Technological culture and its social implications

¶ … Technological Culture. Discussed: how it effects our life; B.F. Skinner; Aldous Huxley, and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Technological Culture

The world has become a technological mecca, filled with gadgets and wonders that only a generation ago would have been impossible for the average citizen to envision, except perhaps in science fiction novels. However, today, the majority of households have at least one computer, if not more. The Internet allows one to access endless sources of information and to communicate with people around the world with a click of the mouse. Cell phones, once a handy luxury for professionals, are now carried by children and parents as a way to keep in touch. Technological advances in genetics has enabled scientists to clone species, and make remarkable leaps in medical research. The last one hundred years has brought mankind from the horse and buggy days to space age technology as a part of daily life.

B.F. Skinner was one of the most influential thinker-behaviorist-psychologist of the 20th century (Wnek 1996). Skinner "stressed the similarities between human and animal learning processes" (Anthropology 1988). He measured learning by devising a box, known as the Skinner box, in which animals learned to press levers to get food and water (Anthropology 1988). Believing that the same conditioning methods would be good for humans, Skinner took his Skinner box one step further and built a conditioning chamber for his daughter, providing a clean, quiet, safe, air filtered and heated to a constant temperature at a monitored level of warmth that made only a diaper as clothing necessary (http://www.fmarion.edu/psych/bio/skinner.htm).

In "Brave New World," 1932, Aldous Huxley writes of a genetically altered society that is created by social needs: Deltas, Epsilons, Alphas, and Gammas, complete with a euphoric drug, soma. Scent and color organs provide music and momentary pictures on the ceiling such as an artificial tropical sunset followed by a bogus sunrise (Paulsell 1995). Cloning, high-tech birth control, drugs that dull the senses and genetic engineering are the stuff of today's headlines (Yost 1997). In Huxley's society, there's conditioning regime for every possible function, therefore, no one complains about his or her job being hard, dirty, or boring (Huxley 1998).