The idea of
technologic determinism is an interesting theory. The idea that culture is
fueled by technological advances is an interesting one. It now only tells us
how technology pushes us to be a certain way but it has implications about the
intelligence of certain peoples. He idea that culture and society I pushed by
technology means that more advanced societies were made by advanced
technologies and the people who made these technologies.
That
is an interesting theory. I would like to think that we are independent from
our technology. One way I like to think about this is advancement vs. ethics.
By a long shot western culture has put advancement above ethics, speed above
morals, productivity above happiness. We can see this in the industrial age
when Europe started to push machines and factories over people. The people were
poor, they couldn’t farm or find jobs. So the factories made jobs for them. The
problem with this was when these factories that made clothes and metal came up
they needed more workers, but they couldn’t pay all these workers. They wanted
to expand and pay their workers less to do so. These factories started to hire
children from these poor families so that they could pay their workers less and
not have to worry about their workers complaining. This led to highly unclean
and unfair circumstances for these children who had to work in dangerous areas
where they could lose appendages and even be killed.
If
this technology defines our cultures, makes us more advanced, I’m not sure I
want to be that advanced. Other examples of this are the tax we are taking on
our environment with coal and gas. Another is the amount of damage we are doing
to the environment through the advancement of how fast we can go. All over I don’t
think technology should define our cultures and history.
