by While technologies are developing fast in contemporary society, they rapidly alter our mindset and values in different facets. It is hard to imagine our lives without smartphones because we have accepted phones as a crucial and useful component in our value systems. Indeed, technological applications changed our values, but the relationship between cultural values and technological applications is not in one direction. The advancement and changes in technology applications are also shaped by our values significantly. Generally, social values provide the goal of technological applications’ development, signal undesirable outcomes correlated to specific technologies, and guide the occurrence of technologies with alternatives, leading to the emergence of corresponding technological applications eventually.
Social values, which are deeply rooted in culture, offer various goals for potential technologies, leading to technological applications’ invention and advancement.
We continuously promote technological applications because we continuously change the expectations for our needs in the world. Consequently, people would work towards the emergence of specific technological applications to fulfill those goals in society with these value-shaped goals. As Open Mind BBVA’s article presents, “without the culture’s choice to refine the technology, the practical applications would have been left as only fleeting ideas; technology will only be developed if the culture has some immediate and apparent use for it.” As a result, people’s values nurture technological applications by providing direction for further development.
Besides, suppose we examine the case of a nation regarding the values and the technologies’ progress. In a developing country, most residents would wish an increase in income and living standards. Specifically, technologies that could bring economic booms and better living standards are desired the most. As a result, this country would put more technological advancement efforts in primary and secondary industries than the tertiary industry. People’s values give technology the goal to develop, and then they would harvest the fruits that satisfy their desires. In this case, the power of values to promote the occurrence of technology by giving the goal for development is lucid. This is one of the way values leads to the emergence of technological developments.
Furthermore, society’s values serve as a benchmark to examine the development of technological applications in different fields. Such function also implicitly promotes the emergence of specific technological applications by signaling issues found in technological applications.
Soldiers’ values and opinions serve as essential components for revising and updating military-applied technologies in the military arena. According to Godé (2006), the U.S. Department of Defense “has adopted a very technological vision of the armed forces transformation, ignoring the impact of the human factor on change. Today, the discourse has changed, highlighting culture as a key factor in understanding and managing technological transformation.” For instance, soldiers’ values that favor more flexible and concise instruction books for a particular software cause engineers’ reconsideration of the current versions of software with obscure and inflexible instruction books. It is signaled as an issue for many soldiers on their values. Eventually, the updates in those technological applications are modified by later ones that meet soldiers’ values (Godé, 2006).
Moreover, as a more widespread and frequently applied technology in society, medical equipment reflects the significance of signaling existing problems with current technology forms. There are “complaints about the cultural and social implications to the person consequent from using a device,” which reminds and warns the manufacturers and designers of the medical equipment the problems existing in the current technological products due to the conflict with people’s values (Luborsky, Mark R., 1993). Notified by these complaints based on various values and cultural aspects, people would promote a specific new form of technology eventually as there is increasing demand. As a result, new technological applications would emerge thanks to values’ function as the benchmark.
Additionally, values lead to technological applications’ emergence by suggesting applications’ alternatives.
Values convey some crucial clues of people’s desires regarding technological products, which suggest potential alternatives for current technological products. According to Hammer, “users appraise and experience adaptive equipment as situated within objective and subjective social, cultural, and lifetime contexts.” With this characteristic, values could facilitate the occurrence of technological developments with favorable and potentially successful alternatives. For instance, the conventional steel brace is efficient for orthodontics, but people do not like it as it is not aesthetically pleasuring. Instead, they want some kind of invisible braces that would not make them feel embarrassed while talking or smiling. Considering the patients’ values, the braces designer developed the new, invisible braces with the same efficiency and effect. Thanks to people’s values, the alternative, invisible brace as a new technological application occurs. Thus, it is clear that values do help the emergence of specific technological applications by providing alternatives.
Given their guidance, the function as an examining “benchmark” of technologies, and indirect suggestions for potential alternatives, social values that everyone holds facilitate and promote the occurrence of technological applications’ advancement in a society profoundly.
Work Cited
Godé, Cécile. “The Effect of Culture on Technological Change.” International Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Change Management, Jan. 2006, www.researchgate.net/publication/265413077_The_Effect_of_Culture_on_Technological_Change.
Hammer, Dan. “Culture’s Influence on Technology: The Human Element of the Development Feedback Loop.” Human Nature, Technology & the Environment, 24 Feb. 2002, fubini.swarthmore.edu/~ENVS2/S2003/dhammer1/secondessay.htm.
Luborsky, Mark R. “Sociocultural Factors Shaping Technology Usage: Fulfilling the Promise.” Technology and disability vol. 2,1 (1993): 71-78. doi:10.3233/TAD-1993-2110
Open Mind BBVA. “How Culture Determines Technological Development.” OpenMind, 28 June 2018, www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/humanities/culture/how-culture-determines-technological-development/.