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How Culture Changes Technologies
Sometimes a new technology comes along that slams into society like a freight train, causing both panic and delight. At other times a technology slips quietly into society like a cat slinks into a room. There’s not a lot of fanfare, but it does influence and change a society and culture.
Technologies are the result of human imagination. Someone sees a problem and figures out how a technology can solve it and bring great benefits. And while technologies do overwhelmingly bring humanity greater benefits, they can also cause some problems.
So a technology tends, at first, to change culture. Then, culture changes the technology. When that happens, technologies become boring or invisible. Not that they disappear, but that they become so common, such a normal part of our lives, societies and cultures that we don’t really think about them. We just use them. Like the telephone, a car, toaster or today, a smartphone.
Quite often, what become revolutionary technologies aren’t seen as such when they start being used. The railroad is a good example. The original intent was to improve delivery of coal from the mines in northern England and Wales to major cities. Then someone figured out you could also move cows. Then people. There’s a reason it was called “cattle class.”
