Technological Society

Abstract

What are the characteristics of a modern technological society? I would suggest the following:

• 1. The mass production of food, services, and goods, whether customised or not, with a consequent emphasis on productivity.

• 2. Increasing urbanization, with the greater complexity of life that goes with a manmade environment.

• 3. A tendency for centralised decision-making affecting ordinary people’s lives, whether by government, or by quangos, or by large industrial and commercial corporations.

• 4. Increased mobility, with greater access to goods, services and people.

• 5. The impact of medical technology, particularly at the beginning and the end of life, and the sexual revolution which has followed on woman’s power to control her own fertility.

• 6. The influence of the mass media of communication on entertainment, news, advertising and education.

• 7. The capability radically and rapidly to alter the environment of the planet either in peace or through war, and the infliction on it of perhaps irreversible damage.

• 8. A capacity for technological innovation, leading to an information explosion and to an almost exponential dynamic of cultural change.