The expansion of technology in society

Essay by kidddynamteB, December 2004

download word file, 6 pages 4.6

Technological Societies

The expansion of technology in society increases the division of labor, mobility, and equality of its members. This statement seems quite accurate to me, especially as we keep progressing and developing new ways of imporving the way we live, and as more and more people adopt the entrpreneural spirit we saw during the industrial revolution.

Emile Durkheim, discussed in his book the "Divison of Labor in Society", some of the exact points which we have studied in class. I will therefore from time to time refer back to some of his theories in this essay. It is important to note that there are postive aspects to technological advances and negative aspects as well. The division of labor is simply the separation and specialization of work among people. As industry and technology proliferate, and population increases, society must be become more specialized if it is to survive. In modern society, this is especially evident.

Labor has never before been as specialized as it is now, and the current trend is toward even further increased specialization. There are many implications as a result of technological advances, and to go through some of them will provide us with a bit of support for our thesis. People become increasingly separated, a group or persons values and interests become different, and somewhere along the line subcultures are formed.

This was evident in the change from Agrarian to Industrial society. As entreprenuers created different tools and function, it forced people to perform distinct, separate, and specialized tasks, as well as made everyone rely on each other to survive. I use this example because it is simple. When farming was the only thing to do, everyone performed the same jobs, and thus no one had a better or worse job. As technology specialized, people...