How Technology Affects Society

To a society, we have learned that technology has more than one meaning. It can be with a reference to a tool or object, and also the ‘means of extending human abilities’. I believe that technology can greatly affect the way a society forms, and as we get into more modern and state of the art types of technology, the society can change more rapidly then we expect. Inventions have a great affect on a society, and depending how advanced it is, it could change cultures at exponential rates. Some examples of these inventions are things like the automobile, the computer, and the Internet.

The automobile has probably been one of the most biggest influences to change the way a society functions. It has given men and women a way a travelling, the ability to go wherever they want, like a new sense of freedom. It allowed for the population to start to spread away from cities and start creating new society in rural areas. This all allowed extensive growth, and in the beginning societies believed that cars were an efficient way of travelling as compared to horses. There would also be fewer roads clean up from the horses, and new transit pathways that could connect cities to other ones. This could also bring about another societies beliefs into someone else’s society and things could be learned that may have not been known to people before. I believe that if something can change a society as quickly as the automobile did, it can also end many societies in the same way. As there is an increase in the use of automobiles in modern civilization we are noticing a create increase in pollution, and as of now many companies are going bankrupt due to the inevitable increase in gas price. This is causing an enormous snowball effect that is affecting every society causing recessions. On top of all that, the pollution from the cars is increasing at exponential rates and within the next fifty years it will go off the charts of what we are used to seeing. This will probably cause another ice age which will affect the way that most societies function.

Another great invention that has affected many societies is the invention of the computer and the Internet. These two things combined have allowed us to communicate with virtually anyone and anywhere in the world. Computers are getting relatively cheap now as compared to what they used to be, so almost any and every family has at least one computer in their family. Computers can also be used to design many new concepts and designs that we use today, such as things from designing more efficient cars, calculation toxins in the atmosphere, or even creating new structures that could eventually become a new place for a society to begin. As with all the benefits of something there is always a negative side. With computers some people have to power to control things, and hack into equipment that should not be touched. An example of this could be satellite systems, and with the control of being able to spy on others, it could start massive wars that could end up going nuclear. This would greatly change the way our society functions.

With the world becoming more modernized and advanced, many characteristics of how societies function change. In modern societies, the changes that occur happen more rapidly than they did before. This affects more people than it did before too as the size of the populations have increased. Also we tend to live closer to cities now as opposed to rural places, and there is an increase for the need of education today. The way our society functions today as compared to traditional societies has greatly changed and probably will continue to keep on changing in the future. Technology can go so far, and societies will never be perfect.