Technologization of Man and Marketization of His Activities and Culture of the Future

Abstract

Technologization of man and human activities has a long history. The industrial revolution of the eighteenth century and the scientific and technological revolution of the twentieth century accelerated this process. Its present forms as the information revolution, biorevolution, and nanorevolution created a new reality. However, technology has been a subject of increasing commercialization and marketization what has a detrimental influence on culture. Dominating (also in the cyberspace) the mass pop culture is oriented mostly to entertainment and consumption of technological gadgets. Could this trend be modified or reoriented? Anyway the complex relations and interactions of technology and culture should be investigated in an interdisciplinary and systemic way which can be instrumental for positive actions and changes.

Annex: Approaches and Conceptualizations

To better understand a complexity of all interrelationships, conditions, and reciprocal influences of technology and culture—in the context of development of societies and human individuals and of various processes reconfiguring them—several schemes together with interpretative description are presented below.

Figure 3.1 illustrates graphically components (sectors, spheres) of the human world of life. It shows its complexity and multidimensionality and existing types of impacts (connected with market, politics, strategies, and behavior).

Fig. 3.1

Ideal model of influences and interactions in the evolutionary processes of the human world of life

Figure 3.2 illustrates mechanisms and processes of development. Systems, strategies, policies, and behavior shape and modify development. Processes of development should be investigated in the context of relations of knowledge, market, and culture what allows for etiquetting societies according to their characteristics and dominated features (Fig. 3.3). Societies of the world are very diverse as to these characteristics and to their levels and intensity. Generalizations are hard, though some trends seem to be quite clear.

Fig. 3.2

Components (sectors, spheres) of the human world of life

Fig. 3.3

Mechanisms and development processes. Selected systems, strategies, policies, and behavior in the context of development, knowledge, and culture

In the past decades, there were many efforts to give new names to changing societies. Social change was predominantly shaped or driven by technology, market, and culture. These domains determine a fabric of social change in general (Fig. 3.4).

Fig. 3.4

Etiquettes for societies (knowledge–market–culture)

In the real cases, the etiquettes could overlap. Usually a society could be characterized by a set (a mix) of etiquettes. Social change was a change in such a set regarding its elements, their meanings, proportions, relations, and importance. Unsuccessful change was often connected with existing gaps of various sorts (see Fig. 3.5). Recognizing gaps enables a better understanding of development and its barriers (diverse through societies and regions).

Fig. 3.5

Components and characteristics of development gaps

These gaps can be assigned to countries, societies, and organizations. There are, of course, many more gaps and divides as information, organizational, management, digital. They are often interconnected and mutually stimulating each other. Many gaps are inherited and difficult to overcome. Identification and recognition of gaps and their various constellations are important not only theoretically but also for strategies and policies elaboration and their implementation. Evidently, all details of gap classification are subject of interpretation.

The next scheme (Fig. 3.6) is, in fact, the listing of processes characterizing the present changes in societies (as a rule making possible by technology and stimulated by technology) and challenges (not to confuse them with goals), challenges connected both with a global survival and development and with issues associated with market, politics, and multiculturalism. The scheme below presents a complex picture of sometimes really negative trends in societies (differentiated throughout space and time). It is designed also to define and explain various uncertainties, risks, and dangers. They should be examined in depth and should constitute a basis for new proper policies and strategies, and for research and societal education as well.

Fig. 3.6

General processes and global challenges

Global processes and challenges are located in structures and networks (or their “mixes”), so are their mechanisms and developmental processes and phenomena, as well as their effects and consequences.

Figure 3.7 (below) illustrates the failure of the concepts (and predictions)—often associated with theory of modernization based on expectation of common imitation of development patterns (technological, economic, political, cultural, and so forth). Such imitation had to concern a consumption. A wide distance between leading countries of the world and the rest does not allow for really common and effective imitation and—what’s more important—achievement of similar results. It is so in spite of the ongoing processes of integration, globalization, technology transfer, migrations and international networking, and co-operation. Despite similarities, the predominant feature seems to be a diversity—not of declared goals and policies but of real actions and their effects. The reason of it is on one side a large differentiation of national developmental potentials and on the other side not equal cultural ability to creation and application of technology in various domains of human life. This should be emphasized in policies for development and international aid and cooperation.

Fig. 3.7

Failure of universalism and its ideology

In the subsequent stages of human civilization and its development, significantly co-shaped, and stimulated by technology (discoveries, inventions, innovations, their applications, and diffusion), various “profiles” of cultural challenges associated with these stages emerged. Figure 3.7 is a proposal of ordering the existing types of these challenges in relation to the stages of development (from prehistory to Post-human Era).

This classification of the types of culture prevailing in the subsequent stages of development of human civilization is arbitrary. Needless to say that these stages and the corresponding cultures sometimes overlapped or had “fuzzy” borders. In some cases, the transition from one to other was evolutionary, and in other cases revolutionary; sometimes changes were inductive, and sometimes they were indigenous (Fig. 3.8).

Fig. 3.8

Stages of civilization development and technology—types of culture

Essential features of all de facto processes of development are uncertainties and feedbacks (both positive and negative). So analysis of the change in human setting (or generally speaking—of civilizational context) in connection with change in man (as individual) and in society (or various forms of human collectivities) is crucial for an understanding of the past and also of the present world. Individual and societal transformations are both “products” and “generators” of broadly understood culture. However, such analysis does not mean the recognition of the future, which is an effect (“resultant,” “sum”) of all types of changes. The future, the long term in particular, seems mostly unknown and open ended. All the more, we should think about it in a scientific way (using forecasts, simulations, scenarios, strategy elaboration, long-term policies, planning, computer modeling, etc.), drawing our attention to the instrumental and determining role of technology and its relations with culture.

Figure 3.9 is a graphic presentation of such issues as feedbacks and uncertainties in development.

Fig. 3.9

Feedbacks and uncertainties in development process

Analysis of feedbacks is typical for a systems approach. Uncertainties are investigated with risk analysis methods. Technological and social changes can be also analyzed with the aid of Web theory. However, for this reason the types of networks should be distinguished. The exemplary classification can be as follows.

Technocultural changes always have—and will have in the future—their proponents and opponents, both in theory and in practice. However, it goes without saying that the most important are agents of change or in other words carriers of change. Various subjects designed to conduct change or to slow it down can be engaged. This is illustrated in Fig. 3.10.

Fig. 3.10

Exemplary enumeration of traditional and teleinformatic networks

In conclusion, it is worthwhile to return to the idea of social assessment of technology (TA in short), from which its advanced concepts, methodologies, and procedures enable also a recognition of various relations, influences, interactions, and impacts—both advantageous and disadvantageous for people and environment (Fig. 3.11). They make it possible to formulate essential research questions addressing at the same time political and cultural issues and controversies. Some exemplary research questions politically and culturally bounded are presented in the table below Fig. (3.12).

Fig. 3.11

Agents and opponents to technocultural changes (basic classification)

Fig. 3.12

Technology evaluation—selected research questions

In parallel in a similar way, some questions addressed to various forms and dimensions of culture of the future can be formulated. Such exemplary questions can be as follows:

• What is culture nowadays?

• What are its types and dimensions?

• What are the directions of its transformations and change?

• How are they caused or supported by technology?

• What are new domains of culture and what happens in them (e.g., in cyberspace)?

• What is the present influence of culture on the “shape” of world and the lives of people?

• What are the short- and long-term consequences of cultural transformation in the world?

• What will the culture of the future be like, also from the perspective of trans- and post-humanism?

To have a more complete view and understanding of the ambiguous relations and interactions of technology and culture, it is worthwhile to confront both lists of questions. And even more important seems to be confronting the answers to these questions.