Technology, Culture, and Human Interaction

Posted: August 26th, 2021

Technology, Culture, and Human Interaction

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Technology, Culture, and Human Interaction

It has now become commonplace for technology to be utilized in the creation and maintenance of relationships among people. According to The Pew Research Center assessment of demographic characteristics,  the population of America’s adults that own tablet computers had increased from 5% to 45% since the year 2010 (Murphie & Potts, 2017).As of 2018, the Research Center found out that 77 percent of online American adults used more than one of the available social media sites – the common ones being Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram- for socialization. Through research and extensive observations, technology has proved both beneficial and detrimental to people’s cultures, and their interaction with the physical environment, as is discussed in this paper.

In a dynamic kind of relationship, human culture and technology are continually co-evolving. If a new technology spreads to a new culture, for example, the cultural context in the said geographical location dictates the speed and manner in which the technology will be adopted (Murphie & Potts, 2017). For example, the introduction of mobile phones for general communication among the populace in Kenya alongside the long hanging challenge of money transfer to rural areas led to the development and flourishing of M-Pesa, a technology that makes it possible for people to send money to their friends and relatives within minutes. As a result, Kenyans’ lives had changed for the better due to the elimination of delays in money transfer that had bedeviled the culture of the people there in the gone days when money transfer was only made possible through courier platforms.

The technological solutions vary depending on the emerging needs arising within varying contexts of the existing physical environment. In the days when sedentary farming was practiced in this region, crop yields were always meager; nonetheless, the natural climatic patterns of rainfall periods and soil fertility remained stable (Turkle, 2017). Similar unfortunate events and changes have been observed in other parts of the world like Australia and Brazil in which the constant bushfires occur allegedly because of the changing climatic conditions. Therefore, without appropriate corrective measures, the worst changes within the physical environment are inevitable.

In summary, technology is rapidly disrupting people’s social system as well as their interactions with the physical environment. Positive and negative effects have both been observed as a direct aftermath of the use of technology. Thus, careful consideration should always be made in assessing the gains and losses that technology has brought to people’s cultures and their interactions with the environment.

References

Murphie, A., & Potts, J. (2017). Culture and technology. Macmillan International Higher Education.

Turkle, S. (2017). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Hachette UK.