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Author Topic:   The Relationship between technology and culture
CK
Member (Idle past 4128 days)
Posts: 3221
Joined: 07-04-2004


Message 16 of 28 (187468)
02-22-2005 9:58 AM
Reply to: Message 15 by Silent H
02-22-2005 9:52 AM


quote:
So you are saying that the greater the technology the more polychronistic? I am not sure if I can agree with that at all. It will for some people, but in order to supply the demands of those who approach things polychronistically (thus flitting from one purpose to another) others will have to be more secured to timetables to assure work proceeds as expected.
I'm not sure I agree with it ever - but it will give us some good talking points (and hopeful we can discuss some the practical outcomes and possible futures we face).

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Tusko
Member (Idle past 101 days)
Posts: 615
From: London, UK
Joined: 10-01-2004


Message 17 of 28 (187469)
02-22-2005 9:58 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by Silent H
02-21-2005 6:48 PM


Attempt at definitions and techno-ramble
I really appreciate any contributions that anyone is willing to make. Keep them coming.
With regards to this whole technology issue, I get the feeling my reasoning might be a bit wobbly somewhere, or that my conclusion might actually be some really underwhelming generality. It is of course quite probable that I AM talking out of my arse, and I will happily concede that as soon as I can be shown why. But while I'm still unsure, I'm going to try to keep flogging it.
Okay. Definitions. I'm just going to write my most immediate thoughts because I want people to show me exactly where my feeling that this idea makes sense fails. (This has the added bonus for a lazy person such as myself of not requiring much genuine enquiry and thought.)
Technology. For my purposes technology refers to man-made things, tools, artefacts. It doesn't have to refer to the processes required to make them, because these find their expression in other artefacts (e.g. - if you want to make a sword, this isn't made from steel plus smelting plus blacksmithing, its made from bellows, a crucible, a hammer, an anvil (or whatever, I don't know how you make swords) and crucially, a series of people trained in their use. What does it do? Well it enables us to accomplish things that we couldn't otherwise, or it allows us to accomplish things individually with much greater efficiency than we could manage otherwise. Add this effect up across a society and it enables different ways of inteacting and social organisation.
Social organisation. As far as I'm concerned, this could refer to modes of government generally, but I believe it might also have more specific applications to understanding how smaller social units like families or tribes might work. If you have a knowledge of how difficult it is to master a particular society's tools, then you can predict how specialised into trades its workers might be, for instance. If workers are strictly divided into trades or adapt to many different roles probably has quite profound effects on a culture. I just can't quite think what they are. I think there is definitely an economic element to all this too.
Complexity. Hmm. Maybe its easier to define when I'm strictly talking about social structuring. Perhaps I mean that the more advanced technology a culture employs, the larger the conglomeration of people that can be sustained? That would explain why the population today is so artificially high for a mammal of our general sort of physiology.
I don't actually agree with holmes' comment that maybe this idea might profitably be restricted to communications technology. It seems that it applies to all kinds of technology. To demonstrate why, it might be simpler to talk about the very early stages of tool development for simplicity's sake (but I believe that this idea should apply to us internetty, mobile phoney lot too).
Obviously, the harder a tool is to use effectively, the longer it takes to learn. In any culture where even a rudimentary box of tools exists, there is likely quite a lot of specialisation for the simple reason that there isn't enough time for someone to learn to be a master carpenter, tanner and fisherman (and similarly, there isn't enough time for anyone to effectively practice all of these trades at the same time). Now. Does the development of increasing ranges of more complex tools result from on the increasing specialisation of different occupations, or does the increasing specialisation of different occupations result from the development of increasing ranges of more complex tools? (catches breath)
To me it seems clear that the jobs that people try to do are limited entirely by the tools that are available to them. 'Aha!' You cry. 'So where does technological innovation come from, Smartypants?'
Well, looking back over human history and pre-history I actually think that technological innovation is not the rule, but rather the exception. Since the agricultural revolution a few thousand years ago things have been really picking up, but there was a much greater time before the dawn of bread when, as far as we can tell, technological innovation was going at a snail's pace. Technological development seems to have followed an exponential arc, where tool gives birth to tool until things are progressing now at a pretty blinding pace, from generation to generation, rather than from millenia to millenia. Of course, this is in part due to the pooling of global resources and brains - but ultimately, it is the development of communication technologies over the past 150 years that have enabled this... so in a sense, this demonstrates how technology begets technology and the whole exponential thing happens.
But I want to return to the question of where technological innovation can come from if we are entirely constrained by the tools available to us. I think there are two ways that technology can provide us with new tools, and ultimately new ways of being socially organised. Firstly, tools can be appropriated for novel usage to enable new things to be accomplished that previously could not. Also, people can use existing tools to fashion a new tool that fulfills a need. The emphasis here for me is on the severe constraint on innovation that is put in place by the fact that one can only make technological solutions to problems when you have all the tools to make the new tool. So teleporters, for the moment at least, are right out - even though we can imagine them. Similarly, prehistoric hunter-gatherers might have been able to imagine huge sustainable gatherings of people living in cities, but they wouldn't have had the tools to design such a place to last indefinitely. So humans are not necessarily limited by their imaginings, but rather the tools, the technology that is available to them at any particular moment.
Oh, before I forget, I'd like to mention the website:
I bring it up because holmes made a passing reference to one of this guy's bugbears. I think this website is really well designed and his theory really well presented. It seems that idle theory even has applications in evolutionary thought.
This message has been edited by Tusko, 02-22-2005 10:11 AM

This message is a reply to:
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Tusko
Member (Idle past 101 days)
Posts: 615
From: London, UK
Joined: 10-01-2004


Message 18 of 28 (187471)
02-22-2005 10:08 AM
Reply to: Message 5 by Thor
02-21-2005 9:45 PM


Ah...Hmm...Um..
Yes, I see your point actually.. and I guess that's the one that holmes was making as well... maybe the weather machine wouldn't change our culture as such... let me think about this a bit. I'm not actually sure how this fits in with what I was thinking.

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Tusko
Member (Idle past 101 days)
Posts: 615
From: London, UK
Joined: 10-01-2004


Message 19 of 28 (187474)
02-22-2005 10:22 AM
Reply to: Message 7 by contracycle
02-22-2005 4:28 AM


Wow...
...Do you mean... I've gone and invented Marxism? If only I'd thought of it 160 years earlier! Tuskoism has a certain ring to it.
My understanding of Marxism is pretty limited, but I got the impression that dialectical materialism or whatever it's called was actually a one way street. I'm not so sure if this idea of the relationship between technology and culture is like that. It might claim to have some predictive powers about social organisation, but I personally don't believe that it would predict that all societies were heading towards socialist enlightenment. Maybe thats a hideous misrepresentation. If so, sorry. If any predictions were to be made on the back of this idea, I think they might be related to economics or work. I don't really know.
This message has been edited by Tusko, 02-22-2005 10:59 AM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 7 by contracycle, posted 02-22-2005 4:28 AM contracycle has replied

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Tusko
Member (Idle past 101 days)
Posts: 615
From: London, UK
Joined: 10-01-2004


Message 20 of 28 (187477)
02-22-2005 10:46 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by Parasomnium
02-22-2005 8:20 AM


Re: Techno or not techno
Ah.. okay. That's a helpful post, thanks. I'm aware that I'm just writing and writing here. It might just be total bunkam. Sorry if it is.
I think it very likely that there are lots of things that impinge on how groups of people interact and organise themselves, economically and socially - not just technology. But at the moment I'm just toying with the idea that you CAN be really reductive and say that available technology not only limits what people (singular and plural) can and can't achieve, but that it also has a profound affect on the aspirations and desires of people - that perhaps it is of foundational importance. E.g. If you have a spear, a dream of outlandish success is ten buffalo. If you have a bank account and a hand blender it might be rather different.
Maybe that's much too reductive a claim. Can someone explain why?
This message has been edited by Tusko, 02-22-2005 10:53 AM

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contracycle
Inactive Member


Message 21 of 28 (187719)
02-23-2005 8:51 AM
Reply to: Message 19 by Tusko
02-22-2005 10:22 AM


Re: Wow...
quote:
...Do you mean... I've gone and invented Marxism? If only I'd thought of it 160 years earlier! Tuskoism has a certain ring to it.
Hehe. Not exactly - but you have expressed one of the axioms with which Marx began. Quite a large chunk of Marxist writing is dedicated to discussions of technical, and thus social, progress. Engels book "the origin of the family, private property and state" is one of these.
One of the things that irks me about all this is that your perception is not considered nearly as radical as it was considered whe Marx wrote it. Nowadays a lot of people tacitly resort to a tecnical progress model of society.
The remainder of Marx theory discusses the impolications of a purely technology driven social developement arc; therein lies his various criticisms of captalism et al, and thats a bit beyond just identifying technology as the basis of social structure.
quote:
My understanding of Marxism is pretty limited, but I got the impression that dialectical materialism or whatever it's called was actually a one way street. I'm not so sure if this idea of the relationship between technology and culture is like that. It might claim to have some predictive powers about social organisation, but I personally don't believe that it would predict that all societies were heading towards socialist enlightenment. Maybe thats a hideous misrepresentation. If so, sorry. If any predictions were to be made on the back of this idea, I think they might be related to economics or work. I don't really know.
Philosphically, Marxism depends on two strands - dialectical materialsm, a mode of analysis premised on a purely physical world, and historical materialism, premised on a purely physical culture. Your proposition is like historical materialism rather than dialectical materialism.
It has been accused of being overly prescriptive, in mandating an end point, a purpose to history. There is some legitimacy to this criticism but I think it falls by the wayside if you examine it on the basis of historical materialism. If Marx general case is anything like correct, the only way in which SOME form of social progress can be avoided is by a technological freeze. And indeed, as we know from China, that has happened in the past. But seeing as our society (capitalism) is heavily into progress as one of its main virtues, it seems likely that technical, and hence cultural, progress will be accelerated in this context. And it is on that basis that Marx argues that Capitalism will so effectively change the technological substrate of human existance that it will render itself redundant. Put like that I don't think it is as radical a claim as it is often painted.
and also becuase this developement is technical, not ideological, other groups will be obliged to adopt the same techniques to compete. Thats what gives it its global convergence element, not any sort of mass enlightenment at all.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 19 by Tusko, posted 02-22-2005 10:22 AM Tusko has not replied

  
Tusko
Member (Idle past 101 days)
Posts: 615
From: London, UK
Joined: 10-01-2004


Message 22 of 28 (188410)
02-25-2005 7:40 AM
Reply to: Message 5 by Thor
02-21-2005 9:45 PM


I think I've been talking rubbish.
Each and every new device doesn't necessitate changes in the way that people relate to each other or society is ordered. For instance, Tamagochi's probably didn't change the world; but they used technology that has world-changing applications. This would mean that my initial definition of technology as simply objects is well off the mark because then we have two distinct categories: world changing objects and mundane objects - and how do you know to which group any particular artefact belongs? Something that seems trivial at any one time might later take on a massive cultural significance.
To me at least, the whole way I was thinking was founded on the idea that the relationship between individual people and the tools that they used had a bearing on how larger aggregations of people interacted.
But I'm not sure if that's right if you can't tell which technologies are going to make significant changes in the way that people interact and which are merely fashionable.
Things like bicycles, mobile phones and books are really fantastic designs that are, for want of a better word, evolving, as new materials and scientific understandings become commercially reproducable.
Urm... I've forgotten what my point was. End of ramble.

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Tusko
Member (Idle past 101 days)
Posts: 615
From: London, UK
Joined: 10-01-2004


Message 23 of 28 (188415)
02-25-2005 7:58 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by Silent H
02-21-2005 6:48 PM


I think I'm seeing why I was being simplistic now, but I'm still not sure for some reason. I'm so used to thinking that my idea made perfect sense I'm just a bit confused now.
The stuff you were saying about technology having an effect on perception of time sounded very interesting. An aquaintance of mine at university was doing a disseratation about the impact that the introduction of a town clock had on medieval/renaissance society. I never read it but I'm pretty sure that the impact would have been profound. We take the idea of an actual, correct time so for granted that we forget that it is only a very recent human invention. If the human race ever makes it off this planet and starts inhabiting our nearby neighbours (and space itself) I wonder what effect the different planetary cycles and the delay in interplanetary communication would have on the perception of time. But that's rather off the point.
Or maybe its not. Maybe the unexpected nature of the relationships between developments in technology and human perceptions is kind of what I'm talking about. You wouldn't think that the invention of safe, cheap interplanetary travel would necessarily have an effect on the way we percieve time, but it does. Or maybe that's not accurate - its not the invention as such, but the use that we put it to that means that we start to change our understanding.
Complicated.

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Replies to this message:
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jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 24 of 28 (188470)
02-25-2005 10:19 AM
Reply to: Message 23 by Tusko
02-25-2005 7:58 AM


We take the idea of an actual, correct time so for granted that we forget that it is only a very recent human invention.
This is a very important point and I'm glad you brought it up since it gives me a chance to talk about one of my favorite subjects. We DO forget how quickly things change. Even the idea of the year starting on January 1st. is a very recent phenomenon. The idea of uniform time is actually a post US Civil-War phenomenon and didn't come about until we had a high volume national rail system.

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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Vercingetorix 
Inactive Member


Message 25 of 28 (188544)
02-25-2005 4:37 PM


environmental determinalism?
this sounds very close to environmental determinalism at the basic level. be careful while i think it makes sense it isn't socially acceptable. (see Dr. Frederich Ratzel)
If you don't have some method of making written records (preferably portable) then you can't have a complex civil service or tax raising powers. If you don't have ploughs and domesticated animals,
what about the aelthing? the 1st european parliment formed in the late 9th century CE. the norse didn't have literacy at that time, the aelthing wasn't recorded until the sagas were in the 12th and 13th centuries.
i like environmental determinalism, culture from the environement, and technology/invention from the environment. tropical people were generally more primitive than those of cooler regions because they never had to save food or survive a winter (i realize this is a very basic generalization), but i think it has something to do with the topic at hand.
I think you are partially correct.

Replies to this message:
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Tusko
Member (Idle past 101 days)
Posts: 615
From: London, UK
Joined: 10-01-2004


Message 26 of 28 (188659)
02-26-2005 5:54 AM
Reply to: Message 25 by Vercingetorix
02-25-2005 4:37 PM


Re: environmental determinalism?
Hi there, thanks for you input. It seems really relevant.
I guess the shortcomings of this way of looking at the world are apparent to all - as you yourself pointed out, there are always going to be exceptions, or the generalisations that you draw are going to be questionable.
Environmental Determinism sounds like a great label for this kind of thing. I'm intrigued that you say that it isn't socially acceptable - obviously I haven't though it through far enough!

This message is a reply to:
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Vercingetorix 
Inactive Member


Message 27 of 28 (188718)
02-26-2005 1:36 PM
Reply to: Message 26 by Tusko
02-26-2005 5:54 AM


Re: environmental determinalism?
I'm intrigued that you say that it isn't socially acceptable - obviously I haven't though it through far enough!
i meant that environmental determinalism isn't socially acceptable. i really like your topic, i was just warning that it could be labeled this way and we need to try and avoid the stigma of enviromental determinalism (ED for now cause its a big word and im being lazy about it).
ED was credited to Dr. Frederick Ratzel. he was a german geographer and anthropologist in the mid-late 19th century. ED states that the enviroment seriously affects how the people who live in it will develop. this leads to a generalisation that people in climates with more seasonality developed more because they had to in order to survive in thier einvironment. more invention took place because more was needed. IMO i think it sounds pretty good, but there were some racists in the 20th century who took it to the extreme. thier leader was adolf hitler and he praised all thing german (including Ratzel), and took alot of ED as evidence of his master race theory.
since that time, IMO for social reasons, ED has been denounced.

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Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 28 of 28 (188731)
02-26-2005 3:16 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Tusko
02-18-2005 9:16 AM


If the technology doesn’t effect this individuality of Rosens’ (see below) then there is a limit technology will eventually means- to> cultural groups in possession. That is why this is the the bioinformation technology century so far. But not only do I respect this truth (that technology isbeing created against this biologically divisible individual (think only of invasive virtual reality for instance) but I feel that genetic engineering basics are not all the tools of its own destruction. THIS IS NOT A MARXIT thought. Go figure!
quote:
SOME HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS ON CELLULAR BIOCHEMISTRY4
In the preceeding sections, we indicated some very general kinds of dynamical metaphors, stressing developmental processes, and showed how specific realizations of these metaphors could be constructed in terms of kinds of biochemical kinetic processes that we know to occur in real biological systems. In this section and the next, we digress to review what is known about the detailed kinetics of biochemical systems in cells and relate this specific knowledge to the more abstract development given above.
We begin by placing our empirical biochemical knowledge into a historical perspective represents the confluence of two previously separate but historically significant streams of biological thought: the study of the way in which biological characteristics are transmitted from generation to generation(genetics) , and the study of the biological characteristics of individual biological systems. We consider each of these separately.
The initial impetus to the study of genetics as a separate discipline came originally from evolutionary theories of Darwin, proposed as a solution to the problem of the origin of biological species. It was realized by the ancients that there were logically only two possibilities regarding biological species (considered as collections of correlated biological characteristics): either they were immutable or they could change with time. If the former were true, there would be no way in which the correlations of characteristics by which we identify a species could be changed, and therefore no possibility that new species could arise. Consequently, it would be necessary to postulate a special creation for each existing species, and each existing species would have had to maintain itself essentially unchanged throughout biological time. On the other hand, if correlations of biological attributes could be altered in time, the possibility would exist that new species (i.e. new correlations) could arise in the course of time, hence at most one initial creative act would need to be postulated. In this lies the root of biological evolution.
It was Darwin’s contribution to propose, and exhaustively document, a specifc mechanism by which biological correlations could be adaptively modified in the course of time; a mechanism to which eh gave the name natural selection. It was this mechanism that changed evolutionary theory from philosophical speculation to a firmly founded biological theory. Natural selection began from the assumption that biological individuals are not all identical, but possess individual differences that are accentuated in the course of time by selectionEither biological characteristics were plastic enough to be altered in a relatively permanent fashion by the environmental influences in which an individual organism found itself or these characteristics were the result of atomic hereditary charactersThe latter view was suggested by the chemistry of the time,which persisted unaffected through all the various chemical combinations
Nanotech is attempting to effect these affections but it's findable that nanoscientists are trying to do this DETERMINATELY without what Rosen subsequently wrote,
quote:
For instance, it makes one reflect that thre may be regions at upper levels which are almost flat plateauz from which two or three different valleys lead off downwards. These, in fact, correspond to what we know as states of competence, in which embryonic tissues are in a condition inwhch they can be easily brought to develop in one or the other of a number of directionswhen displaced from the valley center, to find its way back there again; the final adult character will be easily caused
From Dynamical System Theory in Biology by Rosen Vol 1 of Stability Theory and its Applications John Wiley & Sons p202-203
I don’t think it all that hard to get an idea of what you mean by technology if you read
Heidegger
say.
And by looking in at Rosen's perspective(he wrote it in Buffalo NY I believe) it is possible to see how important c/e will be this century what it was not last. We are slowly changing the discussion from this simplistic notion of creation vs evolution, perhaps to; that plus Croizat's notion of mobilism/immobilism as far as the biology is concerned with the group. New technology can not effect social constuction in this affect but it can cause the affect. Lets just hope that it doesnt keep becoming pathological. Look at 911.
This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 02-27-2005 09:54 AM

This message is a reply to:
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