Table of Contents
Why is Technology a Social Problem?
From a Western perspective, people have tended to associate progress with that of technological improvement. We might look back to times of Industrial Revolution and its products as instruments of societal transformation and new symbols of progress. (Treviño, 2014) What began in agricultural societies as tooling up to facilitate the production of raw materials, reduced manual labour largely through mechanization. An idea that has dominated societies through industrialization and lives on today in the mass production of goods through increasing automation. (Mooney, Knox, & Schacht, 2015) On the surface it would seem technology, from the apparatus to the organisation, has been at the heart of society’s continuing enrichment.
However, a postmodern perspective would cast doubts on this presumption. As the era of industry brought science, rationality and rapid technological change it developed the promise of a better world, a promise still being pushed today but one that raises doubts of sociocultural legitimacy. (Connor, 2004) A Structural Functionalist angle on this might be sensitive to technological innovations and their relationship to a dysfunctional society. Machinery that is brought in to save time and reduce costs brings along with it worker displacement and alienation. (Merton, 1973) Today, these manifest themselves as issues of the automation and digitisation of our workplaces. Merton’s (1973) other main criticism, defective technology and its effects on society, might be best highlighted by the recent ‘Boeing: 737 MAX’ accidents.
The idea of workplace alienation as a social problem lends itself as a textbook example of Marxist Conflict approach. Here, technological advancement isn’t the product of society’s general will to want to improve rather they are the accessories of powerful capitalist interests streamlining profit. A contemporary example might be the internet-driven Amazon & owner Jeff Bezos’ rapidly soaring personal wealth, currently $152.9B (Forbes, 2019), while the company simultaneously faces criticisms like working conditions and local tax avoidance. (Tehrani, 2014) This kind of arrangement would reinforce Conflict theorist’s belief that technology now serves to benefit the elite, whose imperative for new technology is profit. (McDermott, 2007)
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It’s important to keep in mind that societies vary in their levels of technological sophistication and development (Mooney, Knox, & Schacht, 2015), a human activity inflected by culture. The Conflict perspective takes a different form in China for example and would examine a contemporary social problem where technology might be seen as impeding civil liberties. According to Conflict theory, dominant groups that feel threatened may resort to technology as a means of social control. (Mooney, Knox, & Schacht, 2015) In the case of China, control might be seen as exercised unilaterally by the one-party state.
The State Internet Information Office consolidates internet censorship (Xu & Albert, 2017), among other things this prohibits access to many large internet resources such as Google and Facebook. Technology is very much at the centre of an evolving contemporary issue that is China’s controversial Social Credit Scheme, an imminent nationwide system, scoring its citizens and companies and consequently penalising or rewarding them to foster trustworthy behaviour. (MIT, 2019)
Characteristics
We might contemplate technology as a human cultural activity intended to accomplish specific tasks, applying principles of science and mechanics to solve problems. (Mooney, Knox, & Schacht, 2015) According to (Kornblum & Julian, 2012), (Winner, 1977, pp. 11–12) further defined technology as; 1) technological tools or apparatus of technical performance, 2) collective technical skills, procedures, routines of a purposive, rational, step-by-step method and 3) the organizational networks associated with these. Government and/or industry advocacy of this technocracy remains a desirable approach to create a better world, where technology is fundamental to progress and fixing social problems. (Treviño, 2014)
However, Treviño (2014) suggests issues with the so-called ‘technological fix’ might arise when they become automatically applied to nontechnical problems or blind us to social context, creating further issues. A contemporary example here might be CCTV cameras which have been seen to have only a modest impact on crime. (Welsh BP, 2008) In installing one of the largest CCTV networks in the world, the UK now has seen its police force and local councils having to slash its budgets and faced reactions from parts of society claiming CCTV violates personal privacy. (BBC, 2015) So wrapped up we are in the technological approach, any adverse side effects we experience tend to lay blame on the technology itself as opposed to combinations of social, economic and technical factors (Kornblum & Julian, 2012) in a kind of new social order.
According to Treviño (2014), Mumford (1967) conceptualised a ‘mega machine’ that spoke of a new social order where people now prioritise technological rather than human needs. People’s day to day productivity in modern industrial societies are mostly spent working to quotas, deadlines, and various other objectives of their organizations. (Kornblum & Julian, 2012) What’s been coined the new ‘technological order’ on the one hand has afforded individuals the basic necessities and self-sufficiency in terms of their finances, work, recreation etc (Mooney, Knox, & Schacht, 2015) but in doing so has diverted societal life from that of meeting survival needs to meeting the requirements of technology. (Kornblum & Julian, 2012)
Mumford’s ‘mega machines’ then in the technological order would come to change human social organization, “altering community engagement, individual autonomy, and quality of life”. (Treviño, 2014, p. 401) Today we might see this as a complicated web of communication, transportation, energy, manufacturing and various other sectors of technology that has us caught in a net of dependency. (Kornblum & Julian, 2012) This is being realised today as a technological system that is now thought of as a social problem that dehumanizes humanity. (Treviño, 2014)
A contemporary issue in automation brings to the fore this conflict between technology and human values. While it is understood to increase economic productivity, contemporary effects of automation measured by output per hour of labour have been less than perceived by stereotypes of robotic workers. (Kornblum & Julian, 2012) In any case there is the lingering issue as to whether profitable use of automation brought about by higher productivity will ever trickle down to benefit society or simply remain in the hands of the wealthy. (Kornblum & Julian, 2012)
Solutions/Best Practice
When undertaking solutions to technology oriented social problems there is a broad distinction between 1) affected social institutions as needing to adapt to technology, and 2) the technology itself adapting to meet the needs of the institution. (Mooney, Knox, & Schacht, 2015) Generally, when solutions are aimed at adapting our institutions to deal with problems we are in the territory of ‘Social Engineering’ and are encouraged to change our ways. Resolution by motivation or coercion of people to meet some rationale is problematic according to Weinberg (1966).
Since we can’t presume durable rational behaviour in others it may take considerable time and energy to bring about change, especially sacrificing our immediate gains for long-term societal benefits. The ongoing efforts to combat global warming is a contemporary issue that demonstrates how large amounts of effort at the highest level of politics may not be enough to resolve the problem. Rather, we might need to turn to technology to show us the way forward. (Dans, 2018)
This brings us to our other option, the ‘Technological Fix’, an approach advocating development of new technology in order to address societal problems. This approach may have recently gained plausibility due to its compatibility with our consumer culture. (Johnston, 2018) Now turning to technology to improve our daily life, we assign to it various values and beliefs best interpreted in the Symbolic Interactionist/Social Constructionist view.
As Johnston (2018, p. 48) notes, these beliefs have fostered “confidence in reliable innovation and progress, trust in the impact and effectiveness of new technologies, and reliance on technical experts as general problem-solvers”. In these instances, it may be useful to turn to the Symbolic Interactionist approach to understand our relationship to technology and the meaning we carry with it since technology may only be loosely associated with causing social problems. As Treviño (2014) explains, public policy which encourages us to think about risks, who it affects and what remains unknown about technology may make us use it differently.
Likewise, public policy will benefit from Structural Functionalist approaches in ascertaining if technology plays any kind of role in a social problem. Historically, our reliance on technical experts can often drown out other voices. (Treviño, 2014) Described as the ‘lay perspective’, these represent unheard voices that could contribute to policy alongside the dominant scientific community. Structural functionalism may also shed some light on previously mentioned environmental issues, where the examination of the relationship between social institutions and technology reveals a lag.
In this instance rapid technological change are at odds with an explosion in the population and neither can adjust to one another quickly enough to manage the resulting environmental damage. (Kornblum & Julian, 2012) Conflict theory may also be utilised according Treviño (2014) to better fashion policy that is more responsive to these societal changes by examining and responding to existing power structures. In environmental terms this might see how OPEC/fossil fuel interests obstruct routes to clean energy innovation.
In summary, technology in the west has been championed as the seed of societal progress. Mechanical technology reduced toil during the industrial revolution and today’s technology compliments our contemporary consumer culture. These can blind-sight us from it’s unwanted, unintended effects which have emerged recently in forms such as workplace automation, the digital divide and opportunities for the super-rich to further stretch income inequality. In order to meet the demands of contemporary social problems technology must first go hand in hand, step-by-step with our social institutions and should only be administered once thinking about what its consequences are to all people.
References
- BBC. (2015, 01 15). The end of the CCTV era? Retrieved from BBC News: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30793614
- Connor, S. (2004). The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Dans, E. (2018, 10 09). Combatting Global Warming Means Adopting Technology, Now. Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2018/10/09/combatting-global-warming-means-adopting-technology-now/#7522c647d461
- Forbes. (2019, 04 22). #1 Jeff Bezos & family. Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/#294246f11b23
- Johnston, S. F. (2018, March). The Technological Fix as Social Cure-All: Origins and Implications. IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, pp. 47-54.
- Kornblum, W., & Julian, J. (2012). Social Problems. New Jersey: Pearson Education.
- McDermott, J. (2007). Technology: The Opiate of Intellectuals. In K. S. Shrader-Frechette, & L. Westra, Technology & Values (p. 91). Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield.
- Merton, R. K. (1973). ‘The Normative Structure of Science’, The Sociology of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- MIT. (2019, 03 04). MIT Technology Review. Retrieved from China’s social credit system stopped millions of people from buying travel tickets: https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/613070/chinas-social-credit-system-stopped-millions-of-people-buying-travel-tickets/
- Mooney, L. A., Knox, D., & Schacht, C. (2015). Understanding Social Problems. Stamford: Cengage Learning.
- Tehrani, S. (2014). Welcome to the Amazon: Leading Online Retail from Local Tax Avoidance into Your Backyard. Tax Law, 875-908.
- Treviño, A. J. (2014). Investigating Social Problems. USA: SAGE Publications.
- Weinberg, A. M. (1966). Can Technology Replace Engineering? Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences, 4-8.
- Welsh BP, F. D. (2008). Effects of Closed Circuit Television Surveillance on Crime. Campbell Systematic Reviews.
- Xu, B., & Albert, E. (2017, 02 17). Media Censorship in China. Retrieved from Council on Foreign Relations: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/media-censorship-china
