An underlying thread in yesterday’s post on persistent chat rooms is that technology and culture influence each other. We usually tell the story that culture creates a technology, because that explanation seems the most natural way to understand our history and it puts our choices at the forefront, but we also have to consider the ways in which technology either influences or creates culture.
The technology that powered the industrial revolution created the industrial society.
The mass production of automobiles created a culture of commuters, vacationers, and the suburbs.
Radio created a culture of listeners and spawned jazz, big band, and fireside chats.
Television created the culture of Hollywood, MTV, always-on news, and reality TV shows.
The Internet is creating a culture that’s changing so fast that I’m afraid to give examples that may be dated by the time you read this.
As much as technology is created from the fabric of our culture, technology also creates the fabric of our culture. If we follow this thread to its extension, technology creates itself. It’s this awareness that technology is creating itself that makes movies like The Terminator or Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron work. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
Because technologists or historians are often leading the discussion on how technology creates culture, there tends to be this sense of abstractness or extremeness to it. There’s a jump from, say, cars to suburbia. Yes, I did it above, because those extremes are helpful to see. But I believe those big jumps also make the discussion seem less personal to us, because they’re the story of large social changes that we’re reacting to, rather than actively reinforcing or co-creating with others.
Let’s take the daily personal view here:
- Every time a notification pops up on your phone or desktop, that’s technology influencing culture.
- Every time you’re at a table with your friends and are balancing interacting with them and interacting with your phone, that’s technology influencing culture.
- Every time you can order something from an online vendor rather than going to a local store, that’s technology influencing culture.
- Every time you or your kids log on to have some social time with friends rather than going over to their houses, that’s technology influencing culture.
- Every time a teammate or your entire team is so buried under email that they can’t think straight, that’s technology influencing culture.
- Every time you go to a new place based on its Yelp profile and reviews, that’s technology influencing culture.
- Every time one of us sits down to consume our nightly on-demand entertainment, that’s technology influencing culture.
The many hundreds of small ways that technology alters our individual and collective behavior on a daily basis add up to the cultural changes the technologists and historians point to. And, of course, for each of those examples, someone’s personal behavior can alter the group’s behavior. It’s just harder to do so because of how quickly, ubiquitously, and unconsciously so many of those norms are forming.
Though it may sound like it at times, I’m not a pessimist about where these norms are leading us because they’re also enabling social change like the Arab Spring, global connectedness, new economic realities and pathways, and better government. Because of technology, we can find or create the communities and relationships that fit our version of thriving, whatever that might be. I’m eternally hopeful that we can lean into the good, minimize the bad, and consciously explore the grey areas, which exactly why I talk so much about how technology is affecting our lives, relationships, communities, and work.
There are many views on this issue of the influence of one on another. If one takes into consideration that technology is anything that has a purpose then the big bang was the very first technology and a neutron atom shot into space at that instance and may still be somewhere in the cosmos is technology waiting to be combined with other atoms to form a different technology. Yes, societies and cultures influence technology in the sense they have some purpose needing fulfilling and look to a technology for a solution. By the same token, a technology can adapt, be created, evolve and a culture can see a purpose. (i.e., fire).
If you stick with your original thesis, that technology and culture influence each other, you might describe the development of suburbia differently. Suburbs began forming around train lines, long before mass produced automobiles, but the development of mass-produced automobiles, improved road-building technologies, improved home-building technologies, and other communication technologies allowed people to build further afield, on less expensive land. The desires and opportunities together fueled further development of new technologies to meet the desires of society. Technologies don’t invent themselves, nor spring fully formed out of the thigh of Zeus, but are adapted and refined by human needs and uses, including unanticipated uses and impacts. It is a challenge always to avoid a deterministic approach when describing the relationships between culture and technology, but ultimately if we can avoid resorting to determinism, we will have a better understanding of what is really happening.
Hi Glenn,
Your point is dead-on and I think we’re largely in agreement. As far as a tighter description goes, we can chart when a technological or cultural item trend tips from outlier to fad to trend to zeitgeist to cultural foundation; not all items make the progression and it definitely doesn’t happen overnight. To make matters even more complex, we often can’t tell during the transition where it’s going to end up.
For instance, will the virtual realities we’re creating now (World of Warcraft, Pokemon Go) be a trend or will they create a long-term cultural foundation a la Ready Player One? Is digital publishing closer to Polaroids or to the Gutenberg press?
There’s some probabilistic concept between determinism and mere tendency that seems closer to what’s really happening, but you’re right in that it’s not strictly determinism at play.
Technology does not create itself. Technology is invented or created by human beings, as is that vaguely defined, vast panoply of activities and objects we call “culture.” Indeed, technology can be conceived of as an aspect of culture.
explain how the physical environment and
technology influence culture ?
I’m not sure I know what you’re asking since this post is specifically about just technology influencing culture. Can you explain a little further?
Technology is created through the influenced by a culture, and culture is also influenced by technology. Technology and culture are interrelated variables that links with each other. Both influenced the other. Though technologies are made by humans, it is because of the influence of other cultures. The modern world is the evidence how culture is influenced by technology. We have gone this far to innovate different technologies and still continues to make one because of the new ideas we have in our minds.
yes ok
I learned absolutely everything about my question when I read this post, thanks to the author for the detailed description. I wrote my review on the site you can go in and read. Thank you very much for your attention and your time.
Hi thanks for the great article. I agree that technology and culture influence each other and makes people closer and dearer all over the world. Thanks to technology, borders have conditionally disappeared, because now at any time you can call a person on the other side of the planet or see a person via video link. This brought the world very close and helps it develop.