Sociology in Technology
How culture and society influence technology and how technology in turn influences cultural and social experience?
Culture: the social heritage of a people .Learned patterns for thinking, feeling, and acting that are transmitted from one generation to the next through material and nonmaterial means
Society: group of people who live within the same territory and share a common culture
TECHNOLOGY – ancient Greek word techne translated as “art”, “craft” or "skill.”
“Technology: a system created by humans that uses knowledge and organization to produce objects and techniques for the attainment of specific goals.”(Rudi Volte, Society and Technological Change, 1992)
"Necessity is the mother of invention" (Republic,Plato) when the need for something becomes imperative, you are forced to find ways of getting or achieving it.
"Invention mother of necessity" (Alex Alben) Once we are introduced to new inventions, they become a necessity in our lives.
How technology influences cultural and social experience?
We cannot say that technology changes everything. What we really need to understand is what it does and does not change. Technology affects the way you think, act, and behave and you in turn influence the way technology thinks, acts, and behaves. How norms and cultures get embedded in technological systems?
ex: Mobile phones have also led to changing social mores. Informal social norms have developed around the use of mobile phones in public situations. We believe it is okay to use a cellphone when walking down the street, but not at a movie theater.
In what way does culture and social structures shape the design and use of technology?
Media globalization is the worldwide integration of media through the cross-cultural exchange of ideas, while technological globalization refers to the cross-cultural development and exchange of technology (Thomas Friedman, The World Is Flat, 2005).
Technological globalization: Cross-cultural development and exchange of technology and Cross-cultural exchange of ideas.
Education and technology
Workforce and technology
Health and technology
Entertainment and technology
Digital Natives- applies it to a new group of students enrolling in educational establishments referring to the young generation as "native speakers" of the digital language of computers, videos, video games, social media VS Digital Immigrants- grew up in a pre-computer world (Marc Prensky)
Sociological Perspective
Functionalist perspective:
How culture and society influence technology and how technology in turn influences cultural and social experience?
Culture: the social heritage of a people .Learned patterns for thinking, feeling, and acting that are transmitted from one generation to the next through material and nonmaterial means
Society: group of people who live within the same territory and share a common culture
TECHNOLOGY – ancient Greek word techne translated as “art”, “craft” or "skill.”
“Technology: a system created by humans that uses knowledge and organization to produce objects and techniques for the attainment of specific goals.”(Rudi Volte, Society and Technological Change, 1992)
"Necessity is the mother of invention" (Republic,Plato) when the need for something becomes imperative, you are forced to find ways of getting or achieving it.
"Invention mother of necessity" (Alex Alben) Once we are introduced to new inventions, they become a necessity in our lives.
How technology influences cultural and social experience?
We cannot say that technology changes everything. What we really need to understand is what it does and does not change. Technology affects the way you think, act, and behave and you in turn influence the way technology thinks, acts, and behaves. How norms and cultures get embedded in technological systems?
ex: Mobile phones have also led to changing social mores. Informal social norms have developed around the use of mobile phones in public situations. We believe it is okay to use a cellphone when walking down the street, but not at a movie theater.
In what way does culture and social structures shape the design and use of technology?
Media globalization is the worldwide integration of media through the cross-cultural exchange of ideas, while technological globalization refers to the cross-cultural development and exchange of technology (Thomas Friedman, The World Is Flat, 2005).
- Create and share symbols that become part of the social construction of reality.
Technological globalization: Cross-cultural development and exchange of technology and Cross-cultural exchange of ideas.
- Commercial
- Entertainment
- Social Norms (Dating rules, style of dress)
- Are technologies "gendered"? Are some technologies identified with women other with men?
- The Pink Tax (Why woman razors are pink and usually cost more? )
- Sorting out the question of feminist technology - New York University
- Ellen van Oost “Materialized Gender: How Shavers Configure the Users’ Femininity and Masculinity,” in: Pinch and Oudshoorn, Eds., How Users Matter (MIT Press, 2003): 193-208.
- Women and Technology
- Here's Why Companies Are Desperate To Hire Anthropologists many large technology companies, employ anthropologists and sociologists to study how people use their products.While new technologies can be important and they change our way of life, they don’t get to the core of who we are as human beings. By observing people's daily lives and the ways in which they interact with products, consultancies like sociologist are able to determine what products mean to customers in a way that big data can't determine.
- George Ritzer and McDonaldization
NOVA | Rise of the Hackers (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/rise-of-the-hackers.html - 1994 talking about what the Internet will be able to do in the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r49TViy6SKw - Infograph by Ethan Sapolsky: Globalization
https://infogr.am/sociologys_project - Fred Turner, “Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy: the WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community,” Technology and Culture, 46 (2005): 485-512
- Nelly Oudshoorn, “How Man Came to be Included in the Contraceptive Research Agenda,” Ch. 2 in The Male Pill: A Biography of a Technology in the Making (Duke University Press, 2003), p. 19-51.
Education and technology
- What Is The Value Of An Education In The Humanities?
- The Importance of McDonaldization to students
- NASA Helps Launch Data Science Grad Program
- Classroom Technology Survey Results
- Bridging the Digital Divide in Education
Workforce and technology
- Addressing the Digital Divide
- Sociology, Economics Researchers Receive Grant to Study How STEM Education Contributes to Workforce Success
- Google Glass: a sociological perspective
Health and technology
- The Bear Beatrice Lipp, a patient at Boston Children's Hospital, meets Huggable, a robotic teddy bear. The robot's creators are studying whether it can have therapeutic value for hospitalized children.
- Watch » NY Times Video
- Nomophobia is the fear of being out of mobile phone contact. It is, however, arguable that the word "phobia" is misused and that in the majority of cases it is only a normal anxiety.
- Genetic Engineering
- Genetic ancestry testing
Entertainment and technology
- Get A Grip On Your Information Overload With 'Infomagical'
http://www.wnyc.org/story/case-infomagical/
Digital Natives- applies it to a new group of students enrolling in educational establishments referring to the young generation as "native speakers" of the digital language of computers, videos, video games, social media VS Digital Immigrants- grew up in a pre-computer world (Marc Prensky)
Sociological Perspective
Functionalist perspective:
- Focus on what social purposes technology and media serve.
- manifest functions of media and technology, as well as their role in social dysfunction
- Focus on the systematic inequality created by differential access to media and technology.
Ex. the news you hear is an objective account of reality or political interests
Those with means can buy air space.
- Explore the difference between the real lives we lead and the reality depicted on “reality” television shows
- Volti, R. (2014). Society and Technological Change http://www.projectcora.org/sites/default/files/assignments/instructor-resources/Volti_Society%20and%20Technological%20Change.pdf
- Steve Jobs iChanged the World Full Documentary (video)
- Google Glass: a sociological perspective
- Emerging-Technologies-Tetrad
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