hampton said in a recent press release. He surveyed 2,255 American adults this past fall and published his results in a study last month. “We’ve found the exact opposite—that people who use sites like Facebook actually have more close relationships and are more likely to be involved in civic and political activities.”

Hampton’s study paints one of the fullest portraits of today’s social networking site user. His data shows that 47 percent of adults, averaging 38 years old, use at least one site. Every day, 15 percent of Facebook users update their status and 22 percent comment on another’s post. In the 18- to 22-year-old demographic, 13 percent post status updates several times a day. At those frequencies, “user” seems fitting. Social networking starts to sound like an addiction, but Hampton’s results suggest perhaps it is a good addiction to have. After all, he found that people who use Facebook multiple times a day are 43 percent more likely than other Internet users to feel that most people can be trusted. They have about 9 percent more close relationships and are 43 percent more likely to have said they would vote.

The  Wall Street Journal  recently profiled the Wilsons, a New York City-based family of five that collectively maintains nine blogs and tweets incessantly. (Dad, Fred Wilson, is a venture capitalist whose firm, Union Square Ventures, invested in Tumblr, Foursquare and Etsy.) “They are a very connected family—connected in terms of technology,” says writer Katherine Rosman on  WSJ.com . “But what makes it super interesting is that they are also a very close-knit family and very traditional in many ways. [They have] family dinner five nights a week.” The Wilsons have managed to seamlessly integrate social media into their everyday lives, and Rosman believes that while what they are doing may seem extreme now, it could be the norm soon. “With the nature of how we all consume media, being on the internet all the time doesn’t mean being stuck in your room. I think they are out and about doing their thing, but they’re online,” she says.

This has been of particular interest to Hampton, who has been studying how mobile technology is used in public spaces. To describe how pervasive Internet use is, he says, 38 percent of people use it while at a public library, 18 percent while at a café or coffee shop and even 5 percent while at church, according to a 2008 survey. He modeled two recent projects off of the work of William Whyte, an urbanist who studied human behavior in New York City’s public parks and plazas in the 1960s and 1970s. Hampton borrowed the observation and interview techniques that Whyte used in his 1980 study “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces” and applied them to his own updated version, “The Social Life of Wireless Urban Spaces.” He and his students spent a total of 350 hours watching how people behaved in seven public spaces with wireless Internet in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Toronto in the summer of 2007.

Though laptop users tended to be alone and less apt to interact with strangers in public spaces, Hampton says, “It’s interesting to recognize that the types of interactions that people are doing in these spaces are not isolating. They are not alone in the true sense because they are interacting with very diverse people through social networking websites, e-mail, video conferencing, Skype, instant messaging and a multitude of other ways. We found that the types of things that they are doing online often look a lot like political engagement, sharing information and having discussions about important matters. Those types of discussions are the types of things we’d like to think people are having in public spaces anyway. For the individual, there is probably something being gained and for the collective space there is probably something being gained in that it is attracting new people.” About 25 percent of those he observed using the Internet in the public spaces said that they had not visited the space before they could access the Internet there. In one of the first longitudinal studies of its kind, Hampton is also studying changes in the way people interact in public spaces by comparing film he has gathered from public spaces in New York in the past few years with Super 8 time-lapse films that were made by William Whyte over the decades.

“There are a lot of chances now to do these sort of 2.0 versions of studies that have been ongoing studies from the ’60s and ’70s, when we first became interested in the successes and failures of the cities that we have made for ourselves,” says Susan Piedmont-Palladino, a curator at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. Hampton spoke earlier this month at the museum’s “Intelligent Cities” forum, which focused on how data, including his, can be used to help cities adapt to urbanization. More than half of the world’s population is living in cities now and that figure is expected to rise to 70 percent by 2050.

“Our design world has different rates of change. Cities change really, really slowly. Buildings change a little faster, but most of them should outlive a human. Interiors, furniture, fashion—the closer you get to the body, the faster things are changing. And technology right now is changing fastest of all,” says Piedmont-Palladino. “We don’t want the city to change at the rate that our technology changes, but a city that can receive those things is going to be a healthy city into the future.”

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Megan Gambino is a senior web editor for Smithsonian magazine.

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Part 1: Theories and Concepts of STS

5 Technological Determinism

Belle Salsone; Peter Sebastian Stein; Kaleb Gage Parsons; Thomas Kent; Krystal Nielsen; and David Thomas Nitz

We all know technology as an important part of our daily lives. Humans use tools everyday in order to make our lives easier. We use language to communicate with others, and we drive cars in order to get us from place to place, and as such a prevalent aspect of human life, it makes us question, “what exactly is technology? Where did it come from? and does  technology drive history?” The theory of technological determinism states that societal growth does in fact follow an inevitable course that is propelled by technological innovation. It brings light to the positive effects STS has on our lives

A simple example of this concept is the development of the wheel. It “revolutionized human mobility, allowing humans to travel greater distances and carry greater loads with them” (Drew 2021). From this one can conclude that this technological advancement heavily impacted the course of human history, thus substantiating the concept of technological determinism. In this chapter, more examples and concepts surrounding this idea that technology drives history will be discussed. www.communicationtheory.org

There are those who feel as though technology hasn’t influenced change to occur in society or believe that technology isn’t the main factor that causes society to progress. Many times people disagree with technological determinism because they focus on other factors that prompted the societal change being discussed instead of just focusing on the technology driven change. Some may even disagree with the theory because they interpret it as saying technology controls their lives, not them.

One of the more outspoken critics of technological determinism is Daniel Chandler. He believes that while technology does contribute to societal change, it isn’t the only factor causing the change. He states that many technological determinists have a reductionist interpretation, meaning they only see technology being the main factor of change, being the only cause. Chandler explains his theory in which societal change is multicausal rather than monocausal, meaning society’s progression is driven by multiple causes like economics, politics and education (Chandler, 2000). He goes on to say that technological determinism puts technology above society, which makes people feel hopeless to change society by themselves, thus causing a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ (Harrison, 2013).

Another position people have taken against technological determinism is that technology isn’t the causation factor, but rather a tool that could be used to assist in the evolution of society. As the American historian Lynn White writes “a new device merely opens a door; it does not compel one to enter” (White, 1971), meaning technology produces advancement if one allows it to. Another American academic, Ithiel de Sola Pool, states “Technology shapes the structure of the battle but not every outcome” (Finnegan et al., 1987), which implies that technology is a factor of change, but there are other factors as well that can prompt progression.

Relationship to STS

Which is more influential – technology over society or society over technology?

Many people believe that technology has a negative impact on society. Others believe that technology has no impact on society, and it is humans who take the technology and create negative impacts. For that reason, Technological Determinism is often called a “critics term.” To elaborate, “technological determinism” is predominantly employed as a critic’s term, used to dismiss certain classes of theoretical and empirical claims.”

The central issue here is agency. To what extent of control do we have? Is technology thrust upon us with some internal implications controlling our path dependency?

One critique is that “technology never forces itself on members of the society. Man creates technology and choses to use them…There is no imposition on the part of the technology to be used rather technology requires people to participate or involve themselves at some point or another to use a car or a microwave. The choice of using technology and experiencing its effects therefore lies in the hands of a human being (Communication Theory, 2018).”

Many technology scholars believed that technology developments would become out of control and shape society in drastic ways. They based this belief on the fact that their studies of technology showed that over time, technology would impact society in ways that creators did not intend (Drinkwater, 2018).

In short, there are two viewpoints when it comes to the debate of whether technology influences society or if society influences technology. While it is clear that both influence each other, scholars debate over which has more influence. The first group called the technological determinists chose the side that technology has the most impact on society, and that society has little to no say as to how technologies evolve. The opposing side of social determinists believe that society drives technological development. This group may claim that “We shape our technology, then technology shapes us (Drinkwater, 2018).”

Japan displays good examples of a social deterministic view of technology. The first example being that their toilets are very elaborate compared to Western-style toilets. Japanese toilets have a control panel with many settings including heated toilet seats, bidet-style functions, and sound masking features. These settings are incorporated into their toilets because of their high societal regard for cleanliness, which is

The technological determinist side of the debate argues that technology has shaped our lives dramatically in small and large ways. Perhaps smartphones can be an example of how technology has drastically influenced our daily habits. While smartphones have connected people from all different corners of the world, it has also been a relentless distraction for most smartphone owners. It’s undeniable that smartphones have benefited our lives greatly. We can conduct bank transactions, rescue workers can pinpoint exactly where help is needed, we can track how well we are sleeping at night, all from the ease of our fingertips. We rely on apps with mapping capabilities to direct us to places over memory. It has now become habitual for many people to use map apps to drive or walk somewhere we know how to get to heart. The question is: at what cost do these benefits come at? A person’s social and mental health can be at risk from the constant use of smartphones. Some people have even gone as far to say that smartphones can be as addictive and seen as somewhat of a drug. The irony is that although smartphones allow us to be constantly connected to each other, they are also constantly distracting us from the real world, and we are getting lost in virtual reality. People are consumed by phones, as you can see from the dozens of bowed heads staring at their phone, anywhere you go (Bhattacharjee, 2019).

At the University of Texas at Austin, psychologist Adrian Ward conducted a study where he challenged 800 participants with mental tasks. The challenge was to solve a math problem while memorizing a random sequence of letters, then selecting an image out of a group of options to make a visual pattern. One group of participants were asked to leave their smartphones in another room. The other group kept their phones in their pockets or in front of them, however, the participants were not allowed to use their phones during the tasks. The group that did not have their phone with them did better on the tasks than the group that had access to their phones. The psychologist concluded that smartphones did cause people to feel distracted, even though they were not using them, and diminished their cognitive abilities (Bhattacharjee, 2019).

Another study was conducted at the University of Columbia, to attest to the fact that smartphones adversely affect social interaction. The researchers gathered 300 participants to have dinner at a restaurant with friends or family. One group was asked to leave their phones on the table and the other group was asked to put them away. The group with their phones felt more distracted, and bored, enjoying their meal less than the group without their phone. Ethan Kross, a psychologist at the University of Michigan explained why something that is supposedly entertaining as a smartphone, would make us enjoy our meal less, “It’s well known that if you want to keep a person dialed into something, give them a reward at variable times. Turns out, that’s exactly what email or social media does– you don’t know when you’ll get another like or receive your next email, and so we keep checking (Bhattacharjee, 2019). The compulsive urge to constantly check your phone can be attributed to the fact that technology companies can carefully orchestrate apps and websites to keep you hooked and coming back for more. These companies create features to conduct positive reinforcement, encouraging smartphone owners to constantly check their favorite apps (Bhattacharjee, 2019).

As a response to these criticisms, there are now apps to track screen time, although there is no proof that this monitoring has users change their habits. A study was conducted of high school students as participants. Of these participants who checked their screen time monitoring apps on an occasional basis and saw they were spending more time than they originally thought, only about half did nothing to change their behavior (Bhattacharjee, 2019).

The question that still remains is the question of agency: what extent of control do we have? There is no doubt that technology influences our lives significantly, however; we do have complete freedom to use or to not use technology. We, as humans, need to actively work to not lose our sense of agency and control over technology. Right now, we are guided by technology. However, this is because we allow it. Literature’s popular trope that a creation can take on a life of its own, and the creator loses control of it, is a narrative that has warned future generations of the power of technology. Frankenstein and his monster is just one literature example of how innovation and endless possibility can lead to loss of control and destruction. We, as humans, need to analyze the complex relationship of humans and technology. From there, we can direct technological innovation as opposed to letting it direct us (Jain, 2021).

To further determine if technology shapes us or if we shape technology, we can examine human sentiment about technological innovation. A survey was conducted in 2017 that asked participants if they felt enthusiastic or worried about, “the increased role of automation in different facts of life, such as self-driving vehicles, robot caretakers, for older adults and, more generally, a future of machines performing jobs previously filled by humans (Jain, 2021).” In every category, there were more people that expressed worriedness than enthusiasm. Another 2019 study showed that, “nearly twice as many Americans believe automation has done more harm than good.” What this tells us is that people do feel as if technology shapes us, not vice versa. Humans feel a sense that they have lost agency, and that technology may have an adverse effect on society in the future (Jain, 2021).

So what can we do to respond to this dilemma? We must examine how new technologies are shaping and accepted into society. A field of study, called the foundation of control systems, has a feedback control system that attempts to limit the effects of newly deployed technology. The system collects measurements and compares them to a desired outcome, then implements an action to achieve that outcome. This template can be applied to analyze how we relate to and accept technology. We can see how individuals, and society are responding to new technologies. Leaders in the world such as engineers, policymakers, and business influencers have to play a role in this and actively participate to leverage their resources to help us mitigate any potential dangers (Jain, 2021).

Social Media Algorithms

Peter – examples of how social media’s algorithms feed off of society for marketing purposes?

Social Media Platforms & Echo Chambers

Examining how social media platforms like instagram have created echo chambers and comparison traps that are degrading valuable human interaction between younger generations.

How much time do you think the average teenager spends on social media every day? Most people would probably guess a few hours at the most, but still within reason. If that is what you think, then you would probably be surprised to hear that the average teenager actually spends around 9 hours a day looking at some form of social media (Fox). The real question now is what is this actual effect on these individuals who are spending an increasing amount of time online? The rise of social media has disconnected younger generations from each other by creating echo chambers and comparison traps which pushes society farther away from reality, and more towards a false utopia that no one will ever reach.

The first question that needs to be answered is how did social media get so ingrained into our society, and what platforms have become the most prominent? The main reason that people have become more engaged with social media is because “there are more layers of publicness available to those using networked media than ever before; as a result, people’s relationship to public life is shifting in ways we have barely begun to understand” (Matthews, 2016, p. 4). This shift has opened the door for many social media platforms to rapidly expand and root themselves into the culture. There are hundreds of platforms available, but the main one that has affected younger generations is Instagram.

[ 1 ] Source: Max J. Coppes

The first problem with social media, and Instagram in particular, is the prominence of echo chambers. There are two parts to echo chambers. The first is selective exposure which is defined as “the tendency to seek out opinion-reinforcing information,” and the second is selective avoidance which is similarly defined as “avoiding opinion-challenging views” (Pamelee, 2020). When these two parts are implemented as algorithms into social media platforms like Instagram, they will funnel very specific information toward an individual. This will then create a fake reality bubble around them where they perceive the world in a very narrow light, which can hurt their ability to communicate with people outside of their bubble.

The second problem with Instagram is the effects of comparison traps. “People are most likely to share peak experiences and flattering news about themselves… The narrow, distorted slice of reality that is displayed on social media is almost perfectly constructed to make viewers feel deficient and discouraged” (Webber, 2017). When individuals – especially younger generations who are easily impressionable – see someone post the best experiences of their lives, they will inevitably compare it to the entirety of their life, with all its ups and downs, and feel as though they are worthless. This cycle is very harmful for people and will affect how they interact with others, because they will feel as though their lives are not exciting enough. In many cases, people will also turn it into a never ending competition of posting the best parts of their lives to try and outdo others on social media. The fake realities that are created from comparison traps on social media have become harmful to society, and reshaped the culture in unexpected ways.

[ 2 ] Source: Lara Antal

When analyzing the effects of echo chambers and comparison traps on individuals, there is a clear correlation between time spent on social media and a degraded mental health and diminished ability to communicate. Research has shown that an increased amount of time on Instagram and other social media platforms has led to increased feelings of depression and low self esteem (Hunt, 47). While analyzing the effects of technological determinism in this chapter, social media has shown to be changing the environment in which people communicate in ways that are not beneficial to our mental and relational health.

Internet as a Utility – Thomas Johnson

Over the past couple of years, schools have shifted towards online educational methods which have allowed us to adapt in this continuously changing world. But, what about those students who don’t have access to the internet? For those students who are not fortunate enough to have fast and reliable internet access, getting an education has only become much more difficult. In today’s world the internet has become almost a necessity to survive in our technologically driven society and many believe that the internet should now be a school-managed public utility. This would allow internet access to students located all over the United States, but would also pose a lot of problems towards getting internet access to everybody such as infrastructure, service and support, and affordability. Ultimately, internet access has become a crucial part of society today and is something that needs to be managed as a public utility so that education can be accessible to all.

In today’s world internet access has become a necessity and Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of the advocacy group Public Citizen claims, “It’s critical to the functioning of society.” She continues to say that “treating the internet like electricity or water is the way we need to think about it” (Lazarus). The Internet has become the infrastructure of our lives and now more than ever internet access has become crucial to get an education as well as work from home.

Unfortunately, for those less fortunate students, getting an education has only become harder due to the shift towards online classes. Jonathan Browning of Duke University states, “In the past five years, studies have shown that 35% of lower-income households (annual income of under $35,000 a year) with children in school lack broadband access, compared with just 6% of households making upwards of $75,000 a year” (Browning). This shows that a majority of those families who don’t have access to the internet at home have to travel to local public areas that have internet just for their children to get an education. From this many people believe that it is necessary to treat the internet as a utility and that infrastructure must be built in order to reach everyone. Browning also reported that 70% of teachers assign homework that requires broadband access and 65% of students use the Internet to complete assignments ” (Browning). But, obviously without internet access at home, none of this would be possible.

While it is apparent that internet access and infrastructure needs to be increased across the nation, making the internet accessible to a wide range of the population is not such an easy task. There are a lot of challenges that come along with this such as affordability, infrastructure, and service and support. Affordability is one of the biggest issues as many families have numerous different expenses to the point that they can’t afford to spend the extra money on fast and reliable internet access every month. Another big issue is putting together infrastructure that is strong enough to accommodate for everyone to achieve fast and reliable internet access. Achieving this would require a large amount of funding and work as extending fiber networks towards every community would be a difficult task. The last big problem is service and support as when something goes wrong with the internet, someone has to find a solution to the problem. Every community deserves fast and reliable internet, but what happens when internet access gets interrupted or stops functioning? It shows how much work needs to be done in order to get internet access to everyone in our society,

Overall we can see how dependent our society has become on the internet and how many students need access to the internet in order to successfully obtain an education. The internet has played a big role in our everyday lives and ultimately our society needs to make the internet a school-managed public utility. In today’s world we have seen how many classes have shifted towards online educational methods and for those students who don’t have fast and reliable internet access getting an education can be a difficult task. Altogether as the internet has taken control of our everyday lives it is apparent that internet access needs to be developed into a school-managed public utility so that a good education can be accessible to all.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Artificial Intelligence is not simply a robot invasion. In reality, it applies to a very broad aspect of our lives, everyday taking a more ever present role in societal functioning.

In the near future most, if not all cars will be guided by artificial technology that allows the passenger to sit in the back seat, allowing them to be more efficient and productive than if they actually had to drive. (Coeckelbergh) These cars also allow the roadways to be more safe, as the complex algorithms and exceedingly quick machine reaction times drastically minimize the chances of collisions. Even today, multiple companies such as TESLA have vehicles that are fully autonomous on the freeway and highway, as well as low-traffic country roads.

Algorithms are the pure essence of artificial intelligence as they inform the main computer how to make decisions. As time passes, these algorithms grow more complex and allow for the computers to make more well informed decisions from larger amounts of data. A prime example of this is using the COMPAS algorithm within the criminal justice system. The COMPAS system allows for the court to determine the likelihood of the guilty becoming repeat offenders, which then gives them more information with regards to bail and sentencing. It has been proven to be 63% accurate which is astronomically high given the complexity and variability of the human subconscious and their corresponding actions(Coeckelbergh). Once again, this algorithm gives society the means to be safer and more efficient.

The beneficial effect of artificial intelligence even goes beyond safety; in fact, it has the necessary capability to greatly restore the quality of life in the medical sector. Those with the disease ALS gradually lose all muscular control, including the ability to speak, while maintaining the same quality and functioning of their mind. However, due to AI developments, programs have been created to track the users eye movements which then synthesize the words allowing the user to regain the ability to speak again (Hamet). Before AI these people lost their ability to speak for good, but now, they still have the ability to communicate with their peers and family which greatly improves their quality of life.

Missing Voices

Boyd and Ellison define social media as an internet platform that allows people to interact and develop social relationships through private or public online profiles (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). Despite the usefulness of Social Media, researchers claim it to be widely manipulative. The 2020 Netflix hit “The Social Dilemma” introduces the public to this manipulation and exposes the dark business models. Platforms take advantage of users’ behavioral vulnerabilities and social rewards for revenue, even with the cost of social media addiction and the escalation of mental health issues (Roy, 2020). Notably, the companies use unethical algorithms to profit off the missing voices of college students.

[ 3 ] Source: Oladimeji Ajegbile

Social media companies commonly profit off users through the Attention Economic business model. Within a Cambridge article, Bhargava & Velasquez summarize that the model is an ad-based practice. The user’s attention is the product, and businesses sell this attention to the advertisers or other buyers. The longer a user spends on their platform, the more that companies profit. Platforms retain attention through rewarding mechanisms like infinite scrolling, “likes,” and intermittent variable rewards.

Infinite scrolling entices users to continue scrolling because it inhibits stopping cues. Platforms also integrate social validation through likes, encouraging individuals to spend more time online. Additionally, companies like Twitter and Pinterest use intermittent variable signals, which keep users’ attention by reducing content predictability. For example, Twitter uses the blue loading screen

[ 4 ] Source: Ron Lach

to hide tweets, and Pinterest only shows portions of images at the bottom of the screen. These platform elements increase the amount of time that users spend online, increasing the amount of collectible data. This data is thereby used through algorithms to keep users on social media. Furthermore, this fact is concerning, given that most news is on social media (Bhargava & Velasquez, 2020).

In a 2020 study about the impacts of social media on the social comparison of women in college, Engeln and others determined that women spend significantly more time looking at people on Instagram than on Facebook. Women online are often portrayed with unrealistic body types, contributing to comparison. Given the study results, companies should rethink business practices (Engeln et al., 2020).

Algorithmic content retains attention through trending posts, friends’ posts or comments, and clickbait, using personalized ads for profit. In an article about recommender systems, Bojić and others define this content in more detail. Specifically, algorithms use artificial intelligence to provide systems with harvested user data (Bojić et al., 2021).

It is problematic that businesses utilize this model, because social media platforms are addictive. In the Cambridge article, they define internet addiction as “a behavioral addiction.” Specifically, it encompasses several terms, including social media addiction (Bhargava & Velasquez, 2020). Further, the impact of addiction on individuals is concerning, especially considering the prevalence of internet addiction among college students. Setty and others reported the majority of internet addiction among college students in Jodhpur, India. The researchers discovered that “51%” of the 2,035 students suffered from addictive symptoms (Setty & Rajasekhar et al., 2021).

Despite internet addiction’s broad definition, there is controversy over how to describe it. In the Cambridge article, they counter the discussion with supportive evidence for internet addiction. They cite the supportive material of internet overuse and connections between people with internet and substance addiction.

Additionally, the article explains how companies exploit the users’ vulnerabilities, to keep them addicted to the platforms. Two of the discussed vulnerabilities include an individual’s need or desire for the rewards and the importance of the internet to daily life.  (Bhargava & Velasquez, 2020). Boer and others attempt to explain the relationship between social-media-use intensity and adolescent wellbeing in another article. They conclude that “the higher adolescents’ average intensity of certain” social media usage “activities, the lower their average level of life satisfaction” (Boer & Stevens et al.,  2022). This information is concerning, given that Undergraduate Freshmen and Sophomores are at the end of the adolescent age range from 18-19 years old.

To measure the consequences and risk factors of social media misuse, researchers Zhang and Rau analyze 12 questionnaires in a 2020 article. They conclude that social-media-misuse (SMM) of Facebook leads to a deterioration in self-control ability. Additionally, they analyze a positive relationship between the combination of perceived envy through social comparison tendencies and depression, which poor self-esteem may exacerbate (Zhang & Rau, 2020). These behavioral tendencies may also harm interpersonal relationships. Further, those with emotional instability have shown an elevated risk of developing SMM (McCrae & Gealish, 2019).

There are several proposed solutions to the business models with platforms that contribute to poor mental health and social media misuse. Sarah Brown proposes two solutions in an MIT Management Sloan School article. The first is a subscription-based model, which would, “allow businesses to own the relationship with customers.” The company Neeva uses this model by directing individuals to the most helpful content instead of prioritizing profit from searches. The alternative to the subscription model is Identity Verification, which requires accounts to access feeds. LinkedIn uses this system, limiting the number of uncredible users (Brown, 2021). Overall, these solutions may produce profitable platforms that are healthy for users.

Here you will provide an infographic that sums up your theory or concept that includes a brief definition, its relationship to STS, and brief examples.

Chapter Questions

• After reading this chapter, what do you think the most important effect technology has on our lives?
• What is one direct way that technology has made our lives safer or more functional?
• What technological advances do you foresee within the near future?
• In what ways do computer algorithms advance society?

[1] https://med.unr.edu/news/archive/2019/coppes-teens-and-social-media

[2] https://www.verywellfamily.com/ways-social-media-affects-teen-mental-health-4144769

[3] https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-in-white-crew-neck-top-reaching-for-the-like-3314294/

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Historical Perspectives on Technology, Culture, and Society

A new book series published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Introduction to the Series

Technology—broadly understood as material artifacts or assemblages of artifacts used by humans to reconfigure social, political, economic activity—has been the subject of a vast canon of scholarship. When the field of the history of technology first developed, scholars devoted much attention to those technologies (and practices associated with them) that seemed to have punctuated important turnings points in the history of humankind. These technologies and practices included, for example, farming and food-storage techniques in the neolithic era, metallurgy, weaving, printing, and electronics. Historians of technology exploring early human civilization, antiquity, and then the middle ages often focused on moments of technical creation in the global context. However, as their temporal focus gravitated to the early modern and modern eras, they have typically narrowed their purview to Western Europe and North America as the geographic loci for the development of technology. Here, they represented the high points of the history of technology in, for example, printing in the fifteenth century, the steam engine in the eighteenth, industrial factories in the nineteenth, and nuclear power in the twentieth. This literature, while valuable for mining the empirical and narrative threads of many technologies, ultimately proved limited for a variety of reasons.

Historians beginning the 1980s onwards have invoked, rethought, and imagined many newer approaches to the history of technology. These have identified, for example: the limitations of deterministic views of technologies as disembodied forces simply acting on society; the many serious pitfalls of Eurocentric narratives that ignore or minimize the costs and contributions of violence, dispossession, and colonialism to the history of technology; the fundamental inequalities of race and gender embedded in both the history and historiography of technology; the question not only of failed technologies, but as Edward Jones-Imhotep has noted, failure as “a condition that machines experience”; and the irreversible costs to both societies and the environment of capitalism to this same history, damage that was occluded from the received literature by triumphalist narratives enraptured by the cult of Western progress and “innovation.” This is not to say that we have always avoided looking at the deleterious costs of technology in history but that the history of technology is far more complex and difficult to parse than we might have imagined. We can still speak of the revolution in mass production in American factories but also account for how the aftereffects of slavery were fundamental to its conception. First and foremost, we have asked ourselves, how positions of power have blinded us to substantive actors, forces, and movements in the global history of technology.

Despite the many recent academic contributions to the history of technology, the mutual interactions between technology and society have often been neglected in the high school, college, and even university curricula. When teachers unfamiliar with its rich historiography do consider technology, they all too often treat it as inert or determinate, lending their authority to the fallacy that it advances according to its own internal logic. Most historians of technology now largely agree that technologies (and technological systems) are socially constructed; that technologies succeed or fail (or emerge at all) partly because of the political strategies employed by “actors”—individuals, groups, and organizations—that have conflicting or complementary interests in particular outcomes. Most of them also agree that success or failure is also contingent on inescapable physical realities, “that the human fabric depends to a large degree on the behavior of atoms,” as the distinguished historian and metallurgist Cyril Stanley Smith put it. But there is no doubt that technological designs are shaped by ambient social and cultural factors—nor, indeed, that the shaping of technology is integral to the shaping of society and culture.

This monograph series, originally a joint venture of the Society for the History of Technology and the American Historical Association but now published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, draws on the analytical insights of scholars who address technology in social and cultural context. Our goal is to publish scholarship by authors interested in a diversity of approaches, including those who are concerned primarily with the relationship of technology to labor, economics, political structure, or the organization of production; with the role that technology plays in differentiating social class and the construction of gender; with scholarship on those who extend the daily operation of technological systems instead of those who “innovate”; in those who have been written out of the historiography of technology because they did not fit into white male heteronormative narratives; and sometimes, as Jahnavi Phalkey has noted, “explor[ing] the local nature and site of scientific knowledge in reference to its interactions with international history.”

We take for granted the assumption that technology is not intrinsically useful or even rational; that capitalist ideology, in particular, has served to mask powerful nonutilitarian motives for technological novelty, among them kinesthetic pleasure, a sense of play, curiosity, and the exercise of ingenuity for its own sake, a phenomenon some have characterized as “technological enthusiasm.” As evidence of this, many technologies—from the mechanical clock during the Renaissance to the telephone and the automobile more recently—met only marginal needs at the outset. Needs with any substantial economic significance had to be contrived, thereby making “invention” the mother of necessity.

There are various definitions of technology. Sometimes it is defined as the way that “things are done or made,” and this is a useful definition whenever one asks how things were done or made in a particular way in a particular context. Lynn White, Jr., a historian who served as president of both the Society for the History of Technology and the American Historical Association, called this “the jungle of meaning.” While the notion that technology marches of its own predetermined accord still has a strong hold on popular sensibilities, specialists in the interaction of technology, society, and culture now understand that it cannot do anything of the sort. Technology is not autonomous; rather, it is impelled by choices made in the context of circumstances in ambient realms, very often in the context of disputes over power manifested in registers of politics, gender, race, and inequality. Once chosen, however, technologies can exert a powerful influence on future choices.

Definitions of technology vary from one discipline to another. We believe that defining it as “the sum of the methods by which a social group provides itself with the material objects of their civilization” is sufficiently concrete without being too confining. It is important to specify the word material, for there are of course “techniques” having to do with everything from poetics to sex to bureaucratic administration. Some might go further and specify that “material” be taken to mean three-dimensional “things,” and this seems satisfactory as long as one bears in mind that even an abstraction such as a computer program, or an idea for the design of a machine, or an ideology such as technocracy or scientific management is contingent upon its expression in tangible artifacts.

In commissioning and editing the monographs in this series, we seek to have each one convey a broadly informed synthesis of the best scholarship, to outline the salient historiographical issues, and to highlight interpretive stances that seem persuasive to our own generation. We believe that the scholars represented in this series have all succeeded in integrating their inquiries with mainstream scholarship, and we trust that their monographs provide ample confirmation of this belief.

— Pamela O. Long and Asif Siddiqi, Series Editors — Robert C. Post, Advisory Editor

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How does technology affect kids’ social development?

How do technology-mediated experiences impact social development across childhood? What role do devices and digital media play in social interactions and the development of critical social skills?

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Modern devices have so many uses, they can have both positive and negative impacts on children’s social development. They can provide opportunities for connection and social support. They can also displace social interaction or promote conflict. Prosocial content can encourage behaviors like helping and kindness. Antisocial content can promote behaviors like aggression, violence, or hate.

Impacts vary across developmental stages, as children have different needs at different ages.

In early childhood, children are dependent on serve-and-return interactions for healthy social development. When a baby babbles and an adult responds, this provides critical input that teaches the baby about social interaction. Videos and shows (with the exception of video chatting) cannot provide the same quality of responsive interaction. The use of screen devices as calming tools during early childhood can also interfere with the development of important emotion-regulation skills.

As children get older, technology can serve as a tool for social interaction (social media and multiplayer video games, for example). However, technology often strips away critical elements of social interaction. Depending on the use, additional cues from body language, facial expressions, eye contact, and tone of voice are lost. The asynchronicity of messages and posting also alter the nature of interactions that would otherwise happen in real time.

In adolescence, the brain is hardwired to prioritize social responses, especially with peers. This can make social platforms particularly rewarding, but also an increased risk for youth vulnerable to rejection.

At all ages, it is important to promote screen behaviors that enhance connection with others. Establishing a healthy balance with offline interactions is also important.

More nuance might be needed when thinking about screen time, or screen use, and social development. Some takeaways: it matters if the screen use displaces needed experience. If you’re on the screen, you’re not engaging with the person that can help you develop your skills. The age of the child matters – with younger children, there’s less learning. They’re not going to get as much out of it as when they’re older.

What are the most effective digital parenting strategies?

Can parents be too hands-off or too hands-on? How do you parent a child versus a teen online? Is it even possible to supervise a kid in a digital age?

What is Generative AI?

What is Generative AI? How does it work, and what makes it “intelligent” in the first place?

Are video games addictive?

Is video game addiction a real disorder? If so, what are the possible signs?

Are some types of screen time better than others?

Are some types of screen time better than others? How does this change depending on a child’s age or other factors?

Does screen media exposure cause obesity in children?

Is increased screen time linked to youth obesity? Does time spent watching TV, playing video games, or scrolling social media impact body weight?

How does technology affect kids' social development?

Impact of Social Change Through Science and Technological Advancement in Nigeria’s Economy

• Living reference work entry
• First Online: 19 May 2023
• Cite this living reference work entry

• Nkechi Omumu Anyadike 7 ,
• Stephen Tochukwu Nwachukwu 7 ,
• Uchenna Agu Sylvia 7 ,
• Okechukwu Ugwu 7 &
• Nwamaka Patricia Ibeme 8  

27 Accesses

Social change has been phenomenal in the sectors of information and communication technology. Banking, health, and academics impact the global economy through the technological advancement of robotics, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, etc., thereby transforming and altering the process and procedure of doing things and living. Whereas the general objective of this work is to ascertain the impact of social change through science and technological advancement in Nigeria’s Economy from 1960 to 2020, the hypotheses were: Revolutionary changes in banking sectors and schools’ development are the impacts of social change through science and technological advancement in Nigeria’s Economy from 1960 to 2020, and corruption, funding, and lack of development plans are factors militating against technological advancement through the social change in Nigeria’s Economy. Etc and leveraging the qualitative method of data analysis and technical theory on social change and structural functionalism theory. The work argues that Nigeria is lagging, and there are negative impacts of social change on Nigeria’s Economy. Due to social and institutional factors inherent in her administrative system of governance, which triggered the endsars protest by the youth Sequel, the work recommended institutionalizing good management and adequate funding. It concluded that social change is imminent and has the capacity through Nigeria’s potential to drive her economy to the best 20 economies in the world.

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Department of Public Administration Local Government, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu State, Nigeria

Nkechi Omumu Anyadike, Stephen Tochukwu Nwachukwu, Uchenna Agu Sylvia & Okechukwu Ugwu

Department of Public Administration, National Open University of Nigeria, Abuja, Nigeria

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Anyadike, N.O., Nwachukwu, S.T., Sylvia, U.A., Ugwu, O., Ibeme, N.P. (2023). Impact of Social Change Through Science and Technological Advancement in Nigeria’s Economy. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87624-1_99-1

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